Rationality and Freedom by Amartya Sen


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ProductID: 80035 - Hardcover - 736 Pages (Year: 2003)
Oxford University Press ~ ISBN: 0195665287

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Indiaclub.com Description

Rationality and Freedom are among the most profound and contentious concepts in philosophy and the social sciences. In this volume on rationality, freedom, and justice, the distinguished economist and philosopher Amartya Sen brings clarity and insight to these difficult issues.

Sen scrutinizes and departs from the standard criteria of rationality, and shows how it can be seen in terms of subjecting one’s values as well as choices to the demands of reason and critical scrutiny. This capacious approach is utilized to illuminate the demands of rationality in individual choice (including decisions under uncertainty) as well as social choice (including cost benefit analysis and environmental assessment).

Identifying a reciprocity in the relationship between rationality and freedom, Sen argues that freedom cannot be assessed independently of a person’s reasoned preferences and valuations, just as rationality, in turn, requires freedom of thought. Sen uses the discipline of social choice theory (a subject he has helped to develop) to illuminate the demands of reason and the assessment of freedom. The latter is the subject matter of Sen’s previously unpublished Arrow Lectures included here.

Table of Contents

Preface

PART I: GENERAL INTRODUCTIONS

Introduction: Rationality and Freedom
The Possibility of social Choice

PART II: RATIONALITY: FORM AND SUBSTANCE

Internal Consistency of Choice
Maximization and the Act of Choice
Goals, Commitment, and Identity
Rationality and Uncertainty
Non-Binary Choice and Preference

PART III: RATIONALITY AND SOCIAL CHOICE

Rationality and Social Choice
Individual Preference as the Basis of Social Choice
Social Choice and Justice
Information and Invariance in Normative Choice

PART IV: LIBERTY AND SOCIAL CHOICE

Liberty and Social Choice
Minimal Liberty
Right: Formulation and Consequences

PART V: PERSPECTIVES AND POLICIES

Positional Objectivity
On the Darwinian view of Progress Markets and Freedoms
Environmental Evaluation and Social Choice
The Discipline of Costa-Benefit Analysis

PART VI: FREEDOM AND SOCIAL CHOICE: THE ARROW LECTURES

Introductory Remarks
Opportunities and Freedoms
Processes, Liberty and Rights
Freedom and the Evaluation of Opportunity

Name Index

Subject Index

About the Author

AMARTYA SEN is the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Science. He has been President of the Indian Economic Association, the American Economic Association, the International Economic Association, and the Econometric Society. He has taught at Calcutta, Delhi, Oxford, Cambridge, the London School of Economics, and Harvard.

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