Lukas Beck

Philosophers are increasingly recognizing models as vital tools for conducting normative inquiry, emphasizing their relevance in fields like normative ethics, formal epistemology, decision theory, computer science, and economics. Yet, the current discourse on such normative models rests on a crucial oversight: virtually all scholars in the field fail to acknowledge that normative models – depending on their precise role – require very different treatment and pose unique theoretical problems. To rectify this shortcoming, this paper proposes a typology that classifies normative models according to the aims they serve. We distinguish four types: characterizing, analytical, testing, and justifying normative models. The typology offers several theoretical benefits. First, it allows scholars to more effectively utilize a modeling methodology in normative inquiry. Second, it helps to uncover the unique theoretical challenges that different types of models pose. Third, the typology provides the foundation for a more productive debate on the success conditions of normative models.

Recommender Systems (RS) are among the most widely-deployed types of algorithmic systems, shaping the contents and items that billions of users see, engage with, and purchase on a daily basis. A dominant narrative in the literature characterizes RS as estimating user’s preferences and using this information to recommend good items for users. What is striking about this narrative is that it offers a welfare consequentialist justification for RS, in which preference satisfaction is the core welfare criterion that tells us how to rank outcomes in terms of agents' welfare. We argue that this justification is severely undertheorized and defective. More specifically, RS research currently lacks a coherent conceptualization of the relationship between preference, choice, and welfare. As a consequence, most RS research lacks an explicit and coherent theory of welfare-relevant preferences. Instead, it gestures towards outdated economic theories that have since been contravened by decades of research in the behavioral sciences and philosophy. To make our case, we draw out several interconnected challenges that call into question whether RS deals in genuine information about welfare-relevant preferences. To address these challenges, we sketch the contours of an interdisciplinary research program to put RS on coherent welfare-theoretical foundations.

Despite on-going debates in philosophy and cognitive science, dual process theory (DPT) remains a popular framework for theorizing about human cognition. Its central hypothesis is that cognitive processing can be subsumed under two generic types. In this paper, we argue that the putative success and popularity of this framework remains overstated and gives rise to certain misunderstandings. If DPT has predictive and/or explanatory power, it is through offering descriptions of cognitive phenomena via functional analysis. But functional descriptions require an individuation strategy. To date, there has been no systematic exploration of how Type 1 and Type 2 are functionally individuated. Following recent debates in philosophy of cognitive science, we consider three individuation strategies (i.e., abstraction, reification, fictionalization) and assess the legitimacy of each in relation to DPT. This leads us to the verdict that the most viable route for justifying DPT is to construe Type 1 and Type 2 processes as reifications. We conclude that, construed as reifications, the common rationales offered by proponents of DPT for demarcating Type 1 and Type 2 processes do not escape criticism and require further theoretical justification.

This article targets the problems of endogenous preferences for welfare assessment in the context of large-scale interventions that, for instance, concern us in environmental economics. Prominent economists have argued that the problem of endogenous preferences is particularly pressing in these cases. However, I argue that while there are promising solutions to deal with this problem when it comes to small-scale interventions (e.g. nudging), those do not work for large-scale interventions. Based on this, I offer a framework that allows us to preserve the central role of preferences for welfare assessment also in cases of large-scale interventions.

At the heart of economics is a concept that bears a striking resemblance to a desire. Economists use preferences to explain and predict people's choices. However, what exactly we are talking about when we talk about preferences in the context of economics has been debated in the discipline for well over 150 years. This chapter outlines and critically assesses the dominant views on the nature of preferences in economics. It also offers some reflections on the relevance of the debate about the nature of preferences in economics.

Despite on-going debates in philosophy and cognitive science, dual process theory (DPT) remains a popular framework for theorizing about human cognition. Its central hypothesis is that cognitive processing can be subsumed under two generic types. In this paper, we argue that the putative success and popularity of this framework remains overstated and gives rise to certain misunderstandings. If DPT has predictive and/or explanatory power, it is through offering descriptions of cognitive phenomena via functional analysis. But functional descriptions require an individuation strategy. To date, there has been no systematic exploration of how Type 1 and Type 2 are functionally individuated. Following recent debates in philosophy of cognitive science, we consider three individuation strategies (i.e., abstraction, reification, fictionalization) and assess the legitimacy of each in relation to DPT. This leads us to the verdict that the most viable route for justifying DPT is to construe Type 1 and Type 2 processes as reifications. We conclude that, construed as reifications, the common rationales offered by proponents of DPT for demarcating Type 1 and Type 2 processes do not escape criticism and require further theoretical justification.

In this paper, we explicate an underappreciated distinction between two conceptions of valuing. According to the first conception, which we call the surface-account, valuing something is exclusively a matter of having certain behavioral, cognitive, and emotional dispositions. In contrast, the second conception, which we call the layer-account, posits that valuing is constituted by the presence of certain representational mental states underlying those dispositions. In the first part of the paper, we introduce the distinction in proper detail and show that the accounts have different implications regarding the valuings of agents. In the second part, we situate the accounts within the extant philosophical literature. First, we relate them to the recent debate between so-called dispositionalists and representationalists about the nature of beliefs and point out that this debate can help anticipate some of the main dialectical fault lines to be expected between surface- and layer-theorists. Second, we examine the contemporary meta-ethical debate on conceptualizing valuing, indicate that scholars have largely ignored the distinction introduced here, and outline that this oversight has substantial theoretical costs: as we show, key arguments within the meta-ethical debate require thorough re-evaluation in light of the proposed distinction. The third part of the paper illustrates the theoretical leverage of the distinction for practical research by exploring its implications for behavioral welfare economics.

Scholars disagree about the plausibility of preference purification. Some see it as a familiar phenomenon. Others denounce it as conceptually incoherent, postulating that it relies on the psychologically implausible assumption of an inner rational agent. I argue that different notions of rationality can be leveraged to advance the debate: procedural rationality and structural rationality. I explicate how structural rationality, in contrast to procedural rationality, allows us to offer an account of the guiding idea behind preference purification that avoids inner rational agents. Afterward, I address two pressing challenges against preference purification that emerge under the structural rationality account.

When economists perform experiments, they do so typically in one of two traditions: cognitive psychology experiments in the heuristics and biases tradition (H&B-experiments) and experimental economics in the tradition of Vernon Smith. What sets these two traditions apart? In this paper, I offer a novel conceptualization of their pervasive disagreements. Focusing on how each camp approaches preferences, one of the most fundamental concepts in economics, I argue that experimental economics can be reconstructed as holding that the constituents of preferences can be partially located in agents’ environments, while H&B-experiments implicitly assume that the constituents of preferences are entirely located within agents’ bodies. The paper (i) outlines how my reconstruction can account for the disagreement between the two paradigms, (ii) defends the plausibility of this reconstruction, and (iii) highlights its implications for the debate about the nature of preferences in economics.

Functionalism about kinds is still the dominant style of thought in the special sciences, like economics, psychology, and biology. Generally construed, functionalism is the view that states or processes can be individuated based on what role they play rather than what they are constituted of or realized by. Recently, Weiskopf has posited a reformulation of functionalism on the model-based approach to explanation. We refer to this reformulation as ‘new functionalism’. In this paper, we seek to defend new functionalism and to recast it in light of the concrete explanatory aims of the special sciences. In particular, we argue that the assessment of the explanatory legitimacy of a functional kind needs to take into account the explanatory purpose of the model in which the functional kind is employed. We aim at demonstrating this by appealing to model-based explanations from the social and behavioral sciences. Specifically, we focus on preferences and signals as functional kinds. Our argument is intended to have the double impact of deflecting criticisms against new functionalism from the perspective of mechanistic decomposition while also expanding the scope of new functionalism to encompass the social and behavioral sciences.

In this paper, we explore an under-investigated question concerning the class of formal models that aim at providing normative guidance. We call such models normative models. In particular, we examine the question of how normative models can successfully exert normative guidance. First, we highlight the absence of a discussion of this question – which is surprising given the extensive debate about the success conditions of descriptive models – and motivate its importance. Second, we introduce and discuss two potential accounts of the success conditions of normative models. Our tentative conclusion is that the second account is more promising.

Mill (1872, 1874) is an early proponent of the thesis that economics has a special domain in which it can operate relatively independently of findings from other sciences. Contra Mill, I argue that this so-called separateness-thesis is best defendedunder an externalist interpretation of Rational Choice Theory (RCT). Mill’s defence is consistent with an internalist interpretation of RCT. Internalism holds that RCT depicts psychological mechanisms operating in economic agents. I argue that such a defence fails to establish separateness, because it makes economics highly depended on psychological findings. However, externalism understands RCT as an adequate description of how agents react to incentives if certain environmental structures are present. Under this interpretation, we can defend separateness by investigating which features of an environmental structure will lead agents to behave in accordance with RCT. Thereby, we can derive indicators that enable us to demarcate a separate domain for economics.