Acting Rationally
Reaction Paper on Jon Elster’s “Nature and Scope of Rational-Choice Explanation” by Juliana Goranova
Rational action has been obsession for a great deal of the social scientific body. Among all the definitions of what exactly this is and what should we do with it, I will take the one of Jon Ester to put it under consideration by checking its validity with an example.
Elster says that the rational action is “the best way of satisfying agent’s desires, given the best believes he could form, relative to the optimum amount of evidence”. Taking into account the scheme, which Elster uses to present his idea, I suggest the following example: One of my childhood dreams is to dance salsa (desire). I have obtained good amount of basic steps (cognition), by attending several dance classes, watching movies and reading books, considering dances (evidence). Then I have heard about this wonderful Saturday party in a salsa club and I decide that in order to fulfil my dream and on the basis of the knowledge that I have, based on good enough amount of collected information, I can go and dance (action).
However, my action ends to be quite unsuccessful. Why? Because the only available partner for dancing at the party does not know the basic steps. So no matter how hard I try, the only thing that comes out of our dance is a funny caricature of bouncing figures. I am disappointed, because I thought that I had planned my Saturday night rationally... What I did not predicted was the missing well dancing partner. May be, after all, what I did (my staying there, although in a funny situation) could be explained by the second-best rational choice – minding the conditions I did the best.
Let me take into account another possible variant of acting – what if I go to the party, without collecting evidence and without any definite cognition about the steps that I am supposed to know if I want to dance. However, by chance, there I meet a wonderful partner – professional, who I start dancing with, without any problem, just because I follow his steps. Then my, although I did not plan it as a rational, action appears to be very successful.
Despite the possibilities that Elster gives for predicting the side effects, I do not really feel more certain about using the theory of rational action when planning my social dance performances. The strongest reason that I have to reject it is the argument that rational action is mainly defined as such post factum. So reading this text actually made me even more confused in my attempts of trying to be rational…
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