Showing papers on "Rationality published in 1999"

On Ethics and Economics

Abstract: In this elegant critique, Amartya Sen argues that welfare economics can be enriched by paying more explicit attention fo ethics, and that modern ethical studies can also benefit from a closer contact with economics Predicitive and descriptive economics can be helped by making room for welfare-economic considerations in the explanation of behaviour In this context, he explores the rationality of behaviour and pays particular attention to social interdependence and internal tensions within consequential reasoning

On Virtue Ethics

Abstract: INTRODUCTION PART I: ACTION 1. RIGHT ACTION 2. RESOLVABLE DILEMMAS 3. IRRESOLVABLE AND TRAGIC DILEMMAS PART II: EMOTION AND MOTIVATION 4. ARISTOTLE AND KANT 5. VIRTUE AND THE EMOTIONS 6. THE VIRTUOUS AGENT'S REASONS FOR ACTION 7. MORAL MOTIVATION PART III: RATIONALITY 8. THE VIRTUES BENEFIT THEIR POSSESSOR 9. NATURALISM 10. NATURALISM FOR RATIONAL ANIMALS 11. OBJECTIVITY BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX.

Incomplete contracts: Where do we stand?

Abstract: The paper takes stock of the advances and directions for research on the incomplete contracting front. It first illustrates some of the main ideas of the incomplete contract literature through an example. It then offers methodological insights on the standard approach to modeling incomplete contracts; in particular it discusses a tension between two assumptions made in the literature, namely rationality and the existence of transaction costs. Last, it argues that, contrary to what is commonly argued, the complete contract methodology need not be unable to account for standard institutions such as authority and ownership; and it concludes with a discussion of the research agenda.

Rationality and power: democracy in practice

Abstract: "It's like the story of Little Town," an influential actor says in Rationality and Power when choosing a metaphor to describe how he manipulated rationality to gain power, "The bell ringer . . . has to set the church clock. So he calls the telephone exchange and asks what time it is, and the telephone operator looks out the window towards the church clock and says, 'It's five o'clock.' 'Good,' says the bell ringer, 'then my clock is correct.'" In the Enlightenment tradition, rationality is considered well-defined, independent of context; we know what rationality is, and its meaning is constant across time and space. Bent Flyvbjerg shows that rationality is context-dependent and that the crucial context is determined by decision-makers' power. Power blurs the dividing line between rationality and rationalization. The result is a rationality that is often as imaginary as the time in Little Town, yet with very real social and environmental consequences. Flyvbjerg takes us behind the scenes to uncover the real politics—and real rationality—of policy-making, administration, and planning in an internationally acclaimed project for environmental improvement, auto traffic reduction, land use, and urban renewal. The action takes place in the Danish city of Aalborg, but it could be anywhere. Aalborg is to Flyvbjerg what Florence was to Machiavelli: a laboratory for understanding power and what it means for our more general concerns of social and political organization. Policy-making, administration, and planning are examined in ways that allow a rare, in-depth understanding. The reader is a firsthand witness to the classic, endless drama that defines what democracy and modernity are, and what they can be. The result is a fascinating narrative that is both concrete and general, current and timeless. Drawing on the ideas of Machiavelli, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Habermas, Flyvbjerg reads the Aalborg case as a metaphor of modernity and of modern politics, administration, and planning. Flyvbjerg uncovers the interplay of power and rationality that distorts policy deliberation. He demonstrates that modern "rationality" is but an ideal when confronted with the real rationalities involved in decision making by central actors in government, economy, and civil society. Flyvbjerg then elaborates on how this problem can be dealt with so that more fruitful deliberation and action can occur.

Who Is Rational?: Studies of individual Differences in Reasoning

Abstract: Contents: Preface. Conceptualizing Rationality: Some Preliminaries. Performance Errors and Computational Limitations, With R.F. West.The Inappropriate Norm Argument. The Problem of Rational Task Construal. Dual-Process Theories and Evolutionary Adaptation Versus Normative Rationality. Thinking Dispositions and Decontextualized Reasoning, With R.F. West, W.C. Sa.The Fundamental Computational Bias. Has Human Irrationality Been Empirically Demonstrated?

Inefficiency in Analysts' Earnings Forecasts: Systematic Misreaction or Systematic Optimism?

Abstract: A rational analysis of analyst behavior predicts that analysts immediately and without bias incorporate information into their forecasts. Several studies document analysts' tendency to systematically underreact to information. Underreaction is inconsistent with rationality. Other studies indicate that analysts systematically overreact to new information or that they are systematically optimistic. This study discriminates between these three hypotheses by examining the interaction between the nature of information and the type of reaction by analysts. The evidence indicates that analysts underreact to negative information, but overreact to positive information. These results are consistent with systematic optimism in response to information. THE LITERATURE ON FINANCIAL ANALYSTS defines the phrase "forecast inefficiency" to mean forecasts that fail to accurately incorporate new information on a timely basis and/or that are biased. These forecasts have also been described as irrational or suboptimal. Prior studies report inefficiency in analysts' forecasts, finding that they are upwardly biased and inaccurately reflect available information. Some studies conclude from this that analysts underreact to information; other studies conclude that analysts overreact. If markets treat analysts' forecasts as both rational and statistically optimal, then inefficient forecasts could have important implications for the efficiency of pricing in securities markets. In this paper, we reexamine the apparent tendency of analysts to misinterpret earnings information. The intent of this study is to discriminate between three hypotheses: (1) that analysts systematically underreact to new earnings information; (2) that analysts systematically overreact to new earnings information; and (3) that analysts are systematically optimistic in their reactions. For hypotheses (1) and (2), the direction of the misinterpretation (i.e., underor overreaction) is independent of the nature of the information received. In contrast, hypothesis (3) predicts that analysts are optimistic in interpreting

Rationality for Economists

Abstract: Rationality is a complex behavioral theory that can be parsed into statements about preferences, perceptions, and process. This paper looks at the evidence on rationality that is provided by behavioral experiments, and argues that most cognitive anomalies operate through errors in perception that arise from the way information is stored, retrieved, and processed, or through errors in process that lead to formulation of choice problems as cognitive tasks that are inconsistent at least with rationality narrowly defined. The paper discusses how these cognitive anomalies influence economic behavior and measurement, and their implications for economic analysis.

How People Explain Behavior: A New Theoretical Framework

Abstract: This article presents a theoretical framework of how people explain behavior. The framework, based on the folk concept of intentionality, distinguishes two major modes of explanation—reason explanation and cause explanation—as well as two minor modes and identifies conditions under which they occur. Three studies provide empirical support for these distinctions. As part of the framework, a detailed model of people's reason explanations is developed, which emphasizes the unique conceptual and linguistic features of reasons. This model points to limitations of traditional attribution concepts, which are examined theoretically and empirically. Finally, the theoretical framework incorporates attribution concepts, which apply to some but not all modes of explanation. Several paths for future research are outlined—on novel topics such as the roles of rationality and subjectivity in explanations and on classic topics such as the actor-observer asymmetry and the self-serving bias.

The endogeneity of legal regulation: Grievance procedures as rational myth

Abstract: Most accounts of organizations and law treat law as largely exogenous and emphasize organizations' responses to law. This study proposes a model of endogeneity among organizations, the professions, and legal institutions. It suggests that organizations and the professions strive to construct rational responses to law, enabled by "rational myths" or stories about appropriate solutions that are themselves modeled after the public legal order. Courts, in turn, recognize and legitimate organizational structures that mimic the legal form, thus conferring legal and market benefits upon organizational structures that began as gestures of compliance. Thus, market rationality can follow from rationalized myths: the professions promote a particular compliance strategy, organizations adopt this strategy to reduce costs and symbolize compliance, and courts adjust judicial constructions of fairness to include these emerging organizational practices. To illustrate this model, a case study of equal employment opportunit...

Risk, calculable and incalculable

Abstract: This paper starts with two approaches to risk : the sociological approach of Ulrich Beck and the 'governmentality' account based on Michel Foucault's theses Beck's approach is characterized as totalizing, realist, and relying on a uniform conception of risk Moreover, his narrative of the emergence of risk society founders on the untenable binary, calculable/incalculable Using Francois Ewald on social insurance, the paper argues that risk is better approached as a form of calculative rationality, a way of rendering the incalculable calculable The governmental account allows us to analyse specific forms of risk rationality and technology, the types of agency and identity involved in practices of risk, and the political and social imaginaries to which these practices are linked The governmental account, however, encounters difficulties in grasping the more general transformations of contemporary regimes of government In this respect, Beck's notion of reflexivity is extremely useful The paper then delineates various types of risk rationality (insurance, epidemiological, clinical, and case-management risk, and comprehensive risk management) and places them in an analytic of contemporary government It concludes that one of the conditions of these new forms of government is the 'governmentalisation of government' Rather than 'the death of the social', it is better to understand this analytic as charting a transformation of the liberal problematic of security and the emergence of 'reflexive government'

Two Theories of Modernity

Abstract: There seem to be at large in our culture two ways of understanding the rise of modernity. They are in effect two different "takes" on what makes our contemporary society different from its forebears. In one take, we can look on the difference between present-day society and, say, that of medieval Europe as analogous to the difference between medieval Europe and China or India. In other words, we can think of the difference as one between civilizations, each with their own culture. Or alternatively, we can see the change from earlier centuries to today as involving something like "development," as the demise of a "traditional" society and the rise of the "modern." And in this perspective, which seems to be the dominant one, things look rather different. I want to call the first kind of understanding a "cultural" one, and the second "acultural." In using these terms, I'm leaning on a use of the word culture which is analogous to the sense it often has in anthropology. I am evoking the picture of a plurality of human cultures, each of which has a language and a set of practices that define specific understandings of personhood, social relations, states of mind/soul, goods and bads, virtues and vices, and the like. These languages are often mutually untranslatable. With this model in mind, a "cultural" theory of modernity is one that characterizes the transformations that have issued in the modern West mainly in terms of the rise of a new culture. The contemporary Atlantic world is seen as one culture (or group of closely related cultures) among others, with its own specific understandings, for example, of person, nature, the good, to be contrasted to all others, including its own predecessor civilization (with which it obviously also has a lot in common). By contrast, an "acultural" theory is one that describes these transformations in terms of some culture-neutral operation. By this I mean an operation that is not defined in terms of the specific cultures it carries us from and to, but is rather seen as of a type that any traditional culture could undergo. An example of an acultural type of theory, indeed a paradigm case, would be one that conceives of modernity as the growth of reason, defined in various ways: as the growth of scientific consciousness, or the development of a secular outlook, or the rise of instrumental rationality, or an ever-clearer distinction between fact-finding and evaluation. Or else modernity might be accounted for in terms of social, as well as intellectual changes: the transformations, including the intellectual ones, are seen as coming about as a result of increased mobility, concentration of populations, industrialization, or the like. In all these cases, modernity is conceived as a set of transformations that any and every culture can go through--and that all will probably be forced to undergo. These changes are not defined by their end point in a specific constellation of understandings of, say, person, society, good; they are rather described as a type of transformation to which any culture could in principle serve as "input." For instance, any culture could suffer the impact of growing scientific consciousness; any religion could undergo secularization; any set of ultimate ends could be challenged by a growth of instrumental thinking; any metaphysic could be dislocated by the split between fact and value. So modernity in this kind of theory is understood as issuing from a rational or social operation that is culture-neutral. This is not to say that the theory cannot acknowledge good historical reasons why this transformation first arose in one civilization rather than another, or why some may undergo it more easily than others. The point rather is that the operation is defined not in terms of its specific point of arrival, but as a general function that can take any specific culture as its input. To grasp the difference from another angle, the operation is not seen as supposing or reflecting an option for one specific set of human values or understandings among others. …

Ackoff's Best: His Classic Writings on Management

Abstract: SYSTEMS. Our Changing Concept of the World. Reflections on Systems and Their Models. Growth versus Development. Toward a System of Systems Concepts. Beating the System. PLANNING. The Nature of Planning. Alternative Types of Planning. Problem Treatments. Mess Management. Ends Planning.@aMission Statements. Creativity and Constraints. APPLICATIONS. Consumer Design. Education.@aNever Let Your Schooling Interfere with Your Education. Crime. The Effect of Advertising on Sales: A Study of Relations. On Pairs and Trios: The Smallest Social Systems. Why People Drink: Toward Understanding Objectives. Corporate Perestroika: The Internal Market Economy. Design of Management Systems. SCIENCE. The Nature of Science and Methodology. Objectivity. Rationality. The Future of Operational Research Is Past. Epilogue: The Role of Business in a Democratic Society. Index.

The Courage of Misguided Convictions

Abstract: The field of modern financial economics assumes that people behave with extreme rationality, but they do not. Furthermore, people's deviations from rationality are often systematic. Behavioral finance relaxes the traditional assumptions of financial economics by incorporating these observable, systematic, and very human departures from rationality into standard models of financial markets. We highlight two common mistakes investors make: excessive trading and the tendency to disproportionately hold on to losing investments while selling winners. We argue that these systematic biases have their origins in human psychology. The tendency for human beings to be overconfident causes the first bias in investors, and the human desire to avoid regret prompts the second.

Strategic choice and international relations

Abstract: Acknowledgments vii Chapter One International Relations: A Strategic-Choice Approach David A. Lake and Robert Powell 3 Chapter Two Actors and Preferences in International Relations Jeffry A. Frieden 39 Chapter Three The Strategic Setting of Choices: Signaling, Commitment, and Negotiation in International Politics James D. Morrow 77 Chapter Four Institutions as Constraints on Strategic Choice Ronald Rogowski 115 Chapter Five The Governance Problem in International Relations Peter Alexis Gourevitch 137 Chapter Six Evolution, Choice, and International Change Miles Kabler 165 Chapter Seven The Limits of Strategic Choice: Constrained Rationality and Incomplete Explanation Arthur A. Stein 197 References 229 About the Authors 261 Name Index 263 General Index 267

Learning as Problem-Driven or Learning in the Face of Mystery?:

Abstract: The phrase `learning in the face of mystery' is borrowed in homage from Barry Turner, who coined it in contrast to `learning in the face of problems', which assumes learning to be voluntaristic, always functional to the organization, synonymous with change. The shift from the one to the other resides in an aesthetic choice between rationality and relationality. In fact, in spite of the huge amount of literature on organizational learning, there is still very little understanding about organizing as a practice based on a distributed knowledge system. At the same time, the normative/prescriptive discourse on Organizational Learning and the Learning Organization is mobilized as a further means of organizational control. The aim of this paper is to explore, from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge, the implicit assumptions underlying the Organizational Learning literature, and to look for alternative ways of conceptualizing learning-working-innovating as non-distinct activities. The term `learning-i...

Emotional arousal as a source of bounded rationality

Abstract: This paper proposes an alternative psychological explanation for bounded rationality. According to Herbert Simon, bounded rationality arises from human cognitive limitations. Following the suggestion of institutional economist John R. Commons, I argue that extremes in emotional arousal also contribute to bounded rationality. This idea is formalized and developed using the Yerkes–Dodson law from psychology. Examples from the popular press and the academic literatures of law, management and economics are presented to illustrate the impact of this type of bounded rationality on human behavior.

The use of crying over spilled milk: a note on the rationality and functionality of regret

Abstract: This article deals with the rationality and functionality of the existence of regret and its influence on decision making. First, regret is defined as a negative, cognitively based emotion that we experience when realizing or imagining that our present situation would have been better had we acted differently. Next, it is discussed whether this experience can be considered rational and it is argued that rationality only applies to what we do with our regrets, not to the experience itself. Then, research is reviewed showing that both the anticipation of future regret and the experience of retrospective regret influence behavior. The influence of anticipated regret can be considered rational as long as the decision maker can accurately predict the regret that may result from the decision. The influence of experienced regret cannot be considered rational, since decisions should be based on future outcomes, not historical ones. However, influence of experienced regret can be called functional since it may res...

Manufacturing Rationality: The Engineering Foundations of the Managerial Revolution

Abstract: Introduction 1. Prophets of Management: American Engineers between Industrial Growth and Labor Unrest 2. Engineering Rationality: 'System Shall Replace Chaos' 3. Colonizing the Mind: The Translation of Systematization to the Management of Organizations 4. Contested Rationality: Disturbances, Controversies, and Opposition to Management Systems 5. Engineers, Labor Politics, and American Exceptionalism before 1900 6. Taming the Shrew: Systems and Labor Politics during the Progressive Period 7. Deus ex Machina: Concluding Remarks Appendix Description of the Engineering-Management Literature

Civil wars, insecurity, and intervention

Abstract: Part One Civil War and Insecurity 1. Civil War and the Security Dilemma, by Jack Snyder and Robert Jervis2. Designing Transitions for Violent Civil War, by Barbara F. WalterPart Two Case Studies 3. Bosnia and Herzegovina: How Not to End Civil War, by Susan L. Woodward4. Military Intervention in Rwanda's "Two Wars": Partisanship and Indifference, by Bruce D. Jones5. Somalia: Civil War and International Intervention, by David D. Laitin6. War and Peace in Cambodia, by Michael W. DoylePart Three Comparative Analyses 7. When All Else Fails: Evaluating Population Transfers and Partition as Solutions to Ethnic Conflict, by Chaim D. Kaufmann8. The Rationality of Fear: Political Opportunism and Ethnic Conflict, by Rui J. P. de Figueiredo, Jr., and Barry R. Weingast9. Conclusion, by Barbara F. WalterIndex

Another Modernity: A Different Rationality

Abstract: This book is Lash′s most comprehensive statement in social and cultural theory. It is a book addressed to sociologists and philosophers, to students of urban life, modern languages, cultural studies and the visual arts. Alongside the Enlightenment has emerged another modernity. This second modernity has – in opposition to the Enlightenment rationality of progress, order, homogeneity and cognition – initiated a different rationality of uncertainty, transience, experiment, and the unknowable. This second, this other modernity, is present in notions of ′difference′ and ′reflexivity′ so central to the contemporary world–view. The logic, however, of such notions can, itself, lead to the same unhappy abstraction of the first modernity. What is forgotten, Scott Lash argues, is the dimension of the ground. This book consists of explorations into this ground: as place, community, belonging, sociality, tradition, life–world; as symbol, sensation, in the tactile character of the sign. The book addresses the other modernity′s forgotten ground. The first and second modernities co–existed in a state of irresolvable tension along the history of western industrial capitalism. This is thrown into crisis, Lash argues, with the turn of the twenty–first century emergence of the global information culture. What are the implications of this explosion of first and second modernities into today′s technological culture? When the previously existing third space of difference is exploded into the general indifference of information and communication flows? How might we lead our lives in an age in which difference – and indeed the ground itself – become primarily a matter for memory, for mourning?

Adolescent Psychological Development: Rationality, Morality, and Identity

Abstract: Contents: Preface. Introduction: Development, Psychology, and Adolescence. Part I: Cognitive Development. Piaget's Theory of Formal Operations. The Nature of Rationality. The Construction of Rationality. Part II: Moral Development. Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development. The Nature of Morality. The Construction of Morality. Part III: Identity Formation. Erikson's Theory of Identity Formation. The Nature of Identity. The Construction of Identity. Part IV: Advanced Psychological Development. Rational Moral Identity. Pluralist Rational Constructivism. Rationality and Liberty in Secondary Education.

Reasoning and Thinking

Abstract: Reasoning and Thinking: A Four-way Introduction Deduction: Experiments with Syllogisms Deduction: Experiments with "if" and other Connectives Deduction: Biases and Content Effects Theories of Deduction Hypothesis Testing Induction Judging Probability Decision Making Reasoning, Thinking, and Rationality

Engaging Reason: On the Theory of Value and Action

Abstract: INTRODUCTION 1. When We Are Ourselves 2. Agency, Reason and the Good 3. Incommensurability and Agency 4. Explaining Normativity: On Rationality and the Justification of Reason 5. Explaining Normativity: Reason and the Will 6. 6. Notes on Objectivity and Value 7. Moral Change and Social Relativism 8. Mixing Values 9. The Value of Practice 10. The Truth in Particularism 11. The Moral Point of View 12. The Amoralist 13. The Central Conflict: Morality and Self-Interest Index

Muscular humanitarianism: reading the narratives of the new interventionism

Abstract: As a result of the decision by NATO to use force in response to the Kosovo crisis, issues about the legality and morality of humanitarian intervention have again begun to dominate the international legal agenda. This article explores the ways in which international legal texts about intervention operate at the ideological or representational level. It draws on feminist and post-colonial theories of subjectivity and identification to suggest that the desire to intervene militarily in cases of crisis is a product of the deeper narratives and flows of meaning within which texts about intervention are inserted. The narratives of the new interventionism create a powerful sense of self for those who identify with the hero of the story, be that the international community, the Security Council, NATO or the United States. As a result, these narratives operate not only in the realm of state systems, rationality and facts, but also in the realm of identification, imagination, subjectivity and emotion. The article explores some of the implications for international lawyers of the recognition that their arguments about intervention have effects at this personal and subjective level.

Resolving Social Dilemmas : Dynamic, Structural, and Intergroup Aspects

Abstract: This book presents an accessible and state-of-the-art survey of current research on social dilemmas. A social dilemma arises when actions that are justifiable in terms of individual rationality (e.g. over-harvesting resources, or using private instead of public transportation) threaten the common good and in the long run the individual’s own self-interest as well. The study of social dilemmas has important links with many areas in psychology, as well as with cognate disciplines such as risk analysis, environmental science, political science, and economics. Accordingly, the book should appeal not only to psychologists but also to a wider audience of scholars and researchers. Contributors include both established authorities and recent innovators, and the organization and contents of the book reflect the most recent trends in this exciting area. Increased attention is given to modeling dynamics and processes in social dilemmas, and greater emphasis placed on exploring structural solutions to dilemmas. New findings and theoretical developments regarding group and inter-group processes are highlighted and a move is made away from a heavy reliance on laboratory experiments and game theory to field studies and real-world applications. A scholarly prospective chapter at the beginning and an integrative concluding chapter provide useful overviews of the area and the contributions to the book.

An introduction to feminist epistemologies

Abstract: Could gender, race, and sexuality be relevant to knowledge? Although their positions and arguments differ in several respects, feminists have asserted that science, knowledge, and rationality cannot be severed from their social, political, and cultural aspects. This book presents a comprehensive introduction to feminist epistemologies situated at the intersection of philosophical, sociological, and cultural investigations of knowledge. It provides several critiques of more traditional approaches, and explores the alternatives proposed by feminists. In particular, this book contains extensive discussions of topics such as objectivity, rationality, power, and the subject. Drawing on a variety of sources, the author also argues that when knowledge is conceived in terms of practices, it becomes possible to see it as normative and socially constituted.

Decentralized Information Processing in the Theory of Organizations

Abstract: Although models with bounded rationality — defined broadly to mean those in which agent behaviour departs from the paradigm of effortless full rationality — are appearing in every field of economics, only in the theory of organizations has bounded rationality been an important theme throughout the history of the field There is a reason for this difference The classical model of rational choice has been a good approximation and powerful tool in studying consumer and producer theory, markets and price determination, imperfect competition, trading in financial markets, and most other topics in economics Only recently have fields matured enough that some outstanding open questions require more accurate models of human decision-making In the thoery of organizations, on the other hand, the rational model leads to uninteresting models of organizations, in which one manager or entrepreneur can run a firm or economy of arbitrary size Without bounds on information processing capacity, it is impossible to explain the sharing of information processing tasks that is such an important part of the interaction between members of organizations, and to explain the existence and functioning of the administrative apparatus that are such important components of organizations (as documented for example by Chandler, 1966 and 1990)

Closed‐End Funds: A Survey

Abstract: This survey reviews the evolving literature on closed-end fund discounts. Many studies have attempted to explain the existence and the behavior of the discount to net asset value, emphasizing biases in the calculation of NAV, agency costs, tax-timing options and market segmentation. None has been able to provide a full explanation. As a result, some researchers have found it necessary to resort to models of limited rationality. This gives rise to potential opportunities for exploiting the discount. We summarize the findings from over 70 studies of closed-end funds, and present directions for future research.

Made to Measure: Ecological Rationality in Structured Environments

Abstract: A working assumption that processes of natural and cultural evolution have tailored the mind to fit the demands and structure of its environment begs the question: how are we to characterize the structure of cognitive environments? Decision problems faced by real organisms are not like simple multiple-choice examination papers. For example, some individual problems may occur much more frequently than others, whilst some may carry much more weight than others. Such considerations are not taken into account when (i) the performance of candidate cognitive mechanisms is assessed by employing a simple accuracy metric that is insensitive to the structure of the decision-maker's environment, and (ii) reason is defined as the adherence to internalist prescriptions of classical rationality. Here we explore the impact of frequency and significance structure on the performance of a range of candidate decision-making mechanisms. We show that the character of this impact is complex, since structured environments demand that decision-makers trade off general performance against performance on important subsets of test items. As a result, environment structure obviates internalist criteria of rationality. Failing to appreciate the role of environment structure in shaping cognition can lead to mischaracterising adaptive behavior as irrational.