Subjective Uncertainty and Structures of Social Planning

经济学家区分了经济环境状态的不确定性和经济主体对与其互动的主体的决策或计划行动的不确定性（主观和内生不确定性）。传统的一般均衡模型排除了后一种不确定性，或者通过一些人为的假设将其降低到与社会无关的水平。放松这些假设意味着必须认真对待不平衡选择的可能性，既作为一种客观可能性，也作为一种经济主体所支持的可能性；这反过来又为某些制度和实践的解释铺平了道路，这些结构是由代理人试图应对由此产生的不确定性而演变而来的。这些制度和实践就是森萨特博士所说的“具体化”（将抽象概念具体化）。物化可以被批评为实践理性的社会特定障碍。在这项资助下，森萨特博士将以以下方式重构社会物化的论文：首先，物化的社会结构将被描述为对“主观不确定性”的社会特定反应模式，这种“主观不确定性”是由行动者对与他们互动的其他行动者的行为所经历的。表征一方面将物化与某些博弈论均衡联系起来，另一方面与一般均衡理论中的所谓“太阳黑子”均衡联系起来。这些联系将揭示物化结构以最佳方式解决主观不确定性能力的内在局限性。其次，将定义社会规划结构，并将其与具体化结构在可行性、效率和激励兼容性方面进行比较。第三，物化的新概念将用于对剥削的批判，因为它是基于理性代理的理想，而不是基于分配正义的主张。该项目有望增加我们对社会环境中理性代理的本质、经济计划和市场的兼容性和相对优点，以及剥削性社会关系的本质的理解。

Economists have distinguished between uncertainty about the state of economic environment and uncertainty of economic agents about the decisions or planned actions of agents with whom they are interacting (subjective and endogenous uncertainty). Traditional general equilibrium models preclude this latter type of uncertainty or reduce it to socially inconsequential levels through a number of artificial assumptions. Relaxing these assumptions means that the possibility of disequilibrium choices has to be taken seriously, both as an objective possibility and as a possibility countenanced by economic agents; this in turn paves the way for accounts of certain institutions and practices as structures which evolve out of agents' attempts to cope with the resulting uncertainty. These institutions and practices are what Dr. Sensat calls a "reification" (making concrete an abstract idea). Reification can be criticized as a socially specific barrier to practical rationality. Under this grant, Dr. Sensat will reconstruct this thesis of social reification as follows: First, social structures of reification will be characterized as socially specific modes of response to the "subjective uncertainty" experienced by agents about the actions of other agents with whom they are interacting. The characterization will connect reification with certain game- theoretic equilibria on the one hand and with the so-called "sunspot" equilibria of general equilibrium theory on the other. these connections will reveal inherent limitations to the ability of structures of reification to resolve subjective uncertainty in an optimal way. Second, structures of social planning will be defined and compared with structures of reification with respect to feasibility, efficiency and incentive compatibility. Third, the new concept of reification will be used in a critique of exploitation as based on an ideal of rational agency rather than a claim of distributive justice. The project promises to increase our understanding of the nature of rational agency in social contexts, the compatibility and relative merits of economic planning and markets, and the nature of exploitative social relationships.