BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS: AN EPISTEMIC TURN IN THE INTERPRETATION OF RATIONALITY

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to formulate a hypothesis regarding the relationship and dynamic balance between normative and descriptive epistemology, which is established in the process of interpreting rational human behavior to create and accumulate congruent economic knowledge.
In the face of growing complexity and uncertainty of the external environment, the role of critical thinking skills is increasing, which intensify the cognitive co-evolution of a person and environment by neutralizing evolutionarily formed cognitive dysfunctions. As an axiological nucleus it is proposed to use the theory of rational choice – the standard of human behavior, which contributes to the diffusion of complexity and uncertainty of the external environment. However, the presence of an axiological nucleus is a necessary but not sufficient condition, which allows it to be adequately integrated with the subject substrate. For this, one requires the relevant knowledge of those behavioral features that are presented by the epistemic periphery that dynamically changes and also permanently detects and fixes the properties and characteristics of the neural substrate, its phenomenology and behavioral characteristics. The knowledge being accumulated on the epistemic periphery of economic science allows adequately reloading the programs of the human mind to bring them into line with modern requirements for the cognitive abilities of economic agents, and also to create an internally holistic and consistent system of economic knowledge, which will take into account the complexity and multidimensional development of human-sized systems.
The epistemic balance of normative and descriptive epistemology in the context of the interpretation of rational behavior may lie in a hypothesis that eliminates the dichotomy of normative and positive economic knowledge and is based on taking into account the structure of human cognitive processes, as well as the growing complexity and uncertainty of the external environment.