EMOTIONS, RATIONALITY AND RATIONAL CHOICE

In recent years, the relationship between rational choice theories and emotions has become increasingly relaxed. Many theoretical approaches that can be counted among the theories of rational choice, dealt with the relevance of emotions for making rational Choices and arrived at positive results. Karen S. Cook and Sarah Harkness describe them systematically in their contribution. As explained in this replication, ir is however questionable whether theories of rational choice are capable, by their analytic bases, to capture the relevance as well as the rationality of emotions in a comprehensive way. The reason for this is that, in the narrow analytic reference framework of theories of rational choice, emotions are generally regarded only in either their negative or positive effect on the decision-making processes. The rationality of emotions itself remains unaccounted for. Therefore this article considers the thesis to switch from theories of rational choice to comprehensive theories of rational acting: They are not only capable to integrate the rationality of emotions, but also forms of epistemic rationality in a comprehensive way because emotive and epistemic rationality are closely interrelated. Such an analytic approach could form an antithesis to recent developments in the social sciences, which is neurosociology or neuroeconomics emphasize the emotionality of decisions, yet minimize the deliberative rationality of decisions in favor of neurological and neurobiological mechanisms.