Explaining Universal Social Institutions: A Game-Theoretic Approach

Journal of Social Ontology

2019

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Influential thinkers such as Young, Sugden, Binmore, and Skyrms have developed game-theoretic accounts of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. Social contracts are sets of commonly understood rules that govern cooperative social interaction within societies. These naturalistic accounts provide us with valuable and important insights into the foundations of human societies. However, current naturalistic theories focus mainly on how social contracts solve coordination problems in which the interests of the individual participants are (relatively) aligned, not competition problems in which individual interests compete with group interests (and in which there are no group beneficial Nash equilibrium available). In response, I set out to build on those theories and provide a (more) comprehensive naturalistic account of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. My central claim is that social contracts have culturally evolved to solve cooperation problems, which include both coordination and competition problems. I argue that solutions to coordination problems (which I spell out) emerge from “within-group” dynamics, while solutions to competition problems (which I also spell out) result largely from “between-group” dynamics.

Section: Game Changersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This evolutionary approach, I believe, is valuable and important. It seeks to provide a scientific understanding of the foundations of human societies (see also Vlerick 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Evolution of Social Contracts

Journal of Social Ontology

2019

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“…In a non-institutional context where property is not enforced, individual actors will often benefit more from adopting predatory strategies to acquire goods than take the risk of producing goods. The result at the group level is detrimental, since the total amount of resources in this "non-cooperative equilibrium" will be inferior to the amount in the "cooperative equilibrium" where property is sanctioned and since there will be costly conflict (Vlerick, 2016). Many problems, however, are somewhere on a continuum between pure coordination and pure competition.…”

Section: Why Do Social Institutions Emerge?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These institutions imposed punishments on individuals who threatened the harmony and cooperation within the group. Doing so, they protected that harmony and cooperation (Vlerick, 2016). But religion also played an important role.…”

Section: How Do Religions Solve Problems Of Cooperation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Doing so they organize the group in a particular way in order to "solve" pre-existing problems of cooperation. In game theoretic terms, social institutions set out the rules of the game and are efficient to the extent that they increase the total payoff of the game for its participants (Binmore, 2005;Vlerick, 2016). Some institutions will be more efficient in solving those pre-existing problems and maximizing the total payoff for the group than others.…”

Section: What Shapes Social Institutions?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The cultural evolution of institutional religions

Religion, Brain & Behavior

2018

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In recent work, Atran, Henrich, Norenzayan and colleagues developed an account of religion that reconciles insights from the "by-product" accounts and the adaptive accounts. According to their synthesis, the process of cultural group selection driven by group competition has recruited our proclivity to adopt and spread religious beliefs and engage in religious practices to increase within group solidarity, harmony, and cooperation. While their account has much merit, I believe it only tells us half the story of how institutional religions have evolved. Their cultural evolutionary account of religion only looks at the cultural dynamics arising from competition between groups, not at the dynamics arising from within the group. Drawing from game-theoretic analyses of the emergence and cultural evolution of social institutions, I outline two sets of important "within-group" dynamics that shape institutional religions. The first follow from the necessity to keep the interaction of the participants in an equilibrium state in order to maintain the social institution. The second arise from the competition of institutional features for traction within the group. Bringing these dynamics into account enables us to explain prominent features of institutional religions that cannot be satisfactorily explained by the current model of the cultural evolution of religions.

Explaining human altruism

2020

Synthese

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Humans often behave altruistically towards strangers with no chance of reciprocation. From an evolutionary perspective, this is puzzling. The evolution of altruistic cooperative behavior—in which an organism’s action reduces its fitness and increases the fitness of another organism (e.g. by sharing food)—only makes sense when it is directed at genetically related organisms (kin selection) or when one can expect the favor to be returned (reciprocal altruism). Therefore, evolutionary theorists such as Sober and Wilson have argued that we should revise Neo-Darwininian evolutionary theory. They argue that human altruism evolved through group selection in which groups of altruists were naturally selected because they had a comparative advantage over other groups. Wilson and Sober’s hypothesis attracted followers but is rejected by most of their peers. The heated debate between advocates and critics of group selection often suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity. In response, I set out to clearly distinguish ‘genetic’ from ‘cultural’ group selection (developed by Boyd, Richerson & Henrich) and argue that the latter does not face the potentially debilitating problems plaguing the former. I defend the claim that human altruistic dispositions evolved through cultural group selection and gene-culture coevolution and offer empirical evidence in support. I also argue that actual altruistic behavior often goes beyond the kind of behavior humans have evolved to display. Conscious and voluntary reasoning processes, I show, have an important role in altruistic behavior. This is often overlooked in the scientific literature on human altruism.