Product Description: All social theorists and philosophers who seek to explain human action have a 'model of man'; a metaphysical view of human nature that requires its own theory of scientific knowledge. In this influential book, Martin Hollis examines the tensions that arise from the differing views of sociologists, economists and psychologists...read more

Product Description: The crisis of liberalism is in its claim to endorse neutral procedures that allow individuals and groups to pursue their own good, when the very possibility of such neutrality is affected by the growth of plural societies, and resulting divisions of loyalty...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Does trust grow fragile when people are too rational or when they are not rational enough? Both thoughts are plausible. Which is right depends on how we define "reason." Martin Hollis' elegant and distinctive study argues for an interpretation of "reason" as putting the common good before one's own...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: Did Adam and Eve act rationally in eating the fruit of the forbidden tree? That can seem to depend solely on whether they had found the best means to their ends, in the spirit of the "economic" theories of rationality. In these essays, culled in revised form from twenty-five years' work, Martin Hollis argues that social action cannot be understood by viewing human beings as abstract individuals with preferences in search of satisfaction, or by divorcing practical reason from questions of the rationality of norms, principles, practices and ends...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: What makes a choice rational? A common answer is that a rational agent calculates the probable net benefits of each possible course of action and chooses the one that best satisfies his or her given preferences. Rational choice is thus about means, not ends, a view which has been most deeply analyzed in economics, and that is now becoming crucial throughout the social sciences...read more

Product Description: The book is in three parts with a section of keywords. Part I covers individual choice , Part II examines interactive choice . The final part covers interactive choice .

Product Description: A collaboration between a philosopher and an international relations scholar, this work examines the philosophical issues that underlie the theory of international relations. Part I focuses on the dominant theories of Idealism, Realism, and Behavioralism, and Part II examines the international system, the state, bureaucracies, and the individual--four factors commonly assumed to account for international behavior...read more

Product Description: In this book, the author is attempting to make sense, as a philosopher, of the ideas of rationality put forward by economists, sociologists, and political theorists. The book intervenes in intense current debates within and among several disciplines...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: All social theorists and philosophers who seek to explain human action have a 'model of man', a metaphysical view of human nature. Some make man a plastic creature of nature and nurture, some present him as the autonomous creator of his social world, some offer a compromise...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Economics is probably the most subtle, precise and powerful of the social sciences and its theories have deep philosophical import. Yet the dominant alliance between economics and philosophy has long been cheerfully simple. This is the textbook alliance of neo-Classicism and Positivism, so crucial to the defence of orthodox economics against by now familiar objections...read more