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Fictional expectations

Summary:
Fundamental uncertainty due to unknown and unknowable future events prevents rational calculations from accurately anticipating the future. This implies that the expectations that intentionally rational actors hold are not of the kind assumed by rational expectations theory. The proposition developed in the paper states instead that expectations are fictional in the sense that they are based on pretensions of future states of the world. Understanding decision processes based on the concept of fictionality points to a non-teleological theory of action that brings the creativity of actors and the contingency of the future into the foreground. The goal is not to develop a more accurate theory of prediction but rather a theory of the unpredictability of the world and of how

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Fictional expectationsFundamental uncertainty due to unknown and unknowable future events prevents rational calculations from accurately anticipating the future. This implies that the expectations that intentionally rational actors hold are not of the kind assumed by rational expectations theory. The proposition developed in the paper states instead that expectations are fictional in the sense that they are based on pretensions of future states of the world.

Understanding decision processes based on the concept of fictionality points to a non-teleological theory of action that brings the creativity of actors and the contingency of the future into the foreground. The goal is not to develop a more accurate theory of prediction but rather a theory of the unpredictability of the world and of how intentionality unfolds despite this unpredictability of outcomes. The fiction-ability of humans allows for the imaginative representation of future states of the world in the mind and the imagining of decisions of other actors … It brings to the fore the role of images of the future for the understanding of the present and thereby departs from theories in the social sciences that see the present as being shaped through the past.

Jens Beckert

Lars Pålsson Syll
Professor at Malmö University. Primary research interest - the philosophy, history and methodology of economics.

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