ABSTRACT
Economics is often described as the science of choice, but the typical economic agent in fact has no choice – his decisions are made for him by his preferences and constraints. This may be sufficient for normative purposes, demonstrating how agents “should” make choices if they want to adhere to the economic conception of instrumental rationality and maximize their utility or degree of preference satisfaction. But it has little connection to how real persons make decisions, for we like to believe that, given all of the information at our disposal, we have true, free choice. We can make the “right” choice, or we can make the “wrong” one. We can let principles and commitments reign over our most intensely felt preferences, sometimes choosing to endure great sacrifice for our beliefs, or we can succumb to our basest temptations, even ones that our judgment clearly counsels against.
