Dompere basically discuss an old issue in the philosophy and in many other sciences including economics: rationality. Rationality has been defined by many scientists in terms of different dimensions such as ethical rationality, emprical rationality, logical rationality etc. He is interested in a rationality definition in terms of decision-making process of an individual. Understanding human decisions and choices provides us important information to comprehend human behaviors.
We believe there is a rationality behind human behaviors upon observing human behaviors and decision-making process and human's choices. There exist a nationality we believe in, however, there is no concensus among scientists how rationality exists and how it works. Some claim that rationality is needed to understand reality, some others claim that rationality is a result of scepticisim that human has and many other different explanations with different view points. There exist an human intelligence and it functions thus a rationality shapes our decision-making and choosing processes.
Dompere tries to differentiate decision and choice which might help him understand human intelligence causing rationality. Choice and decision might differ in terms intention. Decision is based on an intention it has to be followed by acts depending on the same intention. However, choice does not have to depend on an intention, thus it is different from decision. Choice does not necessarilt require following acts depending on the same intention, although the first act is based on an intention.
Decision is a result of a decision-making process and human, in an information space, has an objective and, under some known limits of information, tries to select the best for himself. Human creates criterion and process steps and then evaluate the information on alternatives to pick the right ones for himself.
Classical decision theory explains rationality as to pick some acts among alternatives which leads human to his objectives. This rationality is called objective rationality. Classic rationality is used in some sciences to characterize theoretical individuals who are used to set up a theory such as homoeconomicus in the science of economics. Classic rationality claims that human can control his decision-making process and he has the capacity to reach all the available information around him. However, there are limits for human to gather all the information and he has a limited capability to comprehend the information. Consequently, classic rationality might be wrong by saying that human can decide the best for himself.
Going further than classical rationality, classical rationality is objective rationality, however, there is no explanation is given how we will know that objectives are rational and they have an intelligence behind them. Human's objectives are probably derivatives of social objectives in which human continues his life. Social objectives are the required objectives for this society to survive. Sometimes social objectives at individual level might rational and irrational at the same time. A social objective might push a human to a position that human is not willing to be in. At this point, classical rationality cannot explain this situation, because rationality is bounded. Bounded rationality means that human might have some problems to collect, evaluate and comprehend the information around him and that problems bound his rationality. In the paper, this information use problems are called rationality limits.
Each human's rationality limits might be different and that creates a huge space for us. Each human by using the same information set might reach different results. This situation has caused the birth of behavioral sciences. Each human's optimization process is different and this new science tries to understand different optimizations for different people. Behavioral sciences has given us a new term: fuzzy concepts such as self-actualizatin, self-aspiration, etc. Fuzziness brings us more subjectivism into rationality. Fuzzy rationality carries more individual characteristic properties in decision making process.
Subsequently, we know that rationality includes some sbujectivism in it, furthermore, a group of people under similar information limits and with similar objectives might believe in a set of objectives and rules together and they might create a belief for themselves. This belief is called ideology. Ideology is like all believes creates its own information for its followers. Ideological information create a discrepancy from the general information and it might biased relative to social objectives and other general rules. Ideology has always the potential to increase the limits of information.
Human, depending on the information he collects and his capability to evaluate and comprehend the information, make decisions based on an intention. However, he makes some choices and this choices basically depends on future expectations. He defines what he expect in the future, then collects, evaluate and comprehend it. After each choice
human faces a new set of information and information processing. Rational choice depends on human's current conditions. He might be following an ideology or his social conditions might shape his choices.
Rational choices depend on some rational decisions. Human, by gathering information and evaluating and comprehending it, creates a rationality criterion and then make his decisions. Decisions are a set of ways that human might go. Among these alternatives, he chooses one and this is called rational choice. Thus each rational choice is related with at least one rational decision.
Consequently, we observe that rationality exists and it functions, however, understanding how it works are still not explained. Decision and choice are acts that human makes and by following decision-making and choice-making processes, we might follow the trace of the rationality. Bounded rationality seems to be a good explanation for rationality and it is related to classic rationality and fuzziness.
