Abstracts of articles by Jon Elster
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Elster, Jon (1986), Reply to Comments (Making Sense of Marx), Inquiry (March 1986) [29 (1):65-77]
Reply to Comments
Abstract
The main theme in most of the contributions to the symposium on Making Sense of
Marx is methodological individualism. In the first part of my reply I consider the
objections raised to this, in my opinion, trivially true doctrine. Against Taylor I
argue that social relations, seen in abstraction from their relata, have no causal
efficacy. Against Wood I argue that my defence of methodological individualism
and my criticism of functional explanation are less closely related than he makes
them out to be. Against Slaughter I argue that he holds two inconsistent views on
the importance of individual desires and beliefs in social explanation. Against
Meikle I argue that his view that entities are 'real natures' with a normal path of
development needs to be restated in terms of dynamically stable processes. In the
second part of the reply I deal with the individual contributions one by one. The
replies to the 'fundamentalist Marxists' Slaughter and Meikle are relatively brief,
because of the dismissive, unscholarly nature of their comments. Similarly I do not
have much to say to North and Taylor, whose brief comments do not contain much
with which to disagree. I reply at greater length to Wood, conceding the point he
makes in the last section of his comment but rejecting his argument concerning
functional explanation.
Some unresolved problems in the theory of rational behaviour, Acta Sociologica (September 1993) [36 (3): 179-190]
Some Unresolved Problems in the Theory of Rational Behaviour
Abstract
In an article written in 1977 the author offered a survey of unresolved problems in
rational choice theory. The present paper is an attempt to rethink this issue. On the one
hand, it emphasizes the question of indeterminacy, i.e. situations in which the rational
choice is not well defined. The paradoxes of backward induction find their place here,
as do the existence and importance of genuine uncertainty (as distinct from risk). On
the other hand, the article discusses the question whether preferences can be said to be
rational. Examples include time preferences, attitudes to risk, regret and the 'taste for
fairness'. The examples are chosen with a view to showing that rational choice theory is
not a predictive theory, but essentially a hermeneutic one. As part of the enterprise of
self-understanding, the construction of rationality is partly discovery and partly decision.
There is no right answer to all questions.
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