Ecological rationality and Human needs

• Autor(a) principal: Salzer, Patrick
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/21632
• topic: Rational agent model; Behavioral economics; Ecological rationality; Human needs; Human values; Teoria de escolha racional; Economia comportamental; Racionalidade ecológica; Necessidades humanas; Valores humanos

The pervasive Rational Agent Model distorts reality by creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. While behavioral economics tried to conceptualize actual behavior of individuals, giving an introduction into various philosophical and psychological aspects of rationality and human choice, it remains rather limited in terms of abstractions, descriptions and interpretations. The present research explores realms of individual ecological rationality by analyzing the first environment of the mind, the human body, and its effects on cognition and decisions. As human needs have been identified by various psychologists, the effects on the mind will be explored, described and explained in order to suggest a causal relationship between universal human needs and basic human values. While, the method of research was a secondary data analysis, a pragmatic research approach permitted a linguistical correspondence between human needs and human values via abductive reasoning. Overall, human needs seem a fundamental variable of ecological rationality as they not only influence consciousness and cognition but seem to have a tremendous effect on well-being and values.