Rational Demand Research Articles

Fitting Things Together: Coherence and the Demands of Structural Rationality, written by Alex Worsnip

Fitting Things Together: Coherence and the Demands of Structural Rationality, written by Alex Worsnip

Epistemic Risk and the Demands of Rationality, by Richard Pettigrew

<i>Epistemic Risk and the Demands of Rationality</i>, by Richard Pettigrew

Boundedly rational demand

Evidence suggests that consumers do not perfectly optimize, contrary to a critical assumption of classical consumer theory. We propose a model in which consumer types can vary in both their preferences and their choice behavior. Given data on demand and the distribution of prices, we identify the set of possible values of the consumer surplus based on minimal rationality conditions: every type of consumer must be no worse off than if they either always bought the good or never did. We develop a procedure to narrow the set of surplus values using richer data sets and provide bounds on counterfactual demands.

Enlightenment as the normative principle of social rationality

This paper argues that Kant’s philosophy entails a normative concept of social rationality distinct from other normative concepts such as moral and juridical rationality. I also argue that the normative demands of social rationality are embodied in the regulative idea of enlightenment which implies a profound intersubjective and moral character that unfolds in multiple layers and perspectives.

When to give weight to weighty religious disagreement

AbstractWhen we encounter a disagreeing interlocutor in the weighty domains of religion, philosophy, and politics, what is the rational response to the disagreement? I argue that the rational response is to proportion the degree to which you give weight to the opinion of a disagreeing interlocutor to the degree to which you and your interlocutor share relevant beliefs. I begin with Richard Fumerton's three conditions under which we can rationally give no weight to the opinions of a disagreeing peer. I argue that his conditions are incomplete; I propose a fourth condition that maintains that disagreeing interlocutors (whether they are peers or not) need not give weight to each other's opinions when the interlocutors do not share rationally held relevant beliefs. By contrast, when rationally held relevant beliefs are shared, rationality demands that we re-evaluate and even moderate or change beliefs in the face of disagreement. I then defend my condition against two objections. First, I argue that the condition does not entail a coherence theory of justification. Second, I consider the charge that my condition recommends operating within an epistemic bubble.

Fitting Things Together. Coherence and the Demands of Structural Rationality, by Alex Worsnip

Two views that have dominated the recent literature on rationality are the coherence-based and the reasons-based conceptions of rationality. According to the first of these views, rationality is a matter of establishing internal coherence between one’s mental states (for example, Scanlon 2007; Broome 2013). On this conception of rationality, it is an open question whether we ought or have any reason to be rational, and some have argued that this question must receive a negative answer (Kolodny 2005). According to the second view, rationality is most fundamentally a matter of responding to reasons (for example, Kiesewetter 2017; Lord 2018). Insofar as incoherence is irrational, this is to be explained in terms of a failure to respond to available reasons, and consequently the normative significance of rationality cannot sensibly be questioned. In Fitting Things Together, Alex Worsnip seeks to establish an alternative to both of these views, which he dubs ‘dualism about rationality’. According to this third view, there are both structural requirements of rationality, which demand coherence among our attitudes, and substantive requirements of rationality, which demand responsiveness to reasons, and these requirements are irre-­ducible to each other. Dualism agrees with the reasons-based view that there is an important dimension of rationality, the normative significance of which cannot sensibly be questioned; but it rejects the thesis that the irrationality of incoherence can be explained in terms of this substantive dimension. Dualism thus agrees with the coherence-based view that there is an important dimension of rationality, the normative significance of which can sensibly be questioned, but denies that this structural dimension exhausts what rationality is about.

Investigation of emotional schemas between adolescents and their mothers

Objective: It is common to see that child-parent interaction affects psychological problems in adulthood. This interaction process may also be effective in developing emotional schemas and attitudes. The present study aimed to investigate the similarities or differences in emotional schemas between mothers and adolescents in both clinical and control groups. Method: Eighty-two adolescents who applied to the child and adolescent outpatient clinics and their mothers (assigned as the clinical group) and 80 adolescents without any psychiatric problems and their mothers (assigned as the control group) were examined using a Sociodemographic Characteristics Form and Leahy Emotional Schema Scale Turkish Version (LESS-T). A multivariate analysis of variance test was used to determine the intergroup differences in emotional schema levels. Results: LESS-T was applied to all participants. No statistically significant difference was found between mothers and their adolescents on the LESS-T subscales in the control group (p=0.89). Mothers in the clinical group reported higher levels of demand for rationality (p=0.003) and emotional avoidance (p=0.01) than mothers in the control group. In the clinical group, adolescents reported higher levels of uncontrollability (p=0.007), and mothers reported higher levels of comprehensibility (p=0.001), demand for rationality (p=0.001), and emotional avoidance (p=0.007). Conclusion: Mothers' emotional schemas, such as avoidance and demand for rationality, may prevent their children from expressing and experiencing emotions sufficiently. Findings emphasize the importance of healthy mother-child interaction for developing emotional skills.

THE ROLE OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE AND CHOICE IN INDIVIDUAL SELF-DETERMINATION

The paper will address the role of choice and positive liberty in light of the utilitarian ideal of 'greatest happiness for the greatest number'. It would also explore how utilitarianism leads towards restriction of choices that leads to paternalism. Sceptics have often criticized egalitarian liberalism as propounded by John Rawls. Rationality demands that person is subjected to the fewer restraints possible and more choice in their decisions, and that institutions be developed that benefit both the individual and the society as a whole. The dilemma of uncontrolled individualism, how a society suffers when one of its members is stripped off the virtue of making choices that concern her, and how to make the person a part of community will be discussed, with special references to American philosopher Martha Nasbaum's 'Capabilities Approach' and choice The significance of each community member to the community's progress and well-being, as well as the community's and institutions' roles in improving the lives of its people. The paper adopts a qualitative approach which focuses on both theoretical and doctrinal methods. The paper seeks a normative approach with the Grundnorm being individual liberty and individual choice in the determination of an individual’s course of life. Keywords: Individualism, Utilitarianism, Liberty, Choice, Capabilities Approach.

Critical Notice: Fitting Things Together: Coherence and the demands of structural rationality

Critical Notice: Fitting Things Together: Coherence and the demands of structural rationality

Bratman, Autonomy, and Self-Governance

Bratman's self-governance model of autonomy is part of a tradition of hierarchical accounts, according to which autonomy is a matter of the agent's psychology having a certain functioning and hierarchical structure that is constitutive of her practical standpoint. Bratman develops a sophisticated version of that account by drawing on a temporally extended sense of agency, which is realized and sustained by the role higher-order (self-governing) policies play—by being subject to rational demands of consistency, coherence and stability—in coordinating one's life over time. We shall argue that: (i) there may be autonomous agency without self-governing policies; (ii) there is a tension between understanding autonomy as involving temporally extended agency and as realized essentially by those rational demands.

Politics of knowledge use: epistemic governance in marine spatial planning

ABSTRACT We examined the application of knowledge in land-use planning as epistemic governance and explored how actors wield institutional power while legitimising the use of knowledge. By applying a neo-institutionalist analytical framework of epistemic governance to discourse analysis, we investigated how actors invoke institutions of science and law while constructing a legitimate rationality. Specifically, we asked how new knowledge of underwater marine areas was invited into a marine spatial planning pilot in Finland. We determined that, while legitimising the use of new marine-life knowledge, the actors invoked law and science by granting the new knowledge various and intermingled meanings that disambiguated and depoliticised nature values into tangible measures. Moreover, uncertainties about the new knowledge spurred doubts which facilitated a stronger political approach that applied precautions. We suggest that in the regulative context of planning there is an institutional demand for techno-legal rationality in which the institutional appropriateness of knowledge is crucial. The lack of legitimate ontological authority allows for a political yet institutionally fit-for-purpose interpretation of reality. Thus, our study contributes to the literature on planning as governance and provides insights of the politics of knowledge use in planning as something not necessarily strategic and conscious, but also routine and institutional.

Uncoordinated Norms of Belief

ABSTRACT If it is ethically wrong to hold some beliefs, there may be a conflict between the demands of morality and the demands of rationality. A recent theory holds that no such conflict exists: any morally wrong belief is also irrational to hold, made irrational through a phenomenon of radical moral encroachment. In this paper, I argue that radical moral encroachment fails to coordinate ethical and epistemic norms, given plausible epistemological principles and various substantive accounts of which beliefs are morally wrong, including those endorsed by radical moral encroachment theorists themselves.

Rational intransitive preferences

According to a widely held view, rationality demands that the preferences of a person be transitive. The transitivity assumption is an axiom in standard theories of rational choice. It is also prima facie very plausible. I argue here that transitivity is not a necessary condition of rationality; it is a constraint only in some cases. The argument presented here is based on the non-linearity of differential utility functions. This paper has four parts. First, I present an argument against the transitivity assumption (I, II). Second, I discuss some objections; this will also bring out some features of the view defended here, like the essentially comparative nature of choice (III). Then, I discuss certain proposals that promise to avoid my conclusion (IV). Finally, I go into some implications concerning the nature of rational decision making (V). To accept some intransitivities as rational does not make our life easier; it can even lead to hard choices. However, it does not lead to skepticism about rational choice.

A Deconstructionist Reading of Populist Claims Related to Covid-19: A Rhetorical Discourse Analysis

Rhetoric at the ontological level—for instance, the way in which hegemony is structured like speech—is a tool that can be used to give meaning to narratives such as the medical populist claims that arose in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Although these populist claims ranged from explicitly trivial conspiracies to rational demands about healthcare, outside the truth–falsity binaries we can explain how the narratives functioned metaphorically to gain acceptability. While guarding against linguistic reductionism, but considering that hegemony works like grammar, rhetorical discourse analysis, inspired by the work of Ernesto Laclau, is used to read the metaphorical transformation of disinformation into “rational” demands and the construction of enemy outsiders to stabilise this populist hegemony. Through a metaphoric mechanism, disinformation is converted to information and linked to rational demands, which enables what is otherwise irrational to become believable. This linking is achieved through disinformation and rational demands metaphorically substituting each other to become what they are not in their literal form. Thereafter, the metaphorical meaning loses its metaphoricity, allowing the disinformation to become catachrestic and to be taken as literal or genuine knowledge. Several cases are cited to illustrate concrete examples of knowledge generated through metaphorical contamination of rational demands with disinformation.

Trust, Inquiry and Partiality: Comments on Goldberg’s Conversational Pressure

In this brief comment, I aim to engage with Sandy Goldberg’s fruitful discussion of the doctrine of epistemic partiality in friendship (EPF), as it appears in his new book Conversational Pressure: Normativity in Speech Exchanges (2020), and to explore a seemly small distinction that I think could complicate things for the way Goldberg sees the pressures that are put on us when we are confronted with speech acts that come from or relate to friends of ours. If my distinction is shown to be successful, I believe it will impact the efficacy of Goldberg’s response to EPF. My main argument focuses on the way Goldberg argues against EPF and the tension it supposedly creates with the demands of epistemic rationality. I believe that Goldberg’s argument fails to capture an important distinction between our epistemic behaviors in the face of a friend’s say-so and our epistemic behaviors when we encounter third-party reports about a friend. I’ll argue that the route from the valuing of friendship to the epistemic reasons in support of differential doxastic outcomes when our friends are involved is not satisfactory, given that it involves what I see to be an unauthorized move from our desire to preserve a friendship to a differential doxastic reaction when someone reports negatively about our friends.

Individual justice in Shi'ah school of thought

In this essay, I discuss individual justice to illustrate the negative sovereignty of lust and cupidity of soul over intellectual faculty, and to show the manifestations of greediness of people in external world, in which they prioritize their appetite of eating and drinking, and their eagerness for possessing property-over rational demands. This unjust order is against what is supposed to be. In this explanation I use Islamic philosophy, ethics and jurisprudence as three fields of Islamic studies to determine justice in thought, justice of inner faculties and justly treatment of people in society because each of these three-thought, inner faculties and behaviours-determines part of justice. It seems that without individual justice it is impossible to achieve perfection and establish justice in society.

Crowding and Tail Risk in Momentum Returns

AbstractSeveral theoretical studies suggest that coordination problems can cause arbitrageur crowding to push asset prices beyond fundamental value as investors feedback trade on each others’ demands. Using this logic, we develop a crowding model for momentum returns that predicts tail risk when arbitrageurs ignore feedback effects. However, crowding does not generate tail risk when arbitrageurs rationally condition on feedback. Consistent with rational demands, our empirical analysis generally finds a negative relation between crowding proxies constructed from institutional holdings and expected crash risk. Thus our analysis casts both theoretical and empirical doubt on crowding as a stand-alone source of tail risk.

Therapeutic effects of stem cells in different body systems, a novel method that is yet to gain trust: A comprehensive review.

ABSTRACTStem cell therapy has been used to treat several types of diseases, and it is expected that its therapeutic uses shall increase as novel lines of evidence begin to appear. Furthermore, stem cells have the potential to make new tissues and organs. Thus, some scientists propose that organ transplantation will significantly rely on stem cell technology and organogenesis in the future. Stem cells and its robust potential to differentiate into specific types of cells and regenerate tissues and body organs, have been investigated by numerous clinician scientists and researchers for their therapeutic effects. Degenerative diseases in different organs have been the main target of stem cell therapy. Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, musculoskeletal diseases such as osteoarthritis, congenital cardiovascular diseases, and blood cell diseases such as leukemia are among the health conditions that have benefited from stem cell therapy advancements. One of the most challenging parts of the process of incorporating stem cells into clinical practice is controlling their division and differentiation potentials. Sometimes, their potential for uncontrolled growth will make these cells tumorigenic. Another caveat in this process is the ability to control the differentiation process. While stem cells can easily differentiate into a wide variety of cells, a paracrine effect controlled activity, being in an appropriate medium will cause abnormal differentiation leading to treatment failure. In this review, we aim to provide an overview of the therapeutic effects of stem cells in diseases of various organ systems. In order to advance this new treatment to its full potential, researchers should focus on establishing methods to control the differentiation process, while policymakers should take an active role in providing adequate facilities and equipment for these projects. Large population clinical trials are a necessary tool that will help build trust in this method. Moreover, improving social awareness about the advantages and adverse effects of stem cell therapy is required to develop a rational demand in the society, and consequently, healthcare systems should consider established stem cell-based therapeutic methods in their treatment algorithms.

Patrons and Personnel: The Foreign Determinants of Military Recruitment Policies

Why do some states develop conscript armies, whereas others rely on volunteers? Most theories of military design describe domestic elites as making decisions based on rational security demands or cultural understandings of what a military should look like. Contrary to these explanations, many states faced with the challenge of building a military are dependent on powerful military patrons with strong beliefs about how to design their clients’ militaries. When states that are building new militaries have foreign military patrons, they are likely to emulate their patron’s recruitment practices. Patrons with sufficient interest and will to engage in security force assistance use their influence to shape recruitment practices in new or postconflict states. This article describes the dynamics of military patronage as they relate to recruitment decisions and finds support for the argument using both original quantitative data and a brief case comparison.

Ecclesial Belonging in a World of Pure Experience: William James, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Religious Rationality in Crisis

Abstract The global COVID-19 pandemic has spotlighted several instances of churches violating state issued and scientifically recommended guidelines designed to keep populations healthy and to prevent the further spread of the disease. While these instances are minority responses to these orders, they nonetheless raise questions about the rationality of ecclesial belonging in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, I draw on the work of William James and W. E. B. Du Bois to articulate a conception of ecclesial belonging as a social epistemological process engaging a complex, fluid multiplicity of knowers of various scales. I argue that, in this view, ecclesial rationality involves the construction of a concatenation of internal and external practices individual believers and groups can traverse so long as they consistently satisfy a plurality of desiderata. I suggest that what is irrational about religious-based defiance of COVID-19 guidelines is the church-sanctioned severance of internal from external practices. I suggest that this behavior is supported by a failure to grasp the demands of ecclesial rationality rather than embrace them, and that this conception of rationality may have been eroded by the value-neutral skepticism of secular rationality.