Against Reductionist Explanations of Human Behaviour: John O’Neill

AGAINST REDUCTIONIST EXPLANATIONS OF HUMAN BEHAVIOUR

John Dupré and John O’Neill

II—John O’Neill

RATIONAL CHOICE AND UNIFIED SOCIAL SCIENCE

ABSTRACT One response to Dupré’s criticism of rational choice theory’sunifying aspirations is that it is aimed at over-ambitious versions of the theory.Immodesty about the scope of rational choice theory may look more plausiblegiven suitable modesty in assumptions about the rational agent. The paperexamines problems with one immodest version of the theory—public choicetheory—and show how these shed light on problems in modest versionsemploying minimal assumptions about the preference structure of rational agents.However, while rational choice theory may fail in its unifying ambitions, I arguethose aspirations are defensible.

In pursuing their respective imperialistic destinies, economicsand sociobiology have arrived in different ways at what isultimately the same master pattern of social theory—one intowhich the phenomena studied by the various social sciences tosome extent have been, and ultimately will all be, fitted.1

I

s Dupré notes, rational choice theory and sociobiology areAoften presented as allies in the project of unifying the socialsciences. Dupré is sceptical about these unifying ambitions. Hisscepticism about the particular claims made for these theories Ishare and this paper will offer additional reasons for beingsceptical. I focus on the claims made for rational choice theory asa tool of unification. However, while I think rational choice theorydoes not succeed in realising its unifying aspirations, I do notcompletely share Dupré’s scepticism about those aspirations assuch. At the close of the paper I make a few brief points in theirdefence.

In what sense does rational choice theory claim to offer thepromise of unity for the social sciences? An initial point to note

1. J. Hirshleifer, ‘The Expanding Domain of Economics’, American Economic Review 75,1985, pp. 53–68, p. 66.

174 II—JOHN O’NEILL

is that the formal apparatus of rational choice theory as such isquite independent of any particular unifying programme for thesocial sciences. It has a variety of potential interpretations indistinct areas of social inquiry under different theoreticalperspectives. Not all of these are consistent. For example, theformal apparatus can be interpreted to describe quite different‘rational actors’. Individual persons, and collectives such as firmsor states, are both open to such treatment. To treat the actions ofa state as those of a rational actor may be inconsistent with treatingits actions as the outcome of the rational actions of individualmembers. Moreover, the individual actor can be understood as acollective, for example when embodying a bundle of conflictingroles, and if she is so interpreted standard assumptions about therationality of individual preference orders may have to go—apoint to which I return below. As part of a unifying project rationalchoice theory needs to be understood under a particularinterpretation, that of neoclassical micro-economics, in which therational actor is the individual.

The potential unifications that it is taken to offer are twofold:within the social sciences—‘the economic approach provides avaluable unified framework for understanding all humanbehaviour’;2 and more ambitiously, as a bridgehead for thereduction of this unified social science to the biological sciencesthrough sociobiology.3 Those larger ambitions rely on the successof the internal unification and in the following I consider only thenarrower programme. As a unifying project within the socialsciences, the programme incorporates two claims, which are oftenconflated, but need to be distinguished: that it provides a unifiedlanguage for the social sciences; that it offers explanatoryunification in the form of a single set of assumptions that can beemployed to explain all social behaviour.

Consider the following statement of the unification thesis:

There is only one social science. What gives economics itsimperialist invasive power is that our analytical categories—

2. G. Becker, ‘The Economic Approach to Human Behaviour’ The Economic Approachto Human Behaviour (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 14.3. See for example J. Hirshleifer, ‘Competition, Cooperation and Conflict in Economicsand Biology’, American Economic Review 68, 1978, pp. 238–243 and G. Becker ‘Altruism,Egoism, and Genetic Fitness: Economics and Sociobiology’ in G. Becker The EconomicApproach to Human Behaviour.

AGAINST REDUCTIONIST EXPLANATIONS OF HUMAN BEHAVIOUR 175

scarcity, cost, preferences, opportunities etc.—are trulyuniversal in applicability.4

The claim concerns the universal scope of the central concepts ofeconomics. The belief that the concepts do have universalapplication is founded upon a particular characterisation ofeconomics that goes back at least as far as Robbins’ influentialdefinition of an economic problem as one choice between multipleends given limited time and means.5 Since practical conflictsfounded upon multiple ends and limited time and means are aubiquitous feature of human life, the central concepts ofeconomics, such as scarcity and cost, particularly opportunity cost,will have applications in all areas of social life. Wherever there ischoice there is economics. This economic characterisation ofchoice is filled out with the normative picture of rational choice:ends, understood as preferences, are ordered, probabilities areassigned to outcomes and the agent acts so as to realise the greatestexpected satisfaction of preferences.6 It is this account that is givenformal development in rational choice theory. Preferences have aparticular structure, transitivity, reflexivity and completeness, andthe agent aims to maximise preference satisfaction given budgetconstraints and assignments of probabilities to different possiblestates of the world. I return below to problems with this attempt tomake economic choice co-extensive with choice. However, evengiven the ubiquity of choice and economic categories in this sense,it does not follow that all social phenomena can be explained interms of the assumptions of economics.

The claim that rational choice theory can offer a unified socialscience in this explanatory sense is founded upon three groups ofassumptions. First, methodological individualism, the assumptionthat all social phenomena are explicable in terms that only involvereference to the properties and behaviour of individuals. Second,the assumptions used to characterise the agent as a rational actorin the market: specifically that the actor’s behaviour can becaptured by the idealised assumption that she is a rational agentintent upon maximising expected utility. Third, the assumption

4. J. Hirshleifer, ‘The Expanding Domain of Economics’, p. 53.5. L. Robbins, The Nature and Significance of Economic Science (London: Macmillan,1935), p. 12.6. Ibid. pp. 77–79.


that the agent has, in addition to the virtues of rationality, the virtueof constancy: ‘human behaviour is not compartmentalized’.7 Thesame assumptions can be employed to explain the behaviour of anactor in different roles. The axioms that characterise the agent asan actor in markets apply equally to all other institutional settings.If it is true that individuals act as rational self-interested agents inthe marketplace, ‘the inference should be that they will also actsimilarly in other and nonmarket behavioral settings’.8 The scopeof economic theory is thus quite general. In principle the behaviourof individuals in any social setting, be it politics, the family, thescientific community, or any other association, can be explainedby the same set of assumptions.

The plausibility of this third claim depends in part upon just howmuch of the characterisation of an agent’s behaviour in the marketis taken to carry over to other spheres. The basic assumption is thatthe agent is rational in the sense of aiming, under the constraint ofsome finite budget, to maximise preference satisfaction givencomplete and consistent assignments of probabilities to outcomesof actions and given a particular preference structure—preferencesare complete, reflexive, and transitive. That basic model can betaken in both more modest and more ambitious directions. It canbe made more modest in its assumptions about rationality. Theassumptions about the capacities of the agent to assignprobabilities and calculate expected utilities for all outcomesmight be weakened by allowing a more bounded conception ofrationality.9 The model can be made more ambitious by addingcontent to the assumptions about agents’ preferences. Theassumption of preference maximisation in itself does not rule outthe saint or the benevolent agent who aims to improve the generalwelfare. The economist often does, however, want to rule out suchactors in their explanations of market behaviour. Actors in themarket are assumed to be motivated only by ‘self-interest’ in anarrow sense, to aim only at their own well-being. Adding

7. G. Becker, ‘The Economic Approach to Human Behaviour’, The Economic Approachto Human Behaviour (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 14.8. J. Buchanan, ‘Towards Analysis of Closed Behavioural Systems’ in J. Buchanan and R.Tollison eds. Theory of Public Choice (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972),p. 22.9. H. Simon, Models of Bounded Rationality vols 1–2 (Cambridge Ma.: MIT, 1982).


substantive assumptions about the content of preferences is itselfconsistent with weakening those about rationality.

In claiming to offer a set of assumptions that could potentiallyunify social science, rational choice theory can be taken to useeither weak or strong assumptions about the agent. One responsethe rational choice theorist might make to Dupré’s criticism of thetheory’s unifying aims is that he picks over-ambitious versions ofthe theory as an object of criticism: thus for example, theexplanations offered by Posner and Philipson rely on particularlystrong assumptions about the egoistic motivations of individualswho are HIV positive. Immodesty about the explanatory scope ofrational choice theory, that it incorporates all social science, maylook more plausible given suitable modesty in assumptions aboutthe nature of the rational utility maximising agent. One would needto show how criticism of the immodest assumptions about thenature of the agent had a bearing on problems with more modestversions. In the following section I examine problems with oneimmodest version of the unifying theory that makes strong claimsabout the motivations of rational actors—that offered by publicchoice theory—and show how these may shed light on problemsin weaker versions—the minimal assumptions about thepreference structure of rational agents.

II

Public choice theory represents an immodest extension of theassumptions of neoclassical theory. In extending the assumptionsof neoclassical economics from market to non-market domains, itmakes substantive assumptions about the content of individuals’preferences. It assumes that individuals are self-interested in anarrow sense of the term. Saints are ruled out. In particular theyare ruled out in the primary field to which public choice isextended—that of politics. A central target of public choice theoryis the view that government action can and should be employed torectify ‘market failures’ that arise when real markets depart from‘ideal markets’. The claim that it can relies upon an assumptionthat political actors, bureaucrats and politicians, are benevolentactors concerned to realise the common good or welfare of all.That assumption, the argument goes, presupposes that the axiomsthat define the rational actor in neoclassical theory do not apply to


bureaucrat or politician. These actors are no longer taken to makerational choices that maximise their own utility. They ratherbecome altruistic channels through which the maximisation of thegeneral utility is achieved. The axioms of neoclassical theory areassumed not to apply in the non-market setting of politics:‘conventional wisdom holds that the market is made up of privatecitizens trying to benefit themselves, but that government isconcerned with something called the public interest.’10

The public choice theorist denies this claim. The assumptionsthat characterise the rational agent in economic life should be takento apply also to the explanation of the behaviour of bureaucrat andpolitician in their political activities. State actors act to maximisetheir own interests not the ‘public interest’. Bureaucrats aim atmaximising the size of their bureau budget, since that is correlatedwith their utility understood in terms of personal promotion andadvancement.11. Likewise, in public choice explanation of thebehaviour of voters and politicians, it is assumed that voters actlike consumers and political candidates like firms. Candidates aimto maximise votes and hence gain political office and voters tomaximise the satisfaction of preferences for those goods the statecan deliver.12 The consequence is that state action does not andcould not produce the optimal outcomes of ‘ideal markets’ by othermeans. The self-interested behaviour of bureaucrat, politician andvoter lead, if unchecked by institutional reform, to the constantexpansion of government expenditure and provision, producingoutcomes that are irrational and inefficient. ‘Market failure’ givesway to ‘government failure’.13

Some of the rhetorical strength of public choice theory relies onthe plausibility of this picture of political life. It calls upon acommon scepticism about the motivations of politicians when theyinvoke political ideals in the pursuit of power. It is a scepticism Ishare. However, there are problems in generalising that scepticism

10. G. Tullock, Private Wants, Public Means (New York: Basic Books 1970), p. v.11. See W. Niskanen, Bureaucracy: Servant or Master (London: I.E.A. 1973), pp. 22–3.12. The approach goes back at least as far as A. Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy(New York: Harper Row, 1957). An interesting recent variant of the public choice approachthat departs from the standard account is G. Brennan and L. Lomasky, Democracy andDecision (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).13. G. Brennan and J. Buchanan, The Power to Tax (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1980); W. Niskanen, Bureaucracy and Representative Government (Chicago:Aldine–Atherton), 1971.


to all social spheres. In particular, applied back to the domain inwhich public choice theorists themselves work it is potentiallyself-subverting. If scientists’ appeals to the internal cognitivevalues of the sciences such as truth and validity are treated in thesame way as politicians’ appeals to the public good, then publicchoice models shift quickly into the deflationary approaches toscience that run through recent sociology of scientificknowledge.14 Appeals to truth and validity are mere rhetoricalploys through which scientists pursue more narrowly definedinterests. But then the claims of public choice theorists shouldthemselves be understood as rhetorical stratagems. I do not believethey should for I do not think this account of science is true.15

Scientists may not be saints, but neither are they narrow self-seekers of the kind deflationary approaches assume. One cannotmake inferences about their interests as scientists from theinterests they might have as market or political actors. Under theiridentity as scientists individuals have a particular conception oftheir interests: within traditional scientific institutions, thoseinterests are characterized in terms of recognition by peers of asignificant contribution to a discipline, recognition achieved, forexample, through publication in a peer reviewed journal. Therecognition matters because it confirms the worth of thatcontribution. Appeal to cognitive values can be taken at face value.This conception of self-interest is fostered by particularinstitutional arrangements and can be undermined by others. Onereason, for example, for worry about the shift towards a marketbased system of intellectual property rights in science is thatinterests are redefined: for example, acts of publication whichwere previously ‘self-interested’ are rendered altruistic acts.16

Within different roles—scientist, parent, citizen, consumer—individuals have different conception of what it is to do well. Onecannot make inferences from motivations individuals have asmarket actors to their motivation in distinct roles in otherinstitutional settings. In this regard, it is worth noting that within

14. See D. Wade Hands, ‘The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge’ in R. Backhouse ed.New Directions in Economic Methodology (London: Routledge, 1994) and J. O’Neill TheMarket: Ethics, Knowledge and Politics (London: Routledge, 1998), ch.12.15. J. O’Neill, ‘Rhetoric, Science and Philosophy’, Philosophy of Social Sciencesforthcoming.16. J. O’Neill, ‘Property in Science and the Market’, The Monist, 1990, 73, pp. 601–620.


public choice theory itself, the account of self-interest embodiedwithin the utility function shifts with institutional position. As aconsumer, interests are defined in terms of the acquisition ofproperty rights over commodities—self-interest amounts to adisposition, given a choice between a smaller and larger bundle ofdesired commodities, to choose the larger; as an actor within thepolitical domain, power is assumed to be the object of a person’sinterest; as an executive in the realm of bureaucracy, it is identifiedas the acquisition of status through promotion. It is not clear thatthese shifts are consistent with the assumptions of eithermethodological individualism or constancy. First, while the theoryclaims to start with preferences that exist prior to institutions, someof these preferences can only be identified as those of an actorwithin a particular institutional role. One could not offer a properinterpretation of the preferences in question without reference tothe institutional position and setting. To want promotion, to desireto win an election or to seek to acquire bundles of commoditiesrequires individuals in positions in very particular kinds ofinstitutions. Familiar observations about the characterization ofaction entail that certain preferences and interests cannot bespecified outside of a particular institutional context. It is only asan actor within specific institutional structures that one can actfrom a desire for promotion. The very interpretation of an actionas an expression of a particular preference has an institutionaldimension. As such, references to institutions cannot be eliminatedfrom the explanatory assumptions of the theory. Second, publicchoice assumptions presuppose not just the possibility ofspecifying preferences but more substantive explanatory claims—that different institutions do foster different conceptions of selfinterest. Thus in different roles in different institutional settings,individuals are assumed to have quite distinct conceptions of theirinterests, interests which are themselves in potential competition.Substantive explanatory work is presupposed in the veryspecification of the utility functions of agents in the differentinstitutional settings.

The violation of the assumption that motivations in marketcontexts can be carried over to others are in part disguised by thelanguage of ‘self-interest’. While the claim that agents are self-interested can be taken to thicken up the thinner characterisation


of the agent in rational choice theory as a utility-maximiser, itremains thin. It acts as a space filler for a number of more specificdispositions of character that shift as an agent shifts roles: thedispositions to maximise bundles of commodities, to gain politicalpower, to further ones career in some apparatus, and so on. Therelatively recent language of self-interest, egoism and altruism17

in which the discussion of rational choice is framed is in this regardless transparent than the older language of vices and virtues that itreplaced in the late eighteenth century. Consider for exampleMandeville’s work, in which it is the vices of avarice, prodigality,pride, envy, vanity and folly that have unintended beneficialconsequences;18 or the universals of human nature that Humeoutlines—ambition, avarice, vanity, friendship, generosity, publicspirit.19 Vice and virtue terms describe dispositions of character toinvolve specific desires and feelings towards particular objects:ambition, for power; avarice, for material gain; vanity forrecognition or glory. Terms like self-interest and egoism—thedisposition to act in what one believes to be one’s own interests—are not like that. There is a blank to be filled by the specificationof one’s interests. This shift to the language of self-interest,whatever other advantages it might have, renders less clear theconflicts that arise from social and institutional roles that arethemselves significant in understanding and explaining socialbehaviour. The older terms avarice, vanity, ambition, pridedescribe dispositions of character are associated with differentinstitutional settings. As such they render clearer conflictsbetween different self-interested motivations that are associatedwith institutional conflicts. Classical economic theory of the kindfound in Hume and Smith is in consequence more sensitive thanmodern neoclassical theory to conflicts in motivation acrossinstitutions.

17. The term ‘altruism’ was coined by Comte in the mid-nineteenth century, the term‘egoism’ emerged in the mid-eighteenth, (R. Price, ‘Self-Love’, “Egoism” and Ambizionein Machiavelli’s Thought’, History of Political Thought, 9, 1988, pp. 237–261). Theconcept of self-interest in its modern usage is likewise one that emerges in the late-eighteenth century (A. Hirshman, The Passions and the Interests (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press 1977), especially pp. 31–42).18. B. Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1988) Volume I, p.25 and 100ff.19. D. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965)VIII p. 65. In Smith and Hume the older language of virtues and vices is used alongside thelanguage of self-interest understood as rational self-love.


This sensitivity is a result not just of shifts in language but alsodifferences in the problems classical and neoclassical economictheories address. Classical theory is concerned not just with theworkings of commercial society but the conditions for itsexistence. For that reason it is less inclined to assume that themotivations exhibited in commercial society can be extended toexplain all behaviour, for a central problem lies in the specificationof the structure of motivation that is required for commercialsociety in the first place. Consider Hume’s remarks about theincompatibility of absolute monarchy and commerce:

Commerce, therefore, in my opinion, is apt to decay in absolutegovernments, not because it is there less secure, but because it isless honourable. A subordination of ranks is absolutely necessaryto the support of monarchy. Birth, titles, and place, must behonoured above industry and riches. And while these notionsprevail, all the considerable traders will be tempted to throw up theircommerce, in order to purchase some of those employments, towhich privileges and honours are annexed.20

In traditional societies, ‘birth, titles and place’ are defined as theobject of one’s interest: to sacrifice them for money would be asign of vulgarity. At the limit the prince, driven by the desire forglory, could throw away all goods for its sake. The theme runsthrough Hume’s histories.21.

Hume’s departure from the assumption of constancy is alsoevident in the very passages that are sometimes taken to anticipatepublic choice theories of politics:

Political writers have established it as a maxim, that, in contrivingany system of government, and fixing the several checks andcontrols of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed to bea knave, and to have no other end, in all his actions, than privateinterest.’22

20. D. Hume, ‘Of Civil Liberty’ Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (Indianapolis:Liberty Press, 1985), p. 93.21. Typical is his censure of Richard I: ‘Elated with hopes of fame, which in that ageattended no wars but those against the infidels, he was blind to every other consideration;and when some of his wiser ministers objected to this dissipation of the revenue and powerof the crown, he replied, that he would sell London itself could he find a purchaser’. D.Hume The History of England Volume I, (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1983) p. 38022. D. Hume, ‘Of the Independency of Parliament’ in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary(Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1985), p. 42.


Hume explicitly denies that this is a general truth of humanbehaviour: ‘it appears somewhat strange, that a maxim should betrue in politics, which is false in fact’.23 The point about knaveryin politics is misread if it is understood as an early statement ofthe public choice principles. Indeed it is almost the opposite.Where the public choice theorist sees the problem of consistentlyapplying a picture of a self-seeking individual to the publicdomain, against those who would see the public domain as one ofbenign actors, Hume’s problem is the reverse: why it is that peoplewho are honourable in pursuit of their private interest cease to beso in the public domain. His point is one that applies solely to thepolitical and concerns the behaviour of men when they act inparties, such that the check of personal honour is absent: ‘men aregenerally more honest in their private than their public capacity,and will go greater lengths to serve a party, than when their ownprivate interest is alone concerned. Honour is a great check uponmankind: But where a considerable body of men act together, thischeck is, in a great measure, removed...’.24

My criticisms thus far have focused on an immodest version ofrational choice theory. It is not the case that one can transfersubstantive assumptions about self-interested behaviour in themarket to other domains. Clearly however, the unifying ambitionsof rational choice theory might be rescued by shifting to moremodest assumptions about the structure of preferences that areagnostic about content. Indeed the assumption of self-interest canbe taken to be merely a normative assumption—that in the designof good institutions it is best to assume that individuals are notsaints. When it comes to explanation one might retreat to a moreminimal formal account of rational choice that allows both saintsand sinners.

Does the line of argument outlined above have implications forthe more modest versions? I want to suggest that it does. Theexistence of shifting institutional constraints raises problems notjust for immodest assumptions about the content of individuals’preferences, but also for modest formal assumptions about thepreference structures of rational agents. It is not just conceptionsof interest that shift with institutional role, but also conceptions of

23. Ibid. pp. 42–43.24. Ibid.p. 43.


appropriate behaviour. To act in a particular institutional role is toaccept certain ends and constraints, including constraints onchoices. That this is the case raises problems with the modestformal assumptions about the preference structures of individualsmade within rational choice theory. Shifts in constraints andobjects of choice in different institutional contexts are inconsistentwith a picture of rational individuals as agents with a singleconsistent preference order of the kind that Robbins outlines andwhich subsequent theory has developed. Rather, in differentinstitutional contexts the same individual can be expected toexhibit different preference orders. The axioms of rational choicein their modest form cannot be assumed to hold for institutionallyembedded choices.

Consider the claim that preferences are transitive: if anindividual given a choice from a set {a,b} would choose a, andgiven a set {b,c} would choose b, then transitivity enjoins thatgiven {c,a} a rational agent would choose a. Consider thefollowing version of an apocryphal story. You are on holidayabroad and come across a restaurant. After a wonderful meal youwait for the fruit bowl: given a choice between a small apple andan orange, you’ll choose an orange; given a choice between anorange and a large apple you’ll choose a large apple; and given achoice between a large apple and a small apple you’ll choose thelarge apple. Choices exhibit transitivity. Your partner returns froma conversation with the waiter. You’ve made a terrible mistake. Itis not a restaurant at all, but someone’s home—the locals are veryhospitable. They still insist you have some fruit. The structure ofyour choices will now be different: given a choice between a smallapple and an orange, you would choose the orange; given thechoice between an orange and a large apple you would choose thelarge apple; but given the choice between a large apple and a smallapple, you will choose the smaller apple. Your choices violatetransitivity.25 There is however no irrationality. The structure ofchoice reflects a constraint of politeness on your choices as a guestthat is absent in the choice as a consumer. There is no reason toassume that the same assumptions about the structure of choice inone role will extend to another.


Violations of transitivity also emerge where individuals areembedded in a variety of different institutional roles, and the setfrom which the choice is made effects the institutional framing ofthe choice. Take for example choices involving three possiblecandidates for an academic job—a person with whom one hasgood personal relations a, an academic who works in one’s ownfield of research b, and an academic who fills the faculty’steaching requirements c. Given a choice between a and b youmight choose a: the different qualities of the candidates benefitthe department equally well and from the faculty viewpoint thereis nothing to choose between them, so it becomes a matter apersonal choice—between a colleague one gets on with and onewith whom your personal research interests fit, and in that contextyou choose a. Given a choice between b and c, one might chooseb: given those alternatives it becomes a matter of institutionalpolitics—there has been a long running dispute between thedepartment and faculty over research as against teaching—and inloyalty to the department one might place its research interestsabove the faculty’s teaching demands. However, if it came to achoice between a and c one might choose c: given a conflictbetween good personal relations and the faculty’s teachingrequirements, the faculty takes priority and personal relationshave to take second place. The choice structure is intransitive.Again there is nothing unintelligible or irrational in that structureof choice. As the set of alternatives shift, so does the institutionalframing of the choice and with it the dimensions over whichcomparisons are made. In the first choice one chooses ‘in apersonal capacity’; in the second one chooses ‘as a member of adepartment’; in the third one chooses ‘as a representative of thefaculty’: the set of options one is offered affects which role isappropriate. Choices are best explained not by some singlepreference ordering, but one’s beliefs about how the conflict in

25. The example is a variant of one in P. Anand Foundations of Rational Choice UnderRisk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) p. 67. The story is from a school selectiontest. The standard response to such failures of transitivity is to re-write the choices so thattransitivity is restored. The choices are ‘a from a and b’, ‘ b from b and c’ and ‘c from aand c’. The response I think empties the transitivity axiom of power. More important here,it is not true that such a re-writing will do the trick of rendering the choices consistentwithout some role constraint. One has to say ‘as a guest at a dinner party c from a and c’but ‘as a consumer in a restaurant a from a and c’. However, writing in roles grants thepoint at issue.


different roles—personal, departmental and institutional—oughtto be resolved.26 What might look irrational for an individualconsidered in abstraction from institutional position is notirrational given a characterisation of the individual embeddedwithin various institutional roles. Choices are explained by theways in which the individual is institutionally embedded.

Whatever the plausibility of rational choice assumptionsconcerning the preference structures for rational consumers in themarket place, it is not the case that one can apply them in otherinstitutional contexts. One cannot precisely because of the waysin which choices are institutionally embedded, such that the sameactor can have different constraints on choice in the different rolesshe plays. The consequence is that it is not just the immodestversions of neoclassical expansion that fail, but also the modestversions. Thus I concur with Dupré’s scepticism about the capacityof rational choice theory under a neoclassical interpretation tounify the social sciences. It follows that I also agree that it is ill-suited to act as a bridgehead from a unified social science to thebiological sciences. In particular, given the institutional contextrequired to properly ascribe preferences, I remain unconvincedthat sociobiology could ‘supply the preferences’ that are given inneoclassical economics. Finally, in stressing institutional contextin the interpretation and explanation of behaviour I also concurwith Dupré in rejecting the assumption that explanation mustalways work in the direction of a macro to micro reduction.

However, my arguments against the particular assumptions ofrational choice theory do not show that there is something inprinciple mistaken with the aspirations of social theories to offera unified explanation of human behaviour. Nor do I believe it is an‘imperialistic’ fault of theories to attempt, on the basis of a limitedset of assumptions, ‘the illumination of an ever greater variety ofhuman behaviour’.27 In the final section I briefly defend thoseunifying aspirations.

26. For example, one simple principle that generates the choice series is this: (1) choosefrom the faculty perspective, (2) unless there is a conflict between research and teaching inwhich case choose from the departmental perspective; (3) if one is indifferent from facultyand departmental perspectives, choose from a personal perspective. In the example: givena and b, clause 3 applies and a is chosen. Given b and c, clause 2 applies and b is chosen.Given c and a, clause 1 applies and c is chosen.27. J. Dupré, ‘Against Reductionist Explanations of Human Behaviour’ p. 153.


III

In the background to Dupré’s specific criticisms of the unifyingambitions of rational choice theory and sociobiology lies hisdefence of the disunity of the sciences.28 He rejects theassumption that the sciences can or should be unified. Dupré’sscepticism here is explicitly aimed at global programmes forunification. Such programmes themselves come in a variety offorms. Even in the Vienna circle at the height of its unifyingambitions, the aspirations for a global unification of science werecomplex. There are different senses in which a body of scientificdisciplines might be unified: in method, in language and inexplanation. The target of Dupré’s criticism is explanatoryunification in the laws of science—the reductionist project inwhich the laws in one group of sciences would be in principlelogically derivable via bridge-laws from those of some other morebasic discipline, and ultimately, through a chain of such reductionsto some single discipline, normally physics.29 That project was,within the Vienna circle, recognised as problematic. Neurathrejected the project completely: ‘would it not be preferable to treatall statements and all sciences as coordinated and to abandon forgood the traditional hierarchy: physical sciences, biologicalsciences, social sciences and similar types of ‘scientificpyramidism’?’30 Even Carnap, while defending the aim of globalunification of laws, recognised that it might not be realised:‘[T]here is at present no unity of laws. The construction of onehomogeneous system of laws for the whole of science is an aimfor the future development of science. The aim cannot be shownto be unattainable. But we do not, of course, know whether it willever be reached.’.31 The Vienna Circle’s programme of unifyingthe sciences was concerned primarily with the construction of a

28. J. Dupré, The Disorder of Things (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993)29. See P. Oppenheim and H. Putnam, ‘Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis’ in H.Feigl, M. Scriven and G. Maxwell eds Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1958).30. O. Neurath, Foundations of the Social Sciences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press1944), p. 8. He also rejected the first programme for a unified method for the sciences. Hedid defend the project for a unified physicalist language of science which carried with iteliminativist implications.31. R. Carnap ‘Logical Foundations of the Unity of Science’ in Neurath et al.,Encyclopedia and Unified Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1938 p. 61.


single language for the sciences and the arguments for it focusedon the need for coordination between sciences for the purposes ofpractical application, for what Neurath refers to as theorchestration of the sciences.32

Whatever the defensibility or otherwise of these global projects,there is a distinction that needs to be drawn between global andlocal aspirations for unification.33 Local unifications in explan-ation in which different laws in particular domains are shown tobe derivable from a single set of theoretical assumptions—as sayNewtonian mechanics and gravitational theory unify the previouslaws of celestial and terrestrial motion—while sometimes offeredas paradigms of reduction34 are as such quite independent of anyglobal ambitions. Local unifications are a necessary condition forglobal unification, but can and do have independent motivations.Rational choice theory under its neoclassical interpretation, assuch, offers a local unification in the social sciences. While it doesnot deliver local unification, the attempt to do so is quite proper.Local unification is built into the concept of explanatory power asa criterion of theory choice. The explanatory power of a theory isits capacity to explain and predict a wide variety of phenomena orto solve a wide variety of problems from a small set ofassumptions. The ‘ever greater variety’ of the phenomena, thefewer the assumptions, the greater the power. Clearly explanatorypower is not the only value invoked in theory choice and it mayconflict with others. However, it remains a central and proper valueof theory choice. To prefer unifying theories is to prefer theoriesof greater to lesser explanatory power. Systematic suspicion oflocal unification amounts to preferring theories with lowerexplanatory power to theories of higher explanatory power. Thatcannot be a sound criterion of theory choice. Neither can it be afault of mere ‘imperialism’ in rational choice theory that it aimsat local unification.

32. See Carnap op. cit. pp. 73–4 and O. Neurath ‘The Orchestration of the Science by theEncyclopedia of Logical Empiricism’ in Philosophical Papers 1923–1946 (Dordrecht:Reidel, 1983). The coordinating ambitions of Neurath’s work was linked to problems insocialist planning. See J. O’Neill ‘Ecology, Socialism and Austrian Economics’ in E.Nemeth, R. Heinrich and A. Soulez eds. Enzyklopedie und Politik (Vienna: Weiner Reiheforthcoming).33. The distinction is indeed noted in Dupré op. cit. p. 228.34. E. Nagel The Structure of Science (Hackett: Indianapolis, 1979) p. 339.

Against Reductionist Explanations of Human Behaviour: John O’Neill

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