Rational Requirements Research Articles

Being More Realistic About Reasons: On Rationality and Reasons Perspectivism

This paper looks at whether it is possible to unify the requirements of rationality with the demands of normative reasons. It might seem impossible to do because one depends upon the agent's perspective and the other upon features of the situation. Enter Reasons Perspectivism. Reasons perspectivists think they can show that rationality does consist in responding correctly to reasons by placing epistemic constraints on these reasons. They think that if normative reasons are subject to the right epistemic constraints, rational requirements will correspond to the demands generated by normative reasons. While this proposal is prima facie plausible, it cannot ultimately unify reasons and rationality. There is no epistemic constraint that can do what reasons perspectivists would need it to do. Some constraints are too strict. The rest are too slack. This points to a general problem with the reasons‐first program. Once we recognize that the agent's epistemic position helps determine what she should do, we have to reject the idea that the features of the agent's situation can help determine what we should do. Either rationality crowds out reasons and their demands or the reasons will make unreasonable demands.

Reducing preference reversals: The role of preference imprecision and nontransparent methods.

Preferences elicited with matching and choice usually diverge (as characterised by preference reversals), violating a basic rationality requirement, namely, procedure invariance. We report the results of an experiment that shows that preference reversals between matching (Standard Gamble in our case) and choice are reduced when the matching task is conducted using nontransparent methods. Our results suggest that techniques based on nontransparent methods are less influenced by biases (i.e., compatibility effects) than transparent methods. We also observe that imprecision of preferences influences the degree of preference reversals. The preference reversal phenomenon is less strong in subjects with more precise preferences.

A reason to be rational

ABSTRACTThis essay argues that in spite of the powerful arguments by Kolodny and Broome there is a reason to be rational. The suggested reason to be rational is that if an agent complies with rational requirements the people around him, as well as he himself, will be able to explain and predict his attitudes. Rationality allows us to make sense of an agent’s attitudes in terms of his other attitudes. This form of explainability is valuable, because it provides us with greater comprehension as regards an agent’s attitudes. Thus, I argue that there is an instrumental reason to be rational.

EPISTEMIC AKRASIA AND EPISTEMIC REASONS

ABSTRACTIt seems that epistemically rational agents should avoid incoherent combinations of beliefs and should respond correctly to their epistemic reasons. However, some situations seem to indicate that such requirements cannot be simultaneously satisfied. In such contexts, assuming that there is no unsolvable dilemma of epistemic rationality, either (i) it could be rational that one's higher-order attitudes do not align with one's first-order attitudes or (ii) requirements such as responding correctly to epistemic reasons that agents have are not genuine rationality requirements. This result doesn't square well with plausible theoretical assumptions concerning epistemic rationality. So, how do we solve this puzzle? In this paper, I will suggest that an agent can always reason from infallible higher-order reasons. This provides a partial solution to the above puzzle.

Reasoning, rational requirements, and occurrent attitudes

AbstractThis paper explores the sense in which rational requirements govern our attitudes like belief and intention. I argue that there is a tension between the idea that rational requirements govern attitudes understood as standing states and the attractive idea that we can directly satisfy the requirements by performing reasoning. I identify the tension by (a) illustrating how a dispositional conception of belief can cause trouble for the idea that we can directly revise our attitudes through reasoning by considering John Broome's view, and (b) advancing a general argument that a standing state cannot be directly affected by reasoning. I then propose a solution: by recognizing the proper targets of rational requirements as occurrent, rather than dispositional attitudes, we can preserve the idea that we can directly satisfy rational requirements through reasoning.

Noisy Belief Equilibrium

Quantal response equilibrium (QRE) of McKelvey and Palfrey (1995) relaxes the rationality requirement of Nash equilibrium by allowing for probabilistic mistakes or “noise in actions” while maintaining that beliefs are correct. QRE is well-studied, and much is known about the falsifiable restrictions imposed by different variants of the model. By contrast, little is understood of the empirical content of equilibrium models which relax the other condition of Nash equilibrium by allowing for “noise in beliefs” while maintaining best response. To fill this gap, we introduce noisy belief equilibrium (NBE) for normal form games in which axioms restrict belief distributions to be unbiased with respect to and responsive to changes in the opponents’ behavior. The axioms impose testable restrictions both within and across games, and we compare these restrictions to those of regular QRE (Goeree et al. 2005) in which axioms are placed on the quantal response function as the primitive. We show that NBE generates similar predictions as QRE such as the “own payoff effect”, and yet is more consistent with the empirically documented effects of changes in payoff magnitude. Unlike QRE, NBE is a refinement of rationalizability and invariant to affine transformations of payoffs.

Aquinas’s Ecological Vision: Natural Law and Friendship in Contemporary Environmental Political Thought

This article examines Aquinas’s thinking about law and nature to show that for Aquinas natural law is not about deriving or finding normative rules (standards) in the order of the cosmos or requirements of practical rationality. Rather, I argue that for Aquinas, natural law is a distinctive way of theorizing relationality and embodiment in the “sublunary realm”: one that aims at “friendship” across species lines (STI-II99.2-3). The word Aquinas uses to describe this ecological practice is synderesis. For Aquinas, synderesis is both the human-creaturely capacity to grasp the analogical structuring of reality and the “disposition” that allows us to work on transforming this reality into belonging-together through our participation in natural law (STI79; DV15-17). Synderesis is thus of central importance to Aquinas’s account of natural law, yet it is largely overlooked by modern natural law theorists. The article concludes by exploring how Aquinas’s natural law thinking might contribute to an environmental politics of friendship.

ІДЕЯ СВОБОДИ В ОСВІТІ: МИСЛЕННЯ, НАВЧАННЯ, ЦІННІСНИЙ ВИБІР

The article examines the problem of freedom and autonomy of the individual in terms of education. In the context of freedom, the problem of the formation and development of a person, who will have to become the author of his or her life, is solved. Freedom manifests itself not only in the acts of choice, but in all activities, including thinking. Freedom of thinking involves the responsibility of individuals for what they think,since the thought becomes objective with the time. This process requires control, which is carried out at the expense of a critical reflection of thinking. In its turn, it generates intellectual freedom, which is an important part of the influence on the person's perceptions and convictions.Personal autonomy is understood as the ability to perform conscious choice The author analyzes the problem of norms, important for reflexive activity and identity formation. Freedom finds its most complete expression at the place and at the time when a person thinks and acts in harmony with rational necessity, which, first of all, focuses on positive values. This requires the release of creative thought, the activities of which do not deprive them of the conditional norms and regulations. An intelligent person is the one who knows how to think and act in different situations of social life and make choices. A person is free only to the extent that he adequately responds to rational requirements: the more he understands what he has to think and do, the greater his freedom. Learning autonomy involves the rational organization of the educational system. It pledges to provide individuals with resources to make free choices from the standpoint of a conscious necessity and to determine the prospects for further life, principles and ideas of social development.

Plan B: A Theory of Judicial Review

There is no general theory of the grounds of judicial review (e.g., the rule against bias, the doctrine of legitimate expectations, unreasonableness). Here I try to fill the gap. My theory draws on ideas from the philosophy of law and the philosophy of action, but it’s a simple theory. Officials make decisions for the community. Their decisions are subject to requirements of instrumental rationality. Ideally, officials would figure out for themselves how to live up to these requirements. Because officials aren’t perfect, the law also has “Plan B”, which is for judges to ensure that officials do what rationality requires of them. The grounds of judicial review are simply the grounds on which it’s rational for officials to reconsider, retain, suspend, or apply their decisions. The “Plan B theory”, as I call it, doesn’t account for every detail of judicial review. Even so, the theory is powerful, parsimonious, fruitful, and sharply at odds with almost everything else written about judicial review.

Globalisation, money, taxes – past and present

The article is devoted to changes that have taken place in the world economy and in the econo- mics, starting with the Great Depression of the 1930s to the contemporary Global Crisis. The author pays special attention to the phenomenon of free movement of capital across borders, which lead to weakening of the importance and role of the state.

Global government or global governance? Realism and idealism in Kant's legal theory

ABSTRACTDid Kant believe we need a world government? It has been a matter of controversy in Kant scholarship whether Kant endorsed the creation of a world state or merely a voluntary federation of states with no coercive power. I argue that Kant's main concern was with a global juridical condition, which he regarded as a rational requirement given the equal freedom and equality of individuals. However, he recognized that implementing this rational ideal requires sensitivity to contingent aspects of world politics. I will argue that Kant offers an ideal theory not disentangled from realist considerations and that he adopts what I will call methodological realism: the attempt to realize the requirements of Right (Recht) in a world governed by its own laws and mechanisms. I will illustrate this interpretation with Kant's discussion of the right of nations (Völkerrecht). The confusion in regard to Kant's actual position on the matter, I will argue, is a direct consequence of Kant's methodological realism. The article concludes by showing how Kant’'s ideas and methods can inspire us to rethink global institutions for our current global challenges.

IT'S OK TO MAKE MISTAKES: AGAINST THE FIXED POINT THESIS

ABSTRACTCan we make mistakes about what rationality requires? A natural answer is that we can, since it is a platitude that rational belief does not require truth; it is possible for a belief to be rational and mistaken, and this holds for any subject matter at all. However, the platitude causes trouble when applied to rationality itself. The possibility of rational mistakes about what rationality requires generates a puzzle. When combined with two further plausible claims – the enkratic principle, and the claim that rational requirements apply universally – we get the result that rationality generates inconsistent requirements. One popular and attractive solution to the puzzle denies that it is possible to make rational mistakes about what rationality requires. I show why (contra Titelbaum (2015b), and Littlejohn (2015)) this solution is doomed to fail.

Defending the social value of knowledge as a safeguard for public trust.

The 'socially valuable knowledge' (SVK) principle has been widely acknowledged as one of the most important guiding principles for biomedical research involving human subjects. The principle states that the potential of producing socially valuable knowledge is a necessary requirement, although not sufficient, for the ethical conduct of research projects. This is due to the assumption that the social value of knowledge avoids exploitation of research subjects and justifies the use of health resources. However, more recently, several authors have started interrogating the validity of SVK in research and offered various lines of argument against the SVK principle as a necessary constraint to research. In this article, I will reconstruct the main arguments of this discussion between defenders and debunkers of the SVK principle and offer a third way to consider the social value of knowledge in research studies. I will argue that the social value of knowledge can be supported by an independent justification. This justification of the SVK principle addresses the rationality and common interest of researchers. Thus, I will introduce the SVK principle as a safeguarding principle for public trust based on a conceptual framework by Alex John London. My approach justifies keeping the principle as a precautionary and rational requirement for human health research that all rational stakeholders can agree upon.

Constitutional but legally invalid: on the practice of interpretive judicial review

ABSTRACTThe question addressed by this paper is whether laws that are perfectly constitutional (i.e., comply with all constitutional requirements or all relevant human rights norms) can nevertheless be deprived of their legal effect because they offend some principle of the Rule of Law. The answer is clearly ‘yes’: legal interpreters regularly engage in a non-constitutional form of judicial review that denies legal validity to statutory provisions that violate Rule of Law principles. The paper gives three examples: violations of the principle of non-contradiction; violations of the prohibition on excessively vague statutes; and violations of the principle that like cases be treated alike. As the paper argues, this last principle is, at bottom, a requirement of rationality, so that irrational statutory requirements are regularly deprived of their legal effects. The paper concludes with a brief examination of the increasing constitutionalization of principles of the Rule of Law.

The early stages in the evolution of Economic Man. Millian and marginal approaches

The homo economicus (Economic Man) concept is one of the best-known components of economic theorising frequently recognised as a part of the “hard core” of the mainstream 20th-century economics. This model gained such a high status in times of the marginal revolution, although it was coined in the 1830s by the classical economist John S. Mill. Nowadays, homo economicus is commonly perceived as a model of rational economic agent maximising utility or preferences. The article aims to show that both the Millian approach and the marginal approach were more complex than the contemporary incarnation of Economic Man. One of the key differences between the early stages in the evolution of homo oeconomicus and the modern version of it refers to the notion of rationality. Whereas it is the constitutive element of the 20th-century homo oeconomicus, the requirement of full rationality was never explicitly articulated by Mill and marginal economists. Therefore, at the early stages of its evolution, the homo economicus model would have been much more resistant to the objections formulated against it by the 20th-century critics.

Does the normative question about rationality rest on a mistake?

Rationality requires that our mental attitudes exhibit specific patterns of coherence. Do we have reason to comply? ’Prichardian Quietists’ regard this question as fundamentally confused: the only reasons to comply with rational requirements are the ones given by the requirements themselves. In this paper, I argue that PQ fails. I proceed by granting that Prichard’s own position, from which PQ draws inspiration, is defensible, while identifying three serious problems with the parallel position about rationality. First, as I argue, PQ is not plausibly combined with either the narrow-scope or the wide-scope formulations of rational requirements. Second, PQ implies that the reasons to comply with rational requirements are reasons of the wrong kind. And finally, PQ lacks a crucial component of its explanation, viz. a plausible theory of what constitutes being rationally required to V.

The property of rationality: a guide to what rationality requires?

Can we employ the property of rationality in establishing what rationality requires? According to a central and formal thesis of John Broome’s work on rational requirements, the answer is ‘no’—at least if we expect a precise answer. In particular, Broome argues that (i) the property of full rationality (i.e. whether or not you are fully rational) is independent of whether we formulate conditional requirements of rationality as having a wide or a narrow logical scope. That is, (ii) by replacing a wide-scope requirement with a corresponding narrow-scope requirement (or vice versa), we do not alter the situations in which a person is fully rational. As a consequence, (iii) the property of full rationality is unable to guide us in determining whether a rational requirement has a wide or a narrow logical scope. We cannot resolve the wide/narrow scope debate by appealing to a theory of fully rational attitudes. This paper argues that (i), (ii) and (iii) are incorrect. Replacing a wide- with a corresponding narrow-scope requirement (or vice versa) can alter the set of circumstances in which a person is fully rational. The property of full rationality is therefore not independent of whether we formulate conditional requirements of rationality as having a wide or a narrow logical scope. As a consequence, the property of full rationality can guide us in determining what rationality requires—even in cases where we expect a precise answer.

Економічний раціональний підхід до оцінки рівня життя населення в Україні

The article examines the rational physiological norms of food consumption for theadult population of men and women per capita, based on the minimum consumer basket, the subsistence minimum and the minimum wage established by the government in accordance with the current legislation from 01.01.2018. Modern rational economic approach to the calculation and assessment of living standards in Ukraine is used, based on the level of food prices and rational requirements and kilocalories.

Grounding and Logical Basing Permissions

The relation between logic and rationality has recently re-emerged as an important topic of discussion. Following the ideas of Broome [1999] and MacFarlane [2004], the debate focused on providing rational requirements, which work as bridges between logic and epistemic norms. However, as Broome [2014] and Way [2011] observed, the usual requirements cannot capture some important aspects of rationality, such as how one can rationally believe something on the basis of believing something else. Broome [2014] proposed a few additional principles (“basing permissions”) for this purpose. In this paper I develop a more systematic family of basing permissions using the recent notion of grounding (Fine [2012], Correia [2014]). In particular, I claim that if Γ (logically) grounds A, and you believe Γ, then rationality permits you to believe A on the basis of believing Γ.

REASONS TO BELIEVE AND REASONS TO ACT

ABSTRACTI consider the structural differences between reasons to believe and reasons to act. I argue that Mark Schroeder's project of providing a unified account of reasons to believe and reasons to act faces serious difficulties. I also investigate the difference between rational requirement and rational permission. While the difference between these notions in the case of action is a matter of the strength of one's reasons, I argue that in the case of belief, the difference depends on what one is attending to.