Why Rational Agents Should Not Be Liberal Maximizers

2008 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isaac Levi
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Rational Agent ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Weak Ordering ◽  
Ordinal Preference ◽  
The Moment

Hans Herzberger's 1973 essay ‘Ordinal Preference and Rational Choice’ is a classic milestone in the erosion of the idea that rational agents are maximizers of utility. By the time Herzberger wrote, many authors had replaced this claim with the thesis that rational agents are maximizers of preference. That is to say, it was assumed that at the moment of choice a rational agent has a weak ordering representing his or her preferences among the options available to the agent for choice and that the rational agent restricts choice to one of the optimal options. Such an option is an available option judged at least as good as imy other.

Conflitto sociale e incomparabilitŕ dei beni

2009 ◽  
pp. 123-146
Author(s):  
Nicolň Bellanca
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Uniform Measure ◽  
Complex Society ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Mainstream Economics ◽  
Collective Beliefs ◽  
Social Goods ◽  
Relations Of Power

- According to mainstream economics, rational agents choose between alternatives that aree supposed to be ranked and compared. This assumption is strongly criticized by sociologists and anthropologists; it may partly hold true only when the commercial transactions sphere establishes a uniform measure: money. But what happens when a community compares social goods supplied by different institutional spheres? The rigorous equalization of any rate of exchange is replaced by a system of conventional equivalences. This system is temporary, since it changes as collective beliefs evolve; it is conflictual, because the "rates of conversion" between social goods often express relations of power among the groups themselves; and finally it is unstable, because individuals tend to develop private "rates of conversion" that aree different from the collective ones. This system, despite its fragility, is a crucial tool of reproduction of a complex society. This essay discusses and analyzes some aspects of the issue.Keywords: Incomparability, Rational Choice, Money, Conflict, Participation.

Ordinal Preference and Rational Choice

Econometrica ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans G. Herzberger
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Ordinal Preference

scholarly journals Homo Economicus in the Shortage Economy

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 207-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hana Lipovská ◽  
Lucie Coufalová ◽  
Libor Žídek
Keyword(s):  
Economic System ◽  
Market Economy ◽  
Rational Agent ◽  
Homo Economicus ◽  
Planned Economy ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Economic Agents ◽  
Centrally Planned Economy ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
Higher Law

Abstract Rational agents react to incentives in the market economy as well as in the centrally planned economy. Economic laws are persistent regardless of the economic system. The legislative system changes the outcome of the game between economic agents and managers. The aim of this paper is to show how rational agents reacted to legislative incentives in the Soviet-type economy in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s, that is, how they reacted to the general shortage in the centrally planned economy. Based on the original survey among former managers as well as on the legislative sources from the 1970s and 1980s, a taxonomy was made of economic reactions to the shortage economy. This survey was possibly the last chance to map the experiences of socialist managers who tried to run companies in the centrally planned economy. We distinguish plan manipulation in order to ensure payment bonuses; bribery in order to obtain short-supplied inputs and the creation of reserves for the purpose of fulfilling the plan. It was shown that, if the rational agent wanted to obey the higher law, he was forced to ignore lower legislation.

Cummiskey's Kantian Consequentialism

Utilitas ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Dean
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Rational Agent ◽  
Kant's Ethics

In Kantian Consequentialism, David Cummiskey argues that the central ideas of Kant's moral philosophy provide claims about value which, if applied consistently, lead to consequentialist normative principles. While Kant himself was not a consequentialist, Cummiskey thinks he should have been, given his fundamental positions in ethics. I argue that Cummiskey is mistaken. Cummiskey's argument relies on a non-Kantian idea about value, namely that value can be defined, and objects with value identified, conceptually prior to and independent of the choices that a rational agent would make. The contrasting Kantian concept of value is that to possess value is to be the object of (one sort or other) of rational choice. Inasmuch as Cummiskey gives no reason to reject the Kantian account of value in favour of his own (consequentialist) account, his argument does not establish that Kant's ethics inevitably leads to normative consequentialism.

Hegel

2020 ◽  
pp. 220-225
Author(s):  
Terence Irwin
Keyword(s):  
Rational Agent ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Right

Hegel believes that we can grasp the character of morality by reflexion on different aspects of the rational will. In willing we will a particular goal, but we also will it as our own goal, as the goal of a rational agent who has other ends. As rational agents we apply critical standards to the goals that we will. Kant is right to argue that morality includes these critical standards, but (as Schopenhauer argues) he is wrong to suppose that the critical standards alone give us the true content of morality. We find the correct morality in so far as we find the goals that meet the right critical standards; these are the goals that fully realize the nature of the rational agent. If we find these goals, we overcome (contrary to Schopenhauer) any opposition between self-interest and morality.

Can Adaptiveness and Rationality Part Ways?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samir Okasha
Keyword(s):  
Utility Function ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Decision Problem ◽  
Rational Agent ◽  
Suitable Choice ◽  
Adaptive Behaviour ◽  
Behavioural Ecology ◽  
Rational Behaviour

Given the abstract parallel between fitness and utility, it is natural to think that adaptive behaviour and rational behaviour will typically coincide, as many authors assume. However, a series of arguments, found in the philosophy, behavioural ecology, and economics literatures, suggest that in some cases the adaptive and the rational can part ways: evolution favours behaviours that violate the principles of rational choice. These ‘parting-of-ways’ arguments pose a challenge to agential thinking in biology—that is, to the idea that an evolved organism can be treated as akin to a rational agent pursuing a goal. However, in many cases the parting may be eliminated by suitable choice of utility function or fitness measure, or by reframing the decision problem.

Expected Utility, Ordering, and Context Freedom

1997 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piers Rawling
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Expected Utility ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Basic Requirement ◽  
The Past ◽  
Weak Ordering ◽  
Original Domain ◽  
Context Free ◽  
Rational Preferences

The context-free weak ordering principle (that rational preferences are weakly ordered, and that subtracting members from the domain of alternatives does not alter the ordering of the original domain, see, for example, Savage, 1972, pp. 205–6; McClennen, 1990, pp. 29–30) is viewed by many as a cornerstone of rational choice theory. McClennen, for example, claims (1990, p. 1) that this principle is one of a pair on which '[t]he theory of rational choice and preference, as it has been developed in the past few decades by economists and decision theorists, rests', and Sen (1970, p. 17) characterizes a version of context freedom (the ‘independence of irrelevant alternatives’, or ‘property α’) as ‘a very basic requirement of rational choice’. But this principle is certainly not uncontroversial: there are examples of (putative) principle is certainly not apper irrational.

scholarly journals Computational Goals, Values and Decision-Making

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 2487-2495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise A. Dennis
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Utility Function ◽  
Expected Utility ◽  
Engineering Ethics ◽  
Rational Agent ◽  
Autonomous Agent ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Do So

Abstract Considering the popular framing of an artificial intelligence as a rational agent that always seeks to maximise its expected utility, referred to as its goal, one of the features attributed to such rational agents is that they will never select an action which will change their goal. Therefore, if such an agent is to be friendly towards humanity, one argument goes, we must understand how to specify this friendliness in terms of a utility function. Wolfhart Totschnig (Fully Autonomous AI, Science and Engineering Ethics, 2020), argues in contrast that a fully autonomous agent will have the ability to change its utility function and will do so guided by its values. This commentary examines computational accounts of goals, values and decision-making. It rejects the idea that a rational agent will never select an action that changes its goal but also argues that an artificial intelligence is unlikely to be purely rational in terms of always acting to maximise a utility function. It nevertheless also challenges the idea that an agent which does not change its goal cannot be considered fully autonomous. It does agree that values are an important component of decision-making and explores a number of reasons why.

scholarly journals How to Believe Long Conjunctions of Beliefs: Probability, Quasi-Dogmatism and Contextualism

Erkenntnis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Bonzio ◽  
Gustavo Cevolani ◽  
Tommaso Flaminio
Keyword(s):  
High Probability ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
Rational Agent ◽  
Preface Paradox ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Lockean Thesis ◽  
Fixed Threshold ◽  
The Preface Paradox

AbstractAccording to the so-called Lockean thesis, a rational agent believes a proposition just in case its probability is sufficiently high, i.e., greater than some suitably fixed threshold. The Preface paradox is usually taken to show that the Lockean thesis is untenable, if one also assumes that rational agents should believe the conjunction of their own beliefs: high probability and rational belief are in a sense incompatible. In this paper, we show that this is not the case in general. More precisely, we consider two methods of computing how probable must each of a series of propositions be in order to rationally believe their conjunction under the Lockean thesis. The price one has to pay for the proposed solutions to the paradox is what we call “quasi-dogmatism”: the view that a rational agent should believe only those propositions which are “nearly certain” in a suitably defined sense.

scholarly journals Self-knowledge and the Paradox of Belief Revision

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Merlo
Keyword(s):  
Belief Revision ◽  
Rational Agent ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
The Face ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The Right ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Do So

AbstractTo qualify as a fully rational agent, one must be able rationally to revise one’s beliefs in the light of new evidence. This requires, not only that one revise one’s beliefs in the right way, but also that one do so as a result of appreciating the evidence on the basis of which one is changing one’s mind. However, the very nature of belief seems to pose an obstacle to the possibility of satisfying this requirement – for, insofar as one believes that p, any evidence that not-p will strike one as misleading and, on the face of it, believing that a certain piece of evidence is misleading is incompatible with appreciating the fact that such evidence should bear on the question at hand. Call this the ‘Paradox of Belief Revision’. This paper introduces the Paradox of Belief Revision, compares it with Kripke’s Dogmatism Paradox, and suggests that we may be able to see a way out of the former if we assume that rational agents are systematically aware of their own beliefs as beliefs they have.

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