Solomonic Judgements

Fülszöveg

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 consiciers 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 that gives the collection its title examines child custody disputes that are paradigmatically indeterminate. Leaving aside cases in which 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 favor of the mother, a strong presumption in favor 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 or medium term, Elster argues that... Tovább

Fülszöveg

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 consiciers 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 that gives the collection its title examines child custody disputes that are paradigmatically indeterminate. Leaving aside cases in which 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 favor of the mother, a strong presumption in favor 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 or medium term, Elster argues that there is a case for randomization in the long term.
The book will be read with interest by anyone concerned with the political and social sciences.
Jon Elster is Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago, and Research Director, Institute for Social Research, Oslo. He is the author of the following books all published with Cambridge: Ulysses and the Sirens (1979), Explaining Technical Change (1983), Sour Grapes (1983), Making Sense of Marx (1985), and An Introduction to Karl Marx (1986). In addition to Solomonic Judgments he will be publishing two other books with Cambridge in the fall of 1989: Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences and The Cement of Society. Vissza