Showing papers on "Rationality published in 2009"

The Idea of Justice

Abstract: * Preface * Acknowledgements * Introduction: An Approach to Justice Part I: The Demands of Justice * Reason and Objectivity * Rawls and Beyond * Institutions and Persons * Voice and Social Choice * Impartiality and Objectivity * Closed and Open Impartiality Part II: Forms of Reasoning * Position, Relevance and Illusion * Rationality and Other People * Plurality of Impartial Reasons * Realizations, Consequences and Agency Part III: The Materials of Justice * Lives, Freedoms and Capabilities * Capabilities and Resources * Happiness, Well-being and Capabilities * Equality and Liberty Part IV: Public Reasoning and Democracy * Democracy as Public Reason * The Practice of Democracy * Human Rights and Global Imperatives * Justice and the World * Notes * Name Index * Subject Index

Précis of Bayesian Rationality: The Probabilistic Approach to Human Reasoning

Abstract: According to Aristotle, humans are the rational animal. The borderline between rationality and irrationality is fundamental to many aspects of human life including the law, mental health, and language interpretation. But what is it to be rational? One answer, deeply embedded in the Western intellectual tradition since ancient Greece, is that rationality concerns reasoning according to the rules of logic - the formal theory that specifies the inferential connections that hold with certainty between propositions. Piaget viewed logical reasoning as defining the end-point of cognitive development; and contemporary psychology of reasoning has focussed on comparing human reasoning against logical standards. Bayesian Rationality argues that rationality is defined instead by the ability to reason about uncertainty. Although people are typically poor at numerical reasoning about probability, human thought is sensitive to subtle patterns of qualitative Bayesian, probabilistic reasoning. In Chapters 1-4 of Bayesian Rationality (Oaksford & Chater 2007), the case is made that cognition in general, and human everyday reasoning in particular, is best viewed as solving probabilistic, rather than logical, inference problems. In Chapters 5-7 the psychology of "deductive" reasoning is tackled head-on: It is argued that purportedly "logical" reasoning problems, revealing apparently irrational behaviour, are better understood from a probabilistic point of view. Data from conditional reasoning, Wason's selection task, and syllogistic inference are captured by recasting these problems probabilistically. The probabilistic approach makes a variety of novel predictions which have been experimentally confirmed. The book considers the implications of this work, and the wider "probabilistic turn" in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, for understanding human rationality.

In two minds: Dual processes and beyond.

Abstract: Presents an interdisciplinary exploration of dual-process theories, drawing together work from cognitive and social psychology, as well as philosophy - Written and edited by leading figures from across the cognitive sciences - Encourages a dialogue between psychologists and philosophers about dual process theories that has hitherto been missing - A state-of-the-art review of a hot topic in the cognitive sciences This book explores the idea that we have two minds automatic, unconscious, and fast, the other controlled, conscious, and slow. In recent years there has been great interest in so-called dual-process theories of reasoning and rationality. According to such theories, there are two distinct systems underlying human reasoning an evolutionarily old system that is associative, automatic, unconscious, parallel, and fast, and a more recent, distinctively human system that is rule-based, controlled, conscious, serial, and slow. Within the former, processes the former, processes are held to be innate and to use heuristics that evolved to solve specific adaptive problems. In the latter, processes are taken to be learned, flexible, and responsive to rational norms. Despite the attention these theories are attracting, there is still poor communication between dual-process theorists themselves, and the substantial bodies of work on dual processes in cognitive psychology and social psychology remain isolated from each other. This book brings together leading researchers on dual processes to summarize the state-of-the-art, highlight key issues, present different perspectives, explore implications, and provide a stimulus to further work. It includes new ideas about the human mind both by contemporary philosophers interested in broad theoretical questions about mental architecture and by psychologists specialising in traditionally distinct and isolated fields. For all those in the cognitive sciences, this is a book that will advance dual-process theorizing, promote interdisciplinary communication, and encourage further applications of dual-process approaches.

Précis of Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading

Abstract: In the second half of the twentieth-century, the traditional problem of other minds was re-focused on special problems with propositional attitudes and how we attribute them to others. How do ordinary people, with no education in scientific psychology, understand and ascribe such complex, unobservable states? In different terminology, how do they go about "interpreting" their peers? By charitably presupposing their rationality and assigning them the desires and beliefs that a rational person would have in their circumstances (as Dennett and Davidson proposed)? Many philosophers of mind?perhaps Sellars (1956) was the first? suggested that our grasp of mental states in general and propositional attitudes in particular is based on a folk theory, a set of folk-psychological laws that mediate between stimulus inputs, mental states, and behavioral outputs. Mental states are assigned to others (and even to oneself) by nomological inference from what we know about their observable situation, behavior, and antecedent states. Our grasp of each attitude concept is based on a specific causal or functional role embedded in such a psychological theory. This was the reigning orthodoxy for at least 30 years and arguably still occupies this status in many circles. In the 1980s simulation theory was offered as an alternative to this orthodoxy (Gordon 1986; Heal 1986; Goldman 1989). It proposed that third-person ascription does not proceed by theoretical inference but by the heuristic of projecting oneself into the target's shoes. An attributor creates pretend states intended to correspond to those of the target, feeds them into his own cognitive equipment, and lets it produce an output state, e.g., a belief, decision, or emotion. The outputted state is then ascribed to the target. This resembles the empathetic approach to human understanding that was earlier advocated by theorists of Verstehen, and was trotted out (with little fanfare,

Distinguishing the reflective, algorithmic, and autonomous minds: Is it time for a tri-process theory?

Abstract: In a recent book (Stanovich, 2004), I spent a considerable effort trying to work out the implications of dual process theory for the great rationality debate in cognitive science (see Cohen, 1981; Gigerenzer, 1996; Kahneman and Tversky, 1996; Stanovich, 1999; Stein, 1996). In this chapter, I wish to advance that discussion, first by discussing additions and complications to dual-process theory and then by working through the implications of these ideas for our view of human rationality.

On Nudging: A Review of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein

Abstract: This paper reviews the case for libertarian paternalism presented by Thaler and Sunstein in Nudge. Thaler and Sunstein argue that individuals’ preferences are often incoherent, making paternalism is unavoidable; however, paternalistic interventions should ‘nudge’ individuals without restricting their choices, and should nudge them towards what they would have chosen had they not been subject to specific limitations of rationality. I argue that the latter criterion provides inadequate guidance to nudgers. It is inescapably normative, and so allows nudgers’ conceptions of well‐being to override those of nudgees. Even if nudgees’ rationality were unbounded, their revealed preferences might still be incoherent.

The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations

Abstract: This book seeks to explain why different systems of sovereign states have built different types of fundamental institutions to govern interstate relations. Why, for example, did the ancient Greeks operate a successful system of third-party arbitration, while international society today rests on a combination of international law and multilateral diplomacy? Why did the city-states of Renaissance Italy develop a system of oratorical diplomacy, while the states of absolutist Europe relied on naturalist international law and "old diplomacy"? Conventional explanations of basic institutional practices have difficulty accounting for such variation. Christian Reus-Smit addresses this problem by presenting an alternative, "constructivist" theory of international institutional development, one that emphasizes the relationship between the social identity of the state and the nature and origin of basic institutional practices. Reus-Smit argues that international societies are shaped by deep constitutional structures that are based on prevailing beliefs about the moral purpose of the state, the organizing principle of sovereignty, and the norm of procedural justice. These structures inform the imaginations of institutional architects as they develop and adjust institutional arrangements between states. As he shows with detailed reference to ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, absolutist Europe, and the modern world, different cultural and historical contexts lead to profoundly different constitutional structures and institutional practices. The first major study of its kind, this book is a significant addition to our theoretical and empirical understanding of international relations, past and present.

Willing, Wanting, Waiting

Abstract: Introduction 1. Intention 2. Belief 3. Choice 4. Weakness of Will 5. Temptation 6. Strength of Will 7. Rationality 8. Freedom Bibliography

Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933-1944

Abstract: Franz Neumann's classic account of the governmental workings of Nazi Germany, first published in 1942, is reprinted in a new paperback edition with an introduction by the distinguished historian Peter Hayes. Neumann was one of the only early Frankfurt School thinkers to examine seriously the problem of political institutions. After the rise of the Nazis to power, his emphasis shifted to an analysis of economic power, and then after the war to political psychology. But his contributions in Behemoth were groundbreaking: that the Nazi organization of society involved the collapse of traditional ideas of the state, of ideology, of law, and even of any underlying rationality. The book must be "studied, not simply read," Raul Hilberg wrote.

Intelligent Policy Making for a Complex World: Pragmatism, Evidence and Learning:

Abstract: The credentials of the evidence-based policy movement appear to be increasingly subject to challenge based on research that has highlighted the limits on the use of evidence in policy making However, moves towards a more ‘realistic’ position of evidence-informed policy making risk conflating prescription with description and undermining a normative vision of better policy making This article argues that we need to review the ideas that underpin our thinking about evidence-based policy making, and move beyond the territory of instrumental rationality to a position founded upon two intellectual pillars: our developing knowledge about complex adaptive systems; and ideas from a pragmatist philosophical position – especially those of John Dewey – about social scientific knowledge and its role in guiding action to address social problems This leads us to a conception of ‘intelligent policy making’ in which the notion of policy learning is central

Towards a Theory of Social Practices

Abstract: The notion of social practice and a family of notions akin to it play an essential role in contemporary philosophical reflection, with particular reference to the conceptualisation of historical processes. Stephen Turner's book A Social Theory of Practices (1994) has provided a major challenge to this family of notions, and our purpose is to outline a grounding account of the notion of social practice in the form of an answer to Turner's criticisms. We try to answer three questions: first, if it is necessary to grant a tacit dimension to transmittable habits; second, if and how a tacit dimension of "meaning" could be intersubjectively transmitted; third, what is the possible role of rationality in changing social practices. Our discussion moves from Wittgenstein's argument on rule-following; in its wake we try to examine the nature of habits as a basis for rules and discuss their temporal sedimentation, inertia and modes of intersubjective transmission. In conclusion we support the idea that social practices must rely on a tacit dimension, that their tacit dimension does not represent a hindrance to intersubjective transmission, and that the possible dogmatism of social practices is not due to their "hidden" side, but to their explicit quasi-rational side.

Doing which work? A practice approach to institutional pluralism

Abstract: This chapter takes a social theory of practice approach to examining institutional work; that is, how institutions are created, maintained, and disrupted through the actions, interactions, and negotiations of multiple actors. We examine alternative approaches that organizations use to deal with institutional pluralism based on a longitudinal real-time case study of a utility company grappling with opposing market and regulatory logics over time. These two logics required the firm to both mitigate its significant market power and also maintain its commercially competitive focus and responsiveness to shareholders. Institutional theorists have long acknowledged that institutions have a central logic (Friedland & Alford, 1991) or rationality (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Scott, 1995/2001; Townley, 2002), comprising a set of material and symbolic practices and organizing principles that provide logics of action for organizations and individuals, who then reproduce the institutions through their actions (Glynn & Lounsbury, 2005; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005). Despite a monolithic feel to much institutional theory, in which a dominant institutional logic appears to prevail, institutional theorists also acknowledge the plurality of institutions (e.g. Friedland & Alford, 1991; Kraatz & Block, 2008; Lounsbury, 2007; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Whittington, 1992). While these pluralistic institutions may be interdependent, they are not considered to coexist in harmony; “There is no question but that many competing and inconsistent logics exist in modern society” (Scott, 1995: 130).

Bayesian Bigot? Statistical Discrimination, Stereotypes, and Employer Decision Making

Abstract: Much of the debate over the underlying causes of discrimination centers on the rationality of employer decision making. Economic models of statistical discrimination emphasize the cognitive utility of group estimates as a means of dealing with the problems of uncertainty. Sociological and social-psychological models, by contrast, question the accuracy of group-level attributions. Although mean differences may exist between groups on productivity-related characteristics, these differences are often inflated in their application, leading to much larger differences in individual evaluations than would be warranted by actual group-level trait distributions. In this study, the authors examine the nature of employer attitudes about black and white workers and the extent to which these views are calibrated against their direct experiences with workers from each group. They use data from fifty-five in-depth interviews with hiring managers to explore employers' group-level attributions and their direct observations to develop a model of attitude formation and employer learning.

The duality of mind: an historical perspective

Abstract: [About the book] This book explores the idea that we have two minds - automatic, unconscious, and fast, the other controlled, conscious, and slow. In recent years there has been great interest in so-called dual-process theories of reasoning and rationality. According to such theories, there are two distinct systems underlying human reasoning - an evolutionarily old system that is associative, automatic, unconscious, parallel, and fast, and a more recent, distinctively human system that is rule-based, controlled, conscious, serial, and slow. Within the former, processes the former, processes are held to be innate and to use heuristics that evolved to solve specific adaptive problems. In the latter, processes are taken to be learned, flexible, and responsive to rational norms. Despite the attention these theories are attracting, there is still poor communication between dual-process theorists themselves, and the substantial bodies of work on dual processes in cognitive psychology and social psychology remain isolated from each other. This book brings together leading researchers on dual processes to summarize the state-of-the-art, highlight key issues, present different perspectives, explore implications, and provide a stimulus to further work. It includes new ideas about the human mind both by contemporary philosophers interested in broad theoretical questions about mental architecture and by psychologists specialising in traditionally distinct and isolated fields. For all those in the cognitive sciences, this is a book that will advance dual-process theorizing, promote interdisciplinary communication, and encourage further applications of dual-process approaches.

Adaptive rationality: An evolutionary perspective on cognitive bias

Abstract: A casual look at the literature in social cognition reveals a vast collection of biases, errors, violations of rational choice, and failures to maximize utility. One is tempted to draw the conclusion that the human mind is woefully muddled. We present a three-category evolutionary taxonomy of evidence of biases: biases are (a) heuristics, (b) error management effects, or (c) experimental artifacts. We conclude that much of the research on cognitive biases can be profitably reframed and understood in evolutionary terms. An adaptationist perspective suggests that the mind is remarkably well designed for important problems of survival and reproduction, and not fundamentally irrational. Our analysis is not an apologia intended to place the rational mind on a pedestal for admiration. rather, it promises practical outcomes including a clearer view of the architecture of systems for judgment and decision making, and exposure of clashes between adaptations designed for the ancestral past and the demands of the present. By casually browsing journals in the social sciences one can discover a collection of human biases, errors, violations of rational choice, and failures to maximize utility. Papers published in Social Cognition are illustrative. In just 2007, the journal published a special issue dedicated to the hindsight bias, which is the tendency to believe that events that have occurred are more probable when assessing them after the fact than when estimating them prospectively (Blank, Musch, & Pohl, 2007). Other examples include misapprehensions of probability like the hot hand fallacy that leads people to erroneously believe that basketball players who have shot several successful baskets are more likely to succeed on the next try (Gilovich, Vallone, & Tversky, 1985). There are also many effects of emotion purported to cloud good judgment (e.g., Leith & Baumeister, 1996), overuses of stereotypes (Ross & Nisbett, 1991), misapprehensions of the motives of members of the opposite sex (Abbey, 1982), common violations of monetary utility in behavioral eco

Educating the Least Informed: Group Endorsements in a Grassroots Campaign

Abstract: Theories of low-information rationality claim that uninformed voters can compensate for their lack of political knowledge by employing heuristics, such as interest group endorsements, to make voting decisions as if they were fully informed. Critics of low-information rationality contend that politically unaware voters are unlikely to use group endorsements effectively as a heuristic since they are unlikely to know the political relevance of interest groups. We address this debate by entertaining the possibility that contextual information coupled with a source cue may enhance the effectiveness of group endorsements as a heuristic. We test competing expectations with a field experiment conducted during the 2006 election in two highly competitive Pennsylvania statehouse races where a well-known liberal interest group endorsed Democratic candidates and canvassed both core supporters and Republicans believed to be likeminded. Our results reveal that Republicans used the endorsement as a negative voting cue and that the group’s endorsement helped some Republicans compensate for their lack of awareness about politics.

Precaution, preemption: arts and technologies of the actionable future

Abstract: Terrorism and climate change are frequently perceived as ‘total threats’ articulated and imagined through a wide array of arts and technologies. If the construction of these threats appears similar then so are the pleas for preemptive and precautionary action. In this paper we explore the ways in which terrorism and climate change are imagined, drawing on a conjoined history in which preemption and precaution are not easily separable. We then trace this through the knowledges, models, and ideas of risk that inform contemporary debates on these issues and suggest that these are caught between a desire for rationality and affective governance through catastrophic visions. Furthermore, we argue that these imaginations of an actionable future have political consequences that depoliticize and delegitimate debate and that potentially bring the unimaginable into being. Reconceiving precautionary politics is thus vital if we are to engage ethically with the world.

Assessing Rational and Intuitive Thinking Styles

Abstract: Theories of dual cognition assume two distinguishable information processing styles: rational and intuitive. We discuss how the concepts of rationality and intuition are used in these theories, and the relations of these two thinking styles to personality character- istics. With the Rational-Experiential Inventory (REI; Pacini & Epstein, 1999), a questionnaire that assesses personal preferences for thinking either rationally or intuitively, we found clear evidence for the independence of the two thinking styles in a large Dutch sample (N = 774). We also found Conscientiousness to be a significant predictor of a preference for rational thinking and an inverse predictor of intuitive thinking. We also administered the REI and a Big Five inventory to a Spanish sample (N = 141), and present these results next to those of the Dutch sample. We further established the validity of the REI's distinction between rationality and intuition by administering another measure, the Preference for Intuition or Deliberation (PID; Betsch, 2004, 2008), to a subset of the Dutch sample (n = 405). We briefly describe two small studies in which a preference for rationality or intuition, measured by the REI, was found to be related to task behavior. In the general discussion we consider all results together, and compare them to Pacini and Epstein's results. We conclude that a dual-process distinction between rationality and intuition is valid cross-culturally and that a proclivity toward either is reliably measured by the REI, not only in the USA but in Europe as well.

Retrospectives : On the Definition of Economics

Abstract: Modern economists do not subscribe to a homogeneous definition of their subject. Surveying definitions of economics from contemporary principles of economics textbooks, we find that economics is the study of the economy, the study of the coordination process, the study of the effects of scarcity, the science of choice, and the study of human behavior. At a time when economists are tackling subjects as diverse as growth, auctions, crime, and religion with a methodological toolkit that includes real analysis, econometrics, laboratory experiments, and historical case studies, and when they are debating the explanatory roles of rationality and behavioral norms, any concise definition of economics is likely to be inadequate. This lack of agreement on a definition does not necessarily pose a problem for the subject. Economists are generally guided by pragmatic considerations of what works or by methodological views emanating from various sources, not by formal definitions: to repeat the comment attributed to Jacob Viner, economics is what economists do. However, the way the definition of economics has evolved is more than a historical curiosity. At times, definitions are used to justify what economists are doing. Definitions can also reflect the direction in which their authors want to see the subject move and can even influence practice.

Judgment and Decision Making: Psychological Perspectives

Abstract: Preface and Acknowledgements. 1. Introduction and Overview: Judgments, Decisions, and Rationality. 2. The Nature and Analysis of Judgment. 3. Judging Probability and Frequency. 4. Judgmental Distortions: The Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic and Hindsight Bias. 5. Assessing Evidence and Evaluating Arguments. 6. Covariation, Causation, and Counterfactual Thinking. 7. Decision Making under Risk and Uncertainty. 8. Preference and Choice. 9. Confidence and Optimism. 10. Judgment and Choice over Time. 11. Dynamic Decisions and High Stakes: Where Real Life Meets the Laboratory. 12. Risk. 13. Decision Making in Groups and Teams. 14. Cooperation and Coordination. 15. Intuition, Reflective Thinking, and the Brain. References. Author Index. Subject Index

Higher cognitive ability is associated with lower entries in a p-beauty contest

Abstract: “Beauty contests” are well-studied, dominance-solvable games that generate two interesting results. First, most behavior does not conform to the unique Nash equilibrium. Second, there is considerable unexplained heterogeneity in behavior. In this work, we explore the relationship between beauty contest behavior and cognitive ability. We find that subjects with high cognitive ability exhibit behavior that is closer to the Nash equilibrium.

Executive functions in insight versus non-insight problem solving: An individual differences approach

Abstract: This is the author's accepted manuscript (with the working title "Executive processes and working memory in solving insight and non-insight problems"). The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright © 2009 Psychology Press.

Decision Theory and Rationality

Abstract: 1. Decision theory and the dimensions of rationality 2. The first challenge: Making sense of utility and preference 3. The second challenge: Individuating outcomes 4. The third challenge: Rationality over time 5. Rationality: Crossing the fault lines? Bibliography

Deep Rationality: The Evolutionary Economics of Decision Making

Abstract: What is a "rational" decision? Economists traditionally viewed rationality as maximizing expected satisfaction. This view has been useful in modeling basic microeconomic concepts, but falls short in accounting for many everyday human decisions. It leaves unanswered why some things reliably make people more satisfied than others, and why people frequently act to make others happy at a cost to themselves. Drawing on an evolutionary perspective, we propose that people make decisions according to a set of principles that may not appear to make sense at the superficial level, but that demonstrate rationality at a deeper evolutionary level. By this, we mean that people use adaptive domain-specific decision-rules that, on average, would have resulted in fitness benefits. Using this framework, we re-examine several economic principles. We suggest that traditional psychological functions governing risk aversion, discounting of future benefits, and budget allocations to multiple goods, for example, vary in predictable ways as a function of the underlying motive of the decision-maker and individual differences linked to evolved life-history strategies. A deep rationality framework not only helps explain why people make the decisions they do, but also inspires multiple directions for future research.

Critiquing Human Resource Development's Dominant Masculine Rationality and Evaluating Its Impact.

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to critique human resource development's (HRD) dominant philosophy, practices, and research; illustrate how they negatively affect women HRD practitioners and recipie...

From the imperial to the empty calorie: how nutrition relations underpin food regime transitions

Abstract: This article works in a recursive manner by using the tools of a food regime approach to reinterpret the nutrition transition that has been underway internationally for 100 years, and then describing the contributions of nutrition science to the 1st and 2nd Food Regimes and the passages between Food Regimes. The resulting history—from the ‘imperial calorie’ through the ‘protective’ vitamin to the ‘empty calorie’—illuminates a neglected dimension to food regime theorising: the role of socio-technical systems in shaping a set of value relations that are central to class relations. Contestation over one such system, nutritionalisation, currently involves an ungovernable array of actors. In describing the protagonists to the system of nutritionalisation, a classic confrontation emerges between technical and lifeworld rationality. Representing the former approach are actor networks responsible for the ‘trade-in-health’ sector which produces foods and nutritional values aimed at both over-nourished and under-nourished populations. Clinging to a lifeworld rationality are ‘culture eaters’ worldwide, for whom nutrition value relations are secondary to communal and ecological relations. This dynamic appears within wealthier Asian states which are emerging as central to the trade-in-nutritional health sector while acting to protect their own customary dietary practices.