The principle of rationality (or rationality principle) was coined by
Karl R. Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the cl ...
in his Harvard Lecture of 1963, and published in his book ''Myth of Framework''. It is related to what he called the 'logic of the situation' in an ''Economica'' article of 1944/1945, published later in his book ''The Poverty of Historicism''. According to Popper’s rationality principle, agents act in the most adequate way according to the objective situation. It is an idealized conception of human behavior which he used to drive his model of
situational analysis
Situational logic (also situational analysis) is a concept advanced by Karl Popper in his ''The Poverty of Historicism''. Situational logic is a process by which a social scientist tries to reconstruct the problem situation confronting an agent in ...
.
Popper
Popper called for social science to be grounded in what he called
situational analysis
Situational logic (also situational analysis) is a concept advanced by Karl Popper in his ''The Poverty of Historicism''. Situational logic is a process by which a social scientist tries to reconstruct the problem situation confronting an agent in ...
. This requires building models of social situations which include individual actors and their relationship to social institutions, e.g. markets, legal codes, bureaucracies, etc. These models attribute certain aims and information to the actors. This forms the 'logic of the situation', the result of reconstructing meticulously all circumstances of an historical event. The 'principle of rationality' is the assumption that people are instrumental in trying to reach their goals, and this is what drives the model. Popper believed that this model could be continuously refined to approach the objective truth.
Popper called his 'principle of rationality' ''nearly empty'' (a technical term meaning without
empirical content) and ''strictly speaking false'', but nonetheless ''tremendously useful''. These remarks earned him a lot of criticism because seemingly he had swerved from his famous
Logic of Scientific Discovery
''The Logic of Scientific Discovery'' is a 1959 book about the philosophy of science by the philosopher Karl Popper. Popper rewrote his book in English from the 1934 (imprint '1935') German original, titled ''Logik der Forschung. Zur Erkenntnisthe ...
.
Among the many philosophers having discussed his 'principle of rationality' from the 1960s up to now are
Noretta Koertge
Noretta Koertge is an American philosopher of science noted for her work on Karl Popper and scientific rationality.
Career
She worked since 1981 as a Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Indiana University and i ...
, R. Nadeau,
Viktor J. Vanberg,
Hans Albert
Hans Albert (born 8 February 1921) is a German philosopher. Born in Cologne, he lives in Heidelberg.
His fields of research are Social Sciences and General Studies of Methods. He is a critical rationalist, paying special attention to rational ...
, E. Matzner,
Ian C. Jarvie, Mark A. Notturno,
John Wettersten, Ian C. Böhm.
Newell
In the context of
knowledge-based systems
A knowledge-based system (KBS) is a computer program that reasons and uses a knowledge base to solve complex problems. The term is broad and refers to many different kinds of systems. The one common theme that unites all knowledge based systems i ...
, Newell (in 1982) proposed the following principle of rationality: "If an agent has knowledge that one of its actions will lead to one of its goals, then the agent will select that action."
[ Allen Newell. ''The knowledge level.'' Artificial Intelligence, 18:87-127, 1982.] This principle is employed by agents at the
knowledge level to move closer to a desired goal. An important philosophical difference between Newell and Popper is that Newell argued that the knowledge level is real in the sense that it exists in nature and is not made up. This allowed Newell to treat the rationality principle as a way of understanding nature and avoid the problems Popper ran into by treating knowledge as non physical and therefore non empirical.
See also
*
Situational logic
Situational logic (also situational analysis) is a concept advanced by Karl Popper in his ''The Poverty of Historicism''. Situational logic is a process by which a social scientist tries to reconstruct the problem situation confronting an agent in ...
*
Rational choice
Rational choice theory refers to a set of guidelines that help understand economic and social behaviour. The theory originated in the eighteenth century and can be traced back to political economist and philosopher, Adam Smith. The theory postula ...
*
Hermeneutics
Hermeneutics () is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than interpretative principles or methods used when immediate ...
*
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...
*
Knowledge level modeling Knowledge level modeling is the process of theorizing over observations about a world and, to some extent, explaining the behavior of an agent as it interacts with its environment.
Crucial to the understanding of knowledge level modeling are Allen ...
*
Rationality
*
Cognitive science
References
{{Reflist
Artificial intelligence