According to a simple form of consequentialism, we should base decisions on our judgments about their consequences for achieving our goals. Our goals give us reason to endorse consequentialism as a standard of decision making. Alternative standards invariably lead to consequences that are less good in this sense. Yet some people knowingly follow decision rules that violate consequentialism. For example, they prefer harmful omissions to less harmful acts, they favor the status quo over alternatives they would otherwise judge to be (...) belter, they provide third-party compensation on the basis of the cause of an injury rather than the benefit from the compensation, they ignore deterrent effects in decisions about punishment, and they resist coercive reforms they judge to be beneficial. I suggest that nonconsequentialist principles arise from overgeneralizing rules that are consistent with consequentialism in a limited set of cases. Commitment to such rules is detached from their original purposes. The existence of such nonconsequentialist decision biases has implications for philosophical and experimental methodology, the relation between psychology and public policy, and education. (shrink)

The evolution of reciprocal altruism probably involved the evolution of mechanisms to detect cheating and remember cheaters. In a well-known study, Mealey, Daood, and Krage (1996) observed that participants had enhanced memory for faces that had previously been associated with descriptions of acts of cheating. There were, however, problems with the descriptions that were used in that study. We sought to replicate and extend the findings of Mealey and colleagues by using more controlled descriptions and by examining the possibility of (...) enhanced altruist recognition. We also examined whether individual differences in cheating tendencies were related to cheater and altruist recognition. In the first experiment, 164 undergraduates saw 40 faces that were paired with character descriptions representing the categories of cheater, trustworthy, altruist, or neutral, for individuals who had either low or high social status. One week later participants reported which faces they recognized from the previous week (among 80 faces). Overall, the results failed to replicate the findings of Mealey and her colleagues, as there was no enhanced memory for cheaters. In addition, there was no enhanced memory for altruists, and no effect of participants’ cheating tendencies. A second experiment using a slightly different methodology produced similar results, with some evidence for enhanced memory for altruists. (shrink)

. Evolutionary psychology and behavioural genomics are both approaches to explain human behaviour from a genetic point of view. Nonetheless, thus far the development of these disciplines is anything but interdependent. This paper examines the question whether evolutionary psychology can contribute to behavioural genomics. Firstly, a possible inconsistency between the two approaches is reviewed, viz. that evolutionary psychology focuses on the universal human nature and disregards the genetic variation studied by behavioural genomics. Secondly, we will discuss the structure of biological (...) explanations. Some philosophers rightly acknowledge that explanations do not involve laws which are exceptionless and universal. Instead, generalisations that are invariant suffice for successful explanation as long as two other stipulations are recognised: the domain within which the generalisation has no exceptions as well as the distribution of the mechanism described by the generalisation should both be specified. It is argued that evolutionary psychology can contribute to behavioural genomic explanations by accounting for these two specifications. (shrink)

Abstract.Evolutionary psychology and behavioural genomics are both approaches to explain human behaviour from a genetic point of view. Nonetheless, thus far the development of these disciplines is anything but interdependent. This paper examines the question whether evolutionary psychology can contribute to behavioural genomics. Firstly, a possible inconsistency between the two approaches is reviewed, viz. that evolutionary psychology focuses on the universal human nature and disregards the genetic variation studied by behavioural genomics. Secondly, we will discuss the structure of biological explanations. (...) Some philosophers rightly acknowledge that explanations do not involve laws which are exceptionless and universal. Instead, generalisations that are invariant suffice for successful explanation as long as two other stipulations are recognised: the domain within which the generalisation has no exceptions as well as the distribution of the mechanism described by the generalisation should both be specified. It is argued that evolutionary psychology can contribute to behavioural genomic explanations by accounting for these two specifications. (shrink)

We study the finitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma in which the players are restricted to choosing strategies which are implementable by a machine with a bound on its complexity. One player has to use a finite automaton while the other player has to use a finite perceptron. Some examples illustrate that the sets of strategies which are induced by these two types of machines are different and not ordered by set inclusion. Repeated game payoffs are evaluated according to the limit of (...) means. The main result establishes that a cooperation at almost all stages of the game is an equilibrium outcome if the complexity of the machines the players may use is limited enough and if the length T of the repeated game is sufficiently large. This result persists when more than T states are allowed in the player’s automaton. We further consider a variant of the model in which the two players are restricted to choosing strategies which are implementable by perceptrons and prove that the players can cooperate at most of the stages provided that the complexity of their perceptrons is sufficiently reduced. (shrink)

Mealey's data do not support her dichotomous model of primary and secondary sociopathy; this data supports the view that there is a continuum of degrees of sociopathy, from zero to the maximal manifestation. There are multitudes of factors that can contribute to sociopathy and the countless different mixes of them can produce multiple degrees and variations of sociopathic behavior.

Mealey's excellent target article rests on several assumptions that may be questioned, including the overarching assumption that sociopathy reflects the failure of a small minority of males to cooperate with the larger group. I suggest that violent competition in ancestral bands cheatinggame was the primary evolutionary precursor of sociopathy. Today's violent sociopath is far more a than a failed cooperator.

A bewildering array of sciences, theories, and methodologies offer researchers many difficult choices when studying emotion or designing affective technologies. Thus, clarity of focus is a prime virtue of good work, as illustrated in the Aylett and Paiva (2012) article. The social sciences remain fundamentally undecided about how to conceptualize human variations, including how to measure culture and personality, and even about whether these two commonly used words have real meaning. This disagreement is pronounced in human-centered computing, because cognitive and (...) rational-choice perspectives are technically easiest to apply, and these make little room for culture and personality. The article employs a modular approach, which can inspire researchers following alternative conceptualizations to substitute their own preferred choices. (shrink)

The paper presents a set of games of competition between two or three players in which reward is jointly determined by a stochastic biased mechanism and players’ choices. More specifically, a resource can be found with unequal probabilities in one of two locations. The first agent is rewarded only if it finds the resource and avoids being found by the next agent in line; the latter is rewarded only if it finds the former. Five benchmarks, based on different psychological and (...) game-theoretic assumptions are derived and their predictions compared to actual behavior of 120, 40, and 48 participants playing repeatedly. Of the five benchmarks—the unique (Nash) equilibrium, reinforcement learning, trust-based efficiency, maximum unpredictability, and regret-based (Impulse Balance) equilibrium—regret for missed opportunities best accounts for the qualitative aspect of participants’ behavior and regret attenuated by randomization best accounts for the quantitative aspect of behavior. (shrink)

Trust is both ethically important and essential for business but difficult to measure. This paper contributes toward clarifying the nature of trust in a way that is both conceptually helpful for ethical inquiries concerning business and pertinent to the measurement of trust as an element in organizations. Several papers hypothesize that increasing the role of trust in a corporation reduces the need for external monitoring and contracts. Assessing this important hypothesis requires a way to gauge whether a firm has a (...) trusting corporate culture. We develop an objective measure of trust in a firm’s corporate culture by counting the number of times 21 trust-related words appear in an important kind of document: the Management Discussion and Analysis section of the annual report. We report two significant findings: that, contrary to what one might think, firms with a trusting culture frequently use audit and control-type words and that trust is positively linked with subsequent share price volatility. We propose explanations of these findings with the hope of facilitating the objective measurement of trust and enhancement of a trusting atmosphere in corporate culture. (shrink)

I argue that images of the notion of group, in correspondence with their social and political values, shape the debate over the evolution of altruism by group selection. Important aspects of this debate are empirical, and criteria can decide among a variety of selection processes. However, leading researchers undermine or reinterpret such tests, explaining the evolution of altruism on the basis of a single extreme metaphor of ‘group’ and a single inclusive selection process. I shall argue that the extreme images (...) for the notion of group are associated with ideologies that these researchers support or fear. Hence, the history of social and political uses of ‘group’ and ‘group selection’ can explain, at least in part, some of the empirical deficiencies of the debate, and why it has continued without resolution or dissolution. (shrink)

When two people engage in a conversation, knowingly or unknowingly, they are playing a game. Players of such games have diverse objectives, or winning conditions: an applicant trying to convince her potential employer of her eligibility over that of a competitor, a prosecutor trying to convict a defendant, a politician trying to convince an electorate in a political debate, and so on. We argue that infinitary games offer a natural model for many structural characteristics of such conversations. We call such (...) games message exchange games, and we compare them to existing game theoretic frameworks used in linguistics—for example, signaling games—and show that message exchange games are needed to handle non-cooperative conversation. In this paper, we concentrate on conversational games where players’ interests are opposed. We provide a taxonomy of conversations based on their winning conditions, and we investigate some essential features of winning conditions like consistency and what we call rhetorical cooperativity. We show that these features make our games decomposition sensitive, a property we define formally in the paper. We show that this property has far-reaching implications for the existence of winning strategies and their complexity. There is a class of winning conditions for which message exchange games are equivalent to Banach- Mazur games, which have been extensively studied and enjoy nice topological results. But decomposition sensitive goals are much more the norm and much more interesting linguistically and philosophically. (shrink)

The dominant theory of the evolution of moral cognition across a variety of fields is that moral cognition is a biological adaptation to foster social cooperation. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that moral cognition is likely an evolutionary exaptation: a form of cognition where neurobiological capacities selected for in our evolutionary history for a variety of different reasons—many unrelated to social cooperation—were put to a new, prosocial use after the fact through individual rationality, learning, and the development and transmission (...) of social norms. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the emerging behavioral neuroscience of moral cognition. It then outlines a novel theory of moral cognition that I have previously argued explains these findings better than alternatives. Finally, it shows how the evidence for this theory of moral cognition and human evolutionary history together suggest that moral cognition is likely not a biological adaptation. Instead, like reading sheet music or riding a bicycle, moral cognition is something that individuals learn to do—in this case, in response to sociocultural norms created in our ancestral history and passed down through the ages to enable cooperative living. (shrink)

This paper tries to answer the question why the epistemic value of so many social simulations is questionable. I consider the epistemic value of a social simulation as questionable if it contributes neither directly nor indirectly to the understanding of empirical reality. To examine this question, two classical social simulations are analyzed with respect to their possible epistemic justification: Schelling’s neighborhood segregation model and Axelrod’s reiterated Prisoner’s Dilemma simulations of the evolution of cooperation. It is argued that Schelling’s simulation is (...) useful because it can be related to empirical reality, while Axelrod’s simulations and those of his followers cannot and thus that their scientific value remains doubtful. I relate this findingto the background beliefs of modelers about the superiority of the modeling method as expressed in Joshua Epstein’s keynote address “Why model?”. (shrink)

The central claim of my paper is that pragmatics has a wider scope of application than has been generally appreciated. In particular, I will argue that many discussions of pragmatics are guilty of a problematic form of provincialism. The provincialism at issue restricts the class of target systems of study to those involving groups of developmentally typical humans (or slightly idealized versions thereof), either explicitly as a matter of principle or implicitly as consequence of how it construes the underlying pragmatic (...) notions. In what follows, I will argue that this kind of provincialism is problematic because there are patterns of non-human animal social interaction that cannot be properly explained without recourse to the theoretical tool-kit of pragmatics. Crucially, rejecting provincialism about pragmatics does not entail that there are not important theoretical differences between human and non-human systems of pragmatics. It does, however, require that our core philosophical theories of social interaction and communication be centered on features independent not merely of those at work in human languages but also of uniquely human features of cognition and sociality more generally. (shrink)

According to a simple form of consequentialism, we should base decision on our judgments about their consequences for achieving out goals. Our goals give us reason to endorse consequentialism as a standard of decision making. Alternative standards invariably lead to consequences that are less good in this sense. Yet some people knowingly follow decision rules that violate consequentialism. For example, they prefer harmful omissions to less harmful acts, they favor the status quo over alternatives they would otherwise judge to be (...) better, they provide third-party compensation on the basis of the cause of an injury rather than the benefit from the compensation, they ignore deterrent effects in decisions about punishment, and they resist coercive reforms they judge to be beneficial. I suggest that nonconsequentialist principles arise from overgeneralizing rules that are consistent with consequentialism in a limited set of cases. Commitment to such rules is detached from their original purposes. The existence of such nonconsequentialist decision biases has implications for philosophical and experimental methodology, the relation between psychology and public policy, and education. (shrink)

Two specific aspects of Mealey's model are questioned: (1) the application of the concept of Evolutionarily Stable Strategy to all alternative strategies, including those that involve reduced lifetime reproductive success; and (2) the evidence for the dual role of testosterone, which is based mainly on studies of a modulating effect on aggression.

Even though the philosophy of simulation is intended as a comprehensive reflection about the practice of computer simulation in contemporary science, its output has been disproportionately shaped by research on equation-based simulation in the physical and climate sciences. Hence, the particularities of alternative practices of computer simulation in other scientific domains are not sufficiently accounted for in the current philosophy of simulation literature. This article centres on agent-based social simulation, a relatively established type of simulation in the social sciences, to (...) exemplify this claim. The analysis advanced has a twofold goal. First, it shows that the philosophy of agent-based social simulation, mostly developed by practitioners themselves, is, on one hand, heavily influenced by the methodological features of agent-based modelling and by the loose and fragmented character of social theory and, on the other hand, distinctively shaped by contrasting views of what it implies to do social research with virtual or artificial societies. Second, it suggests ways in which cross-fertilisation could enrich the philosophical understanding of computer simulation both in agent-based social simulation and in the philosophy of simulation. (shrink)

Successful instances of interdisciplinary collaboration can eventually enter a process of disciplinarisation. This article analyses one of those instances: agent-based computational social science, an emerging disciplinary field articulated around the use of computational models to study social phenomena. The discussion centres on how, in knowledge transfer dynamics from traditional disciplinary areas, practitioners parsed several epistemic resources to produce new foundational disciplinary shared commitments, and how disagreements operated as a mechanism of differentiation in their production. Two parsing processes are examined to (...) illustrate this claim. The first one is the parsing of the qualitative–quantitative dualism, arguably the most important methodological disagreement in social science. The second one is the parsing of prediction, a key value in contemporary science. The analysis evidences that disagreements have fostered both external and internal dynamics of differentiation in agent-based computational social science. The former have permitted a more efficient use of epistemic resources, whereas the latter have forced practitioners to modify the foundational narrative and the agenda of the field. (shrink)

Humans have attained an unparalleled level of sophistication when engaging in collaborative and cooperative activities. Remarkably, the skills and motivation to engage in complex forms of collaboration and cooperation seem to emerge early on during infancy and childhood. In this paper, I extensively review the literature on the evolution and development of human cooperation, emphasizing important aspects of inter-cultural variation in collaborative and cooperative behaviour. This will not only allow us to confront the different evolutionary scenarios in which cooperation may (...) have emerged, but will especially provide the reader with a first orientation in the abundant literature on human cooperation. (shrink)

Team reasoning gives a simple, coherent, and rational explanation for human cooperative behavior. This paper investigates the robustness of team reasoning as an explanation for cooperative behavior, by assessing its long-run viability. We consider an evolutionary game theoretic model in which the population consists of team reasoners and ‘conventional’ individual reasoners. We find that changes in the ludic environment can affect evolutionary outcomes, and that in many circumstances, team reasoning may thrive, even under conditions that, at first glance, may seem (...) unfavorable. We also pursue several extensions that augment the basic account, and conclude that team reasoning is an evolutionarily viable mechanism with the potential to explain behavior in a range of human interactions. (shrink)

Work was conducted among traditional, subsistence whale hunters in Lamalera, Indonesia, in order to test if strict biological kinship or lineage membership is more important for explaining the organization of cooperative hunting parties ranging in size from 8 to 14 men. Crew identifications were collected for all 853 hunts that occurred between May 3 and August 5, 1999. Lineage identity and genetic relatedness were determined for a sample of 189 hunters. Results of matrix regression show that genetic kinship explains little (...) of the hunters’ affiliations independent of lineage identity. Crew members are much more closely related to each other than expected by chance, but this is due to the correlation between lineage membership and genetic kinship. Lineage members are much more likely to affiliate in crews, but kin with r<0.5 are just as likely not to affiliate. The results are discussed vis-à-vis the evolution of cooperation and group identity. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that there is much to learn about “wild justice” and the evolutionary origins of morality – behaving fairly – by studying social play behavior in group-living mammals. Because of its relatively wide distribution among the mammals, ethological investigation of play, informed by interdisciplinary cooperation, can provide a comparative perspective on the evolution of ethical behavior that is broader than is provided by the usual focus on primate sociality. Careful analysis of social play reveals rules of (...) engagement that guide animals in their social encounters. Because of its significance in development, play may provide a foundation of fairness for other forms of cooperation that are advantageous to group living. Questions about the evolutionary roots of cooperation, fairness, trust, forgiveness, and morality are best answered by attention to the details of what animals do when they engage in social play – how they negotiate agreements to cooperate, to forgive, to behave fairly, and to develop trust. We consider questions such as why play fairly? Why did play evolve as it has? Does “being fair” mean being more fit? Do individual variations in play influence an individual’s reproductive fitness? Can we use information about the foundations of moral behavior in animals to help us understand ourselves? We conclude that there is likely to be strong selection for cooperative fair play because there are mutual benefits when individuals adopt this strategy and group stability may also be fostered. Numerous mechanisms have evolved to facilitate the initiation and maintenance of social play, to keep others engaged, so that agreeing to play fairly and the resulting benefits of doing so can be readily achieved. (shrink)

A principal goal of the discipline of artificial morality is to design artificial agents to act as if they are moral agents. Intermediate goals of artificial morality are directed at building into AI systems sensitivity to the values, ethics, and legality of activities. The development of an effective foundation for the field of artificial morality involves exploring the technological and philosophical issues involved in making computers into explicit moral reasoners. The goal of this paper is to discuss strategies for implementing (...) artificial morality and the differing criteria for success that are appropriate to different strategies. (shrink)

Hobbes postulates a social contract to formalize our collective transition from the state of nature to civil society. The prisoner’s dilemma challenges both the mechanics and the outcome of that thought experiment. The incentives for reneging are supposedly strong enough to keep rational persons from cooperating. This paper argues that the prisoner’s dilemma undermines a position Hobbes does not hold. The context and parameters of the social contract steer it safely between the horns of the dilemma. Specifically, in a setting (...) as hostile as the state of nature, Hobbes’s emphasis on self-interest places a premium on survival, and thereby on adaptability, which then promotes progressive concessions toward peaceful coexistence. This transforms the relevant model of rationality from utility maximization to utility satisficing, thus favoring the pursuit of a mutually satisfactory outcome over that of the best personal outcome. The difference not only obviates the prisoner’s dilemma but also better approximates the state of nature while leaving a viable way out. (shrink)

. Moral systems are described as systems of indirect reciprocity, existing because of histories of conflicts of interest and arising as outcomes of the complexity of social interactions in groups of long‐lived individuals with varying conflicts and confluences of interest and indefinitely iterated social interactions. Although morality is commonly defined as involving justice for all people, or consistency in the social treatment of all humans, it may have arisen for immoral reasons, as a force leading to cohesiveness within human groups (...) but specifically excluding and directed against other human groups with different interests. (shrink)

Orbell and Dawes develop a non-game theoretic heuristic that yields a ‘cooperator's advantage’ by allowing players to project their own ‘cooperate-defect’ choices onto potential partners (1991, p. 515). With appropriate parameter values their heuristic yields a cooperative environment, but the cooperation depends, simply, on optimism about others' behavior (1991, p. 526). In earlier work, Dawes (1989) established a statistical foundation for such optimism. In this paper, I adapt some of the concerns of Dawes (1989) and develop a game theoretic model (...) based on a modification of the Harsanyi structure of games with incomplete information (1967–1968). I show that the commonly made conjecture that strategic play is incompatible with cooperation and the cooperator's advantage is false. (shrink)

I discuss how simulating another agent can be useful in some game-theoretical situations, particularly iterated games such as the centipede game.

A cross-cultural analysis of trust and cooperation networks in Northern Ghana (NGHA) and Oaxaca (OAX) was carried out by means of ego networks and interviews. These regions were chosen because both are inhabited by several ethnic groups, thus providing a good opportunity to test the cultural group selection hypothesis. Against the predictions of this approach, we found that in both regions cooperation is grounded in personal trust groups, and that social cohesion depends on these emotional bonds. Moreover, in agreement with (...) Fiske's notion of “evolved proclivities”, we also found two distinct kinds of trust networks, one for each region, which vary in terms of the degree of ethnic interrelation. This pattern suggests that social cohesion increases when environmental resources are scarce. (shrink)

We study the Iterated Bilateral Reciprocity game in which the need for help arises randomly. Players are heterogeneous with respect to ‘neediness’ i.e. probability of needing help. We find bounds on the amount of heterogeneity which can be tolerated for cooperation (all players help when asked to help) to be sustainable in a collectivity. We introduce the notion of Generalised Reciprocity. Individuals make a costly first move to benefit another under the reasonable expectation that either the other or somebody else (...) will reciprocate. We hope that these tentative attempts at extending Axelrod’s seminal work on cooperation will inspire future efforts in the field of organisational culture and social theory more generally. (shrink)

Episodic memory gives us the ability to mentally travel back in time to revisit and relive past experiences. In recent years, there has been an increased interest in the function of episodic memory. According to the orthodox view, episodic memory should be considered a part of a constructive system that simulates the future for sophisticated foresight and flexible planning. In this paper, I offer a novel alternative view. I argue that episodic memory provides invaluable information about the past behavior of (...) others, allowing us to identify reliable and trustworthy partners while avoiding dealing with cheaters. Theoretical models demonstrate that cooperation in groups can be maintained if potential partners use information about an individual’s past behavior to guide their behavior toward that individual. In these reputation-based models of human cooperation, individuals with a history of cheating are ostracized, whereas those with a history of cooperative behavior flourish. Against this theoretical background, it is possible to see a function of episodic memory in facilitating information exchange about others, helping group members make effective partner choices, and avoiding the risk of interacting with cheaters. If correct, episodic memory may have played a significant role in the evolution of human cooperation. (shrink)

This paper addresses theoretically the question how virtual communication may affect cooperation in work teams. The degree of team virtualization, i.e. the extent to which interaction between team members occurs online, is related to parameters of the exchange. First, it is assumed that in online interaction task uncertainties are higher than in face-to-face contacts. Second, the gratifying value of peer rewards is assumed to be lower in online contacts. Thirdly, it is assumed that teams are different in the extent to (...) which members depend on their peers for positive affections, operationalized by the extent to which team members are interested in social relationships for their own sake, independently from their work interactions. Simulation results suggest both positive and negative effects of team virtualization on work-cooperation. (shrink)

In this paper we compare two micro foundations for modelling human behaviour and decision making. We focus on perfect strategic rationality on the one hand and a simple reinforcement mechanism on the other hand. Iterated prisoner’s dilemmas serve as the play ground for the comparison. The main lesson of our analysis is that in the space of all possible 2 × 2 PDs different micro foundations do matter. This suggests that researchers can not safely rely on the assumption that implementing (...) simple models of decision making will yield the same results that may be obtained when more sophisticated decision rules are built into the agents. (shrink)

Economists and biologists have proposed a distinction between two mechanisms – “strong” and “weak” reciprocity – that may explain the evolution of human sociality. Weak reciprocity theorists emphasize the benefits of long-term cooperation and the use of low-cost strategies to deter free-riders. Strong reciprocity theorists, in contrast, claim that cooperation in social dilemma games can be sustained by costly punishment mechanisms, even in one-shot and finitely repeated games. To support this claim, they have generated a large body of evidence concerning (...) the willingness of experimental subjects to punish uncooperative free-riders at a cost to themselves. In this article, I distinguish between a “narrow” and a “wide” reading of the experimental evidence. Under the narrow reading, punishment experiments are just useful devices to measure psychological propensities in controlled laboratory conditions. Under the wide reading, they replicate a mechanism that supports cooperation also in “real-world” situations outside the laboratory. I argue that the wide interpretation must be tested using a combination of laboratory data and evidence about cooperation “in the wild.” In spite of some often-repeated claims, there is no evidence that cooperation in the small egalitarian societies studied by anthropologists is enforced by means of costly punishment. Moreover, studies by economic and social historians show that social dilemmas in the wild are typically solved by institutions that coordinate punishment, reduce its cost, and extend the horizon of cooperation. The lack of field evidence for costly punishment suggests important constraints about what forms of cooperation can or cannot be sustained by means of decentralised policing. (shrink)

Conditional cooperation of selfish and rational actors is feasible in repeated encounters. We stress an important alternative for conditional cooperation: credible commitments that can be incurred via voluntary hostage posting (in the sense of pledging a bond). Hostages may facilitate cooperation in different ways. First, they reduce incentives to behave uncooperatively. Second, by offering some compensation for losses, hostages reduce the costs of suffering from uncooperative behavior of the partner. Finally, hostages may serve as signals about characteristics of the partner (...) that are related to his opportunities and incentives to behave uncooperatively. We show that signalling hostages may have lasting effects in durable relations. (shrink)

In grappling with the micro-macro problem in sociology, philosophers of the field are finding it increasingly useful to associate micro-sociology with theory reduction. In this article I argue that the association is ungrounded and undesirable. Although of a reductive "disposition," micro-sociological theories instantiate something more like "reductive explanation," whereby the causal roles of social wholes are explained in terms of their psychological parts. In this form, micro-sociological theories may actually have a better shot at closing the sociology–psychology explanatory gap, and (...) resist many antireductionist arguments, including the well-known argument from "multiple realization.". (shrink)

Why should moral philosophers, moral psychologists, and machine ethicists care about computational complexity? Debates on whether artificial intelligence (AI) can or should be used to solve problems in ethical domains have mainly been driven by what AI can or cannot do in terms of human capacities. In this paper, we tackle the problem from the other end by exploring what kind of moral machines are possible based on what computational systems can or cannot do. To do so, we analyze normative (...) ethics through the lens of computational complexity. First, we introduce computational complexity for the uninitiated reader and discuss how the complexity of ethical problems can be framed within Marr’s three levels of analysis. We then study a range of ethical problems based on consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics, with the aim of elucidating the complexity associated with the problems themselves (e.g., due to combinatorics, uncertainty, strategic dynamics), the computational methods employed (e.g., probability, logic, learning), and the available resources (e.g., time, knowledge, learning). The results indicate that most problems the normative frameworks pose lead to tractability issues in every category analyzed. Our investigation also provides several insights about the computational nature of normative ethics, including the differences between rule- and outcome-based moral strategies, and the implementation-variance with regard to moral resources. We then discuss the consequences complexity results have for the prospect of moral machines in virtue of the trade-off between optimality and efficiency. Finally, we elucidate how computational complexity can be used to inform both philosophical and cognitive-psychological research on human morality by advancing the moral tractability thesis. (shrink)

This study focuses in testing the power of reciprocity and leadership as collective action incentive structures and cooperation economic benefits in explaining collective action initiation in the context of a post-communist transition economy. The paper is based on a structured survey targeting Albanian export-oriented farmers. Different from most previous studies, this paper uses both regression analysis and machine learning procedure which is better suited for analysing non-linear relationships. The empirical findings are at odds with common sense that non-cooperation is the (...) dominant strategy, because the presence of tolerant reciprocators and leadership resources provide promising incentive structures for collective action development. KEYWORDS: Albania, collective action, collective action benefits, incentive structures, leadership, power, reciprocity. (shrink)