Moral Implications of Rational Choice Theories

Abstract

Rational choice theories assert that human beings behave rationally, either in the narrow sense of rational self-interest, or in the broader sense that decisions are rationally based on preferences. These empirical theories make no direct ethical claims, but they may have relevance to ethics. Social contract theorists have maintained, for example, that rational individuals can assent to a social arrangement that promotes general welfare in some sense. In particular, self-interested business owners can, under the right conditions, rationally consent to regulation. Social choice theorists have argued in a mathematical mode that if we rationally derive social policy from individual preferences, we will adhere to certain ethical norms, perhaps a utilitarian or Rawlsian maximin principle. However, these arguments are based on strong assumptions, particularly with respect to interpersonal incomparability of utilities. Certain rational bargaining procedures, such as Nash bargaining or Raiffa-Kalai-Smorodinsky bargaining, have been shown to lead to outcomes that likewise have ethical content. The former has seen practical application in industry, and the latter results in a minimax relative concession principle similar to that derived by some social contract theorists.

Youth Unemployment and Electoral Malpractices in Nigeria

“…Rational choice asserts that human beings behave rationally, either in the narrow sense of rational self-interest, or in the broader logic that decisions are rationally based on preferences (Hooker, 2011). This explain how human behaviour resulted from rational choices youths make, particularly in an economic context.…”

A guide to formulating fairness in an optimization model

“…6.1) if we adopt an additional axiom that a maximin outcome is preferable to a minimax outcome. 1 It is important to note that the unit comparability assumption implies not only that utilities across persons have unit comparability, but that they have no greater degree of comparability, and similarly for level comparability (Hooker, 2013) . Thus, the utilitarian principle is derived from the rather strict premise that the relative level of utility across individuals cannot be meaningfully compared.…”

Balancing Fairness and Efficiency in an Optimization Model

“…Yet the axiomatic derivation relies on a strong axiom of cardinal noncomparability across parties that is central to the proof. The axiom assumes that the ranking of utility vectors is invariant under affine transformations of the form φ i (u i ) = β i u i + γ i , which arguably rules out the kind of utility comparisons we need in order to assess fairness (Hooker 2013). Furthermore, the bargaining theories assume that the parties begin with a default utility allocation d = (d 1 , .…”

“…Yet the K-S criterion leads to an anomalous situation when one player's utility gain is very expensive and therefore requires very large utility transfers from the other players (Hooker 2013). This forces the overall utility gain to be very small in the K-S solution when much greater utility gains are possible.…”