Re: On Sociology & a correction re Herb

["Alan G. Isaac" <AISAAC@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jamie,

It feels like you're ducking something here. You have avoided saying
that the folk psychological concept of action as the manifestation
of desire and belief is useless. That is natural, since we use this
constantly as an interpretive criteria. But then if utility theory
at its most abstract simply embodies this concept, why will you
not grant utility theory equal usefulness?

We already agree that utility theory treats much as given that is
worthy of analysis. And I agree that inquiry into preference
formation raises question about utility theory based welfare
analysis (not that it suggests an alternative, btw).
But your suggestion that utility theory can simply be replaced
by a theory of socialization and preference formation simply
doesn't follow: once you have the norms and preferences,
how are they reflected in behavior? This is exactly the node
at which folk psychological notions (and thus utility theory)
enters. From the perspective of utility theory, the qualitative
similarity to which you refer is just the tendency to manifest
beliefs and desires (however formed) in action.

You claim that your research interests are in a domain in which
utility theory adds little. That may be, but as an observation
it does not diminish my earlier question. Doesn't the
usefulness of utility theory depend on the domain of application?

--Alan G. Isaac

On Fri, 11 Nov 1994 11:49:05 -0700 James K. Galbraith said:
>
>1. Alan Isaac asks why we should view utility theory as limiting rather than
>stimulating inquiry into such topics as preference formation. It is quite
>true, as he says, that we could take up the challenge implicit in the fact
>that utility theory has nothing to say about preference formation, and it is
>also true that there is nothing in the language that prevents us from having
>a discussion about "the forces behind preferences" or what-have-you. But I
>think this doesn't get to the heart of the problem.
>
>We have a theory which holds that choice is a matter of maximizing a given
>utility function subject to a given set of constraints. This theory has wide
>implications for social arrangements: among other things, free choice takes
>on a privileged status among social desiderata, and public endeavors are
>made subject to a calculation of benefits that is largely relative to the
>pre-existing set of preferences. But what if preferences are subject to
>social forces of preference formation? What if preferences change over the
>act of consumption, so that ex post and ex ante they are not the same? In
>these cases, the welfare implications of the theory lose their definiteness.
>What remains in that case is just an empty shell: a set  of descriptive
>statements that can be used about anything, and that lack empirical and
>normative content.
>
>I would hazard the guess that resistance to this lies behind resistance to
>placing study of preference formation into the core areas of inquiry of
>utility theorists.
>
>Looking at the other side of this coin, suppose we undertake a study of the
>forces of socialization and preference formation. Suppose we come up with a
>set of propositions about that. What then is the role of utility theory,
>other than to impose a complicated and not very necessary mathematical
>structure on a problem that has already been solved in a different way? To
>make the point slightly more concrete, it would seem to me that a study of
>preference formation would be a study of the influence of group identity,
>cultural traditions, technology, and advertising, among other things. What
>would be added to this, if it were done, by requiring that it pass through a
>conceptual filter whose premise is that all people are qualitatively
>similar?
>
>Or to put the matter in a third and final way: suppose I don't like utility
>theory and don't need it for a series of questions I happen to be pursuing.
>Why should it then be considered a fault of my analysis, that I root it in
>some other tradition? Economics is the least plural of disciplines, surely
>that tells us something about limited domains of inquiry.