Normal Rationality: Decisions and Social Order
Edna Ullmann-Margalit, Avishai Margalit, and Cass R. Sunstein
Abstract
How do people proceed when they cannot act on the basis of reasons, or project likely consequences? How is social order possible? Ullmann-Margalit demonstrates that people have identifiable strategies for making difficult decisions, whether the question is small (what to buy at a supermarket) or big (whether to transform one’s life in some large-scale way). She also shows that social dilemmas are solved by norms; that invisible-hand explanations take two identifiable (and dramatically different) forms; that trust can emerge in seemingly unpromising situations; and that considerateness is the f ... More
How do people proceed when they cannot act on the basis of reasons, or project likely consequences? How is social order possible? Ullmann-Margalit demonstrates that people have identifiable strategies for making difficult decisions, whether the question is small (what to buy at a supermarket) or big (whether to transform one’s life in some large-scale way). She also shows that social dilemmas are solved by norms; that invisible-hand explanations take two identifiable (and dramatically different) forms; that trust can emerge in seemingly unpromising situations; and that considerateness is the foundation on which our relationships are organized in both the thin context of the public space and the intimate context of the family.
Keywords:
Rationality,
social order,
choosing,
presumptions,
invisible-hand explanations,
considerateness
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2017 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198802433 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2017 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198802433.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Edna Ullmann-Margalit, author
formerly Professor of Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Avishai Margalit, editor
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Cass R. Sunstein, editor
Harvard University
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