Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T14:46:18.210Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

HUME'S NON-INSTRUMENTAL AND NON-PROPOSITIONAL DECISION THEORY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2006

ROBERT SUGDEN
ROBERT SUGDEN*
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Hume is often read as proposing an instrumental theory of decision, in which an agent's choices are rational if they maximally satisfy her desires, given her beliefs. In fact, Hume denies that rationality can be attributed to actions. I argue that this is not a gap needing to be filled. Hume's theory provides a coherent and self-contained understanding of action, compatible with current developments in experimental psychology and behavioural economics. On Hume's account, desires are primitive psychological motivations which do not have propositional content, and so are not subject to the criteria of rational consistency which apply to propositions.

Type
Essay
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , November 2006 , pp. 365 - 391
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This paper was written as part of a research project on the methodology of experimental economics, supported by the Leverhulme Trust. It is a sign of how long I have been thinking about this topic that my greatest debts are to my late friends Jean Hampton and Martin Hollis. For more recent assistance, I am grateful to Shepley Orr, an editor and two anonymous referees.

References

REFERENCES

Blackburn, S. 1998. Ruling passions: a theory of practical reasoning. Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broome, J. 1991. Weighing goods. Blackwell.Google Scholar
Broome, J. 1999. Can a Humean be moderate? In Ethics out of economics, ed. Broome, J., 68–87. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, D. 1980. Hume's cognitive theory of pride. In Essays on actions and events, ed. Davidson, D., 277–90. Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Dreier, J. 1996. Rational preference: decision theory as a theory of practical rationality. Theory and Decision 40:249–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, E., and Fischbacher, U., 2002. Why social preferences matter – the impact of non-selfish motives on competition, cooperation and incentives. Economic Journal 112:C1–C33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frederick, S., Loewenstein, G. and O'donoghue, T., 2002. Time discounting and time preference: a critical review. Journal of Economic Literature 40:351–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gauthier, D. 1986. Morals by agreement. Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Hampton, J. 1998. The authority of reason. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hume, D. 1978 [1739–40]. A treatise of human nature. Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D. 1996. Comment [on Plott, 1996]. In The rational foundations of economic behaviour, ed. Arrow, K. J., Colombatto, E., Perlman, M. and Schmidt, C., 251–4. International Economic Association and Macmillan.Google Scholar
Knetsch, J. 1989. The endowment effect and evidence of nonreversible indifference curves. American Economic Review 79:1277–84.Google Scholar
Korsgaard, C. 1997. The normativity of instrumental reason. In Ethics and practical reason, ed. Cullity, G. and Gant, B., 215–54. Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McClennen, E. 1990. Rationality and dynamic choice: foundational explorations. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millgram, E. 1995. Was Hume a Humean? Hume Studies 21:75–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nozick, R. 1993. The nature of rationality. Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plott, C. 1996. Rational individual behaviour in markets and social choice processes: the discovered preference hypothesis. In The rational foundations of economic behaviour, ed. Arrow, K. J., Colombatto, E., Perlman, M. and Schmidt, C., 225–50. International Economic Association and Macmillan.Google Scholar
Ramsey, F. 1931. Truth and probability. In The foundations of mathematics and other logical essays, 156–98. Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Robinson, T. and Berridge, K. (1993). The neural basis of drug craving: an incentive-sensitization theory of addiction. Brain Research Reviews 18:247–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Savage, L. 1954. The foundations of statistics. Wiley.Google Scholar
Sayre-McCord, G. 1996. Hume and the Bauhaus theory of ethics. Midwest Studies 20:289–98.Google Scholar
Sugden, R. 1986. The economics of rights, co-operation and welfare. Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sugden, R. 1991. Rational choice: a survey of contributions from economics and philosophy. Economic Journal 101:751–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar