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Human Nature in Politics

This document summarizes Herbert Simon's commentary on the dialogue between psychology and politics regarding theories of human rationality. It outlines three main topics: 1) two prevailing theories of rationality in social sciences - cognitive psychology and economics, 2) implications of each theory for political science, 3) balance between reason and passion. Simon defines rationality as behavior appropriate for goals in a given situation and discusses substantive and procedural rationality, with the latter accounting for cognitive limitations.

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59 views

Human Nature in Politics

This document summarizes Herbert Simon's commentary on the dialogue between psychology and politics regarding theories of human rationality. It outlines three main topics: 1) two prevailing theories of rationality in social sciences - cognitive psychology and economics, 2) implications of each theory for political science, 3) balance between reason and passion. Simon defines rationality as behavior appropriate for goals in a given situation and discusses substantive and procedural rationality, with the latter accounting for cognitive limitations.

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apperdapper
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© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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HUMAN NATURE IN POLITICS: THE DIALOGUE OF PSYCHOLOGY WITH POLITICS

BY: Herbert Simon

this is a comentary and not a new piece of substantive research (Simon: 1985, 294)

THREE MAIN TOPICS


1.Two main forms of theories of human rationality that prevail in social today. A. Cognitive Psychology B. Economics 2. Implications for the balance in political science between rationalism (or a priorism) and empiricism of adopting one or the other of these two paradigms of rationality. Argument: There is a natural alliance between empiricism and psychological version of rationality , on the other hand, and alliance between rationalism and the economic version of rationality, on the other. 3. Balance between reason and passion- radical irrationality

DEFINITION OF RATIONAL
rational

- denotes behavior that is appropriate to specified goals in the context of a given situation

THE FORMS OF RATIONALITY


A.

Substantive or Objective Rationality

B.

If the characteristics of the choosing organism are ignored and we consider only those constraints that arise from external situation Behavior that can be adjudged objectively to be optimally adopted to the situation It uses methods of choice that are as effective as its decision-making and problem solving means Behavior that is adaptive within the constraints imposed both by the external situation and by the capacity of the decision maker procedural or substantive- borrowed from constitutional law, in analogy with the concepts of the procedural and substantive due process, the former judging fairness by the substances of the result itself.

Procedural or Bounded Rationality


T. ~h e two conceptions of rationality are radically different. The foundation for the theory of objective rationality is the assumption that every actor possesses a utility function that induces a consistent ordering among all alternative choices that the actor faces, and, indeed, that he or she always chooses the alternative with the highest utility.

If the choice situation involves uncertainties, the theory further assumes that the actor will choose the alternative for which the expected utility is the highest. By expected utility of an alternative is meant the average of the utilities of the different possible outcomes, each weighted by the probability that the outcome will ensue if the alternative in question is chosen. The theory of objective rationality assumes nothing about the actor's goals. The utility function can take any form that defines a consistent ordering of preferences. Nor does the theory postulate anything about the way in which the actor makes probability estimates of uncertain events; in fact one version of the theory, the so-called subjective expected utility, or SEU, theory, explicitly denies that these probabilities are to be identified with objective probabilities of the events, determined by some outside observer. In this one respect, the label "objective" for this version of the theory must be qualified.

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