Notion Of Rationality Research Articles

A Dynamic Model of Interactions between Conscious and Unconscious

This paper advocates that some limits of the rational agent hypothesis result from the improper assumption that one individual should be modeled as a single rational agent. We model an individual composed of two autonomous and interacting structures, conscious and unconscious. Each agent utility form depends both on external signals and other structures' actions. The perception of the signal depends on its recipient and its grid of interpretation. We study both the static and dynamic version of this interaction mechanism. We show that the dynamics may display instability, depending on the structures interactions' strength. However, if unconscious has a strategic advantage, greater stability is reached. By manipulating other structures' goals, the strategic agent can lead the whole system to an equilibrium closer to its own optimum. This result shows that some switch in the conscious' objective can appear. Behaviors that can't be explained with a single utility can thus be rational if we add a rational unconscious agent. Our results justify our hypothesis of a rational interacting unconscious. It supports the widening of the notion of rationality to multi-rationnality in interaction.

‘(World) risk society’ or ‘new rationalities of risk’? A critical discussion of Ulrich Beck’s theory of reflexive modernity

This paper calls attention to some basic problems and inner contradictions in the German sociologist Ulrich Beck’s theory of the ‘(world) risk society’ or reflexive (second) modernity. A main thread in the critique is that of addressing the theoretical ambiguities that seem to characterize Beck’s at the same time ‘social constructivist’ and ‘realist’ notion of risk – ambiguities that seem to be repeated on the one hand in Beck’s view on the relation between knowledge and unawareness in reflexive modernity and on the other hand in his view on the role of the mass media in the ‘(world) risk society’. Moreover, Beck’s notions of second modernity, reflexivity, rationality and critique are critically examined. With the alternative positions discussed in the paper – represented by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Niklas Luhmann and Mitchell Dean – some indications are given as to how one might fruitfully elaborate on the problem of risk. Thus, rather than a mainly technology-driven new type of social reality, the ‘(world) risk society’ could perhaps better be seen as indicating a changing cultural self-understanding of late modern society, a new ‘semantics of crisis', or the emergence of new forms of governmentality in the contemporary welfare state. In conclusion, some indications are given as to how an analysis of more specific ‘risk logics' or ‘rationalities' could be elaborated on, and a terminology that reflects this more differentiated approach to risk in late modern society is suggested.

The problem of Kuhnian rationality

According to Thomas Kuhn (1962/1970), science is characterized by two levels, one within and one between paradigms. The problem of Kuhnian rationality concerns the choice between paradigms, for which no rational basis appears to exist because this choice is inevitably circular to some extent. This is the main reason why Kuhn's view is perceived to glorify irrationality. (ibid. 199) I present two interpretations of the problem of Kuhnian rationality, one based on concepts (the neo-positivist interpretation) and one based on values. I also describe two notions of rationality, optimizing and satisficing. Neither interpretation supports the notion of optimizing, but the values-interpretation supports satisficing, suggesting that if Kuhnian scientists are rational, as Kuhn insisted, they are satisficers. An agent-based model demonstrates that aggregating the behaviour of satisficing agents can account for Kuhn's view on the dynamics of scientific change.

The Rhetoric of Financial Literacy

This article concerns the use of rhetoric strategies in call for improved financial literacy and financial education. The article combines a presentation of how rhetoric is used in financial literacy improvement initiatives and a discussion on the benefits of including a rhetoric framework in future studies of financial literacy and of finance economy in everyday life. The examples are sampled from the OECD website IGFE and from country-specific initiatives and programmes for improving levels of financial literacy in the general public. The central issue of the article is how the notions of objectivity and rationality together are prevailing as a general theme in the current discourse of the field. The discussion includes how information on financial matters is presented in programme initiatives from mainly an objective and rational perspective and in this sense even may be seen as being ‘anti-rhetoric’. The notion of information accessibility does in this sense become a question of individual activity where the possibility to take ‘financial charge’ of the situation is linked to being able to process ‘objective’ information about financial markets and instruments. The rhetoric patterns of perceived rationality in the studied initiatives can further be seen as linked to personal morality and the incentive to be financially literate in order to control one’s personal economy.

Ecological Rationality: A Framework for Understanding and Aiding the Aging Decision Maker

The notion of ecological rationality sees human rationality as the result of the adaptive fit between the human mind and the environment. Ecological rationality focuses the study of decision making on two key questions: First, what are the environmental regularities to which people’s decision strategies are matched, and how frequently do these regularities occur in natural environments? Second, how well can people adapt their use of specific strategies to particular environmental regularities? Research on aging suggests a number of changes in cognitive function, for instance, deficits in learning and memory that may impact decision-making skills. However, it has been shown that simple strategies can work well in many natural environments, which suggests that age-related deficits in strategy use may not necessarily translate into reduced decision quality. Consequently, we argue that predictions about the impact of aging on decision performance depend not only on how aging affects decision-relevant capacities but also on the decision environment in which decisions are made. In sum, we propose that the concept of the ecological rationality is crucial to understanding and aiding the aging decision maker.

Alternatives to capitalism and working-class struggle: a comment on Alice Bryer’s “the politics of the social economy”

I write this commentary at a time when the U.S. Congress has taken the country to the brink of default, the Euro Zone is facing its own debt crises, and world financial markets are falling precipitously. This state of affairs is taking place while globally the divide between the rich and the poor is growing ever more dramatic, and fewer and fewer people can make a living at all. It seems as if capitalism is failing roundly. Thus, it is an especially appropriate moment to turn our attention to alternatives to capitalism and capitalist subjectivity. Anthropologists have a long history of thinking about individuals and social relationships in ways that critique notions of economic rationality and profit maximization. We can trace this impulse back to Malinowski’s classic study of the kula. Trobianders, he told us, put extraordinary amounts of labor into largely ceremonial acts of gift giving. This seemingly irrational behavior, on the one hand, extends alliances and enables barter, and on the other, shows that microeconomic principals are not universally applicable, and economic behavior is not everywhere governed by the maximizing choices of individuals. Malinowski’s study of Trobianders’ gardens affirmed this message; the islanders tended and cared for their gardens not only for food but also as works of art. This argument was further developed by the ‘‘substantivist’’ school within economic anthropology in the 1960s. Taking their lead from Karl Polanyi, and facing off against their ‘‘formalist’’ adversaries, substantivists maintained that homo economicus is not a universal figure, that economies are embedded in social relations, that cross-culturally there are many ways to produce, consume, and circulate goods, and that people will sometimes struggle in defense of their ‘‘moral economies.’’ This debate is familiar to students of anthropology and remains one of anthropology’s notable intellectual duals with the hegemonic ideas of the day. Alice Bryers’ empirical investigation of Argentina’s ERs shows us that in the current moment, despite the dominance of capitalism across the globe, people still

Organization Politics and the Role of Accounting

1. Introduction Max Weber (1968) was first to introduce issue of division of work and link it to related issue of power. Organisational divisions may have different tasks, but they are usually interdependent. Staff from various departments participate in a decision-making process. Each sub-group has its own goals and personal needs of its members, as well as objectives set by formal structure. The existence of varying sub-goals, and absence of clear and agreed aspirations about future due to uncertainty in making decisions, are major causes of conflict during decision process (Allison 1969; Ntanos 2009). During process, sub-groups express their interests by making demands on organisational scarce resources, and advancing these demands in bargaining arena. A demand is feasible only when sufficient power is mobilised in support of that demand. By holding resources, individual causes a dependency situation that secures his/her position and increases his/her power basis, especially in conditions of organisational change. Pettigrew (1973) argues that control of organisational resources increases holders' power base and ability to influence decisions and allows partial goals to be served. Within an organisation individual is not only governed by organisational structure, but also attempts to shape structure over time to suit his/her own interests and needs. The ability to influence organisational structure is a function of power generated by individual in order to impose on others his/her will. Power is not a matter of authority or status, but rather has to do with control of resources and information, and skilful use of them. Therefore, Power is not only seen as operating vertically in hierarchy, but power relations also may exist among 'equal' standing individuals or sub-units (Pfeffer 1981). Power, though affecting broad areas of organisational domain, was neglected as a subject of study for a long period of time for various reasons (Pfeffer 1981). First, it is a concept that has attracted various interpretations in social science literature, and so could be characterised as problematic. As a way of understanding organisational decision-making, it is not unique. Other perspectives exist that attract researchers because they do not confront notion of rationality and existence of commonly accepted organisational goals seeking efficiency. Finally, admitting existence of power relations and of sectional interests, may undermine notion of cohesion in an organisation. This paper aims to raise neglected role of power politics in organisational decision-making. Apart from purely rational perspective and bounded-rational perspective, there is a notion of rationality in political perspective of decision-making (Jones 1992). Rationality here refers to way in which each interest group conceives their surrounding context, faces uncertainty and responds to a perceived problem (Dermer & Lucas 1986). Within political perspective, rationality has not a neutral but an ideological intense meaning, since there are many views of what rational behaviour is, based on various interpretations of reality. We aim to depict that accounting information is used politically in order to forward a certain interpretation of reality as truth, usually most powerful interpretation. The role of accounting may therefore lie not on making rational decisions, but in helping politically made choices to be accepted. This does not imply that these decisions are irrational; on contrary, behind politically made decisions lies rational action from an interest group that is purposefully pursuing solution best suited to its own aims. 2. The Definition of Power Pfeffer referred to power as the capability of one social actor to overcome resistance in achieving a desired objective or result (1981, p. …

Rationality of belief or: why savage’s axioms are neither necessary nor sufficient for rationality

Economic theory reduces the concept of rationality to internal consistency. As far as beliefs are concerned, rationality is equated with having a prior belief over a “Grand State Space”, describing all possible sources of uncertainties. We argue that this notion is too weak in some senses and too strong in others. It is too weak because it does not distinguish between rational and irrational beliefs. Relatedly, the Bayesian approach, when applied to the Grand State Space, is inherently incapable of describing the formation of prior beliefs. On the other hand, this notion of rationality is too strong because there are many situations in which there is not sufficient information for an individual to generate a Bayesian prior. It follows that the Bayesian approach is neither sufficient not necessary for the rationality of beliefs.

Politeness motivated by the ‘heart’ and ‘binary rationality’ in Thai culture

Most politeness theoretical frameworks are derived from Euro-American ways of thinking, with facework and the notion of rationality often being their common denominators. In this paper, I introduce an aspect of Thai politeness called kʰwaːmkreːŋ▪aj (KKJ) and propose an alternative model for analysing behaviours that are associated with it. Having the literal meaning ‘fear of hearts,’ in the Thai native speaker mindset, KKJ is more widely construed as ‘consideration or concern for others’feelings.’ Judged in terms of the supposedly rational ways of doing things prevalent in the West, some KKJ behaviours, despite the lofty moral ideals attached, can be regarded as indications of irrationality, insincerity and many other negative traits. To make sense of KKJ, I maintain that we need a rationality that is binary in nature: ‘means-to-end’ and ‘rapport-oriented.’ The findings of this study provide evidence for the existence of KKJ in other cultures and suggest that politeness research will benefit from looking beyond the confines of the face metaphor and a rationality based exclusively on logic and individualism. The paper concludes that integrating ingredients of politeness from different cultures may enable us to realise Emancipatory Pragmatics's goals of looking locally while shedding new lights on the underrepresented facets of other politeness systems.

THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL CONDITIONS OF MORAL EDUCATION: THE NOTIONS OF RATIONALITY AND OBJECTIVITY REVISITED

The crucial epistemological question for formulating the principles that underlie moral education concerns the status of rationality and objectivity in ethics and education. In this essay Katariina Holma argues that the intertwined understanding of the concepts of education, ethics, rationality, and objectivity is built into our language and our thinking. She begins by delineating epistemologically adequate interpretations for the notions of rationality and objectivity. In light of these interpretations, Holma contends that the two main contemporary philosophical arguments against the possibility of ethical objectivity — the argument that derives from cultural relativism and the argument that derives from the scientific worldview — fail to refute this possibility. The epistemological notions of rationality and objectivity, as Holma interprets them in this essay, prepare the way for a moral education that combines the appreciation of personal and cultural plurality with the possibility for critical thinking and the pursuit of better understanding in the ethical realm.

Social embeddedness and online consumer behavior

Dear Readers of Electronic Markets, Social embeddedness refers to the extent to which organizations are connected to other actors via linkages of a social network or the extent to which human action of consumers (including their economic behavior) takes place within a web of social attachments such as friendship and kinship (Uzzi and Gillespie 2002). Motivated by the increasing popularity and economic significance of online social networks, the overall objective of this special issue is to advance our understanding on how consumer behavior is influenced by online social embeddedness. The emergence of online social networks has substantially shaped, and continues to reshape, the environment for decision making by market actors. Making decisions is a daily function for organizations as well as for individual consumers. Companies, for example, continuously have to select software solutions to business problems, decide about the relevance of new technologies and decide about sourcing in or out parts of IS/T, to name just a few from the perspective of an IS/T manager. Managers and employees in all fields are usually provided with a variety of resources and tools to help them with making decision. This typically involves some use of information systems, because they can bring about greater efficiency in organizational operations and they can effectively support management processes. The proliferation of the World Wide Web provides individuals for the first time with access to hundreds of pieces of relevant information to help them make more informed consumer choices. For example, while people talked with sales personnel and perhaps asked for advice from friends or family before making a major purchase, today, technology-supported access to information and recommendation systems make the process of comparing different options much easier and more effective. Notions of rationality were frequently applied by social scientists as a basis for describing, understanding and evaluating the actions of individuals and organizations in relation to decisionmaking. In the last decades, however, it has been suggested that the usefulness of rationality in describing and explaining decision making is limited. The work by renowned psychologists, such as Kahneman and Tversky (1979) and Thaler (1994), showed various divergences of actual human decision making from neo-classical economic theory and provided evidence that homo sapiens act quite differently in various situations from the idealized homo oeconomicus. Consequently, the strict assumption of rationality has been gradually softened. A change can be seen from the new institutional economics with fully rational agents alongside dynamic theories with opportunistic agents, towards behavioralism based on agents acting with at most bounded rationality (Simon 1947). Sociologists also challenge the utilitarian neoclassical position and have long recognized that economic decisions and behavior of individuals and organizations are profoundly shaped by the social network in which they are embedded. The concept of social embeddedness expresses the idea that social actors exist within relational, institutional, and T. Hess (*) University of Munich, Ludwigstrase 28 VG, 80539 Munich, Germany e-mail: thess@bwl.lmu.de

Ethics and the economist: What climate change demands of us

Climate change is changing not only our physical world, but also our intellectual, social, and moral worlds. We are realizing that our situation is profoundly unsafe, interdependent, and uncertain. What, then, does climate change demand of economists, as human beings and as professionals? A discipline of economics based on Enlightenment notions of mechanism and disembodied rationality is not suited to present problems. This essay suggests three major requirements: first, that we take action; second, that we work together; and third, that we focus on avoiding the worst, rather than obtaining the optimal. The essay concludes with suggestions of specific steps that economists should take as researchers, teachers, and in our other roles.

The Self and the Other: Liberalism and Gandhi

This paper makes an attempt to philosophically re-construct what I have termed as a fundamental paradox at the heart of deontological liberalism. It is argued that liberalism attempts to create the possibilities of rational consensus and of bringing people together socially and politically by developing methodologies which overcome the divisive nature of essentially parochial substantive conceptions of the good. Such methodologies relying on the supposed universally valid dictates of reason and notions of procedural rationality proceed by disengaging men from the divisive particularities of their plural value contexts. That disengagement is sought to be achieved by conceptualizing the individual as self sufficient in her moral and epistemic being thereby conceptually isolating individual man from the other. The liberal effort to create rational consensus which can bring people together then gets off the ground by isolating the individual from the other. This I have termed as the paradox of the self and the other or alternatively the paradox of social atomism and universalism. As a possible philosophical alternative this paper makes an attempt to re-construct Gandhi’s conceptualization of the relationship between swaraj as self rule and Satyagraha as non-violent resistance. This Gandhian connection, it is argued, has the potential to transform the moral psychology of our response to the other, thereby posing a challenge to the modern, predominantly liberal, conceptualization of such a response.

Ethics and the Economist: What Climate Change Demands of Us

Climate change is changing not only our physical world, but also our intellectual, social, and moral worlds. We are realizing that our situation is profoundly unsafe, interdependent, and uncertain. What, then, does climate change demand of us, as human beings and as economists? A discipline of economics based on Enlightenment notions of mechanism and disembodied rationality is not suited to present problems. This essay suggests three major requirements: First, that we take action; second, that we work together; and third, that we focus on avoiding the worst, rather than obtaining the optimal. The essay concludes with suggestions of specific steps that economists can take as researchers, teachers, and in our other roles.

VEBLEN'S PLACEBO: ANOTHER HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON ADMINISTRATIVE EVIL

Thorstein Veblen was a turn of the 20th century American economist concerned with the implications of financial capitalists directing the means of production. Veblen proposed that the rationality of “material science” as practiced by the “production engineers” is fundamentally different from the rationality of market capitalism. If this claim is valid, our previous contentions regarding accounting, as a facilitating technology, for administrative evil warrant reconsideration. Veblen's position provides a historical perspective on one dimension of administrative evil that is generally unquestionably accepted, especially within accounting. That is, technology, such as accounting and the related information systems, is amoral, and it is only through ideologically instigated applications that any moral value accrues. We discuss administrative evil and the role of instrumental rationality generally, and accounting specifically, in creating it. Veblen's characterization of financial capitalism and production engineers and his arguments for the primacy of economic efficiency versus “pecuniary gain” provide a basis for evaluating the legitimating action. We consider how Veblen's work relates to notions of instrumental rationality and then undertake a critical assessment of the ideas. Some of Veblen's ideas, while utopian, might be seen as an elixir for the detrimental influences of financial capital; however, at best, they provide a placebo for the ills of administrative evil and, as such, do not provide an amoral basis for legitimating the associated accounting systems.

Confirmation in the Cognitive Sciences: The Problematic Case of Bayesian Models

Bayesian models of human learning are becoming increasingly popular in cognitive science. We argue that their purported confirmation largely relies on a methodology that depends on premises that are inconsistent with the claim that people are Bayesian about learning and inference. Bayesian models in cognitive science derive their appeal from their normative claim that the modeled inference is in some sense rational. Standard accounts of the rationality of Bayesian inference imply predictions that an agent selects the option that maximizes the posterior expected utility. Experimental confirmation of the models, however, has been claimed because of groups of agents that probability match the posterior. Probability matching only constitutes support for the Bayesian claim if additional unobvious and untested (but testable) assumptions are invoked. The alternative strategy of weakening the underlying notion of rationality no longer distinguishes the Bayesian model uniquely. A new account of rationality--either for inference or for decision-making--is required to successfully confirm Bayesian models in cognitive science.

‘ “Counting is a bad procedure” ’: Calculation and Economy in Jacques Derrida's Donner le temps

In Jacques Derrida's formalisation of the problem of the gift in Donner le temps (1991), where Derrida offers a joint reading of Marcel Mauss’ The Gift and Baudelaire's La Fausse monnaie, there is an apparent rejection of rational calculation (and of economism) in a narrow sense. This exclusion is only one of the steps in the deconstruction of the metaphysics of the gift, and of other motifs such as, for example, invention, forgiveness, and hospitality. In another step, calculation and economy are the terms of logico-formal paradoxes, and engages us to think of the incompatible demands of calculability and incalculability between which reason is torn, and which Derrida has discussed, for example, in ‘The “World” of the Enlightenment to Come (Exception, Calculation and Sovereignty)’ (2003). In this paper, I argue that in his evaluation of Mauss’ moderate view of economy and exchange, Derrida has limited Mauss’ notions of economy and rationality to reason as calculation. This evaluation jars with Derrida's deconstruction of calculation in his reading of Hegel and Rousseau among others, as I begin to show, Hegel, for whom ‘counting was a bad procedure’.

Behavioral bioethics: Notes of a behavioral economist

Modern American bioethics is built on the assumption that the patient is fully rational. That is a very strong assumption and has made modern bioethics difficult to apply. Bioethics ought to adopt the more nuanced notion of rationality from behavioral economics. I go through several major bioethical principles, assuming that the patient is less than fully rational.

Habermas' Communicative Rationality and Connectionist AI

Habermas' universal pragmatics continues to draw significant attention from sociologists seeking a viable balance between poststructuralism and traditional critical theory, while at the same time becoming increasingly recognised within formal political circles worldwide. A number of social theorists and philosophers, however, have taken Habermas to task with respect to how much his ‘theory of communicative rationality’, the driving force behind universal pragmatics, in fact actually steps away from epistemological foundationalism as Habermas intends it to do. This paper explores parallels between Habermas' particular notion of human reason and rationality (i.e., communicative rationality) and that expressed within connectionism, today's dominant paradigm in the discipline of artificial intelligence (AI), created as an alternative to the classical AI view of ‘mind as computer’. Given the homology, I argue, the practical shortcomings of connectionism may indeed lend unique and compelling weight to those claims that Habermas' system of thought is foundationalist, despite Habermas' efforts.

Fuzzy Negotiation Solutions of n-Person Cooperative Games by Knowledge Engineering in Bargaining

A model for negotiation is developed upon the basis of a previous model called Fuzzy Negotiation Solution by Knowledge Engineering. The new model, called Compensatory Negotiation Solution by Knowledge Engineering and FNSKE are based on the combination of knowledge of experts in negotiation, rather than on classical notions of rationality. The experts in negotiation present four propositions in a non-mathematical way and with a natural language, according to the theory of Knowledge Engineering. In the CNSKE model, knowledge is represented through logic predicates, and the calculations are made using the Compensatory Fuzzy Logic system. CFL is a system whose operators satisfy the axioms of Utility. The CFL operators, especially because of the compensation property, are more adequate than the norm and co-norm’s operators to model human decision-making, according to empirical results. The Good Deal Index in CNSKE is statistically estimated from the GDI in FNSKE. This is a quantitative index, which provides the solution concept. The fuzzy function f(C) represents the likelihood the players of a coalition C to reach an agreement into this coalition. Counterpart Convenience Indexes 1, 2 allow each player to select the best coalition for negotiation. The advantage of CNSKE over FNSKE is that the idempotency of conjunction and disjunction operators give every membership function -obtained from the predicates- the possibility to be interpreted by itself. Hence, the truth-values of the CNSKE membership functions can be semantically interpreted. In addition, CNSKE can be easily applied to solve real negotiation problems.