Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T19:26:32.445Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Preferences: neither behavioural nor mental

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Francesco Guala
Francesco Guala*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Università degli Studi di Milano, via Festa del Perdono 7, 20136 Milano, Italy
*
Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Recent debates on the nature of preferences in economics have typically assumed that they are to be interpreted either as behavioural regularities or as mental states. In this paper I challenge this dichotomy and argue that neither interpretation is consistent with scientific practice in choice theory and behavioural economics. Preferences are belief-dependent dispositions with a multiply realizable causal basis, which explains why economists are reluctant to make a commitment about their interpretation.

Keywords

Preferencechoicebehavioural economicsdispositionsmental states
Type
Article
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , November 2019 , pp. 383 - 401
Check for updates
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Afriat, S. N. 1967. The construction of utility functions from expenditure data. International Economic Review 8, 67–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Albert, D. J. 2011. What’s on the mind of a jellyfish? Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 35, 474–482.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Angner, E. 2018. What are preferences? Philosophy of Science 85, 660–681.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binmore, K. 1994. Game Theory and the Social Contract, Vol. 1: Playing Fair. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Binmore, K. 2008. Rational Decisions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackford, J. U., Buckholtz, J. W., Avery, S. N. and Zald, D. H. 2010. A unique role for the human amygdala in novelty detection. Neuroimage 50, 1188–1193.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Block, N. 1980. Troubles with functionalism. In Block, N. (ed.), Readings in Philosophy of Psychology. Vol. 1, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 261–325.Google Scholar
Bridgman, P. W. 1927. The Logic of Modern Physics. New York, NY: Arno Press.Google Scholar
Bruni, L. and Sugden, R. 2007. The road not taken: how psychology was removed from economics, and how it might be brought back. Economic Journal 117, 146–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camerer, C. 2005. Three cheers – psychological, theoretical, empirical – for loss aversion. Journal of Marketing Research 42, 129–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camerer, C. 2008. The case for mindful economics. In Caplin, A. and Schotter, A. (eds), The Foundations of Positive and Normative Economics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 43–69.Google Scholar
Caplin, A. 2008. Economic theory and psychological data: bridging the divide. In Caplin, A. and Schotter, A. (eds), The Foundations of Positive and Normative Economics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 336–371.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Choi, S. and Fara, M. 2018. Dispositions. In Zalta, E. N. (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dispositions.Google Scholar
Clarke, C. 2016. Preferences and positivist methodology in economics. Philosophy of Science 83, 192–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corbetta, M. and Shulman, G. L. 2002. Control of goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention in the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 3, 201–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cozic, M. and Hill, B. 2015. Representation theorems and the semantics of decision-theoretic concepts. Journal of Economic Methodology 22, 292–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dietrich, F. and List, C. 2016. Mentalism versus behaviourism in economics: a philosophy-of-science perspective. Economics and Philosophy 32, 249–281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dowding, K. 2002. Revealed preference and external reference. Rationality and Society 14, 259–284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, J. 2016. Behaviorism and control in the history of economics and psychology. History of Political Economy 48, 170–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elwood, R. W. and Appel, M. 2009. Pain experience in hermit crabs? Animal Behaviour 77, 1243–1246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engelen, B. 2017. A new definition of and role for preferences in positive economics. Journal of Economic Methodology 24, 254–273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farquharson, R. 1969. Theory of Voting. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Fumagalli, R. 2013. The futile search for true utility. Economics and Philosophy 29, 325–347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gigerenzer, G. 1991. How to make cognitive illusions disappear: beyond “heuristics and biases”. European Review of Social Psychology 2, 83–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glimcher, P. W., Dorris, M. C. and Bayer, H. M. 2005. Physiological utility theory and the neuroeconomics of choice. Games and Economic Behavior 52, 213–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guala, F. 2000. The logic of normative falsification: rationality and experiments in decision theory. Journal of Economic Methodology 7, 59–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guala, F. 2012. Are preferences for real? Choice theory, folk psychology, and the hard case for commonsensible realism. In Lehtinen, A. and Ylikoski, P. (eds), Economics for Real. London: Routledge, pp. 137–155.Google ScholarPubMed
Gul, F. and Pesendorfer, W. 2008. The case for mindless economics. In Caplin, A. and Schotter, A. (eds), The Foundations of Positive and Normative Economics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 3–39.Google Scholar
Hands, D. W. 2009. Economics, psychology and the history of consumer choice theory. Cambridge Journal of Economics 34, 633–648.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hands, D. W. 2013. Foundations of contemporary revealed preference theory. Erkenntnis 78, 1081–1108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hands, D. W. 2014. Paul Samuelson and revealed preference theory. History of Political Economy 46, 85–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hausman, D. M. 2000. Revealed preference, belief, and game theory. Economics and Philosophy 16, 99–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hausman, D. M. 2008. Mindless or mindful economics: a methodological evaluation. In Caplin, A. and Schotter, A. (eds), The Foundations of Positive and Normative Economics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 125–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hausman, D. M. 2012. Preference, Value, Choice and Welfare. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hicks, J. 1939. Value and Capital. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Holm, L., Ritz, C. and Ladewig, J. 2007. Measuring animal preferences: shape of double demand curves and the effect of procedure used for varying workloads on their cross-point. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 107, 133–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Houthakker, H. 1950. Revealed preference and the utility function. Economica 17, 159–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyman, G. M. 2009. Addiction: A Disorder of Choice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A. 1979. Prospect Theory: an analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica 47, 263–291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, D., Wakker, P. P. and Sarin, R. 1997. Back to Bentham? Explorations of experienced utility. Quarterly Journal of Economics 112, 375–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lehtinen, A. 2011. The revealed preference interpretation of payoffs in game theory. Homo Oeconomicus 28, 265–296.Google Scholar
Lewin, S. 1996. Economics and psychology: lessons for our own day from the early twentieth century. Journal of Economic Literature 34, 1293–1323.Google Scholar
List, C. and Menzies, P. 2009. Nonreductive physicalism and the limits of the exclusion principle. Journal of Philosophy 106, 475–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
List, C. and Pettit, P. 2011. Group Agency. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mas-Colell, A., Whinston, M. D. and Green, J. R. 1995. Microeconomic Theory. Vol. 1. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
May, K. O. 1954. Intransitivity, utility, and the aggregation of preference patterns. Econometrica 22, 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mongin, P. 2000a. Les préférences révélées et la formation de la théorie du consommateur. Revue économique 51, 1125–1152.Google Scholar
Mongin, P. 2000b. Does optimization imply rationality? Synthese 124, 73–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, J. 2001. On distinguishing methodological from radical behaviorism. European Journal of Behavior Analysis 2, 221–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moscati, I. 2018. Measuring Utility. From the Marginal Revolution to Behavioral Economics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moscati, I. (Forthcoming). Not a behaviourist: Samuelson’s contributions to utility theory in the Harvard years, 1936–1940. In Anderson, R., Barnett, W. and Cord, R. A. (eds), Paul Samuelson: Master of Modern Economics. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Mumford, S. 1998. Dispositions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nagatsu, M. and Poder, K. (Forthcoming). Economists’ concept of choice: an experimental study. Economics and Philosophy.Google Scholar
Okasha, S. 2016. On the interpretation of decision theory. Economics and Philosophy 32, 409–433.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pareto, V. 1906. Manuale d’economia politica. Milano: Società Editrice Libraria.Google Scholar
Putnam, H. 1975. Mind, Language, and Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rabin, M. 2002. A perspective on psychology and economics. European Economic Review 46, 657–685.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenberg, A. 1993. Economics: Mathematical Politics or Science of Diminishing Returns? Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ross, D. 2005. Economic Theory and Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ross, D. 2011. Estranged parents and a schizophrenic child: choice in economics, psychology and neuroeconomics. Journal of Economic Methodology 18, 217–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, D. 2014. Economic versus psychological models of bounded rationality. Journal of Economic Methodology 21, 411–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuelson, P. A. 1938. A note on the pure theory of consumer’s behaviour. Economica 5, 61–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuelson, P. A. 1948. Consumption theory in terms of revealed preferences. Economica 15, 243–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuelson, P. A. 1950. The problem of integrability in utility theory. Economica 17, 355–383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, A. K. 1977. Rational fools: a critique of the behavioral foundations of economic theory. Philosophy and Public Affairs 6, 317–344.Google Scholar
Sen, A. K. 1982. Choice, Welfare and Measurement. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Starmer, C. 2000. Developments in non-expected utility theory: the hunt for a descriptive theory of choice under risk. Journal of Economic Literature 38, 332–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sugden, R. 1991. Rational choice: a survey of contributions from economics and philosophy. Economic Journal 101, 751–785.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tiitinen, H., May, P., Reinikainen, K. and Näätänen, R. 1994. Attentive novelty detection in humans is governed by pre-attentive sensory memory. Nature 372, 90–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tversky, A. 1969. Intransitivity of preferences. Psychological Review 76, 31–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tversky, A. 1972. Elimination by aspects: a theory of choice. Psychological Review 79, 281–299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tversky, A. and Kahneman, D. 1992. Advances in Prospect Theory: cumulative representation of uncertainty. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 5, 297–323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vanderbeeken, R. and Weber, E. 2002. Dispositional explanations of behavior. Behavior and Philosophy 30, 43–59.Google Scholar
Varian, H. 2005. Intermediate Microeconomics. London: Norton.Google Scholar
Vromen, J. 2010. On the surprising finding that expected utility is literally computed in the brain. Journal of Economic Methodology 17, 17–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wakker, P. 2010. Prospect Theory: For Risk and Ambiguity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, J. B. and McDougall, W. 1929. The Battle of Behaviorism. New York, NY: Norton.Google Scholar
Woodward, J. 2004. Making Things Happen. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar