Description
Rationality has long been treated as a matter of functions. Preferences are represented by utility functions, beliefs by probability distributions, and choice by maximization rules. From expected utility to prospect theory, from axioms to representations, the dominant paradigm assumes that global coherence can be guaranteed by the right functional form. If preferences are complete, probabilities well-defined, and transformations chosen appropriately, rationality should follow. And yet, it does not. Across psychology, economics, and the social sciences, empirical regularities persist that refuse to disappear: context effects, order dependence, framing, preference reversals, and paradoxes that survive every attempted “fix”. These are not marginal anomalies. They are structural, reproducible, and robust. They suggest that something deeper than parameter misspecification is at stake.