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The Construct of Mindfulness Amidst and Along Conceptions of Rationality

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Critical Mindfulness

Abstract

Is it rational to be mindful? Can one be ‘mindfully rational’? Rationally mindful? Research and thinking on the topics of rationality, rational choice, rational belief, and epistemic rationality has proceeded in isolation from work and thinking on mindfulness, mindfulness-including interventions, and the epistemological constructivism they often entail. To a strict Bayesian expected value maximizer, engaging in mindfulness-inducing exercises could seem as irrational as his own optimization routines can seem mindless. But appearances can be deceiving, and I argue that they indeed are. I lay out a map for ‘gains from conceptual trade’ based on modifying one of the core modeling moves used by rational choice researchers—and sketch a way of attaining them.

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Correspondence to Mihnea Moldoveanu .

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Moldoveanu, M. (2016). The Construct of Mindfulness Amidst and Along Conceptions of Rationality. In: Fatemi, S. (eds) Critical Mindfulness. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30782-4_2

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