Integrating Emotion and Rationality in Behavioral Models of Decision Making

摘要

Recent experimental evidence (Damasio 1994), (Bechara, Tranel, & Damasio 1997), suggests that emotions, rather than being sand in the machinery of rationality, are a condition of possibility of rational decision. The main goal of this paper is to present a model of the functional role of emotions in decision making. The offered model applies ideas first presented in (Simon 1967) to the problem of rational decision. The model is then used in order to interpret the experimental evidence and in order to suggest possible applications in knowledge representation. It is proposed that three aspects of choice require the kind of 'interrupting control' hypothesized by Simon: (a) the specification of a feasible set, (b) the determination of mechanisms for picking, rather than choosing, in ties, and (c) the use and selection of heuristics. The application of normative theories of choice, which are partition-sensitive, like the one presented in (Savage 1972), require at least, the specification of the first two parameters. Emotions seem to play a fundamental role in setting those parameters, and therefore in applying normative theories of choice.