Abstract
James Buchanan wrote many short pieces on human nature and on the weaknesses of the rational choice model used by mainstream economics. Although he normally used such models in his own work, he recognized that their usefulness was limited to only a subset of choice settings. This chapter provides the rule-based model of choice that Buchanan may have had in the back of his mind when writing his critiques. It is not an effort at mind reading, but rather develops a model of rule-bound but not rule-determined choice that is consistent with Buchanan’s remarks on human nature and with contemporary research from evolutionary psychology. It develops a theory of self-constitutions or homo constitutionalus.
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Notes
- 1.
See Kirchgässner (2014) for a longer discussion of this point with respect to Buchanan ’s work on constitutional political economy.
- 2.
The poker games in Blacksburg that Buchanan attended included Robert Tollison and Winston Bush among others.
- 3.
The various “social” payoffs of parlor games are less obvious for games played on the Internet or against computers. Such games may provide relief from one’s everyday toils as well as status within the context of the game through rankings of accumulated scores. The latter may generate self-confidence or self-esteem for the persons participating. Only a few “addicts” and “fanatics” allow the number of games won to be their entire reason for play (or life). Indeed, the derogatory nature of the terms “addicts” and “fanatics” implies that such persons are unusual—exceptions to the rule, exceptions to the less winning oriented theory of game playing sketched out above.
- 4.
For other complementary rule-based models of man see Hayek (1952), Newell and Simon (1972), Nozick (1994), or Seligman et al. (2016). This essay differs from others in its use of more general meaning of the term “rules,” by its emphasis on the internalization processes, and by its linkages to economics and Buchanan ’s work, but there are many overlaps and common themes.
- 5.
The dream state (REM) is one of the three phases of sleep. There are several theories of the purpose of dreams, most of which involve information processing of various kinds but a few of which simply regard them to be unnecessary correlates with a good sleep. See, for example, Freud (1913), Jung (1938/2005), Revonsuo (2000), or Zhang (2004).
- 6.
In the spring of 2018, two robots were able to assemble a relatively simple IKEA chair in about 20Â minutes. However, the programming was limited to a single type of chair. Numerous videos of the robots are available. See, for example, https://www.zdnet.com/article/robot-builds-an-ikea-chair-everyone-goes-nuts. Needless to say, a cave dweller might well have taken longer but not a modern man or woman who had assembled such chairs before.
- 7.
Once one knows that languages are possible and exist, one might attempt to learn another. Absent a translator or teacher, the first steps in such a process also uses pointing, nods, and general sounds to establish various if-then relationships between sounds and ideas, as with learning the names for things and actions. In such cases, one hopes to gradually internalize these if-then relationships of the new language so that more subtle forms of communication become possible.
- 8.
This list reflects differences among cultures in the names for colors, measurement of years, assessment of ages and responsibilities associated with “growing up” (as for example with the youngest age at which one can work for a living, marry, or vote). Many of these have varied through time within a given society. Evidence that perceptions of color vary among individuals includes the phenomenon of “color blindness,” and other psychological (Özgen and Davies 2002) and physiological evidence (Siok et al. 2009).
- 9.
This claim can be contested. Insofar as our “selves” emerge gradually from our early education and biological development, subsequent learning is always a bit active and allows individuals to develop their own interpretations of the lessons and information to which they were exposed. However, it is clear that relative to our genotypes, this body of self-created knowledge is small. And, insofar as that which is transmitted socially is accumulated knowledge, privately created rules—even when subject to a huge number of idiosyncratic variations—is also small relative to that created and learned by all previous generations.
- 10.
Dawkins (1989) originated the term “meme” and argued that ideas (memes) are similar to genes in that they are subject to repeated tests and most pass most of them to survive through time. Thus, only “good” ideas—ideas that can propagate themselves—survive in the long run. This term has been extended to include other aspects of cultures by other scholars in the period that followed. This paper focuses on a subset of potential memes, namely rules, and in particular rules that can be internalized. Although Dawkins coined the term “meme,” the idea of cultural evolution preceded Dawkins by at least a century. See Spencer (1851) for the first clear statement of social evolution.
- 11.
See Frank (1988) for a book length exposition on the underlying rationality of many human passions. With regards to religion, for theists the same evolutionary claims will make sense. Theology improves through time as ideas are generalized and conflicts resolved. Atheists, however, may regard religion as largely delusional. However, atheists should acknowledge that the cosmology of a religion is only a small part of its rule-set. Other aspects of a religion—its causal and ethical theories—evolve during time, becoming both more general and in many cases more realistic and internally consistent. In that sense, at least, atheists should acknowledge that religions also tend to improve through time.
- 12.
This is not to say that mental activities involve no physical changes—merely to say that such changes are within ourselves and bodies, rather than in the world outside of ourselves.
- 13.
That such ongoing decision making is not part of the homo economicus model is a weakness of that model, but also a strength. By treating decisions as once and forever events, the number of factors that need to be modeled (taken into account) is greatly reduced, which facilitates reaching clear conclusions—even if they are only approximately correct.
- 14.
Hayek (1952), Pinker (1999), and Seligman et al. (2016), for example, include book-length overviews of research on how the mind operates. Pinker, for example, notes that the human mind is adept at recognizing a wide range of shapes and objects—a very difficult capacity for computer programmer to replicate, but one that is far easier to do than many others that humans routinely undertake. His short discussion of the if-then systems of rules that loosely describe how the mind recognizes faces, places, and shapes of object takes more pages than included in this essay. And, in that book, Pinker deals only with capacities that he believes to be innate rather than learned.
- 15.
Although the model of self-governance sketched out above is consistent with all of the above psychological theories, the homo constitutionalus perspective developed in this paper is most similar to what Pinker refers to as the computational-evolutionary model of the mind, although without committing to a completely deterministic perspective or to particular claims about the rules that govern our thoughts and actions.
- 16.
The “framing effect” identified by Tversky and Kahneman (1981) may be regarded as information that induces an individual to use one set of evaluative principles rather than another. That choices change because of framing implies that the overall collection of evaluative rules is not entirely self-consistent (transitive). Nonetheless, within a particular type of choice setting (frame), choices may still be self-consistent on average—sufficiently so that economic models can shed useful light on behavior.
- 17.
- 18.
- 19.
- 20.
The rationality principle has been more widely taught and so has become more widely internalized during the past two centuries. This may well account for a significant part of the acceleration of prosperity that took place during the same period. Rules that are realistic allow one to more accurately anticipated the consequences of one’s actions, which clearly helps to improve plans of all sorts whenever consequences matter.
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Congleton, R.D. (2018). Toward a Rule-Based Model of Human Choice: On the Nature of Homo Constitutionalus. In: Wagner, R. (eds) James M. Buchanan. Remaking Economics: Eminent Post-War Economists. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03080-3_34
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