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  1. The Specter of Revealed Preference Theory.Lukas Beck - 2024 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 11.
    My aim in this paper is to argue that the recent philosophical defenses of revealed preference theory do not withstand scrutiny. Towards this aim, I will first outline revealed preference theory. I will then briefly present the two most common arguments that the received view offers against it. Afterwards, I will outline three argumentative strategies for rehabilitating revealed preference theory, and successively rebut each of them.
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  • Why We Need to Talk About Preferences: Economic Experiments and the Where-Question.Lukas Beck - 2024 - Erkenntnis 89 (4):1435-1455.
    When economists perform experiments, they do so typically in one of two traditions: cognitive psychology experiments in the heuristics and biases tradition (H&B-experiments) and experimental economics in the tradition of Vernon Smith. What sets these two traditions apart? In this paper, I offer a novel conceptualization of their pervasive disagreements. Focusing on how each camp approaches preferences, one of the most fundamental concepts in economics, I argue that experimental economics can be reconstructed as holding that the constituents of preferences can (...)
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  • Functionalism and the role of psychology in economics.Christopher Clarke - 2020 - Journal of Economic Methodology 27 (4):292-310.
    Should economics study the psychological basis of agents' choice behaviour? I show how this question is multifaceted and profoundly ambiguous. There is no sharp distinction between "mentalist'' answers to this question and rival "behavioural'' answers. What's more, clarifying this point raises problems for mentalists of the "functionalist'' variety (Dietrich and List, 2016). Firstly, functionalist hypotheses collapse into hypotheses about input--output dispositions, I show, unless one places some unwelcome restrictions on what counts as a cognitive variable. Secondly, functionalist hypotheses make some (...)
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  • A unificationist defence of revealed preferences.Kate Vredenburgh - 2020 - Economics and Philosophy 36 (1):149-169.
    Revealed preference approaches to modelling agents’ choices face two seemingly devastating explanatory objections. The no self-explanation objection imputes a problematic explanatory circularity to revealed preference approaches, while the causal explanation objection argues that, all things equal, a scientific theory should provide causal explanations, but revealed preference approaches decidedly do not. Both objections assume a view of explanation, the constraint-based view, that the revealed preference theorist ought to reject. Instead, the revealed preference theorist should adopt a unificationist account of explanation, allowing (...)
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  • Revisiting the criticisms of rational choice theories.Catherine Https://Orcidorg Herfeld - 2021 - Philosophy Compass 17 (1):e12774.
    Theories of rational choice are arguably the most prominent approaches to human behaviour in the social and behavioral sciences. At the same time, they have faced persistent criticism. In this paper, I revisit some of the core criticisms that have for a long time been levelled against them and discuss to what extent those criticisms are still effective, not only in light of recent advancements in the literature but also of the fact that there are different variants of rational choice (...)
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  • In Defence of Revealed Preference Theory.Johanna Thoma - 2021 - Economics and Philosophy 37 (2):163-187.
    This paper defends revealed preference theory against a pervasive line of criticism, according to which revealed preference methodology relies on appealing to some mental states, in particular an agent’s beliefs, rendering the project incoherent or unmotivated. I argue that all that is established by these arguments is that revealed preference theorists must accept a limited mentalism in their account of the options an agent should be modelled as choosing between. This is consistent both with an essentially behavioural interpretation of preference (...)
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  • Neo-Samuelsonian Welfare Economics: From Economic to Normative Agency.Cyril Hédoin - 2021 - Revue de Philosophie Économique 21 (1):129-161.
    Cet article envisage deux types de fondements possibles pour une « économie du bien-être néo-samuelsonnienne ». On défend l’idée que l’approche néo-samuelsonnienne en économie mène à un problème de réconciliation entre l’économie positive et l’économie normative, en raison du fait que l’agent économique n’est plus nécessairement l’unité normativement pertinente. Deux formes de réconciliation ayant des implications radicalement différentes pour le statut de l’économie normative sont envisagées. La première consiste à adopter une approche normative en termes de « welfarisme formel » (...)
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  • Folk Psychology and the Interpretation of Decision Theory.Johanna Thoma - 2020 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 7.
    Most philosophical decision theorists and philosophers of the social sciences believe that decision theory is and should be in the business of providing folk psychological explanations of choice behaviour, and that it can only do so if we understand the preferences, utilities and probabilities that feature in decision-theoretic models as ascriptions of mental states not reducible to choice. The behavioural interpretation of preference and related concepts, still common in economics, is consequently cast as misguided. This paper argues that even those (...)
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  • Normative Models and Their Success.Lukas Beck & Marcel Jahn - 2021 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 51 (2):123-150.
    In this paper, we explore an under-investigated question concerning the class of formal models that aim at providing normative guidance. We call such models normative models. In particular, we examine the question of how normative models can successfully exert normative guidance. First, we highlight the absence of a discussion of this question – which is surprising given the extensive debate about the success conditions of descriptive models – and motivate its importance. Second, we introduce and discuss two potential accounts of (...)
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  • Behavioural and heuristic models are as-if models too – and that’s ok.Ivan Moscati - 2024 - Economics and Philosophy 40 (2):279-309.
    I examine some behavioural and heuristic models of individual decision-making and argue that the diverse psychological mechanisms these models posit are too demanding to be implemented, either consciously or unconsciously, by actual decision makers. Accordingly, and contrary to what their advocates typically claim, behavioural and heuristic models are best understood as ‘as-if’ models. I then sketch a version of scientific antirealism that justifies the practice of as-if modelling in decision theory but goes beyond traditional instrumentalism. Finally, I relate my account (...)
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  • How to Interpret Belief Hierarchies in Bayesian Game Theory: A Dilemma for the Epistemic Program.Cyril Hédoin - 2021 - Erkenntnis 88 (2):1-22.
    This article proposes two interpretations of the concept of belief hierarchies in Bayesian game theory: the behaviorist interpretation and the mentalist interpretation. On the former, belief hierarchies are derived from the players’ preferences over acts. On the latter, they are causal mechanisms that are responsible for the players’ choices and preferences over acts. The claim is that the epistemic program in game theory is potentially confronted with a dilemma regarding which interpretation should be adopted. If the behaviorist interpretation of belief (...)
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  • Preferences: neither behavioural nor mental.Francesco Guala - 2019 - Economics and Philosophy 35 (3):383-401.
    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.
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  • Agency & Choice.James Grayot - 2019 - Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 12 (1):137-144.
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  • New functionalism and the social and behavioral sciences.Lukas Beck & James D. Grayot - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (4):1-28.
    Functionalism about kinds is still the dominant style of thought in the special sciences, like economics, psychology, and biology. Generally construed, functionalism is the view that states or processes can be individuated based on what role they play rather than what they are constituted of or realized by. Recently, Weiskopf has posited a reformulation of functionalism on the model-based approach to explanation. We refer to this reformulation as ‘new functionalism’. In this paper, we seek to defend new functionalism and to (...)
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