Abstract
We argue in favour of identifying one aspect of rational choice with the tendency to conform to the choice you expect another like-minded, but non-communicating, agent to make and study this idea in the very basic case where the choice is from a non-empty subset K of 2A and no further structure or knowledge of A is assumed.
Partially supported by EPSRC research studentship and a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Program for the Investment in the Future (ZIP) of the German Government.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Aizermann, M. and A. Malishevski: 1981, ‘General Theory of Best Variants Choice: Some Aspects’, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control 26, 1030–1040.
Camerer, C.: 2003, Behavioral Game Theory: Experiments on Strategic Interaction, Princeton.
Davidson, D.: 1984, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford University Press.
Davidson, D.: 2001, ‘Rational Animals’, In Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, Oxford University Press. pp. 95–105.
Davidson, D.: 2001, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, Oxford University Press.
Elio, R.: (ed.) 2002, Commonsense, Reasoning, and Rationality, Oxford University Press, New York.
Halpern, J.: 2003, Reasoning About Uncertainty, MIT Press.
Hilpinen, R.: 1973, ‘Carnap’s New System of Inductive Logic’, Synthese 25, 307–333.
Hosni, H.: 2004, ‘Conformity and Interpretation’, In Prague International Colloquium on Logic, Games and Philosophy: Foundational Perspectives, Prague, Czech Republic, October 2004.
Hosni, H.: 2005, Doctoral Thesis. School of Mathematics, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK, http: www.maths.man.ac.uk/~hykel/.
Janssen, M.: 2001, ‘Rationalizing Focal Points’, Theory and Decision 50, 119–148.
Kalai, G., A. Rubinstein and R. Spiegler: 2002, ‘Rationalizing Choice Functions by Multiple Rationales’, Econometrica 70(6), 2481–2488.
Keynes, J. M.: [1936] 1951, The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money, McMillan, London.
Kraus, S., J. S. Rosenschein and M. Fenster: 2000, ‘Exploiting focal points among alternative solutions: Two approaches’, Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence 28(1–4), 187–258.
Lewis, D.: 1969, Convention: A Philosophical Study, Harvard University Press.
Marker, D.: 2002, Model theory: An Introduction, Graduate Texts in Mathematics 217. Springer.
Mehta, J., C. Strarmer and R. Sugden: 1994, ‘The Nature of Salience: An Experimental Investigation of Pure Coordination’, The Americal Economic Review 84(3), 658–673.
Morris, S. and H. S. Shin: 2003, ‘Global Games: Theory and Application’, In M. Dewatripont, L. Hanson and S. Turnovsky (eds.), Advances in Economics and Econometrics, Proceedings of the 8th World Congress of the Econometric Society, Cambridge University Press.
Nozick, R.: 1993, The Nature of Rationality, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Paris, J. B: 1999, ‘Common Sense and Maximum Entropy’, Synthese 117(1), 73–93.
Paris, J. B. and A. Vencovská: 1990, ‘A Note on the Inevitability of Maximum Entropy, International Journal of Approximated Reasoning 4, 183–224.
Paris, J. B. and A. Vencovská: 1997, ‘In Defence of the Maximum Entropy Inference Process’, International Journal of Approximate Reasoning 17, 77–103.
Paris, J. B. and A. Vencovská: 2001, ‘Common Sense and Stochastic Independence’, In D. Corfield and J. Williamson (eds.), Foundations of Bayesianism, Kluwer Academic Press, pp. 230–240.
Plott, C. R.: 1973, ‘Path Independence, Rationality and Social Choice’, Econometrica 41(6), 1075–1091.
Quine, W. V.: 1960, Word and Object, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Rott, H.: 2004, Change, Choice and Inference: A Study of Belief Revision and Nonmonotonic Reasoning, Oxford University Press.
Schelling, T.: 1960, The Strategy of Conflict, Harvard University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 Springer
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hosni, H., Paris, J. (2005). Rationality as Conformity. In: Uncertainty, Rationality, and Agency. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4631-6_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4631-6_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-4630-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-4631-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)