Well that fetal alcohol syndrome is associated with poor emotional regulation is apparently a thing that is true in the sense that you can measure it, and it seems to be helpful to know it if you’re treating patients with fetal alcohol syndrome or living with them.
But our theory is formal, it’s not just a collection of true statements. It’s not really clear how we could use it to model the effect of fetal alcohol syndrome on emotional regulation. So, there’s a sense in which we don’t capture that “feature of reality”. But how important is it to capture? All theories are wrong in some ways. The only way to judge them is in terms of whether they are useful. In this context, we are arguing that our theory of appropriateness is a useful improvement on the rational actor theory, which by the way, also has trouble accounting for the effect of fetal alcohol syndrome on emotional regulation. So if you need a theory of human behavior that can accommodate it, you probably shouldn’t use either of these.
Well that fetal alcohol syndrome is associated with poor emotional regulation is apparently a thing that is true in the sense that you can measure it, and it seems to be helpful to know it if you’re treating patients with fetal alcohol syndrome or living with them.
But our theory is formal, it’s not just a collection of true statements. It’s not really clear how we could use it to model the effect of fetal alcohol syndrome on emotional regulation. So, there’s a sense in which we don’t capture that “feature of reality”. But how important is it to capture? All theories are wrong in some ways. The only way to judge them is in terms of whether they are useful. In this context, we are arguing that our theory of appropriateness is a useful improvement on the rational actor theory, which by the way, also has trouble accounting for the effect of fetal alcohol syndrome on emotional regulation. So if you need a theory of human behavior that can accommodate it, you probably shouldn’t use either of these.