Social Norms, Rational Choice and Belief Change

Abstract

This article elaborates on foundational issues in the social sciences and theirimpact on the contemporary theory of belief revision. Recent work in the foundations ofeconomics has focused on the role external social norms play in choice. Amartya Sen hasargued in [43] that the traditional rationalizability approach used in the theory of rationalchoice has serious problems accommodating the role of social norms. Sen's more recentwork [44, 45] proposes how one might represent social norms in the theory of choice, andin a very recent article [8] Walter Bossert and Kotaro Suzumura develop Sen's proposal,offering an extension of the classical theory of choice that is capable of dealing with socialnorms.This article elaborates on foundational issues in the social sciences and theirimpact on the contemporary theory of belief revision. Recent work in the foundations ofeconomics has focused on the role external social norms play in choice. Amartya Sen hasargued in [43] that the traditional rationalizability approach used in the theory of rationalchoice has serious problems accommodating the role of social norms. Sen's more recentwork [44, 45] proposes how one might represent social norms in the theory of choice, andin a very recent article [8] Walter Bossert and Kotaro Suzumura develop Sen's proposal,offering an extension of the classical theory of choice that is capable of dealing with socialnorms.This article elaborates on foundational issues in the social sciences and theirimpact on the contemporary theory of belief revision. Recent work in the foundations ofeconomics has focused on the role external social norms play in choice. Amartya Sen hasargued in [43] that the traditional rationalizability approach used in the theory of rationalchoice has serious problems accommodating the role of social norms. Sen's more recentwork [44, 45] proposes how one might represent social norms in the theory of choice, andin a very recent article [8] Walter Bossert and Kotaro Suzumura develop Sen's proposal,offering an extension of the classical theory of choice that is capable of dealing with socialnorms.