Motivation

2/18/08, 5pm, Pound 201.. notes follow….

Adam Smith et al traditionally conceptualize civil society as the pursuit of individual self-interest, with individual preferences aggregated by market & electoral forces. But see Aristotlean & Tocquevillean counter-tradition where morality is what reigns in civil society and renders it operable. Gintis operates more in this latter ‘virtue ethics‘ tradition.

Gintis: so how can these civic virtues complement economic & political institutions in fostering freedom, justice, & efficiency? How can we work at a grassroots level in transforming culture, particularly given the core conflict between (a) the patriarchal/feudal/tribal emphasis on local familial ties and (b) the broader civic emphasis on universalistic non-ascriptive ties?? We should work more on cultural battles than on institutional battles. [See Youtube, OLPC, etc.] Note that the main problem of monarchs was in creating a common culture.

Some theories of the emergence of civil society:

• States are built on the ownership of private property –> this enables taxation, police protection, etc.
• Marx: bourgeoisie has pitilessly torn asunder motley feudal ties; all that’s left to tie people together is naked self-interest.
• Sociology: movement from gemeinschaft (community) to gesellschaft (commerce).
• Weber: movement from traditional to rational-legal authority
• Modern liberalism: democratic polity + market economy (both means of aggregating individual preferences). Presumption of self-interested individuals.

What is the political philosophy of civil society?

• Hobbes: presume people have sprung out of blank slate
• Hume: assume people are knaves, if only for the exercise of contriving a system of self-government

What does evolutionary biology of human behavior have to say about altruism?

• Early formulation of ev bio denied possibility of any altruism beyond kin.
• Then, models of reciprocity developed to explain cooperation; but still premised in self-interest (see Ghiselin quote: “scratch an altruist, and watch a hypocrite bleed”). Genuine altruism still seen as maladaptive.
  • Gintis response: all human behaviors have genetic origins in hunter/gatherer society.

How to explain cooperation among selfish agents?

• Folk theorem re game theory: if you do wrong, you get punished by everyone else who did right. If you fail to punish, you get punished by everyone else. Etc.
  • But see Durkheim.
  • Other anomalies: why do people vote? Based on moral sentiments.
  • Why do people engage in collective action (feminism, civil rights movements, etc)? B/c they have certain ideas about what it means to live in a good society.
    • Note that such movements occur primarily in market democracies.
    • But note that these sentiments can be channeled in pathological directions as well, e.g. Nazism, spousal abuse, etc.
• Gintis explanation
  • Humans have the capacity to identify with relatively wide circles of “insiders” under appropriate conditions –> e.g., tsunami victims, sports teams, fellow citizens, etc.
  • In practice, humans behave altruistically: this can best be explained by strong reciprocity, character virtues (honesty/kindness).
• How does Gintis explanation interact with the Rational Actor model, which treats choice as maximization of an objective function (e.g., fill your orifices with as much stuff as possible), and treats beliefs merely as a given (the “subjective prior”)?
  • Gintis: we rename this the “beliefs/preferences/constraints” (BPC) model, since it includes only the most primitive form of rationality –> preference consistency. The weakness of the BPC model is that it is silent on how beliefs – beliefs concerning (a) the natural world and (b) the contents of other minds – are established and transformed.

Experiments [Gintis went into detailed descriptions of various anthropological experiments re reciprocity and PDs and DGs in different parts of the world.. I didn’t type up many of the details, but he has a lot of interesting papers on his website].

• Experiments re reciprocity: people rarely lie, but do so more as the harm to the other person decreases and as the gain from lying increases.
• Experiments re cooperative behavior: markets make people more fair in ultimatum game. This might be explained by fact that most people in market economies work in very cooperative environments.