Showing papers on "Rationality published in 2016"

Better than rational: Evolutionary psychology and the invisible hand

Abstract: Several years ago, we attended an interdisciplinary seminar on what were purported to be "biases" in negotiation behavior. The economists, psychologists, and biologists present were mulling over the data when, suddenly, a prominent economist lit up. "Ah, I see,' he said, "behavior is either rational or it's psychological." This formulation stuck in our minds, because it seemed to succinctly give voice to a tacit assumption held by many economists one that we think works to the detriment of economics, by isolating it from the relevant parts of biology, psychology, and the rest of the natural sciences. This assumption is that rational behavior is the state of nature, requiring no explanation. Explanations that invoke the cognitive processes that actually generate human choices are required only when behavior deviates from this state of nature. In this view, economics is grounded in assumptions of rational behavior, is theoretically constructed out of what logically follows from assuming rational behavior, and gains specificity by plugging in a variety of variables that are kept exogenous to economics, such as preferences. Merchants of the ad hoc and exogenous, psychologists are called in only to provide second-order corrections to economic theory, usually by furnishing a catalog of oddities and quirks in human reasoning (e.g., "biases" and "fallacies"-many of which are turning out to be experimental artifacts or misinterpretations; see G. Gigerenzer, 1991). And for the many behavioral domains where standards of rationality are unclear or undefined, economics is presently mute. From a broader scientific perspective, this formulation is decidedly odd. Rational behavior is not, in any sense, the state of nature. Not behaving at all is the state of nature in a universe that includes lifeless planets, prebiotic soup, mountains, trees, and tables. All departures from this state of inaction require explanation. Moreover, the behavioral repertoires of various animals differ profoundly from one another, and this must be explained as well: bats cannot speak, and we cannot navigate through echolocation. Humans and other animals reason, decide, and behave by virtue of computational devices embodied in neural tissue. Therefore, a complete causal explanation of any behavior-rational or otherwise-necessarily invokes theories about the architecture of these computational devices. The rationality of a behavior is irrelevant to its cause or explanation. Every economic model entails theories about these computational devices, but they are usually left implicit, buried in the assumptions of the model. At the moment, most economists rely on the implicit (and somewhat vague) theory that these computational devices somehow embody "rational" decision rules. But developing a more accurate, useful, and well-defined substitute for this black box is now a realistic goal. Results from the newly emerging field of evolutionary psychology suggest that (i) explicit, well-specified models of the human mind can significantly enhance the scope and specificity of economic theory, and (ii) explicit theories of the structure of the human mind can be made endogenous to economic models in a way that preserves and expands their elegance, parsimony, and explanatory power. *Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, and Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, respectively. For enlightening discussions, we warmly thank Gerd Gigerenzer, Robert Nozick, and Paul Romer. For financial support, we are grateful to the McDonell Foundation and NSF Grant No. BNS9157-449 to Tooby.

The lure of rationality: Why does the deficit model persist in science communication?

Abstract: Science communication has been historically predicated on the knowledge deficit model. Yet, empirical research has shown that public communication of science is more complex than what the knowledge deficit model suggests. In this essay, we pose four lines of reasoning and present empirical data for why we believe the deficit model still persists in public communication of science. First, we posit that scientists’ training results in the belief that public audiences can and do process information in a rational manner. Second, the persistence of this model may be a product of current institutional structures. Many graduate education programs in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields generally lack formal training in public communication. We offer empirical evidence that demonstrates that scientists who have less positive attitudes toward the social sciences are more likely to adhere to the knowledge deficit model of science communication. Third, we present empirical evidence of how scienti...

The Order of Discourse

Abstract: The premises of post-foundational ontology elucidated in Chapter 2 clarified that objects can be associated with a distinctive meaning only insofar as they have been articulated in a discourse (cf. Laclau and Mouffe, 2001[1985], p. 112; Marchart, 2007b, p. 14).1 The assumption of the absence of any objective pre-and exo-discursive determination of meanings as is typical of post-foundational ontology means that we need to accept that discourses are “the primary terrain of constitution of social objectivity” (Laclau, 2006, p. 672). However, it is not discourses as such, but relational arrangements of signifiers characterizing them that determine the meanings of objects denoted by them. In the absence of any natural and objectively necessary reason, relations of signifiers characteristic of a particular discourse cannot “obey any inner logic other than their factually being together” (ibid.). Considering that the social qua the totality of socially meaningful objects is organized in the form of and by means of discourses, particular social institutions, practices, artefacts and organizations signifying and motivating meanings are sustained only as long as social subjects’ practices of articulation reproduce discourses constituting their rationality. In other words, the presence of a particular social order is set into a relation of dependence with a discourse defining its social meaningfulness. Hence, the withering away of discourses’ symbolic power inevitably “amount[s] to the disintegration of the social fabric” (Laclau, 1990a, p. 33; Smith, 1998a, p. 172).

Behavioral Economics: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract: In recent years there has been growing interest in the mixture of psychology and economics that has come to be known as “behavioral economics.” As is true with many seemingly overnight success stories, this one has been brewing for quite a while. My first paper on the subject was published in 1980, hot on the heels of Kahneman and Tversky’s (1979) blockbuster on prospect theory, and there were earlier forerunners, most notably Simon (1955, 1957) and Katona (1951, 1953). The rise of behavioral economics is sometimes characterized as a kind of paradigm-shifting revolution within economics, but I think that is a misreading of the history of economic thought. It would be more accurate to say that the methodology of behavioral economics returns economic thinking to the way it began, with Adam Smith, and continued through the time of Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s. In spite of this early tradition within the field, the behavioral approach to economics met with considerable resistance within the profession until relatively recently. In this essay I begin by documenting some of the historical precedents for utilizing a psychologically realistic depiction of the representative agent. I then turn to a discussion of the many arguments that have been put forward in favor of retaining the idealized model of Homo economicus even in the face of apparently contradictory evidence. I argue that such arguments have been refuted, both theoretically and empirically, including in the realm where we might expect rationality to abound: the financial markets. As such, it is time to move on to a more constructive approach. On the theory side, the basic problem is that we are relying on one theory to accomplish two rather different goals, namely to characterize optimal behavior and to predict actual behavior. We should not abandon the first type of theories as they are essential building blocks for any kind of economic analysis, but we must augment them with additional descriptive theories that are derived from data rather than axioms. As for empirical work, the behavioral approach offers the opportunity to develop better models of economic behavior by incorporating insights from other social science disciplines. To illustrate this more constructive approach, I focus on one strong

Power Laws in Economics: An Introduction

Abstract: Paul Samuelson (1969) was once asked by a physicist for a law in economics that was both nontrivial and true. This is a difficult challenge, as many (roughly) true results are in the end rather trivial (for example, demand curves slope down), while many nontrivial results in economics in fact require too much sophistication and rationality on the part of the agents to actually hold true in practice. 1 Samuelson answered, “the law of comparative advantage.” The story does not say whether the physicist was satisfied. The law of comparative advantage is a qualitative law, and not a quantitative one as is the rule in physics. Indeed, many of the insights of economics seem to be qualitative, with many fewer reliable

LEARNING AND ADAPTIVE ECONOMIC BEHAVIORt Designing Economic Agents that Act Like Human Agents: A Behavioral Approach to Bounded Rationality

Abstract: Most economists accept that there are limits to the reasoning abilities of human beings-that human rationality is bounded. The question is how to model economic choices made under these limits. Where, between perfect rationality and its complete absence, are we to set the "dial of rationality," and how do we build this dial setting in to our theoretical models? One approach to this problem is to lay down axioms or assumptions that suppose limits to economic agents' computational ability or memory, and investigate their consequences. This is useful, but it begs the question of how humans actually behave. A different approach (the one I suggest here) is to develop theoretical economic agents that act and choose in the way actual humans do. We could do this by representing agents as using parametrized decision algorithms, and choose and calibrate these algorithms so that the agents' behavior matches real human behavior observed in the same decision context. Theoretical models using these "calibrated agents" would then, we could claim, furnish predictions based on actual rather than idealized behavior. It is unlikely there exists some yet-to-bedefined decision algorithm, some "model of man," that would represent human behavior in all economic problems-an algorithm whose parameters would constitute universal constants of human behavior. Different contexts of decision making in the economy call for different actions; and an algorithm calibrated to reproduce human learning in a search problem might differ from one that reproduces strategic-choice behavior. We would likely need a repertoire of calibrated algorithms to cover the various contexts that might arise. Nevertheless, for a particular context of decision making, calibrating theoretical behavior to match human behavior would allow us to ask questions that are not answerable at present under the assumption of either perfect rationality or idealized learning. We might want to know whether a given neoclassical model with human agents represented by "calibrated agents" will result in some standard asymptotic patterna rational-expectations equilibrium, say. We might ask whether agents calibrated to learn as humans do converge to some form of optimality, or interactively to a Nash equilibrium.' And we might want to study the speed of adaptation in a particular economic model with human agents represented by calibrated agents. What would it mean to calibrate an algorithm to "reproduce" human behavior? The object would be algorithmic behavior that reproduces statistically the characteristics of human choice, including the distinctive errors or departures from rationality that hutDiscussants: Ken Binmore, University of Michigan; Drew Fudenberg, MIT; John Geanakoplos, Yale University.

The ethics of smart cities and urban science

Abstract: Software-enabled technologies and urban big data have become essential to the functioning of cities. Consequently, urban operational governance and city services are becoming highly responsive to a form of data-driven urbanism that is the key mode of production for smart cities. At the heart of data-driven urbanism is a computational understanding of city systems that reduces urban life to logic and calculative rules and procedures, which is underpinned by an instrumental rationality and realist epistemology. This rationality and epistemology are informed by and sustains urban science and urban informatics, which seek to make cities more knowable and controllable. This paper examines the forms, practices and ethics of smart cities and urban science, paying particular attention to: instrumental rationality and realist epistemology; privacy, datafication, dataveillance and geosurveillance; and data uses, such as social sorting and anticipatory governance. It argues that smart city initiatives and urban science need to be re-cast in three ways: a re-orientation in how cities are conceived; a reconfiguring of the underlying epistemology to openly recognize the contingent and relational nature of urban systems, processes and science; and the adoption of ethical principles designed to realize benefits of smart cities and urban science while reducing pernicious effects.This article is part of the themed issue 'The ethical impact of data science'.

The Rationality Quotient: Toward a Test of Rational Thinking

Abstract: ing, and the perceptions of melody. Chapters 7 and 8 provide guidance on Baroque composition and part-writing, Chapters 9 and 10 explore embellishments and the sense ofmusic leading somewhere, and Chapters 11 through 14 present additional considerations for composition, such as the perception of harmony and how we analyze auditory scenes and experiencemusical texture. Chapter 15discusses how learning and experience influence sound perception, and Chapter 16 focuses on experiments on why music is pleasing. Chapter 17 comprehensively summarizes the book. For readers who tire of marching through each principle, Huron has incorporated an explicit roadmap for reading Voice Leading in Chapters 1 and 17. He also implements parallel formatting for ease of reading: each chapter starts with a concise plan, a tangible and common example to illustrate the ideas discussed, technical exploration of the concept with key ideas italicized, extensive background to explore the ideas, and an excellent summary in a chapter reprise. Although each chapter is dense with scientific information, and the information can be quite technical at times, the explanations are easy to grasp. At the end of each chapter it will be a pleasant surprise to discover how much you have learned. You do not have to be a musician or composer interested in the cognition of music to appreciate this book. For bioacousticians, the author’s navigation of human auditory perception invokes shadows of signal analysis, peripheral nervous system constraints, central nervous system processing, multicomponent signals, and signal composition that can be applied across the animal kingdom. Huron’s neuroethological approach to understanding the perception of music will bring new appreciation to consideration of the aesthetics of sound in other animals. Furthermore, the historical commentary on musical composition throughout anchors the volume within a social context. Perhaps for Huron’s next book he could consider how auditory perception in other animals contrasts with humans to provide context for how unique—or not—human perception of music really is. Overall, Voice Leading provides a framework not just for understanding why musical compositions are perceived the way they are (or which rules musicians should follow to meet specific goals), but paints a picture of the complexity of the neurophysiological and psychological aspects of the impressive human auditory system. Kasey Fowler-Finn, Biology, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri The Rationality Quotient: Toward a Test of Rational Thinking. By Keith E. Stanovich, Richard F. West, and Maggie E. Toplak. Cambridge (Massachusetts): MIT Press. $39.00. xvii + 459 p.; ill.; author and subject indexes. ISBN: 978-0-262-03484-5. 2016. The great Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the timeless Sherlock Holmes novels, was fooled into believing that fairies exist by two teenage girls armed with a camera and a few cardboard cutouts of fairies. How could the brilliant intellectual father of the hypercritical and discerning Sherlock Holmes take on such an extravagant conviction on such meager evidence? The reason, Stanovich et al. would tell us, is that—contrary to common belief—rationality has very little to do with intelligence. RQ (Rationality Quotient) is only weakly correlated with IQ. So what underlies rational thinking? This important question is at the core of The Rationality Quotient. In addition to providing a comprehensive overview of the major findings of four decades of research in the heuristics and biases tradition instigated by the great Kahneman and Tversky, this volume delivers a standardized test to assess rationality in individuals. The importance of the book lies both in the comprehensive overview of the research on (ir)rationality and the psychometric system it proposes to gauge rationality in individuals. For far too long, IQ has been getting all of the attention. Although IQ is an important metric and a good predictor of an individual’s occupational level and performance, RQ—as the authors point out—is both more encompassing and important. In an increasingly hostile cognitive environment (i.e., an environment that differs from the environment of evolutionary adaptedness to which our innate intuitive modes of reasoning are attuned) forming rational beliefs and taking rational decisions becomes ever more challenging. At the same time, in a world where we are constantly bombarded with informational snippets that diverge widely with respect to their trustworthiness, rationality becomes evermore important. The modern world, as the authors point out, puts a premium on rational thinking. But the importance of rational thinking on an individual level is overshadowed by its importance on a societal level. From overconfidence leading to war and financial crises to the affect heuristic making us overreact on terrorism and remain dangerously impassive to the threat of climate change, the woes of society are the result of a lack of rationality. One can only hope that putting RQ on the map will produce a Flynn effect as has been the case for IQ, where average IQ has been steadily on the rise since the test was first introduced in the beginning of the 20th century. NEW BIOLOGICAL BOOKS March 2018 43

From evidence-based policy making to policy analytics

Abstract: This paper aims at addressing the problem of what characterises decision-aiding for public policy making problem situations. Under such a perspective it analyses concepts like “public policy”, “deliberation”, “legitimation”, “accountability” and shows the need to expand the concept of rationality which is expected to support the acceptability of a public policy. We then analyse the more recent attempt to construct a rational support for policy making, the “evidence-based policy making” approach. Despite the innovation introduced with this approach, we show that it basically fails to address the deep reasons why supporting the design, implementation and assessment of public policies is such a hard problem. We finally show that we need to move one step ahead, specialising decision-aiding to meet the policy cycle requirements: a need for policy analytics.

The Comprehensive Assessment of Rational Thinking

Abstract: The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded in 2002 for work on judgment and decision-making tasks that are the operational measures of rational thought in cognitive science. Because assessments of intelligence (and similar tests of cognitive ability) are taken to be the quintessence of good thinking, it might be thought that such measures would serve as proxies for the assessment of rational thought. It is important to understand why such an assumption would be misplaced. It is often not recognized that rationality and intelligence (as traditionally defined) are two different things conceptually and empirically. Distinguishing between rationality and intelligence helps explain how people can be, at the same time, intelligent and irrational. Thus, individual differences in the cognitive skills that underlie rational thinking must be studied in their own right because intelligence tests do not explicitly assess rational thinking. In this article, I describe how my research group has worked to develop the firs...

'In-between' and other reasonable ways to deal with risk and uncertainty: A review article.

Abstract: How people deal with risk and uncertainty has fuelled public and academic debate in recent decades. Researchers have shown that common distinctions between rational and ‘irrational’ strategies underestimate the complexity of how people approach an uncertain future. I suggested in 2008 that strategies in-between do not follow standards of instrumental rationality nor they are ‘irrational’ but follow their own logic which works well under particular circumstances. Strategies such as trust, intuition and emotion are an important part of the mix when people deal with risk and uncertainty. In this article, I develop my original argument. It explores in-between strategies to deal with possible undesired outcomes of decisions. I examine ‘non-rational strategies’ and in particular the notions of active, passive and reflexive hope. Furthermore, I argue that my original typology should be seen as a triangular of reasonable strategies which work well under specific circumstances. Finally, I highlight a number of dif...

Additive Theories of Rationality: A Critique

Abstract: Additive theories of rationality, as I use the term, are theories that hold that an account of our capacity to reflect on perceptually-given reasons for belief and desire-based reasons for action can begin with an account of what it is to perceive and desire, in terms that do not presuppose any connection to the capacity to reflect on reasons, and then can add an account of the capacity for rational reflection, conceived as an independent capacity to ‘monitor’ and ‘regulate’ our believing-on-the-basis-of-perception and our acting-on-the-basis-of-desire. I show that a number of recent discussions of human rationality are committed to an additive approach, and I raise two difficulties for this approach, each analogous to a classic problem for Cartesian dualism. The interaction problem concerns how capacities conceived as intrinsically independent of the power of reason can interact with this power in what is intuitively the right way. The unity problem concerns how an additive theorist can explain a rational subject's entitlement to conceive of the animal whose perceptual and desiderative life he or she oversees as ‘I’ rather than ‘it’. I argue that these difficulties motivate a general skepticism about the additive approach, and I sketch an alternative, ‘transformative’ framework in which to think about the cognitive and practical capacities of a rational animal.

How bad is incoherence

Abstract: Rationality is often defined in terms of coherence, assuming that a single syntactical rule such as consistency, transitivity, or Bayes’ rule suffices to evaluate behavior. Many normative claims made in psychological research follow this assumption. We argue that coherence-based norms are of limited value for evaluating behavior as rational. Specifically, we maintain that (a) there is little evidence that coherence violations are costly, or if they are, that people would fail to learn to avoid them; (b) adaptive rules of behavior can in fact imply incoherence; (c) computational intractability and conflicting goals can make coherence unattainable; and (d) coherence plays a key role in situations where it is instrumental in achieving functional goals. These observations lead to the conclusion that coherence cannot be a universal benchmark of rationality. We argue that smart choices need to be defined in terms of ecological rationality, which requires an analysis of the environmental structure and its match with cognitive strategies.

Measuring Rationality with the Minimum Cost of Revealed Preference Violations

Abstract: We introduce a new measure of how close a set of choices is to satisfying the observable implications of rationality and apply it to a large, balanced panel of household level consumption data. This new measure, the minimum cost index, is the minimum cost of breaking all revealed preference cycles found in choices from budget sets. Unlike existing measures of rationality, it responds to both the number and severity of revealed preference violations.

Rationality and Intelligence: A Brief Update

Abstract: The long-term goal of AI is the creation and understanding of intelligence. This requires a notion of intelligence that is precise enough to allow the cumulative development of robust systems and general results. The concept of rational agency has long been considered a leading candidate to fulfill this role. This paper, which updates a much earlier version (Russell, Artif Intell 94:57–77, 1997), reviews the sequence of conceptual shifts leading to a different candidate, bounded optimality, that is closer to our informal conception of intelligence and reduces the gap between theory and practice. Some promising recent developments are also described.

Revisiting Imperial China’s trajectory in the context of the 'rise of the West'. The Eurocentric legacy in historical sociology

Abstract: This thesis proposes a theoretical and historical reconstruction of the ‘Great Divergence’ between Europe and China. In contrast with both the dominant narrative on the ‘Rise of the West’ and its main detractor, the California School, the dissertation enquires critically into the categories of ‘China’ and ‘Europe’ and contests their temporal and spatial homogeneity. In this, the thesis proposes a unique way to overcome Eurocentrism in International Relations and to sociologically understand similarity and dissimilarity in development. The thesis reveals facets of Eurocentrism which are overlooked in all approaches engaging with the issue of divergence and informing the IR literature (neo-institutionalist economic history, neo-Weberian Sociology, World-Systems Theory, mode-of-production analyses, and the California School). These Eurocentric conceptual anachronisms are: the naturalisation of the European international system; the understanding of Europe as a homogenous entity; the postulate of a universal rationality; and the ontologising of analytical categories derived from the Western experience. The thesis’ methodology, informed by Political Marxism, overcomes such Eurocentrism through its unique reading of Marx, leading to a socialising of geopolitics and rationality, and theorising the specific nature of developmental trajectories, thereby enabling the productive transfer of its method to non-European contexts. From this anti-Eurocentric standpoint, the thesis submits an alternative narrative on the trajectory of Imperial China from the 7th to the 19th Centuries. Re-problematising the contested and changing nature of China’s authority relations and political geography as stemming from social conflicts around politically-constituted power challenges the Realist, English School’s, and California School’s assumptions of its stability, hegemony, and immutability widely held to have prevented take-off. Such a convergence between Continental Europe and China until the 19th Century, contrasting with the IR assumptions of a series of Chinese absences and European structural exceptionalisms, highlights the Anglo-Continental 17th Century divergence as a unique resolution of social conflicts, essential to Europe-China comparative strategies.

The Rationality Paradox of Nudge: Rational Tools of Government in a World of Bounded Rationality

Abstract: Nudge and the wider behavioural economics approach has become increasingly dominant in contemporary political and policy discourse. While much attention has been paid to the attractions and criticisms of Nudge (such as ‘liberal paternalism’), this paper argues that Nudge is based on a rationality ‘paradox’ in that it represents an approach that despite its emphasis on bounded rationality does not reflect on its own ‘limits to rationality’. The paper considers the implications of this paradox by considering mechanisms that influence government decision-making, and mechanisms that lead to unintended consequences in the context of policy interventions.

Economic Rationality Meets Celebrity Urbanology: Exploring Edward Glaeser's City

Abstract: This article presents a critique of the popular and public-policy work of Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, which has been constructed at the nexus of neoclassical economic rationality and celebrity urbanology Widely recognized as one of the world's leading urbanists, Glaeser has combined a high-flying academic career with public-policy engagement and extensive work as a newspaper columnist and media commentator, enabled by a longstanding affiliation with the Manhattan Institute, a leading conservative think tank The critique is pointed, but seeks to exceed argumentum ad hominem by calling attention to sociopolitical and institutional factors that have facilitated the accelerated diffusion and enlarged dominion of this model (and mode) of microeconomically rationalized urbanism, including the production of new forms of intellectual marketing, the construction of colonizing variants of urban-economic expertise, and the ongoing rearticulation and creeping consolidation of market-centric policy norms The article argues that a distinctive form of urban-economic orthodoxy is under construction, based on a potent fusion of scientific reasoning and pop presentation, combining ideologically disciplined applications of neoclassical economics with dissemination in the register of the 'freakonomics' franchise Edward Glaeser's intellectual accomplishments have been significant, but the 'Glaeser effect' is more than a story of individual scholarly endeavor, calling for more than a merely 'internal' critique Its conformity to Manhattan Institute principles testifies to a telling consistency of ideological purpose, contributing as it does to a sustained effort to rationalize and normalize lean and limited modes of neoliberal urban governance, fortified by microeconomic reason

Entrepreneurial Orientation and International Performance: The Moderating Effect of Decision‐Making Rationality

Abstract: This research examines how entrepreneurial orientation (EO) influences international performance (IP) of the firm taking into account the moderating effect of decision-making rationality (DR) on the EO–IP association. Such an investigation is significant because it considers the interplay of strategic decision-making processes supported by the bounded rationality concept in the entrepreneurship field. Drawing from a study on activities of 216 firms in the United States and United Kingdom, the evidence suggests that DR positively moderates the EO–IP association. The findings suggest that managers can improve IP by combining EO with rational (analytical) processes in their strategic decisions.

From modes of production to the resurrection of the body: A labor theory of revolutionary subjectivity & religious ideas

Abstract: FROM MODES OF PRODUCTION TO THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY: A LABOR THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY SUBJECTIVITY & RELIGIOUS IDEAS Ben Suriano Marquette University, 2016 In this dissertation I attempt two needed tasks within historical materialism: first, to reestablish the standpoint of labor as the normative basis for critical theory beyond irrational bourgeois categories, and second, to show that labor’s own self-mediating rationalization, if it is to move beyond these contradictory categories, necessarily requires a certain religious-utopian consciousness. The dominant Weberian and Marxist paradigms for understanding labor and its relation to the religious variously perpetuated irrational bourgeois conceptions of labor as a bare efficient cause, with religion paternalistically positioned as an inherently idealist or mystifying external form. I argue, however, that the concrete rationality of labor’s revolutionary nature necessarily hinges on a ratio to emergent final causes for which consciousness of such is itself the rational kernel of the religious. Thus I retain the historical materialist primacy of the modes of production as an organizing concept but with a more comprehensive account of its selftranscending movement. Herein the religious arises internally as a non-reductive function of labor’s self-understanding as more than a disposable instrument. I claim any materialist critique of alienated labor implies this religious-utopian consciousness, and therefore any critique of religion must presuppose the normative form of the religious as revolutionary rather than reactionary, reflecting ideal trajectories generated from the productive forces in their basic revolutionizing transformation of nature. More specifically, I argue that theoretically the one religious-utopian ideal transcendentally necessary for grasping the normative standpoint of the laboring body as its own emergent final cause, without external mediation, is the resurrection of the body. I then substantiate this historically. The comprehensive rationality of the modes of production demands that the Marxist distinction between historical periods of formal and real subsumptions yield new assessments of pre-capitalist religious ideology as positively integral to labor’s self-mediating history. I then genealogically trace a Hebraic discourse on bodily resurrection whose revolutionarily demythologized form emerged directly from and for social consciousness of its communal mode of production. I further demonstrate historically that prior to capitalism the laboring body became intelligible to itself as constitutively active without idealist inversions under this certain Judeo-Christian articulation of the resurrection of the body.

Moralized Rationality: Relying on Logic and Evidence in the Formation and Evaluation of Belief Can Be Seen as a Moral Issue.

Abstract: In the present article we demonstrate stable individual differences in the extent to which a reliance on logic and evidence in the formation and evaluation of beliefs is perceived as a moral virtue, and a reliance on less rational processes is perceived as a vice. We refer to this individual difference variable as moralized rationality. Eight studies are reported in which an instrument to measure individual differences in moralized rationality is validated. Results show that the Moralized Rationality Scale (MRS) is internally consistent, and captures something distinct from the personal importance people attach to being rational (Studies 1–3). Furthermore, the MRS has high test-retest reliability (Study 4), is conceptually distinct from frequently used measures of individual differences in moral values, and it is negatively related to common beliefs that are not supported by scientific evidence (Study 5). We further demonstrate that the MRS predicts morally laden reactions, such as a desire for punishment, of people who rely on irrational (vs. rational) ways of forming and evaluating beliefs (Studies 6 and 7). Finally, we show that the MRS uniquely predicts motivation to contribute to a charity that works to prevent the spread of irrational beliefs (Study 8). We conclude that (1) there are stable individual differences in the extent to which people moralize a reliance on rationality in the formation and evaluation of beliefs, (2) that these individual differences do not reduce to the personal importance attached to rationality, and (3) that individual differences in moralized rationality have important motivational and interpersonal consequences.

Cubic Fourfolds, K3 Surfaces, and Rationality Questions

Abstract: This is a survey of the geometry of complex cubic fourfolds with a view toward rationality questions. Topics include classical constructions of rational examples, Hodge structures and special cubic fourfolds, associated K3 surfaces and their geometric interpretations, and connections with rationality and unirationality constructions.

The Politically Motivated Reasoning Paradigm, Part 2: Unanswered Questions

Abstract: This is the second in a pair of essays on politically motivated reasoning. The first presented a conceptual model of this dynamic: the “Politically Motivated Reasoning Paradigm” (PMRP). This essay uses PMRP to highlight a set of unsettled issues, including the rationality of politically motivated reasoning; the association of it with ideological conservatism; the power of monetary incentives to neutralize it; and the interaction of it with expert judgment. Keywords: politically motivated reasoning paradigm; rationality; ideology; conservatism; monetary incentive