Rationality and Coordination

by Cristina Bicchieri

This book explores how individual actions coordinate to produce unintended social consequences. In the past this phenomenon has been explained as the outcome of rational, self-interested individual behaviour. Professor Bicchieri shows that this is in no way a satisfying explanation. She discusses how much knowledge is needed by agents in order to coordinate successfully. If the answer is unbounded knowledge, then a whole variety of paradoxes arise. If the answer is very little knowledge, then there seems hardly any possibility of attaining coordination. The solution to coordination and cooperation is for agents to learn about each other. The author concludes that rationality must be supplemented by models of learning and by an evolutionary account of how social order (i.e. spontaneous coordinated behaviour) can persist.

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Cristina Bicchieri is the SJP Harvie Professor of Social Thought and Comparative Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, and director of the Philosophy, Politics and Economics program.

She is a foremost scholar of rational choice and philosophy of social science, and a leader in behavioral ethics.