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La rationalité du choix passionnel : En quête de l'héritage de David Hume

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  • André Lapidus

    (PHARE - Pôle d'Histoire de l'Analyse et des Représentations Économiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre)

Abstract

The question of choice, in Hume's works, lies within the more general framework of the theory of passions. These lead towards desire, aversion and volition, and require reason, as a cognitive faculty, in order to build the set of objects on which our preferences are defined, and to determine its properties. Governed by pleasure and pain, this device nonetheless allows discrepancies between the relation of pleasure and the relation of preference, as shown by the examples of indiscrimination and intertemporal choice. This discrepancy is explained by Hume's distinction between pleasure as a feeling and pleasure as an idea, the ' force and vividness' of which determines action. The question of choice in uncertainty is derived from the discussion of the ‘mixed' passions of hope and of fear. On first view, Hume's writings seem to give credit to their interpretation in terms of expected utility. Nonetheless, both the mental process, of which the judgement of probability is an outcome, and the dynamics of passions, invite us to reconsider this impression: the connection between Hume's approach and expected utility is justified only to the extent that it lays down a norm, face to which possible variations are explained by the imaginative and passionate processes which gave them birth.

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  • André Lapidus, 2000. "La rationalité du choix passionnel : En quête de l'héritage de David Hume," Post-Print hal-00343939, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00343939
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://paris1.hal.science/hal-00343939
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    2. Arnaud Orain, 2003. "Decline and progress: the economic agent in Condillac's theory of history," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(3), pages 379-407.

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