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Animal innovation and rationality: Distinguishing productivity from efficiency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2007

Elias L. Khalil
Elias L. Khalil
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia. [email protected]
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Abstract

For the authors of the target article, innovations are underdetermined by environmental inducement – but are still adopted in the future. For a productive technology to be adopted, the technology must also be efficient. To be efficient, it must be determined by constraints or environmental inducements. However, this contradicts the authors' notion of “underdetermination.” To make matters clear, we need to distinguish between two kinds of determination: the “source” of the innovation as opposed to “inducement” that makes the organism adopt it in the future.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , August 2007 , pp. 414 - 415
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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