IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jhisec/v46y2024i1p140-150_7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On Herbert A. Simon And Jorge Luis Borges About Free Will

Author

Listed:
  • Crespo, Ricardo F.

Abstract

In 1970 Herbert Simon was invited by the Sociedad Argentina de Organización Industrial to deliver lectures on “Business Management in the Technological Era.” He asked for an audience with Jorge Luis Borges, the director of the Argentine National Library. Simon had read Borges’s stories and was particularly fascinated by “La Biblioteca de Babel” (The library of Babel), wherein he discovered that Borges, like him, conceived of life as a search through a labyrinth. The Spanish translation of the interview was published in Primera Plana, an Argentine journal. The brief interview sheds light on some of Simon’s ideas about determinism and free will. His critique on maximizing rationality and his suggested approach to decision making have contributed to enlarge the concept of rationality as construed by standard economic theory. Consequently, it may be argued that Simon is incorporating free will in economics. However, though Simon’s position implies an advancement for the role of free will, the whole context of his ideas conditioned it, thus resulting in a “weak” notion of it. During the course of his conversation with Borges, Simon clarified his personal stance, which is consistent with his ideas. The paper will reveal Borges´s and Simon’s understanding of free will. This paper also contains part of the conversation between Simon and Borges that has not been published previously in English. Introducing it in its entirety is a contribution to the knowledge on Borges’s and Simon’s thought.

Suggested Citation

  • Crespo, Ricardo F., 2024. "On Herbert A. Simon And Jorge Luis Borges About Free Will," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(1), pages 140-150, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:jhisec:v:46:y:2024:i:1:p:140-150_7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1053837222000736/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Simon, Herbert A, 1979. "Rational Decision Making in Business Organizations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(4), pages 493-513, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Francisco B. Galarza & Gabriella Wong, 2017. "The Impact of Price Information on Consumer Behavior: An Experiment," Working Papers 106, Peruvian Economic Association.
    2. Castro, Luciano de & Galvao, Antonio F. & Kim, Jeong Yeol & Montes-Rojas, Gabriel & Olmo, Jose, 2022. "Experiments on portfolio selection: A comparison between quantile preferences and expected utility decision models," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    3. repec:cup:judgdm:v:1:y:2006:i::p:162-173 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Rausser, Gordon C. & de Janvry, Alain & Schmitz, Andrew & Zilberman, David D., 1980. "Principal issues in the evaluation of public research in agriculture," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt74v9m7dh, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    5. DeCanio, Stephen J. & Watkins, William E., 1998. "Information processing and organizational structure," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 275-294, August.
    6. Ichiishi, Tatsuro, 1985. "Management versus ownership, II," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 115-138, March.
    7. Hugo Benítez-Silva & Debra Dwyer & Wayne-Roy Gayle & Thomas Muench, 2008. "Expectations in micro data: rationality revisited," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 381-416, March.
    8. Siegfried Berninghaus & Werner Güth & M. Vittoria Levati & Jianying Qiu, 2006. "Satisficing in sales competition: experimental evidence," Papers on Strategic Interaction 2006-32, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group.
    9. Ole Røgeberg & Morten Nordberg, 2005. "A defence of absurd theories in economics," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(4), pages 543-562.
    10. Schilirò, Daniele & Graziano, Mario, 2011. "Scelte e razionalità nei modelli economici: un'analisi multidisciplinare [Choices and rationality in economic models: a multidisciplinary analysis]," MPRA Paper 31910, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Mostafa Rezaei & Ivor Cribben & Michele Samorani, 2021. "A clustering-based feature selection method for automatically generated relational attributes," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 303(1), pages 233-263, August.
    12. Michaël Lainé, 2014. "Vers une alternative au paradigme de la rationalité ? Victoires et déboires du programme spinoziste en économie," Post-Print hal-01335618, HAL.
    13. Sent, Esther-Mirjam, 2004. "The legacy of Herbert Simon in game theory," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 303-317, March.
    14. Litsiou, Konstantia & Polychronakis, Yiannis & Karami, Azhdar & Nikolopoulos, Konstantinos, 2022. "Relative performance of judgmental methods for forecasting the success of megaprojects," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 1185-1196.
    15. Bouzguenda, Karima, 2018. "Emotional intelligence and financial decision making: Are we talking about a paradigmatic shift or a change in practices?," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 273-284.
    16. Indraneel Dasgupta, 2005. "Consistent firm choice and the theory of supply," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 26(1), pages 167-175, July.
    17. Tsoukias, Alexis, 2008. "From decision theory to decision aiding methodology," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 187(1), pages 138-161, May.
    18. Ralph I. Williams & Torsten M. Pieper & Franz W. Kellermanns & Joseph H. Astrachan, 2019. "Family business goal formation: a literature review and discussion of alternative algorithms," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 69(3), pages 329-349, September.
    19. Joseph McManus, 2021. "Emotions and Ethical Decision Making at Work: Organizational Norms, Emotional Dogs, and the Rational Tales They Tell Themselves and Others," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 169(1), pages 153-168, February.
    20. Sadok Mansour, 2007. "Modelisation Du Risque Dans Les Methodologies D'Audit : Apport Des De La Psychometrie," Post-Print halshs-00543217, HAL.
    21. Yu‐Lin Hsu & Gavin C. Reid, 2021. "Two‐stage decision‐making within the firm: Analysis and case studies," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(6), pages 1355-1373, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jhisec:v:46:y:2024:i:1:p:140-150_7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/het .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.