 The formal relation to choice raises the question of the ontological status of preferences. Are preferences prior to choices, and function potentially as their cause? Or are preferences merely representations of actual or potential choice patterns? Debates about how to interpret preferences in economics have a long history, and in recent years the topic has received renewed attention. This discussion tended to focus on an opposition between behaviourist vs. mentalist interpretations. Many (but certainly not all) economists have interpreted the dominant revealed preference theory in behaviourist terms, claiming for example that “Standard economics does not address mental processes, and as a result, economic abstractions are typically not appropriate for describing them” (Gul and Pesendorfer 2008, 21). Consequently, these authors take the formal relations presented in this section as the determinants of the ontological question what preferences are. Furthermore, they also reject the interpretation of preferences as causes of choice, instead insisting that they only capture choice patterns (Binmore 2008, 19–22).