This paper focuses on the uneasy alliance of rational choice and evolutionary explanations in modern economics. While direct evolutionary explanations of “optimality” rule out "purposeful" rational choice by assuming zerointelligence and pure rational choice explanations leave no room for "selective" adaptation the indirect evolutionary approach integrates both perspectives. Subsequently we go ...

What can time-travel cases tell us about rational choice? In particular, what can we learn about rational choice from what we may call retroactive choice situations, that is, from time-travel cases in which the circumstances where an agent makes a choice depend causally on the choice the agent makes? Such cases have been thought to call into question the dominant theory of rational choice among...

siderably in the social sciences, particularly in economics, political science, and law (e.g., Morrow 1994; Posner 1998; Sunstein 1999). In sociology, especially with the popularity of social capital theory, rational choice has gained traction as an individual-level theory of motivation compatible with macro-level theories of social structure (Coleman 1990). Nevertheless, skepticism in sociolog...