On the Nature and Significance of (Ideal) Rational Choice Theory

Analyse & Kritik 40 (1):131-160 (2018)
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Abstract

The increasingly wide spread use of RCM, rational choice modeling, and RCT, rational choice theory, in disciplines like economics, law, ethics, psychology, sociology, political science, management facilitates interdisciplinary exchange. This is a great achievement. Yet it nurtures the hope that a unified account of rational active choice making might arise from ‘reason’ in terms of intuitively appealing axioms. Such ‘rationalist’ characterizations of rational choice neglect real human practices and empirical accounts of those practices. This is theoretically misleading and practically dangerous. Searching for a wide reflective equilibrium, WRE, on RCT in evidence-oriented ways can explicate ‘rational’ without rationalism.

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