Economic theory reduces the concept of rationality to internal consistency. As far as beliefs are concerned, rationality is equated with having a prior belief over a “Grand State Space”, describing all possible sources of uncertainties. We argue that this notion is too weak in some senses and too strong in others. It is too weak because it does not distinguish between rational and irrational be...

Lying in a transformation period of economic development, economic prosperity, social progress and development in science and technology have to rely on strong competitiveness of a nation’s universities to a large degree. Actually, universities’ competitiveness is closely related to the improvement of a nation’s competitiveness in human resources, industrial development and its comprehensive st...

It is a plausible and compelling theoretical assumption that epistemic rationality just matter of having doxastic attitudes are the correct responses to one’s reasons, or all requirements reduce on attitudes. According this idea, instances rational belief. Call assumption, any theory working under it, belief-centered. In what follows, I argue we should not accept belief-centered theories ration...

SUMMARY Jon Elster has argued that (a) the optimal collection of information creates an infinite regress (we have to collect information about how much information to collect about how much information to collect …) and (b) it is often very difficult to estimate the net value of more information because we have to make decisions in situations that are fast changing, unique or novel. Taken toget...

We investigate a recent methodology we have proposed to extract valuable information on the competitiveness of countries and complexity of products from trade data. Standard economic theories predict a high level of specialization of countries in specific industrial sectors. However, a direct analysis of the official databases of exported products by all countries shows that the actual situatio...

In the first part of the paper (sec. 1-4), I argue that Elqayam and Evan's (2011) distinction between normative and instrumental conceptions of cognitive rationality corresponds to deontological vs. teleological accounts in meta-ethics. I suggest that Elqayam and Evans' distinction be replaced by the distinction between a-priori intuition-based vs. a-posteriori success-based accounts of cogniti...

In this paper we question one of the paradigms in the behavioural sciences in the last century. We call it the "rationality" paradigm, according to which animal and human behaviour can be understood from the assumption that it is "rational" with respect to reaching a given goal. For instance, animals are assumed to take the best course of action for maximising their reproductive success, and ac...

Collective rationality in its ordinary sense is rationality’s extension to groups. It does not entail efficiency by definition. Showing that it entails efficiency requires a normative argument. Game theorists treating cooperative games generally assume that collective rationality entails efficiency, but formulating the reasoning that leads individuals to efficiency, and verifying the rationalit...

In this paper, I challenge a well-known argument for the view that “Why be moral?” is a pseudo-question. I do so by refuting a component of that argument, a component that is not only crucial to the argument but important in its own right. That component concerns the status ofmoral reasons in replies to “Why bemoral?”; consequently, this paper concerns reasons and rationality no less than it co...