What is the economic concept of choice? An experimental philosophy study

Abstract

Economists and philosophers disagree about the concept of choice used in economics. Some behavioural economists argue that economic models of choice will improve as they become more and more psychologically realistic. Don Ross argues that this argument fails because its hidden assumption – that the economic concept of choice is the same as the psychological counterpart – is false. Ross conjectures that the economic concept of choice concerns a population-scale pattern of behavioural changes in response to incentives. We conduct a survey experiment to test two predictions that Ross’s conjecture generates. The statistical analysis of our data confirms our predictions, although with some qualifications. In interpreting our results, we distinguish two versions of commonsensible realism, strong and weak, and propose the weak one as a plausible explanation of our results. Weak commonsensible realism also produces further testable hypotheses. Some methodological implications of our study are discussed.

Experimental philosophy of medicine and the concepts of health and disease

“…What may be called the dice-loading problem of naturalist experimental philosophy, however, need neither favour a naturalist nor normativist account of these notions: the 'winner' of this game is likewise determined -as with anything else in experimental philosophy -empirically. 11 There are two possible results for a study in experimental philosophy of medicine on the concepts of health and disease: either we find substantive agreement among the public, medical practitioners, bioethicists and biomedical scientists, or we find that there is substantive -perhaps insurmountable -disagreement. If we can widen the number of uncontroversial paradigm cases of disease (and uncontroversial paradigm cases of non-disease states) we should at least be able to foster more agreement within the conceptual literature on health and disease.…”

“…If we were to use experimental methods to investigate whether scientists and medical practitioners fall more into the normativist or naturalist camp, it is important to consider the nature of the questions we ask. If we were to employ a simple survey-based methodology asking participants: 11 An anonymous reviewer objected that the usage of scientific methods might favor, rather than negatively affect the normativist position. For example, if one can empirically show that there are no necessary and sufficient conditions for a given state to be classified as a disease, then the normativist, rather that the naturalist, claim is validated.…”

Applying Experimental Philosophy to Investigate Economic Concepts: Choice, Preference, and Nudge

“…I think this is just a contingent fact, and there is no deep reason that prevents an experimental approach from being useful in the philosophy of economics. I argued elsewhere that this unfortunate situation should change ( Nagatsu, 2013 ) and conducted one of the fi rst consciously X-phi of economics studies ( Nagatsu and P õ der, 2018 ). Drawing on these results, I will argue that an X-phi approach can indeed bring conceptual clarity to some debates in philosophy of economics.…”

“…In order to test these hypotheses by eliciting the respondents' notions of choice, we constructed two sets of vignettes , that is, stylized descriptions of hypothetical scenarios in which the protagonist changes his or her behavior prompted by a range of events ( Nagatsu and P õ der, 2018 ). We tested the two hypotheses in two diff erent sets of vignettes.…”

Preferences: neither behavioural nor mental

“… 3 An incomplete list of contributions to the recent debate includes Hausman (2000, 2008, 2012), Mongin (2000a), Dowding (2002), Binmore (2008), Glimcher et al. (2005), Ross (2005, 2011, 2014), Camerer (2008), Gul and Pesendorfer (2008), Hands (2009, 2013, 2014), Vromen (2010), Lehtinen (2011), Guala (2012), Fumagalli (2013), Cozic and Hill (2015), Clarke (2016), Dietrich and List (2016), Okasha (2016), Engelen (2017), Angner (2018), Nagatsu and Poder (Forthcoming). …”