Can egalitarianism be built into rationality theory?
✍ Scribed by C. A. Hooker
- Publisher
- Springer US
- Year
- 1984
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 1009 KB
- Volume
- 16
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0040-5833
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Almost everything that is written about decision making might, from the point of view of Michalos's book, be called derived decision making, where Michalos's concerns are relatively more pure, or foundational. The first half of the book is devoted to an analysis of the key concepts which comprise the deciding dimension to human agency -the chapters dealing with the concepts of person and group; wanting, preferring and indifference; needing, choosing and deciding; qualitative kinds of deciding processes; objects of choice, states of choice; possibilities, restrictions, and resources in decision situations; probability, controlability, clarity and complexity as relevant features of decision situations. Only in the second half of the book are rational decisions directly discussed and then only in a very general way, e.g. there is a discussion of qualitative kinds of costs and benefits, and of maximizing versus satisficing and egoism versus consensualism in definitions of rationality. Nowhere are there detailed examples worked out; decision tree, cost-risk-benefit analyses, game theory, the economist's indifference curves and like mathematical mainstays of the traditional literature do not appear, presumably because they are all already too specific for the level of analysis Michalos intends.
A book at this level of analysis is welcome because, as Michalos correctly insists, critical discussion of the fundamental concepts is at present far too sparse for its relative importance. Moreover Michalos has been researching public decision making for more than a decade and he is able to relate the abstract, and often abstruse and arcane, philosophical literature on human agency to the social sciences/public policy literature on the same concerns -a bridge that desperately needs building but which both sides often wilfully destroy.