Rationality

About: Rationality is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 20459 publications have been published within this topic receiving 617787 citations.

Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment

Abstract: Bishop and Trout here present a unique and provocative new approach to epistemology (the theory of human knowledge and reasoning). Their approach aims to liberate epistemology from the scholastic debates of standard analytic epistemology, and treat it as a branch of the philosophy of science. The approach is novel in its use of cost-benefit analysis to guide people facing real reasoning problems and in its framework for resolving normative disputes in psychology. Based on empirical data, Bishop and Trout show how people can improve their reasoning by relying on Statistical Prediction Rules (SPRs). They then develop and articulate the positive core of the book. Their view, Strategic Reliabilism, claims that epistemic excellence consists in the efficient allocation of cognitive resources to reliable reasoning strategies, applied to significant problems. The last third of the book develops the implications of this view for standard analytic epistemology; for resolving normative disputes in psychology; and for offering practical, concrete advice on how this theory can improve real people's reasoning. This is a truly distinctive and controversial work that spans many disciplines and will speak to an unusually diverse group, including people in epistemology, philosophy of science, decision theory, cognitive and clinical psychology, and ethics and public policy.

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

Evolution and Game Theory

Abstract: Introduced by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern (1944), energized by the addition of John Nash’s (1950) equilibrium concept, and popularized by the strategic revolution of the 1980s, noncooperative game theory has become a standard tool in economics. In the process, attention has increasingly been focused on game theory’s conceptual foundations. Two questions have taken center stage: Should we expect Nash equilibrium play—that is, should we expect the choice of each player to be a best response to the choices of the other players? If so, which of the multiple Nash equilibria that arise in many games should we expect? In the 1980s, game theorists addressed these questions with models based on the assumptions that players are perfectly rational and have common knowledge of this rationality. In the 1990s, however, emphasis has shifted away from rationalitybased to evolutionary models. One reason for this shift was frustration with the limitations of rationality-based models. These models readily motivated one of the requirements of Nash equilibrium, that players choose best responses to their beliefs about others’ behavior, but less readily provided the second requirement, that these beliefs be correct. Simultaneously, rationality-based criteria for choosing among Nash equilibria produced alternative “equilibrium refinements”—strengthenings of the Nash equilibrium concept designed to exclude implausible Nash equilibria—with sufficient abandon as to prompt despair at the thought of ever choosing one as the “right” concept. A second reason for the shift away from rationality-based game theory was a change in the underlying view of what games represent. It was once typical to interpret a game as a literal description of an idealized interaction, in which an assumption of perfect rationality appeared quite

On Church and Sect

Abstract: The three kinds of studies here suggested are capable of extension in many directions. For example, the distinction between the medieval political community, the modern nation-state and the crisis of transition is applicable principally to the countries of Western Europe, and one should explore the limits of this applicability. But one may also apply an analogous approach to other areas of the world which differ from the Western European pattern, to be sure, but which nonetheless possess common structural characteristics of their own.20 With regard to these characteristics it should be possible to formulate models of the pre-modern social structure, of the transition which followed, and of the modern social structure which has developed to date.2' These are only a few positive illustrations of comparative sociological studies aiming at propositions that are true of more than one but less than all societies. This essay will have served its purpose if it directs attention to a type of inquiry whichat the macro-sociological level-seeks to hold a balance between grand theory and the descriptive accounts of area-studies. contained in R. Bendix and Stein Rokkan, "The Extension of National Citizenship to the Lower Classes: A Comparative Perspective," Paper submitted to the Fifth World Congress of Sociology, Washington 1962. 20 Examples are the Latin American countries which have in common the Spanish colonial heritage, European frontier-settlements like the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand which have the British legacy in common, and others. Such groupings are not always that simple and there are countries, like Japan, which probably are in a category of their own. Such historical clustering of social structures may then be analyzed with the aid of sociological universals; but I confess to considerable scepticism concerning the use of such universals without regard to such clusters, or in the absence of an attempt to spell out in what respects two or more social structures are alike or different. I have made such an attempt in a comparison of German and Japanese modernization. See Reinhard Bendix, "Pre-conditions of Development: A Comparison of Germany and Japan," Conference on Modern Japan, Bermuda, 1962. 21 In an effort to articulate the distinguishing features of Western European societies, I have attempted to formulate such models for Russia from her autocratic rule in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to her totalitarian structure of the postrevolutionary period. See my Work and Authority in Industry, New York: John Wiley, 1956, Chapters 3 and 6 and "The Cultural and Political Setting of Economic Rationality in Western and Eastern Europe," in Gregory Grossman (ed.), Value and Plan, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960, pp. 245-70.

Political Spectacle and the Fate of American Schools

Abstract: 1. School Policy Under the Spotlight 2. Testing the Theory in Testing Policy 3. School Choice and the Illusion of Democracy 4. The Contribution of Mass Media to Desegregation Policy 5. Research and the Illusion of Rationality 6. Education Policy Inc 7. Finale