The Pathological Paradigm of Neuroeconomics

Abstract

This paper focuses mainly on the neuroeconomics of reward-processing behaviors, which is also known as “neurocellular economics” (Ross, 2008). It aims to demonstrate that neuroeconomists are implicitly influenced by medical concerns. On the basis of the thesis developed by Georges Canguilhem in The Normal and the Pathological, I will try to interpret the methodology of neuroeconomics as a pathological paradigm. My claim is that the clinical diagnosis of addiction is taken in neuroeconomic experiments as a proxy for a normative definition of irrationality. Such an approach is negative, in the sense that it focuses on the different ways people should not behave in order to deduce the way they should behave. However, it allows neuronal models of decision-making to be both descriptive and normative. Addictions are conceptualized in this framework as pathologies of decision-making. It is because these pathologies need to be treated that neurophysiology is of interest not only to positive economics, but also to economic policy-making. Neuroeconomics thus illustrates the rise of medical semantics in welfare analysis.

Keywords

• neuroeconomics
• neuroscience
• behavioral economics
• addictions
• welfare economics
• pathology