Thoughtful Economic Man: Essays on Rationality, Moral Rules, and Benevolence.

• Author: Levy, David M.

This collection of papers originated as seminar papers at Gay Meeks's Cambridge course on philosophical issues of economics. The papers cluster into related groups with a positive intersection. There is an exchange between Frank Hahn ("Benevolence") and A. K. Sen ("Beneconfusion") over the question on whether human choice can be described in terms of a unitary preference order. David Collard's ("Love is not enough") addresses issues raised by altruism. There is a cluster of papers related to choice under uncertainty: John Broome ("Rationality and the sure-thing principle") and two essays on Keynes's ideas on investment, one by Robin Matthews and another by the editor. Broome's paper addresses the question of preferences for pieces of language, e.g., preferences for propositions. Two other papers do not cluster as easily. Alan Ryan ("Exploitation, justice and the rational man") writes a considerable essay on property, justice and self-interest. Tony Cramp ("Pleasures, prices and principles") attempts to Christianize economics by in part questioning the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and J. S. Mill upon which welfare economics seems to depend.

Suppose we wish to introduce pieces of language (propositions) into the standard economic calculus, we might wish to ask why we accept one proposition and not another. Can we describe preferences for propositions and constraints for propositions? The kind of constraints which rational expectations place upon belief have been discussed extensively in the literature; consequently, I shall focus on the question of what sort of constraints there are on metapreferences. Can we define a corresponding metaconstraint for a metapreference? (I learned to think about metaconstraints from James Buchanan.)

The link between language and metapreference is natural because we know about metapreferences from language. Some of us say we want to have different preferences than we have. We tell others, and perhaps even ourselves, that we want to be better people. Is truth a constraint to metapreferences or to the rational acceptance of theory?

Perhaps because of historical reasons of proximity the exchange on the nature and significance of metapreferences between Sen and Hahn is elliptical and inconclusive. Their papers read like formulaic statements summarizing a disagreement long carried on in private. Hahn's objection to metapreferences, if I read him correctly, is that human nature is pretty much a constant quantity...