Elster The Nature And Scope Of Rational Choice Explanation Notes

Jon Elster - The Nature and Scope of Rational-Choice Explanation

• What is intentionality?

  • establishes behaviour as action and the performer as an agent

  • relation between behaviour (B), a set of cognitions (C), and a set of desires (D)

  • the desires and beliefs must be reasons for the behaviour, so

    • Given C, B is the best means to realize D

      • insufficient for ‘the occurrence of the behaviour for which they are reasons’ because B could be recognized as the best means yet be very difficult/impossible in the particular circumstances. Also the same behaviour - B - may occur for reasons other than C and D

    • C and D caused B

      • this is also insufficient because the same causes C and D could produce quite different behaviour. In other words, C and D could act as a cause, but not qua reason

    • C and D caused B qua reasons - sufficient

      • ‘When the desire of the rifleman causes him to miss the target, we point to something like psychological turbulence or emotional excitement, not the strength of the desire’

        • the emotional halo that surrounds the reason (strength of desire) is irrelevant for its efficacy qua reason, but may affect its efficacy qua nonrational cause

        • in other words, emotions such as the one above can form causes in intentional explanations, but they will be nonrational causes

• Rational-choice explanation goes beyond intentionality

  • to be rational, behaviour must stem from desires and beliefs (C and D) that are in some sense rational

  • we need a stronger relation between the beliefs and desires and the action

  • minimally, we require that

    • The set of beliefs C is internally consistent

    • The set of desires D is internally consistent

      • for a belief in an outcome to be consistent, there must be a possible world in which it is feasible (i.e. it is a logical possibility)

      • actions may be guided by inconsistent desires or beliefs

  • we may of course demand more from rationality than consistency - we may want the belief (C) to be well grounded. So, three conditions are to be satisfied

    • The belief - C - must be the best belief, given the available evidence

      • presupposes strong rule of inductive inference

    • The belief must be caused by the available evidence

      • rules out possibility of striking upon the correct belief by accident

    • The evidence must cause the belief “in the right way”

      • rules out possibility that one might arrive at the belief warranted by the evidence, but by the wrong reasoning

  • however, this is incomplete, because we also need a condition regarding how much evidence it is rational to collect

  • could we similarly demand substantive rationality of the desires?

    • maybe

  • we must draw a stronger connection between desires and behaviour, but one that excludes akratic behaviour - behaviour that shows a weak will - from being considered rational:

    • Given C, B is the best action with respect to the full set of weighed desires

• The success of rational-choice models in economics rests on their ability to yield unique, determinate predictions in terms of maximizing behaviour.

  • But what if:

    • there are several equally good options

    • there is no best option at all

    • uniquely maximizing behaviour is in general not possible?

  • where there are several equally good options

    • clearly in the real world, even among equally good options, one is ultimately chosen

    • if we had a theory of which would be chosen it would be an improvement over the one that leaves it indeterminate, but would destroy the ‘existence proof’ by introducing a discontinuity in the reaction functions

    • given a situation with multiple optimal strategies (i.e. multiple equally good options), why should the actor choose the (social/market) equilibrium strategy?

      • game theory fails to deal with this

  • where optimal behaviour does not exist e.g. an agent has incomplete preferences

    • noncomparability may be particularly important where our rankings are sensitive to the welfare of others -...

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