Rational Choice Theory

Although rational choice theory has made considerable advances in other social sciences, its progress in sociology has been limited. Some sociologists' reservations about rational choice arise from a misunderstanding of the theory. The first part of this essay therefore introduces rational choice as a general theoretical perspective, or family of theories, which explains social outcomes by constructing models of individual action and social context. "Thin" models of individual action are mute about actors' motivations, while "thick" models specify them ex ante. Other sociologists' reservations, however, stem from doubts about the empirical adequacy of rational choice explanations. To this end, the bulk of the essay reviews a sample of recent studies that provide empirical support for particular rational choice explanations in a broad spectrum of substantive areas in sociology. Particular attention is paid to studies on the family, gender, and religion, for these subareas often are considered least amenable to understanding in terms of rational choice logic.

The massacre of almost 50 Maidan protesters on February 20, 2014 was a turning point in Ukrainian politics and a tipping point in the conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. This mass killing of the protesters and the mass shooting of the police that preceded it led to the overthrow of the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych and gave a start to a civil war in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine, Russian military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. A conclusion promoted by the post-Yanukovych governments and the media in Ukraine that the massacre was perpetrated by government snipers and special police units on a Yanukovych order has been nearly universally accepted by the Western governments, the media, and many scholars. The Ukrainian government investigation identified members of the special company of Berkut as responsible for killings of the absolute majority of the protesters, but did not release any evidence in support, with the exception of videos of the massacre.
              The question is which side organized the “snipers’ massacre.” This paper is the first academic study of this crucial case of the mass killing. It uses a theory of rational choice and a Weberian theory of instrumental rationality to examine actions of major actors both from the Yanukovych government, specifically various police and security forces, and the Maidan opposition, specifically its far right and oligarchic elements, during the massacre.
          The paper analyzes a large amount of evidence from different publicly available sources concerning this massacre and killings of specifics protesters. Qualitative content analysis includes the following data: about 1,500 videos and recordings of live internet and TV broadcasts from mass media and social media in different countries(some 150 gigabytes), news reports and social media posts by more than 100 journalists covering the massacre from Kyiv, some 5,000 photos, and nearly 30 gigabytes of publicly available radio intercepts of snipers and commanders from the special Alfa unit of the Security Service of Ukraine and Internal Troops, and Maidan massacre trial recordings. This study also employs field research on site of the massacre, eyewitness reports by both Maidan protesters and government special units commanders, statements by both former and current government officials, estimates of approximate ballistic trajectories, bullets and weapons used, and types of wounds among both protesters and the police. This study establishes a precise timeline for various events of the massacre, the locations of both the shooters and the government snipers, and the specific timeline and locations of nearly 50 protesters’ deaths. It also briefly analyzes other major cases of violence during and after the “Euromaidan.” This study includes two video appendixes.
            This academic investigation concludes that the massacre was a false flag operation, which was rationally planned and carried out with a goal of the overthrow of the government and seizure of power. It found various evidence of the involvement of an alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland. Concealed shooters and spotters were located in at least 20 Maidan-controlled buildings or areas. The various evidence that the protesters were killed from these locations include some 70 testimonies, primarily by Maidan protesters, several videos of “snipers” targeting protesters from these buildings, comparisons of positions of the specific protesters at the time of their killing and their entry wounds, and bullet impact signs. The study uncovered various videos and photos of armed Maidan “snipers” and spotters in many of these buildings. The paper presents implications of these findings for understanding the nature of the change of the government in Ukraine, the civil war in Donbas, Russian military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine.

North begins his book by stating that "institutions are the rules of the game in a society or, more formally, are the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction."(3) That being said North then proposes to examine institutions, changes in them, and their impact on economic performance over time.

Actors in competitive environments are bound to decide and act under conditions of uncertainty because they rarely have accurate foreknowledge of how their opponents will respond and when they will respond. Just as a competitor makes a move to improve their standing on a given variable relative to a target competitor, she should expect the latter to counteract with an iterative lagged asymmetric response, that is, with a sequence of countermoves (iteration) that is very different in kind from its trigger (asymmetry) and that will be launched at some unknown point in the future (time lag). The paper explicates the broad relevance of the newly proposed concept of " iterative lagged asymmetric responses " to the social study of temporality and to fields as diverse as intelligence and counterintelligence studies, strategic management, futures studies, military theory, and long-range planning. By bringing out in the foreground and substantiating the observation that competitive environments place a strategic premium on surprise, the concept of iterative lagged asymmetric responses makes a contribution to the never-ending and many-pronged debate about the extent to which the future can be predicted.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X17752652

North begins his book by stating that "institutions are the rules of the game in a society or, more formally, are the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction."(3) That being said North then proposes to examine institutions, changes in them, and their impact on economic performance over time.

This intervention contributes to recent work in urban geography that integrates the conceptual frameworks of assemblages and actor-network theory by highlighting two additional directions that require a more rigorous and detailed theorization. The first direction concerns the relationship between contingency and necessity in urban assemblages and actor-networks and this paper delineates four specific propositions as a starting point for further reflection. The second direction suggests that urban assemblages and actor-networks require a more explicit vocabulary for thinking about competition and cooperation within and between cities. To this end, the paper introduces a new concept – delayed asymmetric counterforces – that can foster a better understanding of competition-induced urban change and destabilization. The novel concept is developed in conjunction with a typology of delays in competitive urban dynamics, which helps illuminate how delayed asymmetric counterforces are both a cause and an effect of the complexity inherent in the urban realm.

This article concerns the extent to which corrupt behavior is dependent on the organizational power structure and the resources available for illegal exchange. This qualitative study is based on 42 in-depth interviews with organizational actors in different organizations in Hungary. Four core themes emerged from the analysis of the interviews: (a) isolated corruption at the bottom, (b) the middle level’s own corruption, (c) “technicization” when middle-level professionals and expert groups are used to legalize the corruption of the dominant coalition, and (d) “turning-off controls” when organizational elites intentionally deactivate internal and external controls to avoid detection.

Rational-Choice Institutionalist dengan Paradigma Liberalisme Ini adalah review kritis atas salah satu artikel Mark A. Pollack yang dimuat dalam Journal of Common Market Studies Vol. 39 No. 2 pp. 221-244 pada Juni 2001 dengan judul "International Relations Theory and European Integration". Proses Integrasi yang mulai dikenal sekitar tahun 1980-1990an, misalnya pada usaha nyata pengintegrasian negara-negara di Benua Eropa, membuka cakrawala analisis Ilmu Hubungan Internasional jadi lebih produktif dengan semakin maraknya dialog akademik inter-perspektif. Pollack berargumen bahwa pendekatan realis, liberalis, dan institusionalis menunjukkan adanya konvergensi pada lingkup model rasionalitas, dengan adanya konstruktivis sebagai rival utama yang bertahan, hanya saja kurang berkembang. Pollack menguji debat terkini diantara teori tersebut mengenai proses integrasi dimana Uni Eropa selaku organisasi internasional yang dimaksud. Terdapat beberapa konsep yang ambigu, juga pemetaan yang kurang jelas dalam artikel Pollack, sehingga cukup berpengaruh pada pemaknaan pesan yang menjadi tujuan pentulisan. Tulisan ini akan mengajak pembaca menganalisis sistematika dan metodologi penulisan Pollack, kemudian memetakannya kembali dan menyandingkannya pada asumsi dasar pemikiran Hubungan Internasional. Akhirnya, sampai pada simpulan pengklasifikasian konsep Rational-Choice Institutionalist Pollack pada Liberalisme, salah satu Grand Paradigm dalam Ilmu Hubungan Internasional.

This paper highlights two of the ways in which an abundance of frequent and high-quality information can nonetheless lead an economic agent to failure. I begin with the problem of frequent information, continue with the problem of abundant high-quality information, and end with a general reflection about the lesson these two problems may offer for economic geographical scholarship.

Corrupt exchanges are often brokered by a third party, but this phenomenon has not been satisfactorily explored by researchers of corruption. Literature on brokerage in general provides interesting models but they have not previously been applied to corrupt exchanges. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with respondents who participated in actual corrupt transactions, this paper identifies several distinct brokerage types in low-level corruption in contemporary Hungary. The paper also provides explanation of variation in corruption brokerage in terms of actors' group affiliations, forms of the corrupt exchanges, brokerage mechanisms, as well as neutrality, benefit and motivation, risk distribution, and stability of the brokerage structure. Finally, we discuss some policy implications of corruption brokerage.

"Corruption has become one of the most popular topics in the social scientific disciplines. However, there is a lack of interdisciplinary communication about corruption. Models developed by different
academic disciplines are often isolated from each other. The purpose of this paper is to review several major approaches to corruption and draw them closer to each other. Most studies of corruption fall
into three major categories: (i) rational-actor models where corruption is viewed as resulting from cost/benefit analysis of individual actors; (ii) structural models that focus on external forces that determine corruption; and (iii) relational models that emphasize social interactions and networks among corrupt actors. Focusing on actors’ behavior and the social context, this article explains corruption concepts taken from sociology, economics, organization studies, political science, social anthropology, and social psychology."

from five hospitality industry segments. The data were analyzed with the content analysis techniques of phenomenology qualitative research and revealed that leadership, relevant job experience, person-organization and person-job fit, and personality are the most influential factors in recruiters' hiring decisions.

In psychology, the picture is admittedly more complex. Since the publication of Freud's earliest metapsychological writings, and in particular his adumbration of the distinction between two principles of mental functioning, the BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2003) 26, 139-198 Abstract: Rational choice theory enjoys unprecedented popularity and influence in the behavioral and social sciences, but it generates intractable problems when applied to socially interactive decisions. In individual decisions, instrumental rationality is defined in terms of expected utility maximization. This becomes problematic in interactive decisions, when individuals have only partial control over the outcomes, because expected utility maximization is undefined in the absence of assumptions about how the other participants will behave. Game theory therefore incorporates not only rationality but also common knowledge assumptions, enabling players to anticipate their co-players' strategies. Under these assumptions, disparate anomalies emerge. Instrumental rationality, conventionally interpreted, fails to explain intuitively obvious features of human interaction, yields predictions starkly at variance with experimental findings, and breaks down completely in certain cases. In particular, focal point selection in pure coordination games is inexplicable, though it is easily achieved in practice; the intuitively compelling payoff-dominance principle lacks rational justification; rationality in social dilemmas is self-defeating; a key solution concept for cooperative coalition games is frequently inapplicable; and rational choice in certain sequential games generates contradictions. In experiments, human players behave more cooperatively and receive higher payoffs than strict rationality would permit. Orthodox conceptions of rationality are evidently internally deficient and inadequate for explaining human interaction. Psychological game theory, based on nonstandard assumptions, is required to solve these problems, and some suggestions along these lines have already been put forward.

A critical review of the rational approach to policy-making' This essay will critically review the approach of Rational Choice Theory when applied to Public Policy. First it will analyse the main tenets proposed by this approach to policy analysis such as the focus on the individual as a rational decision maker and profit maximiser with complete access to information and resources. As an abstract framework analysis of human behaviour, it observes simple assumptions. By using scientific methodology, the theory is able to provide testable hypothesis. This bestows the theory a predictive leverage, which has made it highly attractive for policy makers and policy analysis. Then the essay will present Lindblom's (1959) challenge to the framework, which he considered too unrealistic. He argues, that in the real world of policy making, decision makers do not possess the resources to follow this route. Moreover, practical knowledge is superior to theoretical approaches, something which policy makers should not be concerned with. Then, the essay will review the position of Herbert Simon (1955). For Simon, humans are economic as well as administrative. The essay will show that Simon and Lindblom agree that political agents do not have total access to information but also that they disagree on the causes. Simon argues that there are many factors that influence decision makers that RCT does not consider. After presenting these two different perspectives on rational choice theory and how it should be interpreted, the essay will analyse some characteristics of RCT, starting from its emphasis of capitalism applied to policy making and then moving on to analyse how the knowledge supporting RCT is elaborated. The essay will conclude arguing that competition and maximising profit are not the optimal conditions to base ones policy making upon.

Organized crime is often conceptualized as a business enterprise formed by actors motivated by profits. The Balkans represents an ideal case for testing the extent to which assumptions about the image of actors involved in illegal arms trading can be extrapolated to the macro-level of analysis. Focusing mainly on public discourse, this paper points to several thematic categories of illicit arms trafficking: i) profit-oriented arms trafficking involving organized crime groups ii) trafficking of arms for the purpose of arming criminal-terrorist formations and iii) state-sponsored illegal arms trafficking. Although economic incentives appear strong in many cases, other cultural, social and political issues also frame the illicit arms market in the region. We argue that both understanding and policing organized crime should also embrace the non-economic nature of this type of criminal behavior.

This qualitative study examines the role of clients in petty corruption by analyzing actual corrupt exchanges between ordinary citizens and low level public and private employees in post-communist Hungary. Using a grounded theory approach, interviews reveal how clients from different social strata deal with low-level agents in corrupt situations. Findings suggest two contrasting forms of low-level corruption: transactions where the client and the agent do not have a prior relationship and where external factors dominate the relationship; and cases with stronger social ties between the actors, where the client has more freedom to structure the transaction. However, a client's social background frequently determines the form of corrupt transaction and the form of resources illegally exchanged in the deal.

The prisoner’ dilemma model applied to the Great Terror in the Soviet Union implies that political prisoners had an incentive to confess and implicate other prisoners. Since the other prisoners had similar incentives, they also confessed. As a result, all of the prisoners ended up worse off than if they all refused to confess. The analysis of Krawtchouk’s case and related cases, such as the Union of Liberation of Ukraine (SVU), the Jet Propulsion Institute, and UFTI cases, finds weak support for the prisoner’s dilemma model. Among 177 cases of individuals arrested on political charges in these cases, 13 percent gave voluntarily confessions and implicated other prisoners. The absolute majority of the prisoners who provided voluntary confessions and implicated others were Communist party members or secret informers of the NKVD. When this factor is held constant, the rates of voluntary confessions among Ukrainians, Jews and Russians do not differ significantly. The absolute majority of the political prisoners, 70 percent, did not confess voluntarily. Their interrogators had to resort to other methods in the form of physical and psychological torture, such as sleep deprivation, to extract confessions. Most of the political prisoners confessed as a result of the torture by the Soviet secret police. This result does not prove the effectiveness of torture, because these individuals admitted crimes they never committed.

Organized crime is often conceptualized as a business enterprise formed by actors motivated by profits. The Balkans represents an ideal case for testing the extent to which assumptions about the image of actors involved in illegal arms trading can be extrapolated to the macro-level of analysis. Focusing mainly on public discourse, this paper points to several thematic categories of illicit arms trafficking: i) profit-oriented arms trafficking involving organized crime groups ii) trafficking of arms for the purpose of arming criminal-terrorist formations and iii) state-sponsored illegal arms trafficking. Although economic incentives appear strong in many cases, other cultural, social and political issues also frame the illicit arms market in the region. We argue that both understanding and policing organized crime should also embrace the non-economic nature of this type of criminal behavior.

La curiosità degli scienziati sociali, che vogliono occuparsi del Mezzogiorno d'Italia e più specificatamente di quella Regione a Statuto Speciale che è la Sicilia, cozza ormai da lungo tempo con il fenomeno cosiddetto "mafioso", il quale sembra permeare ogni aspetto della vita dell'isola rendendo superfluo, o quantomeno avventuroso, qualsiasi tipo di studio che miri a fotografare o migliorare le sue condizioni economiche e politiche. Ogni indagine, infatti, si troverà di fronte delle anomalie -teoriche ma più spesso empiriche-difficilmente spiegabili se si considera il carattere democratico dello Stato italiano. Queste "stranezze", anche ad un occhio poco allenato, risulteranno essere di provenienza mafiosa.

Rational choice theory is a framework formed in order to explain
organizational and economical behaviours in decision making process.
Basically, it is claimed that people calculate costs and benefits of their actions
before initiating to do any activity. Although Rational Choice Theory has a
quite important background which various social science fields benefit from, it
frequently confronts some criticisms especially coming from Human relations
school.
Bounded Rationality Approach offers an argument by claiming that human
being has limited mind to make optimum choices, therefore, tries to satisfy
rather than optimize. There is still an ambiguity in the literature whether these
two approaches should be used separately or mutually complementary.
Accordingly, this paper discusses whether Bounded Rationality Approach can
replace Rational Choice Theory by overcoming lacks of it. It is concluded that
Bounded Rationality Approach is not able to substitute Rational Choice Theory,
though its persuasive arguments provide an insight in order to comprehend the
complex decision making process.
Keywords: Rational Choice Theory, Bounded Rationality, Decision
Making Process

This article concerns the extent to which corrupt behavior is dependent on the organizational power structure and the resources available for illegal exchange. This qualitative study is based on 42 in-depth interviews with organizational actors in different organizations in Hungary. Four core themes emerged from the analysis of the interviews: (a) isolated corruption at the bottom, (b) the middle level's own corruption, (c) "technicization" when middle-level professionals and expert groups are used to legalize the corruption of the dominant coalition, and (d) "turning-off controls" when organizational elites intentionally deactivate internal and external controls to avoid detection.

The growth of Protestantism among U.S. Latinos has been the focus of considerable discussion among researchers. Yet few studies investigate how Latino Protestants and Latino Catholics differ, or which types of Latinos convert from Catholicism to Protestantism. Our study tests various theories about why some Latinos convert including a modified version of the semi-involuntary thesis, the national origin hypothesis, and assimilation theory. We use data from a large national sample of U.S. Latinos and find some support for assimilation theory and less for the semi-involuntary thesis. However, context matters. If we divide Latinos into national origin groups, these groups strongly predict who converts and who are lifelong Protestants. We discuss how war may influence the religious composition of early migrants and thus shape both the religious composition and conversion of later migrants.

Generally, over the years rural crime in South Africa has been largely ignored and/or under-researched by academics, particularly from a criminological perspective. With the recent exception of a focus on wildlife poaching in rural areas (or more specifically the poaching of rhino), and to a lesser extent on stocktheft as a rural crime, most of the attention on rural crime in South Africa has been directed towards the so-called 'farm attacks', which have, more often than not, been taken out of context and/or politicised. Part of the problem in researching rural crime in South Africa has been of a definitional nature. For instance, in farm attacks, who are the 'farmers' and what constitutes a 'farm'? An example of the semantic confusion has been the fact that Gauteng Province-the smallest of the nine provinces in land area, but the industrial and economic heartland of South Africa-has the highest number of registered 'smallholdings/plots', but many of the owners/residents of such properties live there because of a lifestyle choice and not for any commercial or for-profit-farming enterprises. Also ignored in the analysis of rural crime are many of the 'other' victims of farm attacks, namely the farm workers and members of their families. Overall, as a rural crime, stocktheft in fact represents the biggest economic and crime impact on rural economies even though the usual range of violent crimes also occur in rural areas. This article seeks to broadly unpack rural crimes-with an exploratory focus on 'farm attacks' and stocktheft-within the context of South African areas outside of the major urban areas, inter alia touching on such aspects as the demise of the Commando System of rural protection and its belated replacement with a National Rural protection Plan in the late 1990s. From a number of the reports on farm attacks it was generally found that the primary motive for farm attacks was robbery and that such farm attacks should be dealt with and policed inclusively with all other forms of rural crime including that of livestock theft, particularly within the structures of the 2011 National Rural Strategy.

There seems to be critics who think that game theory can provide very little insights in doing empirical social scientific research or normative political theory/political philosophy. This is because these people tend to think that game theory is committed to some highly contestable theory of human psychology; namely, that human beings either are or should be primarily motivated by their own exclusive self-interest. From this, critics tend to think that game theory is defective both as a normative theory of action as well as a descriptive theory of action. After explaining the basics of game theory, I will try to show that such criticisms are mostly based on a general misunderstanding of game theory. In the end, I will argue that game theory is simply a mathematical tool that could be used to model any strategic interaction for many different purposes, and is not committed to any substantial theories of human nature.

This book presents a model for making ethical decisions both effectively and efficiently. Therefore, the model is much broader than a purely analytical framework. It must tell us how to act rather than limit us to reflection on actions already performed; it must combine decision and praxiological analysis of human conduct. The proposed model enlarges the scope of the debate and suggests new avenues of both rational and responsible decision making

Given their definition of subjective norms, rational-choice theories must be located within the realm of social conventionality. However, subjective norms can be grounded in moral as well as conventional considerations. Not surprisingly, then, rational-choice theories insufficiently explain behaviors that are at least partially moral, such as ecological behavior. The present paper establishes an expanded rational-choice model of environmental attitude that extends into the moral domain by using feelings of personal obligation toward the environment (i. e., feelings of responsibility) as an additional predictor of intentions to behave ecologically. Findings from two studies are presented. In Study 1 a sample of Swiss adults (N -436) was used to. test the proposed model. Study 2 replicates the

"This work explores the institutionalized reasons for the decline of temples rather than the religious. I argue that the process of pagan temple destruction of the eastern provinces in the Later Roman Empire (c. late fourth and early fifth centuries) should not be understood as Götterdämmerung, a cataclysmic, sudden, and violent destruction of pagan shrines and temples, but rather what I call Tempeldämmerung, the gradual ruin of temples as provincial governors’ “benevolent light” of public funding no longer shined on these pagan temples — a fade into twilight.

This work uses economic theory to analyze and explain the incentive structure that would have led a provincial governor to prioritize the funding of other public buildings over the temples, resulting in their collapse from lack of maintenance. Economic theory is well suited to a study of how a provincial governor in general would have governed since a governor had to manage an allocation of finite resources and in doing so, was engaged in exchanges with his subjects. A governor interacted with his local elite through a system of mutual benefaction. This involved an exchange of offering benefactions, which could be honorific or practical, both being desirable nonetheless. This work asks the question, “Was the fall of pagan temples a result of rational behavior on the part of these governors?”"

In this paper we will deal with the relations between game theory and conflict. Firstly, we will outline the starting analisys of rational action in the field of international security, based on the model of prisoner’s dilemma, game of chicken, theory of moves and their empirical application. Secondly, we will compare this theorical notions considering the problem of the crisis subgame and initiation war crisis. Finally, we will consider some methodological limits through a critical approach to security studies.

Our lives are filled with aesthetic choices, that is, choices of objects for aesthetic experience. Choice is crucial to having a fulfilling aesthetic life. Our immediate satisfaction and long term flourishing require the ability to generate rewarding aesthetic opportunities. A good aesthetic life is one of good aesthetic choices. Given the centrality of choice to a good aesthetic life, aesthetic theory is in need of an account of choice. However, aesthetic choice has gone unexamined. This paper considers how choice helps to make us who we are as aesthetic persons. I situate aesthetic choice within debates in contemporary choice theory. The paper also examines whether the recommenders on websites like Amazon or Netflix pose a risk to our aesthetic flourishing. Aesthetic choice is mostly constructive and conditional, in other words, ad hoc and easily influenced. Aesthetic choices tend to be small choices, with low stakes and relaxed deliberation. The effect of our choices is cumulative, and the import of individual choices is best judged by seeing them in the context of other choices. We can best evaluate choices by seeing them in terms of the plans to which they belong

International relations theory took shape in the 1950s in reaction to the behavioral social science movement, emphasizing the limits of rationality in a context of high uncertainty, weak rules, and the possibility of lethal conflict. Yet the same discipline rapidly developed “rational choice” models applied to foreign policy decision making or nuclear strategy. This paper argues that this transformation took place almost seamlessly around the concept of “decision.” Initially associated with an antirationalist or “decisionist” approach to politics, the sovereign decision became the epitome of political rationality when it was redescribed as “rational choice,” thus easing the cultural acceptance of political realism in the postwar years. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In the United States, highly religious people tend to live longer, have fewer health and mental problems, steal less, volunteer more time, and give away more money than others. Even when other relevant factors are controlled for statistically, these differences persist. Moreover, in many cases the religiosity of the community influences these factors as much as the religiosity of individuals. Thus, there seems to be a communal product which goes beyond individual religiosity. All the factors listed above presumably influence the economy. To the extent people's religious commitments cause these differences, we can view religion as a resource which social scientists should account for in their economic models. Just as scholars have used the concepts of "human capital," "social capital," and "cultural capital"—perhaps we can add the concept "spiritual capital." We can define this as resources that are created or people have access to when people invest in religion as religion. "Spiritual capital" differs from the other forms of capital, not because religious groups don't have material resources, skills, trusting relationships, and cultural-valued knowledge – that is, financial, human, social and cultural capital. 1 They do. But religious groups are concerned with more than these. For example, most religious groups purport to be more than mere social clubs. They often stress that their relationship with God is central and that the focus of group activity is precisely to emphasize and actualize that relationship. Moreover, participants often claim that people can access spiritual resources anywhere without respect to group solidarity per se. Both these suggest that what happens in religious groups is not fully encompassed by the concept of social capital. Empirical evidence seems to confirm this. Research consistently shows that those who attend religious services for social or other non-religious reasons (the extrinsically religious) are significantly different from those who attend for religious reasons (the intrinsically religious), even if they attend church the same amount.

This thesis offers a philosophical perspective on the different conceptions of agency and choice as they are understood and employed in economics and behavioral decision research—this perspective is two-fold: on the one hand, philosophical analysis can clarify ambiguities in definitions and concepts that can and do arise within interdisciplinary research. This is of particular importance given how philosophical concepts such as mind, cognition, and intentionality feature in economic studies of rational choice. Hence, one project of this thesis is to subject contemporary research on questions about agency and choice to such philosophical scrutiny. On the other hand, the questions and topics discussed in this thesis can be understood as an exercise in philosophy of science: they deal explicitly with questions and topics that pertain to the theoretical and empirical practices of scientists. This includes traditional microeconomic disciplines, such as decision and game theory, as well as interdisciplinary collaborations in behavioral economics, neuroeconomics, and experimental psychology.

K 90 Polis Bilimleri Dergisi: 11 (4) tün suçların da rasyonel bir tercih neticesinde alınan kararlarla gerçekleşmediği durumu göz önüne alındığında, caydırıcılığın kişiden kişiye ve suç tipine göre belli bir değişim göstereceği ve bu nedenle de caydırıcılık doktrininin suçu önleme noktasında sınırlılıkları olan bir felsefe olduğu unutulmamalıdır.

http://lnx.pubblitesi.it/schede-sintetiche/area-umanistica/1230-virginia-ghiara-oltre-l-individualismo-metodologico-le-proposte-del-mauss

La tesi intende ripercorrere l’evoluzione del pensiero dei membri del MAUSS dalla fondazione del movimento a oggi. Il primo capitolo propone una descrizione del movimento, mentre il secondo capitolo riepiloga il primo periodo del MAUSS, che coincide con la pars destruens del lavoro teorico proposto dagli esponenti. I primi anni di vita del MAUSS sono infatti stati dedicati alla ricostruzione dei vari modelli di homo oeconomicus e alla critica della teoria della scelta razionale. Il terzo e il quarto capitolo, infine, si concentrano sulla pars costruens del lavoro del MAUSS: il dibattito sul ruolo del riconoscimento e l’elaborazione del manifesto convivialista.

This paper analyses how a theoretical approach like rational choice institutionalism (RCI) may help understand the conceptual bases and future challenges of digital democracy (DD). It distinguishes three main characteristics of DD, in the light of RCI: the use of quantitative empirical data to measure and trace public activity to provide more perfect information to actors it assumes are rational; the creation of liquid contexts that allow permanent reconfiguration of institutional settings; and a state-skeptic heritage from techno-libertarianism. The final section elaborates a critique of the rational assumptions of DD and stresses that the governance of the technological devices it creates may still be dependent on more ‘analogous’ politics.

Social science employs teleological explanations which depend upon the rationality principle, according to which people exhibit instrumental rationality. Popper points out that people also exhibit critical rationality, the tendency to stand back from, and to question or criticise, their views. I explain how our critical rationality impugns the explanatory value of the rationality principle and thereby threatens the very possibility of social science. I discuss the relationship between instrumental and critical rationality and show how we can reconcile our critical rationality with the possibility of social science if we invoke Popper’s conception of limited rationality and his indeterminism.

Returning to Reality. Science and Spirituality after the rediscovery of our embodied existence.
According to the tradition of sapiential philosophy, which includes thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart and Max Scheler, spiritual practices are not reducible to a matter of practical concern. They enable us to know the world that we inhabit, and shape our attitude towards reality, both in matters of practical and theoretical concern. More recent philosophical, phenomenological and neuro-cognitive research confirms this insight from a contemporary point of view: Even modern sciences cannot dispense with context-sensitive types of "emotional intelligence" that are governed by a responsive attitude toward our environment and rooted in our bodily existence. This programmatic essay shows how the premodern unity of science and spirituality can be recovered under late modern auspices and contrasts the anthropological and neuro-scientific implications of this turn from the representationalist delusions of modern thinkers like Descartes, Locke, Kant, Kahneman and the neurocognitive sciences of the late 20th century.