On 15 August 2012
From: Meg McKean
Date: 2012/08/09

Just a moment here. Ratcho followers have no trouble explaining acting on principle. If one gets a lot of utility out of pursing principle, then a rational actor will do so. Ratch does not explain where people's preferences come from. I endorse Hiwatari-sensei's comments on the fact that rational choice should guide one to focus on interactions and choices among strategies, and it accepts the preferences as whatever the actor wants them to be.

Sloppy users of rational choice (including many economists much of the
time) have trouble remembering that utility and preferences need not be materialistic. An egoist pursues the egoist's preferences but those preferences can be anything.

Apologies in advance if this turns out to be a very stupid question-I come from an International Relations background and received my academic training in the UK where rational choice is considered just one of the many theoretical approaches to states' behavior. Thus my knowledge of the rational choice theory is very basic but I always thought that the debate between rational choice and constructivism was predominantly about the nature of actors' preferences. To the best of my understanding, the former define the interests in material terms while the latter argue that interests/preferences are socially constructed as thus can be anything-depending on the nature of the social interactions through which the actors' identities and interests are constructed.

Thus I find the above definition of rational choice given by Prof McKean very confusing as it seems to identify rational choice theory with constructivism, which at least in field of IR is perceived as its main rival. If rational choice and constructivism are identical then what will be their ontological adversary -altruism?

Yours,

Alexander

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Dr Alexander Bukh

Graduate School of Humanities and Social Science, Tsukuba University