Showing papers on "Rationality published in 1996"

Reasoning the fast and frugal way: models of bounded rationality.

Abstract: Humans and animals make inferences about the world under limited time and knowledge. In contrast, many models of rational inference treat the mind as a Laplacean Demon, equipped with unlimited time, knowledge, and computational might. Following H. Simon's notion of satisficing, the authors have proposed a family of algorithms based on a simple psychological mechanism: onereason decision making. These fast and frugal algorithms violate fundamental tenets of classical rationality: They neither look up nor integrate all information. By computer simulation, the authors held a competition between the satisficing "Take The Best" algorithm and various "rational" inference procedures (e.g., multiple regression). The Take The Best algorithm matched or outperformed all competitors in inferential speed and accuracy. This result is an existence proof that cognitive mechanisms capable of successful performance in the real world do not need to satisfy the classical norms of rational inference.

The Institutionalization of Institutional Theory

Abstract: Excerpt] Our primary aims in this effort are twofold: to clarify the independent theoretical contributions of institutional theory to analyses of organizations, and to develop this theoretical perspective further in order to enhance its use in empirical research. There is also a more general, more ambitious objective here, and that is to build a bridge between two distinct models of social actor that underlie most organizational analyses, which we refer to as a rational actor model and an institutional model. The former is premised on the assumption that individuals are constantly engaged in calculations of the costs and benefits of different action choices, and that behavior reflects such utility-maximizing calculations. In the latter model, by contrast, 'oversocialized' individuals are assumed to accept and follow social norms unquestioningly, without any real reflection or behavioral resistance based on their own particular, personal interests. We suggest that these two general models should be treated not as oppositional but rather as representing two ends of a continuum of decisionmaking processes and behaviors. Thus, a key problem for theory and research is to specify the conditions under which behavior is more likely to resemble one end of this continuum or the other. In short, what is needed are theories of when rationality is likely to be more or less bounded. A developed conception of institutionalization processes provides a useful point of departure for exploring this issue.

Why Bounded Rationality

Abstract: NEARLY EVERYONE would see the truth as between Hamlet and Puck. Including Hamlet and Puck. Hamlet is feigning madness, and Puck is just being, well, puckish. Model-writing economists, however, tend not to the middle but to the “infinite in faculties” extreme. Although the postulate of unbounded rationality has dominated economic modeling for several decades, the dominance is relaxing. Is this encouraging? Why bounded rationality? In this survey, four reasons are given for incorporating bounded rationality in economic models. First, there is abundant empirical evidence that it is important. Second, models of bounded rationality have proved themselves in a wide range of impressive work. Third, the standard justifications for assuming unbounded rationality are unconvincing; their logic cuts both ways. Fourth, deliberation about an economic decision is a costly activity, and good economics requires that we entertain all costs. These four reasons, or categories of reasons, are developed in the following four sections. Deliberation cost will be a recurring theme. Most references are to the last 15 years, though many earlier works are also cited. A longer version of the survey, including many more references, is available from the author on request.

Norms, culture, and world politics: insights from sociology's institutionalism

Abstract: International relations scholars have become increasingly interested in norms of behavior, intersubjective understandings, culture, identity, and other social features of political life. However, our investigations largely have been carried out in disciplinary isolation. We tend to treat our arguments that these things "matter" as discoveries and research into social phenomena as forays into uncharted territory. However, scholars within the fields of international law, history, anthropology, and sociology have always known that social realities influence behavior, and each field has incorporated these social constructions in different ways into research programs. Sociologists working in organization theory have developed a particularly powerful set of arguments about the roles of norms and culture in international life that pose direct challenges to realist and liberal theories in political science. Their arguments locate causal force in an expanding and deepening Western world culture that emphasizes Weberian rationality as the means to both

Rationality and reasoning

Abstract: This book addresses an apparent paradox in the psychology of thinking. On the one hand, human beings are a highly successful species. On the other, intelligent adults are known to exhibit numerous errors and biases in laboratory studies of reasoning and decision making. There has been much debate among both philosophers and psychologists about the implications of such studies for human rationality. The authors argue that this debate is marked by a confusion between two distinct notions: (a) personal rationality (rationality1Evans and Over argue that people have a high degree of rationality1 but only a limited capacity for rationality2. The book re-interprets the psychological literature on reasoning and decision making, showing that many normative errors, by abstract standards, reflect the operation of processes that would normally help to achieve ordinary goals. Topics discussed include relevance effects in reasoning and decision making, the influence of prior beliefs on thinking, and the argument that apparently non-logical reasoning can reflect efficient decision making. The authors also discuss the problem of deductive competence - whether people have it, and what mechanism can account for it.As the book progresses, increasing emphasis is given to the authors' dual process theory of thinking, in which a distinction between tacit and explicit cognitive systems is developed. It is argued that much of human capacity for rationality1 is invested in tacit cognitive processes, which reflect both innate mechanisms and biologically constrained learning. However, the authors go on to argue that human beings also possess an explicit thinking system, which underlies their unique - if limited - capacity to be rational.

Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge

Abstract: We may learn from our mistakes, but this work argues that, where experimental knowledge is concerned, we haven't begun to learn enough. It provides a critique of the subjective Bayesian view of statistical inference, and proposes the author's own error-statistical approach as a more robust framework for the epistemology of experiment. Deborah Mayo seeks to address the needs of researchers who work with statistical analysis, and simultaneously engages the basic philosophical problems of objectivity and rationality. Mayo has argued for an account of learning from error that goes beyond detecting logical inconsistencies. In this book, she presents her complete programme for how we learn about the world by being "shrewd inquisitors of error, white gloves off." Her approach should be relevant to philosophers, historians and sociologists of science, as well as researchers in the physical, biological and social sciences whose work depends upon statistical analysis.

Social Norms and Social Roles

Abstract: This essay challenges some widely held understandings about rationality and choice, and uses that challenge to develop some conclusions about the appropriate domain of law. In particular, it suggests that many well-known anomalies in individual behavior are best explained by reference to social norms and to the fact that people feel shame when they violate those norms. Hence, there is no simple contrast between "rationality" and social norms. Individual rationality is a function of social norms. It follows that social states are often more fragile than might be supposed, because they depend on social norms to which people may not have much allegiance. Norm entrepreneurs -- people interested in changing social norms -- can exploit this fact; if successful, they produce what norm bandwagons and norm cascades. Collective action might be necessary to solve some unusual collective action problems posed by existing norms. And for many purposes, it would be best to dispense with the idea of "preferences," despite the pervasiveness of that idea in positive social science and in arguments about the appropriate domains of law.

What is sociological about economic sociology? Uncertainty and the embeddedness of economic action

Abstract: This article argues that the problem of uncertainty represents the central limitation of efficiency-based approaches to the explanation and prediction of economic outcomes. The problem of uncertainty reintroduces the Hobbesian problem of order into economics and makes it possible to connect questions of economic decision-making with social theory. The emphasis lies not, as in the behavioral theories of the Carnegie School, in the influence of uncertainty on the actual decision process, but in those social “devices” that actors rely on in decision-making, i.e., that structure the situation for the agents. If agents cannot anticipate the benefits of an investment, optimizing decisions become impossible, and the question opens up how intentionally rational actors reach decisions under this condition of uncertainty. This provides a systematic starting point for economic sociology. Studies in economic sociology that argue from different theoretical perspectives point to the significance of uncertainty and goal ambiguity. This contribution reflects theoretically why economic sociology can develop a promising approach by building upon these insights. It becomes understandable why culture, power, institutions, social structures, and cognitive processes are important in modern market economies. But it should be equally emphasized that the maximizing paradigm in economics will not be dethroned without a causal theory of the relationship of intentional rationality and social rigidities.

Economic analysis and moral philosophy

Abstract: Introduction 1. Ethics and economics 2. Two examples Part I. Rationality and Morality: 3. Rationality 4. Rationality in positive and normative economics 5. Rationality, norms and morality Part II. Welfare and Consequences: 6. Welfare 7. Efficiency 8. Utilitarianism and consequentialism Part III. Libert, Rights, Equality and Justice: 9. Liberty, rights and libertarianism 10. Equality and egalitarianism 11. Justice and contractualism Part IV. Moral Mathematics: 12. Social choice theory 13. Game theory Part V. Conclusions: 14. Conclusions Appendix: How could ethics matter to economics?

Rationality and the Emotions

Abstract: In an earlier paper (Elster, I989 a), I discussed the relation between rationality and social norms. Although I did mention the role of the emotions in sustaining social norms, I did not focus explicitly on the relation between rationality and the emotions. That relation is the main topic of the present paper, with social norms in a subsidiary part. Emotions are a neglected topic, and the neglect of economists is second to none. I find this surprising. I take it that economics is concerned with the best ways of promoting human satisfaction in a world of scarce resources. With one exception, all human satisfaction comes in the form of emotional experiences. The exception is the hedonic satisfaction produced by the senses, such as the taste of sweetness on the tongue or the feeling of wind on your face after a long climb. Such sensations differ from emotions in that no prior cognition is necessary to produce them. I do not have to recognise the wind as wind to enjoy the sensation. By contrast, to get angry when my Albanian host offers me a cup of tea by passing it under his left arm I have to know that in Albania this is considered an insult. For infants, sensations may be the most important source of satisfaction. For most adults, I believe, they definitely take second place to emotional experiences. If one grants the truth of that claim, or even of the weaker claim that emotional experiences are important sources of human satisfaction, we would expect economists to have thought about them a great deal. We would expect them to have studied the ways in which people organise their life to maximise emotional satisfaction, to have identified sources of suboptimal emotion-seeking behaviour, and to have suggested ways of improving this behaviour. Economists, as we know, have done nothing of the kind. Recent economic work on the emotions (Hirshleifer, I987; Frank, I988) focuses exclusively on the role of the emotions in sustaining (or preventing) cooperative interactions. No economist to my knowledge has considered the emotions in their main role as providers of pleasure, happiness, satisfaction, or utility. To put it crudely, economists have totally neglected the most important aspect of their subject matter. No doubt there are reasons for this neglect. One is the lack of a metric. If you asked someone whether he prefers shame or griefwhether he would rather be caught cheating at an exam or have his girl friend leave him he would probably be at a loss for an answer. The emotions themselves, in fact, interfere with our ability to observe them. (Montaigne cites Petrarch to the effect that 'He who can describe how his heart is ablaze is burning on a small pyre'.) Another reason which ought, however, to be a challenge rather than an excuse may be the lack of good theories of how emotions are triggered and transformed in encounters with the world. A further reason may be that

Farewell to Criteriology

Abstract: Criteriology is the quest for permanent or stable criteria of rationality founded in the desire for objectivism and the belief that we must somehow transcend the limitations to knowing that are the inevitable consequence of our sociotemporal perspective as knowers. The project of criteriology has, in turn, shaped our way of thinking about the epistemology of social inquiry. This article offers a way of redefining social inquiry without recourse to criteriology. It presents a view of social inquiry as practical philosophy and discusses the vision that enables that practice, the conditions that sustain that practice, and the place of such a practice in society.

Comparing the Reinventing Government Movement with the New Public Administration

Abstract: No movement associated with the administrative aspects of modern American government has had the visibility of reinventing government. The phrase reinventing government has entered the lexicon of government, and the constellation of ideas associated with it appears to have been extensively influential in the practices of government management at all levels (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992; Report of the National Performance Review, 1993). Only time will tell if the reinventing movement will be the revolution its advocates seek and will have the staying power of the progressive reform movement of the turn of the century, out of which much of modern public administration emerged, or the positive government era of the 1940s and 1950s, which shaped the character of the modern field. American public administration is alive with debates, arguments, and discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of the reinventing government paradigm (Kettl, 1994; DiIulio, Garvey, and Kettl, 1993; Goodsell, 1993; Moe, 1993; Rosenbloom, 1994; Carroll, 1995; Nathan, 1995). Because this is not the first attempted revolution in the field, it is useful to compare it with earlier movements. Here I compare the new public administration that started in the late 1960s and has a continuing literature (Marini, 1971; Frederickson, 1980; Waldo, 1971; Frederickson and Chandler, 1989) to the reinventing government movement of the early 1990s.(1) I compare new public administration with reinventing government along six dimensions of public administration: concepts of change; concepts of relevance and empowerment; theories of rationality; organizational structure and design; theories of management and leadership; and epistemology, methodology, and the issue of values. Concepts of Change The need for change is the dominant theme in both the new public administration and in the reinventing government movement. Because both movements were in some sense revolutionary, it is axiomatic that the adherents to the movements were disappointed with the status quo and called for change. In some respects, members of the two movements were disappointed with the same things and were (are) seeking the same changes (Table 1). The new public administration developed a comparatively sophisticated concept of change, in part because change was the gear driving the other gears of the argument. The concept of change and other concepts were set out in three-column tables with the headings "From," "Transition," and "To." The new public administration attempted to describe the then-current (say 1968) state of affairs under "From"; the desired objective under "To," and the transition between the two. These three-column tables were applied to many concepts of public administration, such as rationality, organization structure, management, and so forth. One new public administration conception of change is presented in Table 2. Obviously, the new public administration conception of change was rather process oriented, involving changeable or malleable organizational forms, developing criteria by which to judge effectiveness, institutionalizing change processes, emphasizing decrements as much as increments, and identifying change facilitation as the primary responsibility of leadership. The new public administration also was skeptical about technology as a solution to organizational or policy problems; indeed, it was argued that technology was more often the cause of government problems than the solution. A key point in the new public administrations conception of change was based on systems logic. Public organizations are embedded in a dynamic social/political ecology. Organizations tend to stability, as most bureaucratic models would verify, whereas the context of the organization is very dynamic. By definition, [TABULAR DATA FOR TABLE 2 OMITTED] then, there are problems, through time, in reconciling organizational statics and social/political dynamics. …

Organization Science as Social Construction Postmodern Potentials

Abstract: We critically examine three major assumptions of modernist organization science: rational agency, empirical knowledge, and language as representation. With these assumptions problematized, we are positioned for a postmodern turn in the discipline. From a postmodern standpoint, we are moved to replace rational agency with communal rationality, empirical knowledge with social construction, and language as representation with language as action. Outcomes for an organization science place special emphasis on reconstructing and enriching the aims and methods of research and on critical reflection, generative theorizing, and scholarly action within organizations.

Interactive minds : life-span perspectives on the social foundation of cognition

Abstract: Part I. General Theoretical Framework: 1. The evolution of cooperation: within and between generations Peter Hammerstein 2. Interacting minds in a lifespan perspective: a cultural-historical approach to culture and cognitive development Michael Cole 3. Essentially Social: on the origin of linguistic knowledge in the individual Wolfgang Klein 4. Knowledge and the construction of women's development Gisela Labouvie-Vief Part II. Interactive Minds: 5. Peer interactive minds: development, theoretical, and methodological issues Margarita Azmitia 6. Collaborative rules: how are people supposed to work with one another Jacqueline Goodnow 7. The lifelong transformation of moral goals through social influence Damon William 8. Adults Telling and retelling stories collaboratively Roger A. Dixon 9. Planning about life: towards a social-interactive paradigm Jacqui Smith 10. Wisdom and the social-interactive foundation of the mind Ursula Staudinger Part III. Interactive Minds: Perspecxtives from Cognitive and Educational Psychology: 11. Rationality: Why Social Context Matters Gerd Gigerenzer 12. Styles of thinking Robert J. Sternberg 13. Cooperative construction of expert knowledge: the case of knowledge engineering Gerhard Strube 14. Communities of practice towards expertise: social foundation of university instruction Heinz Mandl Epilogue: reflections and future perspectives 15. Cognitive pychology Peter Graf 16. Developmental psychology Laura Carstensen 17. Educational psychology Franz Weinert 18. Cognitive and cultural anthropology Richard Shweder.

A critical review of the methodology of environmental racism research

Abstract: Research on environmental racism has emphasized positive rationality. While useful for policy and legal interventions, this is problematic from a radical political and theoretical viewpoint. By examining two key research questions–is “race” or class responsible for discriminatory patterns? which came first, the people or the hazard?–I explore the implicit assumptions concerning racism within this framework. This reveals a large, pervasive set of misconceptions, including a tendency to reduce racism to overt actions, denying racism as ideology, and insisting on a fixed, unitary idea of racism. Both scholars committed to antiracism and those who challenge environmental justice activists' claims reproduce these conceptualizations.

The Relationship Between Theory and Practice: Back to the Classics

Abstract: During the 20th century, scholarly thinking has been dominated by a strong inequality between theory and practice. Abstract knowledge was considered to be of a higher standing and of more value than concrete skills or the tacit knowledge of good performance. Much of the educational research concentrated on theory formation, both descriptive, for explanation, and prescriptive, for behavioral instructions. Consequently, educationalists in different subjects and professions were confronted with the problem of bridging the gap between theory and practice, a task that never seemed to succeed. During the past few decades, this problem has been analyzed in such different fields as education (Schoen, Fenstermacher), anthropology (Geertz), epistemology (Rorty, Toulmin, Lyotard), and ethics (Nussbaum). In different ways, these scholars developed alternative models of knowledge. For the justification of such alternative models, several authors, especially in the philosophical domain, referred to the classical controversy between Plato's and Aristotle's conceptions of rationality (episteme versus phronesis). In this article, the characteristics of these different types of rationality are discussed, as are the consequences for teacher education of the shift from episteme to phronesis. A revaluation of practical knowledge will be proposed, as well as an alternative view of the relationship between theory and practice.

Court communities under sentencing guidelines: dilemmas of formal rationality and sentencing disparity

Abstract: Efforts to structure sentencing through guidelines involve a fundamental dilemma for the sociology of law—guidelines attempt to emphasize formal rationality and uniformity (Savelsberg, 1992) while allowing discretion to tailor sentences to fit situations and characteristics of individual defendants when courts deem it warranted (substantive rationality). This exercise of substantive rationality in sentencing based on “extralegal” criteria deemed relevant by local court actors risks the kind of unwarranted disparity that guidelines were intended to reduce. We view local courts as arenas in which two sets of sentencing standards meet—formal rational ones articulated by guidelines vs. substantive, extralegal criteria deemed relevant by local court actors. We use statistical and qualitative data from Pennsylvania, a state whose courts have operated under sentencing guidelines for over a decade. Our analysis examines extralegal differences in three county courts' sentencing outcomes, and then documents ways in which substantive rational sentencing criteria are intertwined with defendants' exercise of their right to trial and their race and gender.

Without good reason : the rationality debate in philosophy and cognitive science

Abstract: Are humans rational? Various experiments performed over the last several decades have been interpreted as showing that humans are irrational-we make significant and consistent errors in logical reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, similarity judgements, and risk-assessment, to name a few areas. But can these experiments establish human irrationality, or is it a conceptual truth that humans must be rational, as various philosophers have argued? In this book, Edward Stein offers a clear critical account of this debate about rationality in philosophy and cognitive science. He discusses concepts of rationality-the pictures of rationality that the debate centres on-and assesses the empirical evidence used to argue that humans are irrational. He concludes that the question of human rationality must be answered not conceptually but empirically, using the full resources of an advanced cognitive science. Furthermore, he extends this conclusion to argue that empirical considerations are also relevant to the theory of knowledge-in other words, that epistemology should be naturalized.

Learning in evolutionary environments

Abstract: The purpose of this work is to present a sort of short selective guide to an enormous and diverse literature on learning processes in economics. We argue that learning is an ubiquitous characteristic of most economic and social systems but it acquires even greater importance in explicitly evolutionary environments where: a) heterogeneous agents systematically display various forms of "bounded rationality"; b) there is a persistent appearance of novelties, both as exogenous shocks and as the result of technological, behavioural and organisational innovations by the agents themselves; c) markets (and other interaction arrangements) perform as selection mechanisms; d) aggregate regularities are primarily emergent properties stemming from out-of-equilibrium interactions. We present, by means of examples, the most important classes of learning models, trying to show their links and differences, and setting them against a sort of ideal framework of "what one would like to understand about learning...". We put a signifiphasis on learning models in their bare-bone formal structure, but we also refer to the (generally richer) non-formal theorising about the same objects. This allows us to provide an easier mapping of a wide and largely unexplored research agenda.

Modern theories of justice

Abstract: Modern Theories of Justice By Serge-Christophe Kolm. Cambridge, MA: The M1T Press, 1998. Pp. ix, 525. $42.00. Professor Kolm's books and articles form one of the most important contributions to contemporary social ethics. Even though the main parts of his works were originally published in or have been translated into English, they have not received the attention they deserve. This is sufficient reason to highly recommend his Modern Theories of Justice, which contains a detailed introduction to his other books. Since the late fifties, Professor Kolm has developed a general theory of justice. He has also extensively contributed to the critical evaluation of the various theories, principles, or criteria of justice that influence economists. Professor Kolm presents his theory of justice as resulting from an application of rationality (in the sense of rational justification) to the question of global justice (what should be done in society?), that is, to the definition of the social optimum and of what is right or good in society. Briefly, this social optimum basically consists of first satisfying basic needs and guaranteeing basic rights and second allocating society's resources (including human resources) in an equitable way. The latter principle requires mixing the (somehow competing) moral criteria of equal process freedom (freedom to benefit from the results of one's acts), equal consumption, and equal satisfaction. Process freedom alone justifies free markets and no resource redistribution. Equal consumption, when combined with efficiency, requires superequity (that is, no agent would strictly prefer any convex combination of the allocations received by others to his own allocation). Equal satisfaction requires to leximin welfare levels corresponding to fundamental preferences, a (difficult) concept that allows the social observer, in particularly unjust or unequal situations, to unambiguously identify the worst-off agents, that is, the agents who should be allocated more resources. Among the different ways of mixing process freedom and equal consumption, Professor Kolm elaborated a particularly interesting intermediary case in recent contributions (recall that the whole structure of his theory, including the ideas of the maximin in fundamental preferences, income justice and superequity, unjust inequality measurement, etc., was first developed and presented in the late sixties). The purpose of this intermediary case is to equally share the benefits of possibly unequal productive capacities while letting agents individually benefit from their own consumptive capacities. The solution consists of a fixed-duration income equalization. This criterion is met when all agents in a society face a budget set having the property that by choosing a prespecified labor time (the so-called fixed duration) any agent would earn the same labor income. Professor Kolm's theory of justice also considers several reasons why the first-best social optimum could not be reached (for example, market failures) and proposes solutions to these problems (for example, social contracts, which give foundations to a theory of the state). Finally, a large part of the book is devoted to a critical appraisal of the main ethical theories influencing the development of normative economics (what justifies the title of the book), with a long discussion on utilitarianism and social choice theory. The general picture is quite impressive. Professor Kolm is not only able to discuss a long and diversified series of topics, such as the economics of poverty, the no self in Buddhism or the ideology of the French Revolution, but he also succeeds in building links among all these topics and integrating them into a unified theory. …

The Habermas Reader

Abstract: Part I: General Introduction. Part II: Rationality and the Public Sphere. Part III: Epistemology and Methodology. Part IV: Language and Communication. Part V: Ethics and Law. Part VI: Evolution and Legitimation. Part VII: The Theory of Modernity. Part VIII: Critical Social Theory Today.

Rationality Redeemed?: Further Dialogues on an Educational Ideal

Abstract: In Educating Reason, Harvey Siegel presented the case regarding rationality and critical thinking as fundamental education ideals. In Rationality Redeemed?, a collection of essays written since that time, he develops this view, responds to major criticisms raised against it, and engages those critics in dialogue. In developing his ideas and responding to critics, Siegel addresses main currents in contemporary thought, including feminism, postmodernism and multiculturalism.

Living Together: Rationality, Sociality, and Obligation

Abstract: Chapter 1 Introduction: Two Standpoints Chapter 2 The Personal and the Collective Part 3 Part I. Rationality, Coordination, and Convention Chapter 4 Rationality and Salience Chapter 5 Rationality, Coordination, and Convention Chapter 6 Notes on the Concept of a Social Convention Chapter 7 On Language and Convention Chapter 8 Game Theory and Convention Part 9 Part II. Sociality: Introducing Plural Subjects Chapter 10 Walking Together: A Paradigmatic Social Phenomenon Chapter 11 Modelling Collective Belief Chapter 12 Fusion: Sketch of a "Contractual" Model Chapter 13 On the Question Whether Language Has A Social Nature: Some Aspects of Winch and Others on Wittgenstein Chapter 14 Group Languages and "Criteria" Chapter 15 More on Social Facts Part 16 Part III. Joint Commitment and Obligation Chapter 17 Agreements, Coercion, and Obligation Chapter 18 Is an Agreement an Exchange of Promises? Chapter 19 More on Collective Belief Chapter 20 Group Membership and Political Obligation Chapter 21 On Feeling Guilt for What One's Group Has Done

The Dark Side of Planning: Rationality and 'Realrationalität'

Abstract: Niccolo Machiavelli, the founder of modern political and administrative thought, made clear that an understanding of politics requires distinguishing between formal politics and what later, with Ludwig von Rochau, would become known as Realpolitik. No such distinction has been employed in the study of rationality. Yet I will argue that distinguishing between formal rationality and real rationality is as important for the understanding of rationality and planning as the distinction between formal politics and Realpolitik has been for understanding politics.

Rational behavior and economic theory

Abstract: Nowadays, it seems almost universally presumed that the fundamental characteristic of homo oeconomicus is his rationality. We analyze the role played by the concept of rationality in economic theory, and demonstrate that it is necessarily constrained to be an essentially contentless notion. We show that the main body of economic theory is firmly grounded, and that some contrasting approaches to rationality, although leading to heated debates and vivid confusion, have no fundamental significance for economics. With a refereshed view on the essence of economics, we argue that the principles of economic theory form an essential methodological guide for the emergent line of research based on the use of so-called ‘evolutive’ models.

Reconstructing Nature: Alienation, Emancipation and the Division of Labour

Abstract: One of the main features of the contemporary environmental crisis is that no one has a clear idea of what is going on. The author uses an extension of Marx's theory of alienation to explain why people find it so difficult to relate their different knowledges of the natural and social world. He argues that nevertheless it is possible to relate these to the abstractions of ecological discourse. Emancipation can come only through embracing science and rationality rather than rejecting them and, in the process, humanity as well as the non-human world will benefit.

Social emotions: confidence, trust and loyalty

Abstract: Confidence, trust and loyalty are three social emotions necessary respectively for the social processes of agency, cooperation and organization. In addition to the centrality of emotion in social life, an examination of these emotions demonstrates the importance of future‐time in social structure. Temporality is seldom discussed in the sociological literature, but unavoidable in a consideration of confidence, trust and loyalty. An examination of confidence, trust and loyalty from the perspective of temporality clarifies issues of social rationality and indicates some of the limitations of rational choice theory.

Religion, Science, and Rationality

Abstract: A fundamental debate has surfaced within the social-scientific study of religion. Though fueled by new, economic models of religious behavior, the debate finds its origins in a growing body of empirical findings. These findings challenge the received wisdom that religious beliefs and behavior are grounded in primitive, pre-scientific, and non-rational thinking. The distorting force of the received wisdom is underscored by the body of “stylized facts” that it has spawned. For example: (1) religion must inevitably decline as science and technology advance; (2) individuals become less religious and more skeptical of faith-based claims as they acquire more education, particularly more familiarity with science; and (3) membership in deviant religions is usually the consequence of indoctrination (leading to aberrant values) or abnormal psychology (due to trauma, neurosis, or unmet needs). Nearly all educated people “know” these statements to be true, even though decades of research have proved them false (Stark and Bainbridge 1985, Hadden 1987, Greeley 1989). Our review of traditional claims and contemporary data leads us to conclude that standard social-scientific theories of religious behavior have accorded unwarranted status to the assumption of nonrationality. The view of religion as nonrational, not to mention irrational, emerged from a 19th century scholarly tradition largely devoid of empirical support and tainted by prejudice, ignorance, and antireligious sentiment. Taken for granted, the standard view has hobbled religious research, promoted public misconceptions, and distorted law and politics (particularly the legal decisions and political fears concerning “cults” and “fundamentalists”).