We connect Bermúdez's arguments to previous theorizing about “leaky” rationality, emphasizing that the decision process (including decision frames) “leaks” into the experience of decision outcomes. We suggest that the implications of Bermúdez's analysis are broadly applicable to the study of virtually all real-world decision making, and that the field needs a substantive and not just a formal theory of rationality.

We distinguish two types of cases that have potential to generate quasi-cyclical preferences: self-involving choices where an agent oscillates between first- and third-person perspectives that conflict regarding their life-changing implications, and self-serving choices where frame-based reasoning can be “first-personally rational” yet “third-personally irrational.” We argue that the distinction between these types of cases deserves more attention in Bermúdez's account.

To assess whether behaviors like framing effects are rational, researchers need to consider decision makers' goals. I argue that researchers should broaden the scope of analysis to include impression management goals. Under predictable conditions, behaviors traditionally considered irrational (e.g., loss–gain framing effects on risk preferences) can be reputationally rewarding, casting doubt on strict claims of irrationality.

Bermúdez argues for rational framing effects based on normatively appropriate quasi-cyclical preferences. We suggest that this argument conflates preferences over specific outcomes with preferences over outcome aspects. Instead of implying quasi-cyclical preferences, framing affects decisions through standard economic trade-offs. Nonetheless, we demonstrate that framing can affect behavior through altering perceptions of particular outcome aspects when framing effects are not decomposable.

Bermúdez describes the extensionality principle as being “almost unquestioned.” This claim might come as a surprise to philosophers who work on agency and ethics. In Kantian deontological ethics and in Platonic or Aristotelian virtue ethics, our preferences for outcomes can be rationally affected by how those outcomes are framed in terms of maxims and character traits.

Frames group choices into categories, thus modifying the incentives for them. This effect makes framing itself a motivated choice rather than a neutral cognition. In particular, framing an inferior choice with a high short-term payoff as part of a broad category of choices recruits incentive to reject it; but this must be motivated by its being a test case.

Bermúdez persuasively argues that framing effects are not as irrational as commonly supposed. In focusing on the reasoning of individual decision-makers in complex situations, however, he neglects the crucial role of the social-communicative context for eliciting certain framing effects. We contend that many framing effects are best explained in terms of basic, rational principles of discourse processing and pragmatic reasoning.

Experimental research is reviewed which suggests that rational framing effects influence young children's social activities according to a logic of interdependence. However, young children are unlikely to possess some of the elaborate cognitive skills argued in the Target Article to be prerequisite for rational framing effects. Understanding rational framing effects requires understanding their ontogenetic origins.

Trolley-like dilemmas are other cases of what Bermúdez refers to as (conscious) quasi-cyclical preferences. In these dilemmas, identical outcomes are obtained through morally non-identical actions. I will argue that morality is the context where descriptive invariance and ecological relevance may be crucially distinguished. Logically irrational moral choices in the short term may promote greater social benefits in the longer term.

There is much to like in Bermúdez's analysis, yet it is incomplete and at times problematic for social decision making and, by extension, interpersonal conflict. Here I explain how four frames – gains, losses, me, we – operate in conjunction and how humans gravitate toward a “me–loss” frame that, without intervention, leads to a breakdown of cooperation and an arguably tragic funeral of the commons.

Frames for interpreting situations are necessary in the face of time constraints for action and indeterminacy of the “right or optimal thing to do” given multiple objectives but not all frames are equally useful. We need a way of modeling representational frames according to the informational gain of using them and the computational cost of synthesizing a decisive reason for acting from them.

I argue that the scope of rational framing effects may be broader than Bermúdez assumes. Even in many “canonical experiments,” the explanation of the judgment reversals or shifts may refer to reasons, including moral ones. Referring to the Asian disease paradigm (ADP), I describe how non-consequentialist reasons related to fairness and the distinction between doing and allowing may help explain and justify the typical pattern of choices in the cases like ADP.

The normative principle of description invariance presupposes that rational preferences must be complete. The completeness axiom is normatively dubious, however, and its rejection opens the door to rational framing effects. In this commentary, we suggest that Bermúdez's insightful challenge to the standard normative view of framing can be clarified and extended by situating it within a broader critique of completeness.

Bermúdez convincingly argues that framing effects are ubiquitous and that this is not a sign of human irrationality, but an unavoidable feature of any intelligent system. The commentary adds that framing effects arise even in formal domains, such as chess and mathematics, which appear paradigms of rational thought. Indeed, finding and attempting to resolve clashes between different frames is a major impetus for deliberative cognition.

Framing effects attributed to “quasi-cyclical” irrational complex human preferences are ubiquitous biases resulting from simpler mechanisms that can be found in other animals. Examples of such framing effects vary from simple learning contexts, to an analog of human gambling behavior, to the value added to a reinforcer by the effort that went into obtaining it.

When communication is not disinterested, seemingly inconsistent preferences are predictable from language pragmatics and information non-equivalence. In addition, the classic risky choice framing effect found in the Asian disease task – risk-aversion with gains and risk-seeking with losses – applies to gambles, but tends to be overgeneralized to non-gambling situations.

Bermúdez's arguments in favour of the rationality of quasi-cyclical preferences conflate reasons, desires, emotions, and responses with genuine preferences. Rational preference formation requires that the decision-makers not only identify reasons, but also weigh them in a coherent way.

The thoughtful and rewarding peer commentaries on my target article come from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives. I engage with the commentaries in three groups. First, I discuss the commentaries that apply my basic approach to new cases not considered in the target article. Second, I explore those that helpfully extend and refine my arguments. Finally, I offer replies to those that object either to the overall framework or to specific arguments.