Franz Dietrich
‘Economics & Philosophy’
Rationality and Reasoning
Jointly with Robert Sugden and our former doctoral student Antonios Staras, I develop a formal theory of rationality and reasoning that builds on influential philosophical work by John Broome (2013) and others. The focus is on the agent's psychology, captured by his or her various mental states: the beliefs, intentions, desires, preferences, hopes... This contrasts with the behaviourist revealed-preference tradition, but matches the trend towards 'behavioural economics' which emphasizes psychology. We model the process of reasoning by which the agent revises beliefs, intentions, preferences, and other states. We hope to integrate four approaches to agency: the choice-theoretic, philosophical, logical, and psychological approaches, which have much to teach one another.
Related Work
- Abstract rationality: the ‘logical’ structure of attitudes (with A. Staras and R. Sugden), Economics and Philosophy, 1-30, 2023 [preprint]
- Reasoning in attitudes (with A. Staras), Synthese 200: 1-31, 2022 [preprint]
- Savage's response to Allais as Broomean reasoning (with A. Staras and R. Sugden), Journal of Economic Methodology 28(2): 143-164, 2021 [preprint]
- A Broomean model of rationality and reasoning (with A. Staras and R. Sugden), Journal of Philosophy 116: 585-614, 2019 [preprint]