Lior Nissim Grinman
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
One prevailing economic policy proposal to counteract irrational decision-making is to reconstruct the preferences individuals would hold had they been rational and then design policies that will encourage them to act in accordance with these rationalized preferences. However, there has been a recent pushback against this approach, suggesting that irrational choices should be respected in policy contexts. Importantly, both of these approaches claim to promote people’s welfare. This dialectic gives rise to two interrelated questions: Firstly, can both of these responses to irrational decision-making be appropriate in different contexts? If so, secondly, how can we make sense of this notion that in welfare policymaking there exists a rationale to correct irrational behavior in some contexts while simultaneously advocating for its respect in others – and yet in both contexts the arguments pivot on the satisfaction of people’s preferences?
In this paper, I utilize policy examples from behavioral welfare economics to first argue that viewing the above two approaches as complementary rather than opposites aligns more closely with our intuitions. I then argue that a Functionalist interpretation of preferences can account for the appropriateness of these responses in different contexts. I also highlight the challenges faced by other prevalent interpretations of preferences in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences in capturing this intuitive appropriateness-in-context claim.
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Chair: Damiano Ranzenigo
Time: September 8th, 15:20-15:50
Location: SR 1.003
SOPhiA 2026 