IV
On: preference/choice/self-interest/commitment
Issues:
Is there confusion in the use of these
terms?
What interpretation should be given to an
individuals’ preference ordering?
Is there a risk of ensuring self-interest
maximisation in economic theory just through sloppy definition?
Considerations:
- Some traditional
association of economic agents’ rational individual choices with
self-interested choice (individual self-interest/social harmony; private
greed/public virtue etc.). Self-interest also the initial basis of (e.g.)
Prisoners Dilemma analysis.
- But individual choices/preferences in rational choice theory
need not be self-interested (Hahn and Hollis, ‘The postulate that an agent
is characterised by preferences rules out neither the saint nor Genghis
Khan’ p.4).
- Then is it, or isn’t it, potentially confusing to speak of a
preference (rather than just choice) ordering? Cramp on Schelling
on the struggle to choose, rationally, against immediate personal
preference; Nagel on the possibility of altruism; and Sen
on choosing from ‘commitment’, not just sympathy (‘commitment…drives a
wedge between personal choice and personal welfare, and much of
traditional economic theory relies on the identity of the two’). Case for
using ‘meta-rankings’.
- Sen’s
detailed examples: apple boys/Dugeon/orange-or-mango-garden
party chair. [Also showing choice as ‘menu’ dependent, ‘chooser’
dependent, etc.]
- Hahn’s reply to Sen: trade-offs,
‘integrated personality’. But also,
sense of Hahn’s ‘a man knows what he wants’.
- How to resolve the possible ambiguity of ‘preference’?
- What the individual chooses as in Revealed Preference theory.
(Sen: if also defined as making better-off,
this is ‘definitional egoism’, on which even an altruist appears as an
egoist.)
- What makes the individual better off (but which she/he may
sometimes forego in choosing.)
- What the individual finds tempting at the time even though it
would not make them better off
and may not be chosen! (temptation resisted.)
- Are there problems in any of these interpretations? Might choice and preference actually
(always?) coincide after all if (e.g.) not choosing an altruistic action
would undermine self-interest because of guilt (not just as a matter of
definition)? Or, does identifying
choice and preference lead to a merging of the concepts of self-interest,
commitment and altruism which implies a loss of language – mightn’t we
want to be ale to distinguish acts that seem selfish and those that seem
selfless?
- Draw your own conclusions…
(Dr. J G T Meeks)