Rationality

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

Is Talk Really Cheap? Prompting Conversation between Critical Theory and Rational Choice.

Abstract: Critical theory and rational choice theory share both overlapping concerns and parallel theoretical weaknesses. Specifically, both critical theorists and rational choice theorists are preoccupied with determining what rational can mean in the realm of social and political interaction. I show in a provisional way how game theory extends and deepens the critical theorists' basic intuition that unembellished strategic rationality cannot adequately sustain social and political interaction. And I suggest how critical theory identifies a mechanism underlying the force of the “cheap talk” that game theorists introduce in hopes of circumscribing the indeterminacy generated by their models. My goal is to stimulate productive conversation between what are typically considered discordant research traditions.

Critical Thinking and Learning

Abstract: This paper introduces some of the debates in the field of critical thinking by highlighting differences among thinkers such as Siegel, Ennis, Paul, McPeck, and Martin, and poses some questions that arise from these debates. Does rationality transcend particular cultures, or are there different kinds of thinking, different styles of reasoning? What is the relationship between critical thinking and learning? In what ways does the moral domain overlap with these largely epistemic and pedagogical issues? The paper concludes by showing how Peters, Evers, Chan and Yan, Ryan and Louie, Luntley, Lam, Doddington, and Kwak, respond to these questions.

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

Recurrent Hyperinflations and Learning

Abstract: This paper uses a model of boundedly rational learning to account for the observations of recurrent hyperinflations in the last decade. We study a standard monetary model where the fully rational expectations assumption is replaced by a formal definition of quasi-rational learning. The model under learning is able to match remarkably well some crucial stylized facts observed during the recurrent hyperinflations experienced by several countries in the 80's. We argue that, despite being a small departure from rational expectations, quasi-rational learning does not preclude falsifiability of the model and it does not violate reasonable rationality requirements.

As-if behavioral economics: Neoclassical economics in disguise?

Abstract: For a research program that counts improved empirical realism among its primary goals, it is surprising that behavioral economics appears indistinguishable from neoclassical economics in its reliance on “as-if” arguments. “As-if” arguments are frequently put forward in behavioral economics to justify “psychological” models that add new parameters to fit decision outcome data rather than specifying more realistic or empirically supported psychological processes that genuinely explain these data. Another striking similarity is that both behavioral and neoclassical research programs refer to a common set of axiomatic norms without subjecting them to empirical investigation. Notably missing is investigation of whether people who deviate from axiomatic rationality face economically significant losses. Despite producing prolific documentation of deviations from neoclassical norms, behavioral economics has produced almost no evidence that deviations are correlated with lower earnings, lower happiness, impaired health, inaccurate beliefs, or shorter lives. We argue for an alternative non-axiomatic approach to normative analysis focused on veridical descriptions of decision process and a matching principle – between behavioral strategies and the environments in which they are used – referred to as ecological rationality. To make behavioral economics, or psychology and economics, a more rigorously empirical science will require less effort spent extending “as-if” utility theory to account for biases and deviations, and substantially more careful observation of successful decision makers in their respective domains.