A theory of instrumental and existential rational decisions: Smith, Weber, Mauss, Tönnies after Martin Buber

Khalil, Elias L.; Marciano, Alain

doi:10.1007/s11238-020-09772-2

Cited by 4 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 52 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Nonetheless, as clarified elsewhere (Khalil & Marciano, 2021a), this literature starts with the supposition that substantive-based and transcendental-based utilities are intertwined. It views any substantive exchange as necessarily involving friendship.…”

Section: Simon's Critique Of Optimizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Insofar as we study why DMs want to belong to families and other groupings ranging from the church to the nation, we need a set of tools such as Bourdieu's habitus or Simon's procedural rationality. The consumption of goods affording a sense of belonging, which is crucial for happiness, has also not escaped the attention of anthropologists since the inception of the discipline (e.g., Mauss, 1990; see Khalil & Marciano, 2021a).…”

Section: A Critique Of Simon's Procedural Rationalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The information inelasticity of habits: Kahneman’s bounded rationality or Simon’s procedural rationality?

Khalil

2022

Synthese

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Why would decision makers (DMs) adopt heuristics, priors, or in short “habits” that prevent them from optimally using pertinent information—even when such information is freely-available? One answer, Herbert Simon’s “procedural rationality” regards the question invalid: DMs do not, and in fact cannot, process information in an optimal fashion. For Simon, habits are the primitives, where humans are ready to replace them only when they no longer sustain a pregiven “satisficing” goal. An alternative answer, Daniel Kahneman’s “mental economy” regards the question valid: DMs make decisions based on optimization. Kahneman understands optimization not differently from the standard economist’s “bounded rationality.” This might surprise some researchers given that the early Kahneman, along with Tversky, have uncovered biases that appear to suggest that choices depart greatly from rational choices. However, once we consider cognitive cost as part of the constraints, such biases turn out to be occasional failures of habits that are otherwise optimal on average. They are optimal as they save us the cognitive cost of case-by-case deliberation. While Kahneman’s bounded rationality situates him in the neoclassical economics camp, Simon’s procedural rationality echoes Bourdieu’s “habitus” camp. To abridge the fault line of the two camps, this paper proposes a “two problem areas hypothesis.” Along the neoclassical camp, habits satisfy wellbeing, what this paper calls “substantive satisfaction.” Along the Bourdieu camp, habits satisfy belonging, love, and bonding with one’s environment, what this paper calls “transcendental satisfaction.”

show abstract

Section: Simon's Critique Of Optimizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Critique Of Simon's Procedural Rationalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The information inelasticity of habits: Kahneman’s bounded rationality or Simon’s procedural rationality?

Khalil

2022

Synthese

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…(1990) concept of the "gift" expresses such a camaraderie-and-grant structure of exchange (Khalil & Marciano, 2021a).…”

Section: Sugden's Social Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Elias Khalil and Alain Marciano (2021b) call such an exchange structure “camaraderie and grant.” The grants act partially as loans presupposing repayment, on one hand, and as tokens of family, friendship, and love, on the other. Marcel Mauss’s ([1922] 1990) concept of the “gift” expresses such a camaraderie-and-grant structure of exchange (Khalil and Marciano, 2021a).…”

Section: The Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For Hayek, the DM is not primarily motivated by substantive benefit but by entrepreneurial activity. While entrepreneurship differs from friendship-and-love, they share a common thread; insofar as the pursuit of an imagined portrayal of a future self can be seen as a form of bonding, entrepreneurship and more broadly the pursuit of aspiration enhance the transcendental satisfaction action (see Khalil 2019b, forthcoming; Khalil, Aimone, Houser et al 2021). At least according to one interpretation of Hayek (Lavoi 1991), the DM is not a calculator of costs and benefits.…”

Section: The Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Does Friendship Stem From Altruism? Adam Smith and the Distinction Between Love-Based and Interest-Based Preferences

Khalil¹

2022

J Hist Econ Thought

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Friendship-and-love expresses musings about well-being—while the object of the musings, i.e., “well-being,” is the economist’s substantive satisfaction. Insofar as altruism is about well-being and not the musings, it cannot be subsumed under friendship-and-love. However, what is the basis of the difference between the economist’s substantive satisfaction and friendship-and-love? The answer can be found in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, chapter 2: how “mutual sympathy” differs from substantive satisfaction. Smith scholars generally miss the uniqueness of “mutual sympathy” and, indeed, fold it under Smith’s “sympathy” (and “empathy”)—with one exception. Robert Sugden highlights the uniqueness of mutual sympathy. However, he goes to the other end, that is, he folds Smith’s sympathy-and-empathy under mutual sympathy. This paper aims to avoid the folding in either direction. Indeed, it argues that each fellow-feeling deals with a question that is orthogonal to the other. Mutual sympathy originates love-based sociality (friendship-and-love), which can be juxtaposed to interest-based sociality, i.e., substantive satisfaction, such as altruism. These genera of sociality are about the nature of satisfaction or preferences, and hence in contrast to sympathy-and-empathy that are basically about judgments. As judgments, sympathy-and-empathy are ultimately about the nature of decision making, irrespective of whether the decisions concerning love-based or interest-based preferences.

show abstract

The cost of love: Solving the gift anomaly

Khalil

2023

Kyklos

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Friendship‐and‐love affords bonding that satisfies what can be called “transcendental preferences”—in contradistinction of “substantive preferences” afforded by, for example, food, clothes, and shelter. Substantive preferences involve ordinary “substantive cost,” whereas transcendental preferences involve “bonding cost” that includes heartaches, obsession, and emotional turmoil. What about the cost of gifts such as flowers, time, and other carriers of friendship‐and‐love? The greater is the expenditure on gifts, the greater the bonding cost. This paper investigates the following question: How should we model bonding cost, which includes the cost of gift, in relation to substantive cost? Given bonding cost and substantive cost share the same budget, neoclassical economists treat them as commensurable and, hence, transcendental and substantive preferences make up a unidimensional objective function. This treatment, however, originates the “gift anomaly”: If people easily substitute between the two genera of preferences, why do they consider the demand of payments for visiting their grandmothers—or payments for voting and sexual intercourse—as repugnant (taboo)? To solve the gift anomaly, this paper is critical of the standard economist's entry point. This paper proposes bonding and substantive costs as incommensurable and, corollary, transcendental and substantive preferences as incommensurable as well. This paper further shows how, without undermining the incommensurability thesis, the incommensurability is up to a limit: the two genera of costs and, corollary, the two genera of preferences are still linked via the income effect—as opposed to the substitution effect.

show abstract

A theory of instrumental and existential rational decisions: Smith, Weber, Mauss, Tönnies after Martin Buber

Cited by 4 publications

References 52 publications

The information inelasticity of habits: Kahneman’s bounded rationality or Simon’s procedural rationality?

The information inelasticity of habits: Kahneman’s bounded rationality or Simon’s procedural rationality?

Does Friendship Stem From Altruism? Adam Smith and the Distinction Between Love-Based and Interest-Based Preferences

The cost of love: Solving the gift anomaly

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About