Fisher, Sarah A;
(2023)
Description invariance: a rational principle for human agents.
Economics and Philosophy
10.1017/s0266267123000019.
(In press).
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Abstract
This article refines a foundational tenet of rational choice theory known as the principle of description invariance. Attempts to apply this principle to human agents with imperfect knowledge have paid insufficient attention to two aspects: first, agents’ epistemic situations, i.e. whether and when they recognize alternative descriptions of an object to be equivalent; and second, the individuation of objects of description, i.e. whether and when objects count as the same or different. An important consequence is that many apparent ‘framing effects’ may not violate the principle of description invariance, and the subjects of these effects may not be irrational.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Description invariance: a rational principle for human agents |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1017/s0266267123000019 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266267123000019 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | Description invariance; rational choice theory; framing effects; equivalence; imperfect knowledge |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Political Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10167964 |
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