Although rational choice theory has enjoyed only modest predictive success, it provides a powerful explanatory mechanism for social processes involving strategic interaction among individuals and it stimulates interesting empirical inquiries. Rather than present competing theories to compare against rational choice, Don Green and Ian Shapiro have merely alluded to alternative explanatory variables such as culture, institutions, and social norms, without showing either how these factors can be incorporated into a more powerful theory, or how they are inconsistent with rational choice (...) theory. It is likely that any eventual theory of the origin and maintenance of social institutions, norms, and values will have to reserve a central place for rational action. (shrink)

It is a mystery how we just know to be in any context of our lives. It happens without our thinking. By this same token we never have to work out how to speak an English sentence that we utter. We just know to talk and do. This paper is an exploration of this mystery.