The literature on nudging has rekindled normative and conceptual debates surrounding the extent to which and the direction in which people can legitimately influence each other’s actions. An oft-heard objection to nudging is that it exploits psychological mechanisms, manipulates people and thereby insufficiently respects their rational decision-making capacities. Bypassing and/or perverting people’s rational capacities, nudges are said to undermine agency. In this paper, I analyze and deflate these criticisms. After disentangling the different conceptions of rationality that pervade the arguments of both nudging enthusiasts and critics, I critically assess how and under which circumstances nudging can be said to undermine, pervert, bypass but also strengthen people’s rationality. Only in a limited set of cases, I argue, does it make sense to object to nudges for making people less rational than they are, can be or should be. Crucial in this respect will be the distinction between outcome-oriented and process-oriented conceptions of rationality.

中文翻译：

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轻推与理性：有什么可担心的？

关于轻推的文献重新引发了围绕人们可以合法地影响彼此行为的程度和方向的规范和概念辩论。对轻推的一个经常听到的反对意见是，它利用心理机制，操纵人们，从而不够尊重他们的理性决策能力。绕过和/或歪曲人们的理性能力，据说轻推会破坏能动性。在这篇论文中，我分析并平息了这些批评。在理清了轻推爱好者和批评家的论点中普遍存在的不同理性概念之后，我批判性地评估了轻推如何以及在何种情况下可以说是破坏、歪曲、绕过但也加强了人们的理性。我认为，仅在有限的情况下，反对让人们变得比他们更不理性的推动是否有意义，可以或应该。在这方面至关重要的是区分以结果为导向和以过程为导向的理性概念。