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In a provocative essay, Professor Baigent criticizes the “bare” or “stark” conception of practical reason embodied in the formal models of decision theorists, economic theorists, and game theorists because it precludes the analysis of “deliberation.” Moreover, Professor Baigent argues that acknowledgement of deliberative aspects of practical rationality leads one to reject a fundamental premise of the standard theory. I agree with the criticism of rational choice theory but I think that Professor Baigent’s argument neither succeeds fully nor goes sufficiently far to provide a basis for the formal modelling of deliberation. In the theory of rational choice, each agent has an extremely simple “psychology” or “motivation.” To decide, an agent consults her preference ordering (variously over outcomes, lotteries, or actions) and her beliefs. As Professor Baigent notes, no interpretation of the formal theory admits a plausible account of deliberation. Often, the analyst interprets this preference ordering as “desires” on which the agent acts directly. The ordering might as easily be interpreted as an “all-things-considered” set of judgments. This second interpretation apparently admits a more complex weighing of reasons but the ordering resolves whatever conflicts the agent may face among her desires and other reasons for action such as morality. Thus, all deliberation precedes the invocation of rational choice theory. That the resolution of these conflicts results in a complete and transitive ordering may appear to be an heroic assumption and it is that assumption that Professor Baigent attacks. The formal models exclude completely a second form of deliberation as well. In the models, the ordering by which the agent evaluates her option in lights of her beliefs is “fixed,” or a datum of the problem. The models thus exclude the possibility that agent’s evaluative norms develop from (or within) choice situations themselves. Both these theoretical simplifications contrast sharply with Aristotelian views of practical reason. Specifically, practical reason, under the Aristotelian view, is characterized precisely by conflicts among incommensurable values and the by the need to articulate clearly the values that the agent holds. Professor Baigent offers a framework in which non-prudential concerns may not only influence an agent’s choices through their incorporation in an all-things-considered ranking but one in which non-prudential concerns might be said to conflict with or override prudential ones. To accomplish this end, Professor Baigent substantially modifies the standard decision-theoretic model. Most fundamentally, he assumes that each agent has a set of (first-order) preferences over alternatives and then he introduces a set of metapreferences over subsets of first-order preferences.
Source Publication
Social Rules: Origin, Character, Logic, Change
Source Editors/Authors
David Braybrooke
Publication Date
1996
Recommended Citation
Kornhauser, Lewis A., "Comment" (1996). Faculty Chapters. 1045.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1045
