Construing Sen on Commitment
نویسنده
چکیده
One of Amartya Sen’s most distinctive claims, and perhaps also one of his most controversial, is that there is an altruistic attitude toward others that does not make sense within the terms of rational choice theory, however broadly that theory is construed. He describes this attitude as one of “commitment” to others, contrasting itwith egoismandalsowith adistinct altruistic attitude he calls “sympathy.” It involves recognizing the goals of another and, regardless of whether or not this answers to independent goals of one’s own – regardless of whether or not one internalizes those goals in “sympathy” with the other – letting them impact on how one behaves. Committing oneself to another in this way is, on the face of it, a fairly common sort of exercise. Surely we often do take the goals of others into account in the manner proposed. We are bent on pursuit of our own ends, we discover that acting as they require will frustrate someone else’s projects, and then we pause, take stock, and adjust what we were going to do so that the other will not suffer unduly at our hands. But though commitment is phenomenologically plausible in this way, it looks to be architecturally problematic. On Sen’s conceptualization, it characteristically involves putting aside one’s own goals and acting on those of another. But how could one ever fail to act on one’s own goals? The idea offends against a picture of human psychology accepted on almost all sides, whether among professionals or among the folk. This paper attempts to expound Sen’s view, especially as he has presented it in the most recent statements that he has given or reprinted (Sen 2002); and then to explain why he is led to endorse a position that offends, in formulation if not in substance, against our common sense about action. There are two parts to the paper. The first is devoted to the expository task, the second to the explanatory one.
منابع مشابه
Sen on Rationality, Commitment and Preferences
This article discusses Sen’s critique of the behavioral implications of revealed preference theory. Sen proposes the concept of commitment as a way to account for the possibility of counter-preferential choice. More generally, it is part of an argument against the thesis that rationality may be reduced to some criteria of internal consistency of choices. The main purpose of this paper is to sho...
متن کاملMark Peacock Commitment and Goals Comment on Christoph Hanisch , “ Negative Goals and Identity ”
In this Comment, I examine Christoph Hanisch’s recent contribution to this journal. In commenting on Hanisch’s essay, I offer an interpretation of Amartya Sen’s notion of ‘commitment’ which makes committed choices both uncontroversial and quotidian. This interpretation contrasts with those which see some of Sen’s pronouncements on commitment to be obviously false, counterintuitive or psychologi...
متن کاملMark S . Peacock Sen ’ s Apples : Commitment , Agent Relativity and Social Norms
This paper examines Amartya Sen’s notion of ‘commitment’ in light of Geoffrey Brennan’s recent discussion thereof. Its aim is to elucidate one type of commitment which consists in following social norms. To this end, I discuss Sen’s ‘apples’ example from his ‘Rational fools’ essay (section 2). In section 3, I draw some implications of commitments in Sen’s work for the concept of ‘agent relativi...
متن کاملThe Role of Commitment in Cooperative Negotiation
Cooperative information agents need mechanisms that enable them to work together eeectively while solving common problems. We investigate the use of commitment by agents to proposed actions as a mechanism that allow agents to work concurrently on interdependent problems. Judicious use of commitment can not only increase the throughput of cooperative information systems, but also allow them to d...
متن کامل