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Functionalism and the role of psychology in economics

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Peer-reviewed

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Article

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Abstract

Should economics study the psychological basis of agents' choice behaviour? I show how this question is multifaceted and profoundly ambiguous. There is no sharp distinction between "mentalist'' answers to this question and rival "behavioural'' answers. What's more, clarifying this point raises problems for mentalists of the "functionalist'' variety (Dietrich and List, 2016). Firstly, functionalist hypotheses collapse into hypotheses about input--output dispositions, I show, unless one places some unwelcome restrictions on what counts as a cognitive variable. Secondly, functionalist hypotheses make some risky commitments about the plasticity of agents' choice dispositions.

Description

Keywords

Mentalism, behaviourism, cognitive science, neuroeconomics, revealed preference, aims of economics

Journal Title

Journal of Economic Methodology

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1350-178X
1469-9427

Volume Title

27

Publisher

Informa UK Limited

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
European Research Council (715530)
European Research Council