Reconsidering Environmental Policy: Prescriptive Consequentialism and Volitional Pragmatism

Prescriptive consequentialism informs currentassessments of rational action in economics. Choice is alleged to start with stable andknown preferences over alternative outcomes,and rational agents choose actions thatmaximize well being with respect to thesepreferences. Evidence suggests that thisform...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEnvironmental & resource economics Vol. 28; no. 1; pp. 73 - 99
Main Author Bromley, Daniel
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists 01.05.2004
Springer Nature B.V
SeriesEnvironmental & Resource Economics
Subjects
Collective action
Competition
Consequentialism
Costs
Economic theory
Economics
Economists
Environment
Environmental policy
Environmental regulations
Hypotheses
Philosophers
Philosophy
Positivism
Pragmatism
Studies
volitional pragmatism
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Summary:Prescriptive consequentialism informs currentassessments of rational action in economics. Choice is alleged to start with stable andknown preferences over alternative outcomes,and rational agents choose actions thatmaximize well being with respect to thesepreferences. Evidence suggests that thisformulation fails as an accurate and reliabledescription of how individuals make choices,and this formulation seems particularly at oddswith collective decision making with respect toenvironmental policy. Pragmatism, an importantbranch of philosophy, offers a theory of humanaction that economists would find helpful. This promise is especially pertinent to effortsdevoted to the assignment of values to parts ofnature, and to environmental policy in general. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2004
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ISSN:0924-6460
1573-1502
DOI:10.1023/B:EARE.0000023821.33379.b7