Salience, inductive reasoning and the emergence of conventions

Robert Sugden

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2011, vol. 79, issue 1, 35-47

Abstract: This paper develops Lewis's theory of conventions to show that the spontaneous emergence of conventions depends on shared conceptions of salience. It offers a reconstruction of a mode of reasoning that is compatible with the emergence of conventions, and argues that such reasoning is pragmatically rational. This is a form of non-Bayesian inductive reasoning in which an individual's private and subjective conceptions of salience can influence the inferences she makes. This mode of reasoning is then shown to be pragmatically rational in a more general sense, relevant to problems of induction discussed in the philosophy of science.

Keywords: Salience; Induction; Convention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B52 C73 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268111000576
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Journal Article: Salience, inductive reasoning and the emergence of conventions (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:79:y:2011:i:1:p:35-47

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2011.01.026

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().