The Experts below are selected from a list of 42 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Mongin Philippe - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Waterloo or the Plurality of Interpretations
Armand Colin, 2012Co-Authors: Mongin PhilippeAbstract:International audienceThe interpretations of Waterloo are part of history no less than the event itself. This article investigates those of Clausewitz and Stendhal in detail before offering a philosophical sketch of the concepts of interpretation and interpretive plurality. It likens Clausewitz to a Rational Choice Theorist, and Stendhal, who expresses himself through his character Fabrice, to a Theorist of semantics before their time. Having been selected because of their opposite trends towards unification and dissolution, the two examples will help bring the conclusion that plurality of interpretations is to some extent orderly
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Waterloo ou la pluralité des interprétations
Armand Colin, 2012Co-Authors: Mongin PhilippeAbstract:International audienceThe interpretations of Waterloo are part of history no less than the event itself. This article investigates those of Clausewitz and Stendhal in detail before offering a philosophical sketch on the concepts of interpretation and interpretive plurality. It likens Clausewitz to a Rational Choice Theorist, and Stendhal, who expresses himself through his character Fabrice, to a Theorist of semantics before the time. Having been selected because of their opposing trends towards unification and dissolution, the two examples will help bring the conclusion that the plurality of interpretations is to some extent orderly.Les interprétations de Waterloo appartiennent à l'histoire non moins que cet événement lui-même. L'article étudie en détail celles de Clausewitz et Stendhal, avant de proposer une ébauche philosophique sur les concepts d'interprétation et de pluralité interprétative. Il découvre en Clausewitz l'un des premiers théoriciens du choix rationnel, et en Stendhal, qui s'exprime à travers son personnage Fabrice, un théoricien de la sémantique avant l'heure. Choisis pour leurs tendances opposées, respectivement unificatrice et dissolvante, ces deux exemples aideront à établir finalement que la pluralité des interprétations n'est pas dénuée de règles
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Waterloo et les regard croisés de l'interprétation
HAL CCSD, 2009Co-Authors: Mongin PhilippeAbstract:Cahier de Recherche du Groupe HEC 912The interpretations of the Waterloo campaign are numerous, diverse and constantly reworked, so they are part of history no less than the event itself. This article briefly reviews them before considering more carefully two selected interpreters, i.e., Clausewitz and Stendhal. It likens the former to a Rational Choice Theorist who makes a step away from intelligible narrative in the direction of modelling, and it represents the latter, who expresses himself through his character Fabrice, as a theoretically informed critique of the inert categories of the historical discourse. Despite their opposing trends towards unification and dissolution, both examples testify to general features, which the end of this essay tries to bring out, of the concepts of interpretation and plurality of interpretations."Nombreuses, diverses et constamment reprises, les interprétations de la campagne de Waterloo appartiennent à l¿histoire non moins que cet évènement lui-même. L¿article y revient au niveau des généralités sommaires avant de se consacrer en détail à deux interprètes sélectionnés, Clausewitz et Stendhal. Il tire le premier vers l¿analyse rationnelle de l¿action et même la conception de proto-modèles en rupture avec le genre du récit intelligible, et dans le second, qui s¿exprime à travers son personnage Fabrice, il découvre un critique théoriquement avisé des catégorisations figées du langage historique. Malgré leurs tendances respectivement unificatrice et dissolvante, ces deux exemples témoignent de certains caractères généraux de l¿interprétation et de la pluralité interprétative que la fin de ce travail s¿attache à dégager. Mots-clés : Waterloo, campagne de 1815, Napoléon, Clausewitz, Stendhal, La chartreuse de Parme, interprétation, pluralité interprétative, récit intelligible, théories du choix rationnel
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Waterloo et les regard croisés de l'interprétation
2024Co-Authors: Mongin PhilippeAbstract:The interpretations of the Waterloo campaign are numerous, diverse and constantly reworked, so they are part of history no less than the event itself. This article briefly reviews them before considering more carefully two selected interpreters, i.e., Clausewitz and Stendhal. It likens the former to a Rational Choice Theorist who makes a step away from intelligible narrative in the direction of modelling, and it represents the latter, who expresses himself through his character Fabrice, as a theoretically informed critique of the inert categories of the historical discourse. Despite their opposing trends towards unification and dissolution, both examples testify to general features, which the end of this essay tries to bring out, of the concepts of interpretation and plurality of interpretations.Waterloo; campaign of 1815; Napoleon; Clausewitz; Stendhal; The Charterhouse of Parma; interpretation; interpretative plurality; intelligible narrative; Rational Choice theories
Chapman Bruce - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Rational Choice and Categorical Reason
2003Co-Authors: Chapman BruceAbstract:Recently, the positive theory of Rational Choice has come under attack from experimental psychologists and economists. Their experimental results, gathered together under the banner of behavioral analysis, show that the maximizing model of Rational Choice often does not provide a very accurate account of how agents actually choose. Moreover, the departures from the model appear systematic rather than random, suggesting that something other than maximization is going on. However, the general tenor of these studies is not to question the normative ideal of maximization. Rather, the departures from the standard account of Rational Choice are typically characterized, and criticized, as failures to be Rational. Agents are only human beings, after all, and human beings are subject to the limitations that must, inevitably and systematically, arise out of personal bias, limits on the salience and availability of important information, and the distorting effects of how a given problem is framed. Thus, real world agents are only, it is said, capable of a bounded Rationality, using rules of thumb and various heuristics (sometimes helpful, sometimes not) rather than the fully fledged maximizing Rationality that is still largely accepted as the ideal for Rational Choice. This paper argues that, for many decision-making problems, the normative account of Rationality that animates Rational Choice theory, and not just the positive account that is criticized by the behaviorists, is deficient, even as a theory of ideally Rational behavior, and that an alternative account of Rational Choice is required. Rationality, it is suggested, provides for an ordered particularity, including particular decisions, but the notion of an ordering that informs this alternative account of ideally Rational behavior, and which is more appropriate in some decision-making contexts, including many legal ones, is very different from the idea of an ordering that informs the standard account within Rational Choice theory. The latter, which is closely allied to the idea of maximization, remains largely quantitative and single-minded in its orientation, this despite the pluralism of motivations that it appears to be willing and able to accommodate within its seemingly minimalist structure. The alternative account is more qualitative, or categorical (although not absolute), offering a conception of a Rational ordering of particularity that is more allied to the idea of an understanding or interpretation (under rules or principles) than it is to maximization. In this paper this alternative conception of Rationality is referred to as categorical reason. The real challenge for the paper, however, is not so much to articulate two alternative accounts of Rationality, but to begin to make each accessible to the other within some common intellectual framework. While Rational Choice theory provides a useful and precise set of tools for beginning this process of achieving mutual understanding, the paper argues that some quite fundamental postulates of Rational Choice theory (including the most basic Choice consistency axiom and the strong independence assumption) will have to be relaxed if the contributions of categorical reason are properly to be accommodated within it. However, the paper shows that there is much advantage in this, even for what the Rational Choice Theorist hopes to achieve, and illustrates the point by reference to some systematic difficulties that the Rational Choice Theorist faces in the theory of social Choice and game theory
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The Rational and the Reasonable: Social Choice Theory and Adjudication
1994Co-Authors: Chapman BruceAbstract:This Article contends that the diversity of reasons chosen to Rationalize different cases, even different cases within a given body of law, while evidencing contradiction to the legal skeptic, and arbitrary path dependence to the Rational Choice Theorist, actually manifests law's overall reasonableness and coherence. The Article is organized as follows: Section I outlines the conventions of Rational social Choice that are relevant to this Article in both their preference-theoretic and their Choice-theoretic forms. This Section also suggests a structural interpretation of these Rationality requirements in terms of the general theory of the Good and in contrast to a general theory of the Right. Section II uses a simple abstract example to describe the very different notion of Rationality that is inherent to legal reasoning across a set of "like cases", a form of reasoning that emphasizes the different relations between, rather than the comparable properties of, the various alternatives that are available for Choice. This feature of legal reasoning explains the apparent partition- and path-dependence of judicial law making: the legal rule that is finally announced as Rationalizing a set of cases depends on the sequence of Choice over those cases. Legal reasoning is thus closer to theories of the Right, with their emphasis on process, than theories of Good, with their emphasis on the goals to be achieved in different end states. Section III illustrates the reasonableness of adjudication across a coherent set of like cases with an example taken from tort law. Finally, Section IV addresses the nagging question as to what possible advantage there could be, even for what the Rational Choice Theorist hopes to accomplish, in law's reasonableness, that is, in the coherent yet path-dependent adjudication of a set of like cases. The Section argues, using an example based on Kaldor-Hicks efficient contracting and the cycle of social Choice that it produces, that it is sometimes self-defeating to pursue a social goal directly and in a purely forward-looking way. The goal is often more likely to be achieved under the more coordinated set of Choices made possible by a backward-looking (path-dependent) respect for prior Choices
Bruce Chapman - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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PUBLIC REASON, SOCIAL Choice, AND COOPERATION*
2015Co-Authors: Bruce ChapmanAbstract:Economic theory and legal theory can both claim to provide plausible accounts of Rational decision-making. Yet, despite the growth of "law and economics " as a hugely successful area of interdisciplinary study, therff is very little intellectual exchange between the Rational Choice Theorist who attempts to explain economic behaviour on the one hand, and the more philosophically inclined Theorist who seeks to comprehend legal reasoning and adjudication on the other. Thus, the claim that each sort of Theorist makes to account for Rational decision-making seems largely to go unanswered by the other, this despite the fact that the two disciplines are otherwise so interconnected. While the two sorts of theory loosely understand the Rationality of a set of decisions in the same way, namely as an "ordered particularity", the notion of ordering is fundamentally different between the two. In economics, no matter how diverse the motivations for Choice might appear to be, the idea of an ordering remains somewhat single-minded and "quantitative", the sort of thing over which a chooser can maximize. Thus, in social Choice theory, for example, the idea persists that the plurality of ordefings (of either individuals or Choice criteria) that are the inputs into the social Choice functio
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PUBLIC REASON, SOCIAL Choice, AND COOPERATION∗
2015Co-Authors: Bruce ChapmanAbstract:Economic theory and legal theory can both claim to provide plausible accounts of Rational decision-making. Yet, despite the growth of “law and economics ” as a hugely successful area of interdisciplinary study, there is very little intellectual exchange between the Rational Choice Theorist who attempts to explain economic behaviour on the one hand, and the more philosophically inclined Theorist who seeks to comprehend legal reasoning and adjudication on the other. Thus, the claim that each sort of Theorist makes to account for Rational decision-making seems largely to go unanswered by the other, this despite the fact that the two disciplines are otherwise so interconnected. While the two sorts of theory loosely understand the Rationality of a set of decisions in the same way, namely as an “ordered particularity”, the notion of ordering is fundamentally different between the two. In economics, no matter how diverse the motivations for Choice might appear to be, the idea of an ordering remains somewhat single-minded and “quantitative”, the sort of thing over which a chooser can maximize. Thus, in social Choice theory, for example, the idea persists that the plurality of orderings (of either individuals or Choice criteria) that are the inputs into the social Choice functio
Akhtar, Sahar Z - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Topics in Rational Choice Theory
2008Co-Authors: Akhtar, Sahar ZAbstract:Rational Choice theory includes a broad body of research that attempts to account for how people act in a variety of contexts, including economic, political and even moral situations. By proposing, most generally, that individuals Rationally pursue their self-interests regardless of the context, Rational Choice has had extensive theoretical and empirical success, on the one hand, and has also faced wide criticism when applied in a variety of disciplines, on the other hand. While there is disagreement over what the defining assumptions of Rational Choice theory are, in this dissertation I focus on three on which there is widespread agreement. These three features of Rational Choice theory are: its assumption of egoism or self-interest as the central motivation of individuals; its reliance on consequences as part of a comparative decision-making framework; and finally, its focus on the individual and not on groups as the methodological and normative unit of analysis. In correspondence to these three features, my dissertation is divided into three parts and explores the separate topics of (I) egoism and altruism; (II) consequentialism and ethical decision-making; and, (III) individualism and group identity. The dissertation is not an exercise in showing the extensive problems of Rational Choice theory, although there are many. The dissertation rather engages these three topics with differing results, some of which in fact attempts to revitalize Rational Choice, or at least features of Rational Choice. For the part on altruism, my goal is to demonstrate why the central assumption of egoism in Rational Choice theory is problematic. More broadly, I argue for a different way of defining genuine altruistic motivation. A result of my analysis there is that altruism appears to be more widespread than has been traditionally assumed and is more amenable to empirical examination. For my discussion on consequentialism, my aim is to re-characterize Rational Choice as a mode of moral decision-making. I argue that the moral agent is one who frequently compares her particular moral ends in a stable fashion and for this reason cost-benefit analysis is a fully moral framework, one that encourages the agent to genuinely care for her ends and values. For the topic of individualism and group identity, my objective is to show how a previously dismissed topic, once unpacked, is fully consistent with Rational Choice theory and ought to be of interest to the Rational Choice Theorist. I show that if the liberal political Theorist, including the Rational Choice Theorist, is to value group identity, the commitment is only limited to valuing a form of group identity--particularized identity--that is individualist in character.Dissertatio
Picavet Emmanuel - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Arguments de choix rationnel et contractualisme : les cas symétriques de Rousseau et de Pareto
'OpenEdition', 2015Co-Authors: Picavet EmmanuelAbstract:Dans cet article, l’enquête porte sur la démarche de Vilfredo Pareto en tant que théoricien du choix rationnel qui se refuse à en tirer des leçons contractualistes. On examine le cas symétrique d’un théoricien tel que Jean-Jacques Rousseau, habituellement donné (par David Gauthier en particulier) comme illustrant le contraire d’une approche contractualiste de type « choix rationnel », mais qui utilise en fait beaucoup d’arguments de type « choix rationnel » ou même « coût-efficacité » d’une manière qui est bien liée (d’une manière cruciale, ce que l’on tente de montrer) à son argumentation contractualiste.This article holds an inquiry into Vilfredo Pareto’s profile as a Rational-Choice Theorist who abstains from drawing conclusions from Rational-Choice analysis in the field of contractarian theory. The symmetrical case of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is also examined: the case of a Theorist who, although he has been described (notably by David Gauthier) as a contractarian Theorist who rejects the typical hypotheses we now associate with Rational-Choice analysis, turns out to make use of a wide array of arguments which remind us of Rational-Choice and even cost-efficiency analyses. It is argued that this is crucially related to contractarian argument in Rousseau’s work
