Solomonic Judgements: Studies in the Limitation of Rationality

by Jon Elster

This volume of essays is very much a sequel to the two earlier collections by Jon Elster, Ulysses and the Sirens and Sour Grapes. His topic is rationality - its scope, its limitations, and its failures. Elster considers rational responses to the insufficiency of reason itself, and to the 'indeterminacies' in deploying rational-choice theory and discusses the irrationality of not seeing when, where, and what these are. A key essay which gives the collection its title examines disputes in cases of child custody, which are paradigmatically indeterminate. Leaving aside cases where one parent is patently unfit and assuming that protracted dispute is against the immediate interests of the child, Elster argues that three options present themselves: a strong presumption in favour of the mother, a strong presumption in favour of the primary caretaker (also likely to be the mother), and tossing a coin. Though the first two options may be preferable in the short/medium term, Elster argues that there is a case for randomisation in the long term. The book will be read with interest by anyone concerned with political and social science.

Genres: Philosophy

248 pages, Hardcover

First published July 28, 1989

About the author

Jon Elster ، born 22 February 1940, Oslo) is a Norwegian social and political theorist who has authored works in the philosophy of social science and rational choice theory. He is also a notable proponent of analytical Marxism, and a critic of neoclassical economics and public choice theory, largely on behavioral and psychological grounds.

In 2016, he was awarded the 22nd Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science for his contributions to political science.

Reviews

[Will S · Rating 4 out of 5]

This "book" is really three interrelated essays plus a tangentially related fourth tacked on at the end. They vary in quality.

The first essay is in essence an overview of Elster's previous two books, Ulysses and the Sirens and Sour Grapes, furnished with some additional findings in social psychology. It is a solid but unexceptional summary of the limits of rational choice, both in principle and with empirical psychology considered.

The second essay is an outstanding discussion of probabilities, lotteries, and the value of lotteries given the limits of rationality discussed in the first essay. This essay is by far the longest (90 of the 215 pages) and in my view alone makes the book worth buying if you're interested in these topics. I saw constant references to this chapter in later works on lotteries and sortition (e.g. Dowlan's Political Potential of Sortition and Peter Stone's Luck of the Draw) and it is easy to see why given how comprehensive and incisive this chapter is.

The third essay is essentially an application of the second chapter's discussions of lotteries as a useful vehicle for rationally indeterminate decisions. The case study is of child custody settlements in divorce cases, and it advances the initially shocking argument that in many cases of custody battles, they should just flip a coin for primary custody. I thought this chapter had interesting moments, but was far too long (over 50 pages) for what is a single case-study of the themes discussed in the 2nd chapter.

The fourth chapter is at best a digression, or, less charitably, a non-sequitur from the first three chapters. It discusses the possibilities of a "rational" politics. It was an excellent summary of many arguments scattered through the philosophy literature on the impossibility of having a political system ever operate as rationally even as an individual could, but was not very original on its own. The one attempt at originality is an argument that deontological justice can overcome Burkean/Oakeshottian worries that indeterminacy of future outcomes renders consequentialist arguments for social change pointless speculations. Elster surprisingly agrees with them about the charge against consequentialism, but argues deontological justice, found in authors like Dworkin and Rawls, overcomes these worries. I thought this was wholly unpersuasive, since, as many of Rawls's followers note (most explicitly Thomas Pogge in Realizing Rawls), his theory is still "semi-consequentialist," in the sense that it seeks to bring about consequences that realize perfect procedural justice, which means all Elster accomplished in his argument is to push the issue back one level: why think that the reforms will actually bring about the deontological justice you seek?