Doctor Alex Kacelnik

Lecture Abstract

Rationality and Its Meanings

The concept of rationality and the significance of its boundaries or failures are ubiquitous in philosophy, psychology and economics. More recently, rationality has also been discussed in biologically inspired behavioral studies. The meaning of the term, however, is sufficiently different across fields to cause confusion and to warrant a revision that may promote a clearer connection between theorizing and empirical evidence. In its non-technical and philosophical uses the idea relates to reasoning, and in economics to the consistency of expressed preferences. The implicit notion of rational preferences in biology, however, is connected to Darwinian fitness, and applies across the range of living things regardless of their cognitive capacities. I will first address these conceptual matters in general and then present empirical research in humans and starlings dealing with rationality in the economic and biological sense, before concluding with attempts to characterize the level of reasoning involved in the tool-oriented behavior of New Caledonian Crows.