Four Layers of Economic Rationality: A Diagnostic Extension of the Rational Agent from Dimensional Sequence Theory
From the Kingdom of Means to the Kingdom of Ends

Writing Declaration: This paper was independently authored by Han Qin. All intellectual decisions, framework design, and editorial judgments were made by the author.

Abstract

The 'rationality' described by economics is 12DD rationality — interest-maximization calculation. What Kahneman corrects are 13DD cognitive biases. But at the 14DD and 15DD levels, there exist two further forms of rationality that the economic framework cannot accommodate: the guarding of non-negotiables (14DD) and the production of a joint outcome C between two independent subjects (15DD). A large share of what economics labels 'irrational behavior' is the systematic misreading of these higher-level rationalities by the 12DD framework.

This paper applies the four-layer cognitive architecture of the SAE (Self-as-an-End) framework — 12DD (pure calculation), 13DD (self-monitoring), 14DD (non-negotiable will), 15DD (bilateral subjecthood) — to translate Kant's Kingdom of Ends into the language of economics. The posture is diagnostic and extensional, not negative and substitutive. Economics describes 12DD rationality accurately; Kahneman's discoveries about 13DD biases are important. This paper identifies the shared boundary of their applicability and exhibits the structure that lies beyond it — in the direction of the Kingdom of Ends.

The paper further proposes that sacred-value behavior, integrative negotiation, relational contracts, and institutional commitment are not 'bounded rationality' but higher-rationality phenomena operating under different structural conditions. Non-trivial predictions are derived for empirical falsification.

Keywords: Self-as-an-End, economics, rational agent, Kant, Kingdom of Ends, 12DD, 13DD, 14DD, 15DD, behavioral economics, non-negotiable values, integrative negotiation