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@@ -598,3 +598,1800 @@ is algorithmic"):
-- 93
Why not expand this affirmation so _any_ move to signal some intention?
+
+## Misc
+
+Page 101:
+
+ Hence these refinements (e.g. proper equilibria), likethe Nash
+ equilibrium project itself, seem to have to appeal to somethingother
+ than the traditional assumptions of game theory regarding
+ rationalaction in a social context.
+
+Page 102:
+
+ regarding the relation betweenconvention following and instrumental
+ rationality. The worry here takes usback to the discussion of section
+ 1.2.3 where for instance it was suggested thatconventions might best be
+ understood in the way suggested by Wittgenstein orHegel. In short, the
+ acceptance of convention may actually require a radicalreassessment of
+ the ontological foundations of game theory.
+
+Page 102:
+
+ actually require a radicalreassessment of the ontological foundations
+ of game theory.
+
+Page 103:
+
+ Why not give up on the Nash concept altogether? This ‘giving up’ might
+ takeon one of two forms. Firstly, game theory could appeal to the
+ concept ofrationalisable strategies (recall section 2.4 of Chapter 2)
+ which seemuncontentiously to flow from the assumptions of instrumental
+ rationalityand CKR. The difficulty with such a move is that it concedes
+ that gametheory is unable to say much about many games (e.g. Figures
+ 2.6, 2.12, etc.).Naturally, modesty of this sort might be entirely
+ appropriate for gametheory, although it will diminish its claims as a
+ solid foundation for socialscience.
+
+Page 104:
+
+ Unlike the instrumentally rational model, for Hegelians and Marxists
+ actionbased on preferences feeds back to affect preferences, and so on,
+ in an everunfolding chain. (See Box 3.1 for a rather feeble attempt to
+ blend desires andbeliefs.) Likewise some social psychologists might
+ argue that the key to actionlies less with preferences and more with
+ the cognitive processes used bypeople; and consequently we should
+ address ourselves to understanding theseprocesses.
+
+Page 105:
+
+ 105
+
+Page 106:
+
+ Quite simply, the significant social processes which write history
+ cannot beunderstood through the lens of instrumental rationality. This
+ destines gametheory to a footnote in some future text on the history of
+ social theory. Welet the reader decide.3
+
+Page 108:
+
+ Thirdly, the sociology of the discipline may provide further clues.
+ Twoconditions would seem to be essential for the modern development of
+ adiscipline within the academy. Firstly the discipline must be
+ intellectuallydistinguishable from other disciplines. Secondly, there
+ must be some barriersto the amateur pursuit of the discipline. (A third
+ condition which goes withoutsaying is that the discipline must be able
+ to claim that what it does ispotentially worth while.) The first
+ condition reduces the competition fromwithin the academy which might
+ come from other disciplines (to do thisworthwhile thing) and the second
+ ensures that there is no effectivecompetition from outside the academy.
+ In this context, the rational choicemodel has served economics very
+ well. It is the distinguishing intellectualfeature of economics as a
+ discipline and it is amenable to such formalisationthat it keeps most
+ amateurs well at bay. Thus it is plausible to argue that thesuccess of
+ economics as a discipline within the social sciences has been
+ closelyrelated to its championing of the rational choice model.
+
+Page 108:
+
+ kind of amnesia or lobotomy which thediscipline seems to have suffered
+ regarding most things philosophical duringthe postwar period.
+
+Page 108:
+
+ It isoften more plausible to think of the academy as a battleground
+ betweendisciplines rather than between ideas and the disciplines which
+ have goodsurvival features (like the barriers to entry identified
+ above)
+
+Page 109:
+
+ explanations willonly prosper in so far as they are both superior and
+ they are not institutionallyundermined by the rise of neoclassical
+ economics and the demise ofsociology. It is not necessary to see these
+ things conspiratorially to see thepoint of this argument. All academics
+ have fought their corner in battles overresources and they always use
+ the special qualities of their discipline asammunition in one way or
+ another. Thus one might explain in functionalist termsthe mystifying
+ attachment of economics and game theory to Nash.
+
+Page 110:
+
+ We have no special reason to prioritise one strand of our
+ proposedexplanation. Yet, there is more than a hint of irony in the
+ last suggestionbecause Jon Elster has often championed game theory and
+ its use of the Nashequilibrium concept as an alternative to functional
+ arguments in social science.Well, if the use of Nash by game theorists
+ is itself to be explainedfunctionally, then…
+
+Page 111:
+
+ Liberal theorists often explain the State with reference to state of
+ nature. Forinstance, within the Hobbesian tradition there is a stark
+ choice between astate of nature in which a war of all against all
+ prevails and a peacefulsociety where the peace is enforced by a State
+ which acts in the interest ofall. The legitimacy of the State derives
+ from the fact that people who wouldotherwise live in Hobbes’s state of
+ nature (in which life is ‘brutish, nasty andshort’) can clearly see the
+ advantages of creating a State. Even if a State had
+
+Page 111:
+
+ not surfaced historically for all sorts of other reasons, it would have
+ to beinvented.Such a hypothesised ‘invention’ would require a
+ cooperative act of comingtogether to create a State whose purpose will
+ be to secure rights over life andproperty. Nevertheless, even if all
+ this were common knowledge, it wouldnot guarantee that the State will
+ be created. There is a tricky further issuewhich must be resolved. The
+ people must agree to the precise property rightswhich the State will
+ defend and this is tricky because there are typically avariety of
+ possible property rights and the manner in which the benefits ofpeace
+ will be distributed depends on the precise property rights which
+ areselected (see Box 4.1).In other words, the common interest in peace
+ cannot be the onlyelement in the liberal explanation of the State, as
+ any well-defined andpoliced property rights will secure the peace. The
+ missing element is anaccount of how a particular set of property rights
+ are selected and thiswould seem to require an analysis of how people
+ resolve conflicts ofinterest. This is where bargaining theory promises
+ to make an importantcontribution to the liberal theory of the State
+ because it is concernedprecisely with interactions of this sort.
+
+Page 112:
+
+ State creation in Hobbes’s world provides one example (which
+ especiallyinterests us because it suggests that bargaining theory may
+ throw light onsome of the claims of liberal political theory with
+ respect to the State), butthere are many others.
+
+Page 113:
+
+ The creation of the institutions for enforcing agreements (like the
+ State)which are presumed by cooperative game theory requires as we have
+ seenthat agents first solve the bargaining problem non-cooperatively.
+
+Page 113:
+
+ Indeed for this reason, and following thepractice of most game
+ theorists, we have so far discussed the non-cooperative play of games
+ ‘as if ’ there was no communication, therebyimplicitly treating any
+ communication which does take place in the absenceof an enforcement
+ agency as so much ‘cheap talk’
+
+Page 113:
+
+ In cooperative games agents cantalk to each other and make agreements
+ which are binding on later play. Innon-cooperative games, no agreements
+ are binding. Players can say whateverthey like, but there is no
+ external agency which will enforce that they dowhat they have said they
+ will do.
+
+Page 114:
+
+ Thus it will have shown not just what sort of State rational agents
+ mightagree to create, but also how rational agents might solve a host
+ of bargainingproblems in social life. Unfortunately we have reasons to
+ doubt therobustness of this analysis and it is not difficult to see our
+ grounds forscepticism. If bargaining games resemble the hawk-dove game
+ and thediscussion in Chapter 2 is right to point to the existence of
+ multipleequilibria in this game under the standard assumptions of game
+ theory, thenhow does bargaining theory suddenly manage to generate a
+ uniqueequilibrium?
+
+Page 114:
+
+ 114face value, the striking result of the non-cooperative analysis of
+ thebargaining problem is that it yields the same solution to the
+ bargainingproblem as the axiomatic approach. If this result is robust,
+ then it seems thatgame theory will have done an extraordinary service
+ by showing thatbargaining problems have unique solutions (whichever
+ route is preferred).Thus it will have shown not just what sort of State
+ rational agents mightagree to create, but also how rational agents
+ might solve a host of bargainingproblems in social life. Unfortunately
+ we have reasons to doubt therobustness of this analysis and it is not
+ difficult to see our grounds forscepticism. If bargaining games
+ resemble the hawk-dove game and thediscussion in Chapter 2 is right to
+ point to the existence of multipleequilibria in this game under the
+ standard assumptions of game theory, thenhow does bargaining theory
+ suddenly manage to generate a uniqueequilibrium?
+
+Page 116:
+
+ A threat or promise which, if carried out, costs more tothe agent who
+ issued it than if it is not carried out, iscalled an incredible threat
+ or promise.
+
+Page 138:
+
+ However, this failure topredict should be welcomed by John Rawls and
+ Robert Nozick as it providesan opening to their contrasting views of
+ what counts as justice betweenrational agents.
+
+Page 138:
+
+ If the Nash solution were unique, then game theory would have
+ answeredan important question at the heart of liberal theory over the
+ type of Statewhich rational agents might agree to create. In addition,
+ it would have solveda question in moral philosophy over what justice
+ might demand in this and avariety of social interactions. After all,
+ how to divide the benefits from socialcooperation seems at first sight
+ to involve a tricky question in moralphilosophy concerning what is
+ just, but if rational agents will only ever agreeon the Nash division
+ then there is only one outcome for rational agents.Whether we want to
+ think of this as just seems optional. But if we do or ifwe think that
+ justice is involved, then we will know, and for onceunambiguously, what
+ justice apparently demands between instrumentallyrational
+ agents.Unfortunately, though, it seems we cannot draw these inferences
+ becausethe Nash solution is not the unique outcome. Accepting this
+ conclusion, weare concerned in this section with what bargaining theory
+ then contributes tothe liberal project of examining the State as if it
+ were the result of rational
+
+Page 140:
+
+ behind the veil of ignorance.
+
+Page 142:
+
+ Torture: Another example in moral philosophy is revealed by the problem
+ oftorture for utilitarians. For instance, a utilitarian calculation
+ focuses onoutcomes by summing the individual utilities found in
+ society. In so doing itdoes not enquire about the fairness or otherwise
+ of the processes responsiblefor generating those utilities with the
+ result that it could sanction torture whenthe utility gain of the
+ torturer exceeds the loss of the person being tortured.Yet most people
+ would feel uncomfortable with a society which sanctionedtorture on
+ these grounds because it unfairly transgresses the ‘rights’ of
+ thetortured.
+
+Page 143:
+
+ Granted that society (andthe State) are not the result of some
+ living-room negotiation, what kind of“axioms” would have generated the
+ social outcomes which we observe in agiven society?’ That is, even if
+ we reject the preceding fictions (i.e. of the Stateas a massive
+ resolution of an n-person bargaining game, or of the veil ofignorance)
+ as theoretically and politically misleading, we may still
+ pinpointcertain axioms which would have generated the observed income
+ distributions(or distributions of opportunities, social roles, property
+ rights, etc.) as a resultof an (utterly) hypothetical bargaining game.
+
+Page 143:
+
+ Roemer (1988) considers a problem faced by an international
+ agencycharged with distributing some resources with the aim of
+ improving health(say lowering infant mortality rates). How should the
+ authority distributethose resources? This is a particularly tricky
+ issue because different countriesin the world doubtless subscribe to
+ some very different principles which theywould regard as relevant to
+ this problem; and so agreement on a particularrule seems unlikely.
+ Nevertheless, he suggests that we approach the problemby considering
+ the following constraints (axioms) which we might want toapply to the
+ decision rule because they might be the object of significantagreement.
+
+Page 144:
+
+ rule which allocates resources in such a way as to raise the country
+ with thelowest infant survival rate to that of the second lowest, and
+ then if the budgethas not been exhausted, it allocates resources to
+ these two countries until theyreach the survival rate of the third
+ lowest country, and so on until the budgetis exhausted.
+
+Page 147:
+
+ It is tempting to think that the problem only arises here because
+ theprisoners cannot communicate with one another. If they could get
+ togetherthey would quickly see that the best for both comes from ‘not
+ confessing’.But as we saw in the previous chapter, communication is not
+ all that isneeded. Each still faces the choice of whether to hold to an
+ agreement that
+
+Page 148:
+
+ The recognition ofthis predicament helps explain why individuals might
+ rationally submit to theauthority of a State, which can enforce an
+ agreement for ‘peace’. Theyvoluntarily relinquish some of their freedom
+ that they enjoy in the(hypothesised) state of nature to the State
+ because it unlocks the prisoners’dilemma. (It should be added perhaps
+ that this is not to be taken as a literalaccount of how all States or
+ enforcement agencies arise. The point of theargument is to demonstrate
+ the conditions under which a State or enforcementagency would enjoy
+ legitimacy among a population even though it restrictedindividual
+ freedoms.)
+
+Page 148:
+
+ their normal business with the result that they prosper and enjoy a
+ more‘commodious’ living (as Hobbes phrased it), choosing strategy
+ ‘peace’ is like‘not confessing’ above; when everyone behaves in this
+ manner it is much betterthan when they all choose ‘war’ (’confess’).
+ However, and in spite of wideranging recognition that peace is better
+ than war, the same prisoners’ dilemmaproblem surfaces and leads to war.
+
+Page 148:
+
+ While Hobbes thought that the authority of the State should be absolute
+ soas to discourage any cheating on ‘peace’, he also thought the scope
+ of itsinterventions in this regard would be quite minimal. In contrast
+ much of themodern fascination with the prisoners’ dilemma stems from
+ the fact that theprisoners’ dilemma seems to be a ubiquitous feature of
+ social life. Forinstance, it plausibly lies at the heart of many
+ problems which groups
+
+Page 148:
+
+ they have struck over ‘not confessing’. Is it in the interest of either
+ party tokeep to such an agreement? No, a quick inspection reveals that
+ the bestaction in terms of pay-offs is still to ‘confess’. As Thomas
+ Hobbes remarkedin Leviathan when studying a similar problem, ‘covenants
+ struck without thesword are but words’. The prisoners may trumpet the
+ virtue of ‘notconfessing’ but if they are only motivated instrumentally
+ by the pay-offs,then it is only so much hot air because each will
+ ‘confess’ when the timecomes for a decision.
+
+Page 148:
+
+ What seems to be required to avoid this outcome is a mechanism
+ whichallows for joint or collective decision making, thus ensuring that
+ both actuallydo ‘not confess’. In other words, there is a need for a
+ mechanism for enforcingan agreement—Hobbes’s ‘sword’, if you like. And
+ it is this recognition whichlies at the heart of a traditional liberal
+ argument dating back to Hobbes for thecreation of the State which is
+ seen as the ultimate enforcement agency.(Notice, however, that such an
+ argument applies equally to some otherinstitutions which have the
+ capacity to enforce agreements, for example theMafia.) In Hobbes’s
+ story, each individual in the state of nature can behavepeacefully or
+ in a war-like fashion. Since peace allows everyone to go about
+
+Page 149:
+
+ it is notuncommon to find the dilemma treated as the essential model of
+ social life
+
+Page 149:
+
+ The following four sectionsand the next chapter, on repeated games,
+ discuss some of the developmentsin the social science literature which
+ have been concerned with how thedilemma might be unlocked without the
+ services of the State. In otherwords, the later sections focus on the
+ question of whether the widespreadnature of this type of interaction
+ necessarily points to the (legitimate inliberal terms) creation of an
+ activist State. Are there other solutions whichcan be implemented
+ without involving the State or any public institution?Since the scope
+ of the State’s activities has become one of the mostcontested issues in
+ contemporary politics, it will come as no surprise todiscover that the
+ discussions around alternative solutions to the dilemmahave assumed a
+ central importance in recent political (and especially inliberal and
+ neoliberal) theory.
+
+Page 149:
+
+ It arises as a problem of trust in every elemental economic
+ exchangebecause it is rare for the delivery of a good to be perfectly
+ synchronised withthe payment for it and this affords the opportunity to
+ cheat on the
+
+Page 150:
+
+ These are two-person examples of the dilemma, but it is probably the
+ ‘n-person’ version of the dilemma (usually called the free rider
+ problem) which hasattracted most attention. It creates a collective
+ action problem among groupsof individuals. Again the examples are
+ legion.
+
+Page 151:
+
+ The instrumentally rational individual will recognise that the best
+ action is‘do not attach’ (i.e. defection) whatever the others do. This
+ means that in apopulation of like-minded individuals, all will decide
+ similarly with the resultthat each individual gains 2 utils. This is
+ plainly an inferior outcome for allbecause everyone could have attached
+ the device and if they all had done soeach would have enjoyed 3
+ utils.In these circumstances the individuals in this economy might
+ agree to theState enforcing attachment of the device. Alternatively, it
+ is easy to see howanother popular intervention by the State would also
+ do the trick. The Statecould tax each individual who did not attach the
+ device a sum equivalent to 2utils and this would turn ‘attach’ (C) into
+ the dominant strategy.
+
+Page 151:
+
+ There is nothinglike the State which can enforce contracts within the
+ household to keep akitchen clean, but interestingly within a family
+ household one oftenobserves the exercise of patriarchal or paternal
+ power instead. Of course,the potential difficulty with such an
+ arrangement is that the patriarch mayrule in a partial manner with the
+ result that the kitchen is clean but with nohelp from the hands of the
+ patriarch! The role of the State has in suchcases been captured, so to
+ speak, by an interested party determined bygender. Then gender becomes
+ the determinant of who bears the burdenand who has the more privileged
+ role. Social power which ‘solves’prisoners’ dilemmas can be thus
+ exercised without the direct involvementof the State (even though the
+ State often enshrines such power in its owninstitutions).
+
+Page 152:
+
+ Hence the prisoners’ dilemma/free rider might plausibly lie atthe
+ distinction which is widely attributed to Marx in the discussion of
+ classconsciousness between a class ‘of itself’ and ‘for itself’ (see
+ Elster, 1986b). Onsuch a view a class transforms itself into a ‘class
+ for itself’, or a society avoidsdeficient demand, by unlocking the
+ dilemma.
+
+Page 153:
+
+ Adam Smith’s account of how the self-interest of sellers combines with
+ thepresence of many sellers to frustrate their designs and to keep
+ prices lowmight also fit this model of interaction. If you are the
+ seller choosing from thetwo row strategies C and D, then imagine that C
+ and D translate into ‘charge ahigh price’ and ‘charge a low price’
+ respectively. Figure 5.2 could reflect yourpreference ordering as high
+ prices for all might be better than low prices forall and charging a
+ low price when all others charge a high might be the bestoption because
+ you scoop market share. Presumably the same applies to yourcompetitors.
+ Thus even though all sellers would be happier with a high level
+ ofprices, their joint interest is subverted because each acting
+ individually quiterationally charges a low price. It is as if an
+ invisible hand was at work onbehalf of the consumers.
+
+Page 155:
+
+ This is perhaps the most radical departure from the
+ conventionalinstrumental understanding of what is entailed by
+ rationality because, whileaccepting the pay-offs, it suggests that
+ agents should act in a different wayupon them. The notion of
+ rationality is no longer understood in the means—end framework as the
+ selection of the means most likely to satisfy given ends.
+
+Page 155:
+
+ thus enabling‘rationality’ to solve the problem when there are
+ sufficient numbers ofKantian agents.
+
+Page 155:
+
+ For instance, we mighthave wrongly assumed earlier that there is no
+ honour among thieves becauseacting honourably could be connected to
+ acting rationally in some fullaccount of rationality in which case the
+ dilemma might be unlocked withoutthe intervention of the State (or some
+ such agency). This general idea oflinking a richer notion of rational
+ agency with the spontaneous solution ofthe dilemma has been variously
+ pursued in the social science literature andthis section and the
+ following three consider four of the more prominentsuggestions.
+
+Page 155:
+
+ The first connects rationality with morality and Kant provides a
+ readyreference. His practical reason demands that we should undertake
+ thoseactions which when generalised yield the best outcomes. It does
+ not matterwhether others perform the same calculation and actually
+ undertake thesame action as you. The morality is deontological and it
+ is rational for theagent to be guided by a categorical imperative (see
+ Chapter 1). Consequently,in the free rider problem, the application of
+ the categorical imperative willinstruct Kantian agents to follow the
+ cooperative action
+
+Page 156:
+
+ Similarly partisans in occupied Europe during the Second World War
+ riskedtheir lives even when it was not clear that it was instrumentally
+ rational toconfront the Nazis. In such cases, it seems people act on a
+ sense of what isright.
+
+Page 156:
+
+ Likewise, Hardin (1982) suggests thatthe existence of environmental and
+ other voluntary organisations usuallyentails overcoming a free rider
+ problem and in the USA this may beexplained in part by an American
+ commitment to a form ofcontractarianism whereby ‘people play fair if
+ enough others do’
+
+Page 156:
+
+ Instead, rationality is conceived more as an expression of what is
+ possible: ithas become an end in its own right. This is not only
+ radical, it is alsocontroversial. Deontological moral philosophy is
+ controversial for the obviousreason that it is not concerned with the
+ actual consequences of an action, aswell as for the move to connect it
+ with rationality. (Nevertheless, O’Neill(1989) presents a recent
+ argument and provides an extended discussion of thismoral psychology
+ and how it might be applied.)Kant’s morality may seem rather demanding
+ for these reasons, but thereare weaker or vaguer types of moral
+ motivation which also seem capableof unlocking the prisoners’ dilemma.
+ For example, a general altruisticconcern for the welfare of others may
+ provide a sufficient reason forpeople not to defect on the cooperative
+ arrangement.
+
+Page 157:
+
+ Another departure from the strict instrumental model of rational action
+ comeswhen individuals make decisions in a context of norms and these
+ norms arecapable of overriding considerations of what is instrumentally
+ rational.
+
+Page 157:
+
+ On the other hand, given the well-known difficultiesassociated with any
+ coherent system of ethics (like utilitarianism), it seemsquite likely
+ that a person’s ethical concerns will not be captured by a well-behaved
+ set of preferences (see for instance Sen (1970) on the problems ofbeing
+ a Paretian Liberal). Indeed rational agents may well base their actions
+ onreasons which are external to their preferences.
+
+Page 157:
+
+ Of course, there is a tricky issue concerning whether these rather
+ weaker orvaguer moral motivations (like altruism, acting on what is
+ fair or what is right)mark a deep breach with the instrumental model of
+ action. It might be arguedthat such ethical concerns can be represented
+ in this model by introducing theconcept of ethical preferences. Thus
+ the influence of ethical preferencestransforms the pay-offs in the
+ game.
+
+Page 158:
+
+ Disputeswithin Aboriginal society are neither perceived as simply
+ between twoindividuals nor subject to some established community
+ tribunal. It is for thisreason that the resolution of a major conflict
+ will involve a significant amountof negotiation between the parties.
+ Yet the informal laws which govern thecontents of the negotiations are
+ well entrenched in the tribal culture. Forexample, it is not uncommon
+ for family members of the perpetrator to beasked to accept ‘punishment’
+ if the individual offender is in prison andtherefore unavailable.
+
+Page 159:
+
+ First World War. This was a war of unprecedentedcarnage both at the
+ beginning and the end. Yet during a middle period, non-aggression
+ between the two opposing trenches emerged spontaneously in theform of a
+ ‘live and let live’ norm. Christmas fraternisation is one
+ well-knownexample, but the ‘live and let live’ norm was applied much
+ more widely.Snipers would not shoot during meal times and so both sides
+ could go abouttheir business ‘talking and laughing’ at these hours.
+ Artillery was predictablyused both at certain times and at certain
+ locations. So both sides couldappear to demonstrate aggression by
+ venturing out at certain times and tocertain locations, knowing that
+ the shells would fall predictably close to, butnot on, their chosen
+ route. Likewise, it was not considered ‘etiquette’ to fireon working
+ parties who had been sent out to repair a position or collect thedead
+ and so on.
+
+Page 159:
+
+ For instance, it is sometimes argued that thenorms of Confucian
+ societies enable those economies to solve the prisoners’dilemma/free
+ rider problems within companies without costly contracting
+ andmonitoring activity and that this explains, in part, the economic
+ success ofthose economies (see Hargreaves Heap, 1991, Casson, 1991,
+ North, 1991).Akerlof ’s (1983) discussion of loyalty filters, where he
+ explains the relativesuccess of Quaker groups in North America by their
+ respect for the norm ofhonesty, is another example—
+
+Page 160:
+
+ Wittgenstein of Philosophical Investigations1 is an obvious source for
+ this viewbecause he would deny that the meaning of something like a
+ person’sinterests or desires can be divorced from a social setting; and
+ this is a usefulopportunity to take that argument further. The
+ attribution of meaningrequires language rules and it is impossible to
+ have a private language. Thereis a long argument around the possibility
+ or otherwise of private languagesand it may be worth pursuing the point
+ in a slightly different way by askinghow agents have knowledge of what
+ action will satisfy the condition ofbeing instrumentally rational. Any
+ claim to knowledge involves a firstunquestioned premise: I know this
+ because I accept x. Otherwise an infiniteregress is inevitable: I
+ accept x because I accept y and I accept ybecause…and so on.
+ Accordingly, if each person’s knowledge of what isrational is to be
+ accessible to one another, then they must share the samefirst premises.
+ It was Wittgenstein’s point that people must share somepractices if
+ they are to attach meaning to words and so avoid the problem ofinfinite
+ redescription which comes with any attempt to specify the rules
+ forapplying the rules of a language.
+
+Page 161:
+
+ There is another similarity and difference which might also be
+ usefullymarked. To make it very crudely one might draw an analogy
+ between thedifficulty which Wittgenstein encounters over knowledge
+ claims and a similardifficulty which Simon (1982) addresses. (Herbert
+ Simon is well known ineconomics for his claim that agents are
+ procedurally rational, or boundedlyrational, because they do not have
+ the computing capacity to work out whatis the best to do in complex
+ settings.) To be sure, Wittgenstein finds theproblem in an infinite
+ regress of first principles while Simon finds thedifficulty in the
+ finite computing capacity of the brain. Nevertheless, both
+
+Page 161:
+
+ discussion of the Harsanyi doctrine because a similar claim seems to
+ underpinthat doctrine. Namely that all rational individuals must come
+ to the sameconclusion when faced by the same evidence. Wittgenstein
+ would agree to theextent that some such shared basis of interpretation
+ must be present ifcommunication is to be possible. But he would deny
+ that all societies andpeoples will share the same basis for
+ interpretations. The source of the sharingfor Wittgenstein is not some
+ universal ‘rationality’, as it is for Harsanyi; ratherit is the
+ practices of the community in which the people live, and these willvary
+ considerably across time and space.
+
+Page 162:
+
+ let us make the view inspired by Wittgensteinvery concrete. The
+ suggestion is that what is instrumentally rational is notwell defined
+ unless one appeals to the prevailing norms of behaviour. Thismay seem a
+ little strange in the context of a prisoners’ dilemma where thedemands
+ of instrumental rationality seem plain for all to see: defect! But,in
+ reply, those radically inspired by Wittgenstein would complain that
+ thenorms have already been at work in the definition of the matrix and
+ itspay-offs because it is rare for any social setting to throw up
+ unvarnishedpay-offs. A social setting requires interpretation before
+ the pay-offs can beassigned and norms are implicated in those
+ interpretations. (See forexample Polanyi (1945) who argues, in his
+ celebrated discussion of the riseof industrial society, that the
+ incentives of the market system are onlyeffective when the norms of
+ society place value on private materialadvance.)
+
+Page 162:
+
+ The last reflection on rationality comes from David Gauthier. He
+ remainsfirmly in the instrumental camp and ambitiously argues that its
+ dictates havebeen wrongly understood in the prisoners’ dilemma game.
+ Instrumental rationalitydemands cooperation and not defection! To make
+ his argument he distinguishesbetween two sorts of maximisers: a
+ straightforward maximiser (SM) and aconstrained maximiser (CM). A
+ straightforward maximiser defects (D)following the same logic that we
+ have used so far. The constrained maximiseruses a conditional strategy
+ of cooperating (C) with fellow constrainedmaximisers and defecting with
+ straightforward maximisers. He then asks:which disposition
+ (straightforward or constrained) should an instrumentallyrational
+ person choose to have? (The decision can be usefully compared with
+ asimilar one confronting Ulysses in connection with listening to the
+ Sirens,
+
+Page 164:
+
+ The point is that if instrumental rationality is what motivates the CM
+ inthe prisoners’ dilemma, then a CM must want to defect
+
+Page 164:
+
+ In other words, being a CM may be better than beingan SM, but the best
+ strategy of all is to label yourself a CM and then cheaton the deal.
+ And, of course, when people do this, we are back in a worldwhere
+ everyone defects.
+
+Page 164:
+
+ Surely, this line of argument goes,it pays not to ‘zap’ a fellow CM
+ because your reputation as a CM is therebypreserved and this enables
+ you to interact more fruitfully with fellow CMs inthe future. Should
+ you zap a fellow CM now, then everyone will know that youare a rogue
+ and so in your future interactions, you will be treated as an SM.
+ Inshort, in a repeated setting, it pays to forgo the short run gain
+ from defectingbecause this ensures the benefits of cooperation over the
+ long run. Thusinstrumental calculation can make true CM behaviour the
+ best course ofaction.
+
+Page 165:
+
+ Moreover, it achieved aremarkable degree of cooperation.
+
+Page 165:
+
+ each program.Tit-for-Tat, submitted by Anatol Rapoport, won the
+ tournament. Theprogram starts with a cooperative move and then does
+ whatever theopponent did on the previous move. It was, as Axelrod
+ points out, not onlythe simplest program, it was also the best!
+
+Page 165:
+
+ dilemma can be defeated without the intervention of a collective agency
+ likethe State—that is, provided the interaction is repeated
+ sufficiently often tomake the long term benefits outweigh the short
+ gains.
+
+Page 166:
+
+ ‘Is the Prisoners’ dilemma all of sociology?’Of course, it is not, he
+ answers. Nevertheless, it has fascinated social scientistsand proved
+ extremely difficult to unlock in one-shot plays of the game—atleast,
+ without the creation of a coercive agency like the State which is
+ capableof enforcing a collective action or without the introduction of
+ norms or somesuitable form of moral motivation on the part of the
+ individuals playing thegame. Of course, many interactions are repeated
+ and so this stark conclusionmay be modified by the discussion of the
+ next chapter.
+
+Page 167:
+
+ Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, mutualdefection remains the only Nash
+ equilibrium. The following two sectionsdiscuss, respectively,
+ indefinitely repeated prisoners’ dilemma and therelated free rider
+ games. We show (section 6.4) that mutual cooperation isa possible Nash
+ equilibrium outcome in these games provided there is a‘sufficient’
+ degree of uncertainty over when the repetition will cease.There are
+ some significant implications here both for liberal politicaltheory and
+ for the explanatory power of game theory. We notice that thisresult
+ means that mutual cooperation might be achieved without theintervention
+ of a collective agency like the State and/or withoutappealing to some
+ expanded notion of rational agency
+
+Page 168:
+
+ the absence of a theory of equilibriumselection.
+
+Page 170:
+
+ Firstly, it provides a theoretical warrant for the belief that
+ cooperation in theprisoners’ dilemma can be rationally sustained
+ without the intervention ofsome collective agency like the State,
+ provided there is sufficient (to be definedlater) doubt over when the
+ repeated game will end. Thus the presence of aprisoners’ dilemma
+ interaction does not necessarily entail either a poor socialoutcome or
+ the institutions of formal collective decision making. The
+ thirdalternative is for players to adopt a tit-for-tat strategy
+ rationally.1 If they adoptthis third alternative the socially inferior
+ outcome of mutual defection will beavoided without the interfering
+ presence of the State or some other formal(coercive) institution.
+
+Page 171:
+
+ Equally, it is probable that both prisonersin the original example may
+ think twice about ‘confessing’ because each knowsthat they are likely
+ to encounter one another again (if not in prison, at leastoutside) and
+ so there are likely to be opportunities for exacting ‘punishment’ ata
+ later date.
+
+Page 171:
+
+ Folk theorem
+
+Page 172:
+
+ This is an extremely important result for the social sciences because
+ itmeans that there are always multiple Nash equilibria in such
+ indefinitelyrepeated games. Hence, even if Nash is accepted as the
+ appropriateequilibrium concept for games with individuals who are
+ instrumentally rationaland who have common knowledge of that
+ rationality, it will not explain howindividuals select their strategies
+ because there are many strategy pairs whichform Nash equilibria in
+ these repeated games. Of course, we have encounteredthis problem in
+ some one-shot games before, but the importance of this resultis that it
+ means the problem is always there in indefinitely repeated games.Even
+ worse, it is amplified by repetition. In other words, game theory needs
+ tobe supplemented by a theory of equilibrium selection if it is to
+ explain actionin these indefinitely repeated games, especially if it is
+ to explain howcooperation actually arises spontaneously in indefinitely
+ repeated prisoners’dilemma games.
+
+Page 175:
+
+ Now consider a tit-for-tat strategy in this group which works in
+ thefollowing way. The strategy partitions the group into those who are
+ in ‘goodstanding’ and those who are in ‘no standing’ based on whether
+ the individualcontributed to the collective fund in the last time
+ period. Those in ‘goodstanding’ are eligible for the receipt of help
+ from the group if they fall ‘ill’ thistime period, whereas those who
+ are in ‘no standing’ are not eligible for help.Thus tit-for-tat
+ specifies cooperation and puts you in ‘good standing’ for thereceipt of
+ a benefit if you fall ‘ill’ (alternatively, to connect with the
+ earlierdiscussion, one might think of cooperating as securing a
+ ‘reputation’ whichputs one in ‘good standing’
+
+Page 175:
+
+ Notice your decision now will determine whether you are in ‘good
+ standing’from now until the next opportunity that you get to make this
+ decision (whichwill be the next period if you do not fall ‘ill’ or the
+ period after that if you fall‘ill’). So we focus on the returns from
+ your choice now until you next get theopportunity to choose.
+
+Page 176:
+
+ Who needs the State?
+
+Page 176:
+
+ Here we pick up threads of the Hobbesianargument for the State and see
+ what the result holds for this argument. At firstglance, the argument
+ for the State seems to be weakened because it appearsthat a group can
+ overcome the free rider problem without recourse to theState for
+ contract enforcement. So long as the group can punish free riders
+ byexcluding them from the benefits of cooperation (as for instance the
+ Pygmiespunished Cephu—see Chapter 5), then there is the possibility of
+ ‘spontaneous’public good provision through the generalisation of the
+ tit-for-tat strategy.Having noted this, nevertheless, the point seems
+ almost immediately to beblunted since the difference between a
+ Hobbesian State which enforcescollective agreements and the generalised
+ tit-for-tat arrangement is notaltogether clear and so in proving one we
+ are hardly undermining the other.After all, the State merely codifies
+ and implements the policies of‘punishment’ on behalf of others in a
+ very public way (with the rituals ofpolice stations, courts and the
+ like). But, is this any different from the golfclub which excludes a
+ member from the greens when the dues have not beenpaid or the Pygmies’
+ behaviour towards Cephu? Or the gang which excludespeople who have not
+ contributed ‘booty’ to the common fund?
+
+Page 176:
+
+ Box 6.2
+
+Page 178:
+
+ contract—that the creation of the State by the individual also helps
+ shape asuperior individual.) Hayek, however, prefers the ‘English
+ tradition’ because hedoubts (a) that the formation of the State is part
+ of a process which liberates(and moulds) the social agent and (b) that
+ there is the knowledge to informsome central design so that it can
+ perform the task of resolving free ridingbetter than spontaneously
+ generated solutions (like tit-for-tat). In other words,reason should
+ know its limits and this is what informs Hayek’s support forEnglish
+ pragmatism and its suspicion of the State.Of course there is a big ‘if
+ in Hayek’s argument. Although Beirut stillmanaged to function without a
+ grand design, most of its citizens prayed forone. In short, the
+ spontaneous solution is not always the best. Indeed, as wehave seen,
+ the cooperative solution is just one among many Nash equilibria
+ inrepeated games, so in the absence of some machinery of collective
+ decisionmaking, there seems no guarantee it will be selected. Against
+ this, however, itis sometimes argued that evolution will favour
+ practices which generate thecooperative outcome since societies that
+ achieve cooperation in these gameswill prosper as compared with those
+ which are locked in mutual defection.This is the cue for a discussion
+ of evolutionary game theory and we shall leavefurther discussion of the
+ State until we turn to evolutionary game theory
+
+Page 178:
+
+ Instead the result seems important because it demythologises the
+ State.Firstly the State qua State (that is, the State with its police
+ force, its courts andthe like) is not required to intrude into every
+ social interaction which suffersfrom a free rider problem. There are
+ many practices and institutions which aresurrogates for the State in
+ this regard. Indeed, the Mafia has plausiblydisplaced the State in
+ certain areas precisely because it provides the services ofa State.
+ Likewise, during the long civil war years inhabitants of Beirutsomehow
+ still managed to maintain services which required the overcoming offree
+ rider problems.Secondly since something like the State as contract
+ enforcer might well arise‘spontaneously’ through the playing of free
+ rider games repeatedly, it need notrequire any grand design. There need
+ be no constitutional conventions. In thisway the result counts strongly
+ for what Hayek (1962) refers to as the Englishas opposed to the
+ European continental Enlightenment tradition. The latterstresses the
+ power of reason to construct institutions that overcome problemslike
+ those of the free rider. (It also often presupposes—recall Rousseau’s
+ social
+
+Page 178:
+
+ different if you pay the State in the form of taxes or the Mafia in the
+ form oftribute?
+
+Page 185:
+
+ example comes from strategicdecisions by the legislature when the
+ Executive is trying to push throughParliament a series of bills that
+ the latter is unsympathetic towards.
+
+Page 185:
+
+ President proposes legislation. The Congress is notin sympathy with the
+ proposal and must decide whether to make amendments.If it decides to
+ make an amendment, then the President must decide whetherto fight the
+ amendment or acquiesce. Looking at the President’s pay-offs it
+ isobvious that, even though he or she prefers that the Congress does
+ not amendthe legislation, if it does, he or she would not want to fight
+
+Page 186:
+
+ the Folk theorem ensures that aninfinity of war/acquiescence patterns
+ are compatible with instrumentalrationality. Nevertheless, the duration
+ of such games is usually finite andsometimes their length is
+ definite—e.g. US Presidents have a fixed term andincumbents have only a
+ fixed number of local markets that they wish todefend. What happens
+ then? Would it make sense for the President or theincumbent to put on a
+ show of strength early on (e.g. by fighting the Congressor unleashing a
+ price war) in order to create a reputation for belligerence thatwould
+ make the Congress and the entrant think that, in future rounds,
+ theywill end up with pay-off -1/2 if they dare them?
+
+Page 186:
+
+ In the finitely repeated version of the game Nash backward
+ inductionargues against this conclusion. Just as in the case of the
+ prisoners’ dilemmain the previous subsection, it suggests that, since
+ there will be no fighting atthe last play of the game, the reputation
+ of the President/incumbent willunravel to the first stage and no
+ fighting will occur (rationally). Theconclusion changes again once we
+ drop CKR (or allow for different types ofplayers).
+
+Page 190:
+
+ Of course, there may be actions that can be takenoutside the game and
+ which have a similar effect on the beliefs of others. Such‘signalling’
+ behaviour is considered briefly in this section to round out
+ thediscussion of reputations. It is of potential relevance not only to
+ repeated, butalso to one-shot games.
+
+Page 192:
+
+ when the game isrepeated and there is a unique Nash equilibrium things
+ change. The Nashequilibrium is attractive because as time goes by and
+ agents adjust theirexpectations of what others will do in the light of
+ experience, then they willseem naturally drawn to the Nash equilibrium
+ because it is the only restingplace for beliefs. Any other set of
+ beliefs will upset itself.
+
+Page 192:
+
+ Nevertheless, there is still no guarantee that a Nash equilibrium
+ willsurface even if it exists and it is unique.
+
+Page 193:
+
+ The strength of the Nash equilibrium is that forward looking agents
+ mayrealise that (R2, C2) is the only outcome that does not engender
+ such thoughts.We just saw that adaptive (or backward looking)
+ expectations will not do thetrick. If, however, after having been
+ around the pay-off matrix a few timesplayers ask themselves the
+ question ‘How can we reach a stable outcome?’,they may very well
+ conclude that the only such outcome is the Nashequilibrium (R2, C2).But
+ why would they want to ask such a question? What is so wrong
+ withinstability (and disequilibrium) after all? Indeed in the case of
+ Figure 2.6 ourplayers have an incentive to avoid a stable outcome
+ (observe that on averagethe cycle which takes them from one extremity
+ of the pay-off matrix toanother yields a much higher pay-off than the
+ Nash equilibrium result). If, onthe other hand, pay-offs were as in
+ Figure 6.4 below, they would be stronglymotivated to reach the Nash
+ equilibrium.
+
+Page 193:
+
+ It is easy to see that this type of adaptivelearning will never lead
+ the players to the Nash equilibrium outcome (R2, C2).Instead, they will
+ be oscillating between outcomes (R1, C1), (R1, C3), (R3, C1)and (R3,
+ C3).Can they break away from this never ending cycle and hit the
+ Nashequilibrium? They can provided they converge onto a common
+ forwardlooking train of thought. For
+
+Page 194:
+
+ Thus we conclude that whether repetition makes the Nashequilibrium more
+ or less likely when it is unique must depend on thecontingencies of how
+ people learn and the precise pay-offs from non-Nashbehaviour.
+
+Page 194:
+
+ Broadly put, this is one and the same problem. It is a problem
+ withspecifying how agents come to hold beliefs which are extraneous to
+ the game(in the sense that they cannot be generated endogenously
+ through theapplication of the assumptions of instrumental rationality
+ and commonknowledge of instrumental rationality)
+
+Page 195:
+
+ the insights of evolutionary game theory arecrucial material for many
+ political and philosophical debates, especially thosearound the State.
+
+Page 195:
+
+ The argument for suchan agency turns on the general problem of
+ equilibrium selection and on theparticular difficulty of overcoming the
+ prisoners’ dilemma. When there aremultiple equilibria, the State can,
+ through suitable action on its own part, guidethe outcomes towards one
+ equilibrium rather than another. Thus the problemof equilibrium
+ selection is solved by bringing it within the ambit of
+ consciouspolitical decision making. Likewise, with the prisoners’
+ dilemma/ free riderproblem, the State can provide the services of
+ enforcement. Alternativelywhen the game is repeated sufficiently and
+ the issue again becomes one ofequilibrium selection, then the State can
+ guide the outcomes towards thecooperative Nash equilibrium.
+
+Page 195:
+
+ intransigent Right’
+
+Page 196:
+
+ —that is, the idea that you can turn social outcomes intomatters of
+ social choice through the intervention of a collective action
+ agencylike the State. The positive argument against ‘political
+ rationalism’, as the quoteabove suggests, turns on the idea that these
+ interventions are not evennecessary. The failure to intervene does not
+ spell chaos, chronic indecision,fluctuations and outcomes in which
+ everyone is worse off than they couldhave been. Instead, a ‘spontaneous
+ order’ will be thrown up as a result ofevolutionary processes.
+
+Page 196:
+
+ Likewise, there are problems of ‘political failure’ that subvert the
+ ideal ofdemocratic decision making and which can match the market
+ failures that theState is attempting to rectify. For example, Buchanan
+ and Wagner (1977) andTullock (1965) argue that special interests are
+ bound to skew ‘democraticdecisions’ towards excessively large
+ bureaucracies and high governmentexpenditures. Furthermore there are
+ difficulties, especially after the Arrowimpossibility theorem, with
+ making sense of the very idea of something likethe ‘will of the people’
+ in whose name the State might be acting (see Arrow,1951, Riker, 1982,
+ Hayek, 1962, and Buchanan, 1954).1These, so to speak, are a shorthand
+ list of the negative arguments comingfrom the political right against
+ ‘political rationalism’ or ‘socialconstructivism’
+
+Page 196:
+
+ Forinstance, there are problems of inadequate knowledge which can mean
+ thateven the best intentioned and executed political decision generates
+ unintendedand undesirable consequences. Indeed this has always been an
+ importanttheme in Austrian economics, featuring strongly in the 1920s
+ debate over thepossibility of socialist planning as well as
+ contemporary doubts over thewisdom of more minor forms of State
+ intervention.
+
+Page 196:
+
+ Hayek (1962) himself tracesthe battlelines in the dispute back to the
+ beginning of Enlightenmentthinking:Hayek distinguished two intellectual
+ lines of thought about freedom, ofradically opposite upshot. The first
+ was an empiricist, essentially Britishtradition descending from Hume,
+ Smith and Ferguson, and seconded byBurke and Tucker, which understood
+ political development as aninvoluntary process of gradual institutional
+ improvement, comparable tothe workings of a market economy or the
+ evolution of common law. Thesecond was a rationalist, typically French
+ lineage descending fromDescartes through Condorcet to Comte, with a
+ horde of modernsuccessors, which saw social institutions as fit for
+ premeditatedconstruction, in the spirit of polytechnic engineering. The
+ former lineled to real liberty; the latter inevitably destroyed it.
+
+Page 197:
+
+ evolutionary stable strategies
+
+Page 197:
+
+ In particular, wesuggest that the evolutionary approach can help
+ elucidate the idea that poweris mobilised through institutions and
+ conventions. We conclude the chapterwith a summing-up of where the
+ issue of equilibrium selection and the debateover the State stands
+ after the contribution of the evolutionary approach.
+
+Page 197:
+
+ The basic idea behind this equilibrium concept is that an ESS is a
+ strategywhich when used among some population cannot be ‘invaded’ by
+ anotherstrategy because it cannot be bested. So when a population uses
+ a strategy I,‘mutants’ using any other strategy J cannot get a toehold
+ and expand amongthat population.
+
+Page 197:
+
+ This is why evolutionary game theory assumes significance in the
+ debateover an active State. It should help assess the claims of
+ ‘spontaneous order’made by those in the British corner and so advance
+ one of the central debatesin Enlightenment political thinking.
+
+Page 198:
+
+ This is, if youlike, a version of Hobbes’s nightmare where there are no
+ property rightsand everyone you come across will potentially claim your
+ goods.
+
+Page 202:
+
+ Secondly, and more specifically, there is the result that although the
+ symmetricalplay of this game yields a unique equilibrium, it becomes
+ unstable the momentrole playing begins and some players start to
+ recognise asymmetry. Sincecreative agents seem likely to experiment
+ with different ways of playing thegame, it would be surprising if there
+ was never some deviation based on anasymmetry. Indeed it would be more
+ than surprising because there is muchevidence to support the idea that
+ people look for ‘extraneous’ reasons whichmight explain what are in
+ fact purely random types of behaviour (see theadjacent box on winning
+ streaks).Formally, this leaves us with the old problem of how the
+ solution to thegame comes about. However, evolutionary game theory does
+ at least point usin the direction of an answer. The phase diagram in
+ Figure 7.2 reveals that theselection of an equilibrium depends
+ critically on the initial set of beliefs
+
+Page 202:
+
+ once animperfect form of rationality is posited. In other words, it is
+ not beingdeduced as an implication of the common knowledge of
+ rationalityassumption which has been the traditional approach of
+ mainstream gametheory.
+
+Page 203:
+
+ Thirdly, it can be noted that the selection of one ESS rather than
+ anotherembodies a convention
+
+Page 203:
+
+ To put these observationsrather less blandly, since rationality on this
+ account is only responsible for thegeneral impulse towards mimicking
+ profitable behaviour, the history of thegame depends in part on what
+ are the idiosyncratic and unpredictable (non-rational, one might say,
+ as opposed to irrational) features of individual beliefsand learning.
+
+Page 204:
+
+ Fourthly, the selection of one equilibrium rather than another
+ potentiallymatters rather deeply. In effect in the hawk—dove game over
+ contestedproperty, what happens in the course of moving to one of the
+ ESSs is theestablishment of a form of property rights. Either those
+ playing role R get theproperty and role C players concede this right,
+ or those playing role C get theproperty and role R players concede this
+ right. This is interesting not onlybecause it contains the kernel of a
+ possible explanation of property rights (onwhich we shall say more
+ later) but also because the probability of playing roleR or role C is
+ unlikely to be distributed uniformly over the population. Indeed,this
+ distribution will depend on whatever is the source of the distinction
+ usedto assign people to roles.
+
+Page 204:
+
+ The question, then, of how a source of differentiation gets
+ establishedbecomes rather important.
+
+Page 204:
+
+ Thus the behaviour at one of theseESSs is conventionally determined
+ and, to repeat the earlier point, we can plotthe emergence of a
+ particular convention with the use of this phase diagram.It will depend
+ both on the presumption that agents learn from experience(the rational
+ component of the explanation) and on the particularidiosyncratic (and
+ non-rational) features of initial beliefs and precise learningrules.
+
+Page 206:
+
+ After all, perhaps the presence of these conventions can only
+ beaccounted for by a move towards a Wittgensteinian ontology, in which
+ casemainstream game theory’s foundations look decidedly wobbly. To
+ prevent thisdrift a more robust response is required.The alternative
+ response is to deny that the appeal to shared prominenceor salience
+ involves either an infinite regress or an acknowledgement
+ thatindividuals are necessarily ontologically social
+
+Page 206:
+
+ There is a further and deeper problem with the concept of salience
+ basedon analogy because the attribution of terms like ‘possession’
+ plainly begs thequestion by presupposing the existence of some sort of
+ property rights in thepast. In other words, people already share a
+ convention in the past and this isbeing used to explain a closely
+ related convention in the present. Thus we havenot got to the bottom of
+ the question concerning how people come to holdconventions in the first
+ place.3
+
+Page 206:
+
+ So, of course, we cannot hope to explainhow they actually achieve a new
+ coordination without appealing to thosebackground conventions. In this
+ sense, it would be foolish for socialscientists (and game theorists, in
+ particular) to ignore the social context inwhich individuals play new
+ games.
+
+Page 208:
+
+ This conclusion reinforces the earlier result that the course of
+ historydepends in part on what seem from the instrumental account of
+ rationalbehaviour to be non-rational (and perhaps idiosyncratic) and
+ thereforefeatures of human beliefs and action which are difficult to
+ predict
+
+Page 209:
+
+ mechanically. One can interpret this in the spirit of
+ methodologicalindividualism at the expense of conceding that
+ individuals are, in this regard,importantly unpredictable. On the one
+ hand, this does not look good for theexplanatory claims of the theory.
+ On the other hand, to render theindividuals predictable, it seems that
+ they must be given a shared history andthis will only raise the
+ methodological concern again of whether we canaccount for this sharing
+ satisfactorily without a changed ontology. Insummary, if individuals
+ are afforded a shared history, then social context is‘behind’ no one
+ and ‘in’ everyone and then the question is whether it is agood idea to
+ analyse behaviour by assuming (as methodological individualistsdo) the
+ separability of context and action.4
+
+Page 213:
+
+ The underlying point here is that discrimination may be
+ evolutionarystable if the dominated cannot find ways of challenging the
+ social conventionthat supports their subjugation. This conclusion is
+ not necessarily rightbecause there are other potential sources of
+ change. The insight that we preferto draw is that individual attempts
+ to buck an established convention areunlikely to succeed, whereas the
+ same is not true when individuals takecollective action.
+
+Page 213:
+
+ Stasis, status quo: Thus the introduction of a convention will benefit
+ the average person, butif you happen to be so placed with respect to
+ the convention that you onlyplay the dominant role with a probability
+ of less than 1/3, then you would bebetter off without the convention.
+ This result may seem puzzling at first: whydo the people who play a
+ dominant role less than 1/3 of the time not revert tothe symmetric play
+ of the game and so undermine the convention? The answeris that even
+ though the individual would be better off if everyone quit
+ theconvention, it does not make sense to do so individually. After all,
+ aconvention will tell your opponent to play either H or D, and then
+ instruct youto play D or H respectively; and you can do no better than
+ follow thisconvention since the best reply to H remains D and likewise
+ the best reply toD is H. It is just tough luck if you happen to get the
+ D instruction all thetime!We take the force of this individual
+ calculation to be a powerful contributorto the status quo and it might
+ seem to reveal that evolutionary processes yieldto stasis.
+
+Page 213:
+
+ Conventions, inequality and revolt
+
+Page 214:
+
+ To summarise, we should expect a convention to emerge even though itmay
+ not suit everyone, or indeed even if it short-changes the majority. It
+ maybe discriminatory, inequitable, non-rational, indeed thoroughly
+ disagreeable, yetsome such convention is likely to arise whenever a
+ social interaction like hawk-dove is repeated. Which convention emerges
+ will depend on the sharedsalience of extraneous features of the
+ interaction, initial beliefs and the waythat people learn.
+
+Page 214:
+
+ Standstill: A potential weakness of evolutionary game theory has just
+ becomeapparent. Once the bandwagon has come to a standstill, and one
+ conventionhas been selected, the theory cannot account for a potential
+ subversion of theestablished convention. Such an account would require,
+ as we argued in theprevious paragraph, an understanding of political
+ (that is, collective) actionbased on a more active form of human agency
+ than the one provided byinstrumental rationality. Can evolutionary game
+ theory go as far?
+
+Page 219:
+
+ Recall the idea of a trembling hand in section 2.7.1 and suppose
+ thatplayers make mistakes sometimes. In particular, when they intend
+ tocooperate they occasionally execute the decision wrongly and they
+ defect. Inthese circumstances, playing t punishes you for the mistake
+ endlessly becauseit means that your opponent defects next round in
+ response to your mistakendefection. If in the next period you
+ cooperate, you are bound to get zapped.If you follow your t-strategy
+ next time, then you will be defecting while youropponent will be
+ cooperating and a frustrating sequence of alternatingdefections and
+ cooperations will ensue. One way out of this bind is toamend t to t’
+ whereby, if you defect by mistake, then you cooperate twiceafterwards:
+ the first time as a gesture of acknowledging your mistake and thesecond
+ in order to coordinate your cooperative behaviour with that of
+ youropponent. In other words, the amended tit-for-tat instructs you to
+ cooperatein response to a defection which has been provoked by an
+ earlier mistakendefection on your part.
+
+Page 219:
+
+ Eventhough strategy C would do equally well as a reply to t’, if your
+ opponentmade the mistake (last period) then you know that your opponent
+ willcooperate in the next two rounds no matter what you do this period.
+ Thusyour best response in this round is to defect
+
+Page 221:
+
+ Conventions as covert social power
+
+Page 221:
+
+ even more covert power that comes from being able to mould the
+ preferencesand the beliefs of others so that a conflict of interest is
+ not even latentlypresent.
+
+Page 221:
+
+ with the interests of another.It is common in discussions of power to
+ distinguish between the overt andthe covert exercise of power. Thus,
+ for instance, Lukes (1974) distinguishesthree dimensions of power.
+ There is the power that is exercised in the politicalor the economic
+ arena where individuals, or firms, institutions, etc., are able
+ tosecure decisions which favour their interests over others quite
+ overtly. This isthe overt exercise of power along the first dimension.
+ In addition, there is themore covert power that comes from keeping
+ certain items off the politicalagenda. Some things simply do not get
+ discussed in the political arena and inthis way the status quo
+ persists. Yet the status quo advantages some rather thanothers and so
+ this privileging of the status quo by keeping certain issues offthe
+ political agenda is the second dimension of power. Finally, there is
+ the
+
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+
+ The figure of Spartacus captured imaginations over theages, not so much
+ because of his military antics, but because he personifiedthe
+ possibility of liberating the slaves from the beliefs which sustained
+ theirsubjugation.
+
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+
+ this is the power which works through the mind and which dependsfor its
+ influence on the involvement or agreement of large numbers of
+ thepopulation (again connecting with the earlier observation about the
+ force ofcollective action).
+
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+
+ State were consciously to select a convention in these circumstances
+ thenwe might observe the kind of political haggling associated with the
+ overtexercise of power. Naturally when a convention emerges
+ spontaneously, we donot observe this because there is no arena for the
+ haggling to occur, yet theemergence of a convention is no less decisive
+ than a conscious politicalresolution in resolving the conflict of
+ interest.6Evolutionary game theory also helps reveal the part played by
+ beliefs,especially the beliefs of the subordinate group, in securing
+ the power of thedominant group (a point, for example, which is central
+ to Gramsci’s notion ofhegemony and Hart’s contention that the power of
+ the law requires voluntarycooperation).
+
+Page 224:
+
+ Theannexing of virtue can happen as a result of well-recognised
+ patterns ofcognition.
+
+Page 224:
+
+ Of course, like all theories of cognitive dissonance removal,this story
+ begs the question of whether the adjustment of beliefs can do thetrick
+ once one knows that the beliefs have been adjusted for the
+ purpose.Nevertheless, there seem to be plenty of examples of dissonance
+ removal
+
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+
+ Our final illustration of how evolutionary game theory might help
+ sharpenour understanding of debates around power in the social sciences
+ relates tothe question of how gender and race power distributions are
+ constitutedand persist. The persistence of these power imbalances is a
+ puzzle to some.
+
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+
+ Once a convention isestablished in this game, a set of property
+ relations are also established.Hence the convention could encode a set
+ of class relations for this gamebecause it will, in effect, indicate
+ who owns what and some may end upowning rather a lot when others own
+ scarcely anything. However, as wehave seen a convention of this sort
+ will only emerge once the game isplayed asymmetrically and this
+ requires an appeal to some piece ofextraneous information like sex or
+ age or race, etc. In short, the creationof private property relations
+ from the repeated play of these gamesdepends on the use of some other
+ asymmetry and so it is actuallyimpossible to imagine a situation of
+ pure class relations, as they couldnever emerge from an evolutionary
+ historical process. Or to put thisslightly differently: asymmetries
+ always go in twos!This understanding of the relation has further
+ interesting implications.For instance, an attack on gender
+ stratification is in part an attack on classstratification and vice
+ versa.
+
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+
+ Likewise, however, it would be wrong toimagine that the attack on
+ either if successful would spell the end of theother.
+
+Page 227:
+
+ On this account of powerthrough the working of convention, the
+ ideological battle aimed atpersuading people not to think of themselves
+ as subordinate is half thebattle because these beliefs are part of the
+ way that power is mobilised.
+
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+
+ . The feedback mechanism, however, ispresent in this analysis and it
+ arises because there is ‘learning’. It is theassumption that people
+ shift towards practices which secure better outcomes(without knowing
+ quite why the practice works for the best) which is thefeedback
+ mechanism responsible for selecting the practices. Thus in the
+ debateover functional explanation, the analysis of evolutionary games
+ lends supportto van Parijs’s (1982) argument that ‘learning’ might
+ supply the generalfeedback mechanism for the social sciences which will
+ license functionalexplanations in exactly the same way as natural
+ selection does in the biologicalsciences.
+
+Page 228:
+
+ effect, the explanation of gender and racial inequalities using
+ thisevolutionary model is an example of functional argument.
+
+Page 228:
+
+ The differencebetween men and women or between whites and blacks has no
+ merit inthe sense that it does not explain why the differentiation
+ persists. Thedifferentiation has the unintended consequence of helping
+ the populationto coordinate its decision making in settings where there
+ are benefitsfrom coordination. It is this function of helping the
+ population to selectan equilibrium in a situation which would otherwise
+ suffer from theconfusion of multiple equilibria which explains the
+ persistence of thedifferentiation.
+
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+
+ So far, however, the difference between the two camps (H&EVGT andMarx)
+ is purely based on value judgements: one argues that illusory moralsare
+ good for all, the other that they are not. In this sense, both
+ canprofitably make use of the analysis in evolutionary game theory.
+ Indeed, aswe have already implied in section 7.3.4, a radical political
+ project grounded
+
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+
+ On the side of H&EVGT, Hume thinks that suchillusions play a positive
+ role (in providing the ‘cement’ which keeps societytogether) in
+ relation to the common good. So do neo-Humeans (like Sugden)who are, of
+ course, less confident that invocation of the ‘common good’ is agood
+ idea (as we mentioned in section 7.6.2) but who are still happy to
+ seeconventions (because of the order they bring) become entrenched in
+ sociallife even if this is achieved with the help of a few moral
+ ‘illusions’. On theother side, however, Marx insists that moral
+ illusions are never a good idea(indeed he dislikes all illusions).
+ Especially since, as he sees it, their socialfunction is to help some
+ dreadful conventions survive (recall how in section7.3.4 we showed that
+ disagreeable conventions may become stable even ifthey are detrimental
+ to the majority). Marx believed that we can
+
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+
+ which sound quite like observations that Marxists might make:
+ theimportance of taking collective action if one wants to change a
+ convention;how power can be covertly exercised; how beliefs
+ (particularly moral beliefs)may become endogenous to the conventions we
+ follow; how propertyrelations might develop functionally; and so on.
+
+Page 229:
+
+ Indeedmost of the ideas developed on the basis of H&EVGT in the
+ precedingpages would find Marx in agreement.
+
+Page 229:
+
+ People may think that their beliefson such matters go beyond material
+ values (i.e. self-interest, which in ourcontext means pay-offs); that
+ they respond to certain universal ideals aboutwhat is ‘good’ and
+ ‘right’, when all along their moral beliefs are a direct(even if
+ unpredictable) repercussion of material conditions and interests.
+
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+
+ An analysis of hawk—dove games, along the lines of H&EVGT, helpsexplain
+ the evolution of property rights in primitive societies. Once
+ theserights are in place and social production is under way, each group
+ in society(e.g. the owners of productive means, or those who do not own
+ tools, land,machines, etc.) develops its own interest. And since (as
+ H&EVGT concurs)conventions evolve in response to such interests, it is
+ not surprising thatdifferent conventions are generated within different
+ social groups in responseto the different interests. The result is
+ conflicting sets of conventions which
+
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+
+ Finally, the established (stable) conventions acquire moral weight and
+ even leadpeople to believe in something called the common good—which is
+ most likelyanother illusion
+
+Page 230:
+
+ In summary, H&EVGTbegins with a behavioural theory based on the
+ individual interest and eventuallylands on its agreeable by-product:
+ the species interest. There is nothing inbetween the two types of
+ interest. By contrast, Marx posits another type ofinterest in between:
+ class interest.Marx’s argument is that humans are very different from
+ other speciesbecause we produce commodities in an organised way before
+ distributingthem. Whereas other species share the fruits of nature
+ (hawk—dove games aretherefore ‘naturally’ pertinent in their state of
+ nature), humans have developedcomplex social mechanisms for producing
+ goods. Naturally, the norms ofdistribution come to depend on the
+ structure of these productive mechanisms.They involve a division of
+ labour and lead to social divisions (classes). Whichclass a person
+ belongs to depends on his or her location (relative to others)within
+ the process of production. The moment collective production (as in
+ thecase of Cephu and his tribe in Chapter 5) gave its place to a
+ separationbetween those who owned the tools of production and those who
+ workedthose tools, then groups with significantly different (and often
+ contradictory)interests developed.
+
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+
+ in collective action is as compatible with evolutionary game theory as
+ is theneo-Humeanism of Sugden (1986, 1989). But is there something more
+ inMarx than a left wing interpretation of evolutionary game theory? We
+ thinkthere is.
+
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+
+ lead to conflicting morals. Each set of morals becomes an ideology.9
+ Which setof morals (or ideology) prevails at any given time? Marx
+ thinks that, inevitably,the social class which is dominant in the
+ sphere of production and distributionwill also be the one whose set of
+ conventions and morals (i.e. whose ideology)will come to dominate over
+ society as a whole.To sum up Marx’s argument so far, prevailing moral
+ beliefs are illusoryproducts of a social selection process where the
+ driving force is not somesubjective individual interest but objective
+ class interest rooted in thetechnology and relations of production.
+ Although there are many conflictingnorms and morals, at any particular
+ time the morality of the ruling class isuniquely evolutionary stable.
+ The mélange of legislation, moral codes, norms,etc., reflects this
+ dominant ideology.But is there a fundamental difference between the
+ method of H&EVGTand Marx? Or is it just a matter of introducing classes
+ in the analysiswithout changing the method?
+
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+
+ So, how would Marx respond to evolutionary game theory if he werearound
+ today? He would, we think, be very interested in some of the
+ radicalconclusions in this chapter. However, he would also speak
+ derisively of thematerialism of H&EVGT Marx habitually poured scorn on
+ those (e.g.Spinoza and Feuerbach) who transplanted models from the
+ natural sciencesto the social sciences with little or no modification
+ to allow for the fact thathuman beings are very different to atoms,
+ planets and molecules.12 Wemention this because at the heart of H&EVGT
+ lies a simple Darwinianmechanism (witness that there is no analytical
+ difference between the modelsin the biology of John Maynard Smith and
+ the models in this chapter). Marxwould probably claim that the theory
+ is not sufficiently evolutionary because(a) its mechanism comes to a
+ standstill once a stable convention has evolved,and (b) of its reliance
+ on instrumental rationality which reduces humanactions to passive
+ reflex responses to some (meta-physical) self-interest.
+
+Page 232:
+
+ Especially in hisphilosophical (as opposed to economic) works, Marx
+ argued strongly for anevolutionary (or more precisely historical)
+ theory of society with a modelof human agency which retains human
+ activity as a positive (creative) forceat its core. In addition, Marx
+ often spoke out against mechanism; againstmodels borrowed directly from
+ the natural sciences (astronomy andbiology are two examples that he
+ warned against). It is helpful to preservesuch an aversion since humans
+ are ontologically different to atoms andgenes. Of course Marx himself
+ has been accused of mechanism and,indeed, in the modern (primarily
+ Anglo-Saxon) social theory literature he istaken to be an exemplar of
+ 19th century mechanism. Nevertheless hewould deny this, pointing to the
+ dialectical method he borrowed fromHegel and which (he would claim)
+ allowed him to have a scientific, yetnon-mechanistic, outlook. Do we
+ believe him? As authors we disagree here.SHH does not, while YV does.
+
+Page 232:
+
+ Of course there is always the answer that self-interest feeds into
+ moral beliefsand then moral beliefs feed back into self-interest and
+ alter people’s desires.And so on. But that would be too circular for
+ Marx. It would not explainwhere the process started and where it is
+ going. By contrast, his version ofmaterialism (which he labelled
+ historical materialism) starts from thetechnology of production and the
+ corresponding social organisation. Thelatter entails social classes
+ which in turn imbue people with interests; peopleact on those interests
+ and, mostly without knowing it, they shape theconventions of social
+ life which then give rise to morals. The process,however, is grounded
+ on the technology of production at the beginning of thechain. And as
+ this changes (through technological innovations) it provides theimpetus
+ for the destabilisation of the (temporarily) evolutionary
+ stableconventions at the other end of the chain.
+
+Page 232:
+
+ Ifmorals are socially manufactured, then so is self-interest.
+
+Page 233:
+
+ Perhaps our disagreement needs to be understood in terms of thelack of
+ a shared history in relation to these debates—one of us embarkingfrom
+ an Anglo-Saxon, the other from a (south) European, tradition. It
+ was,after all, one of our important points in earlier chapters that
+ game theoristsshould not expect a convergence of beliefs unless agents
+ have a sharedhistory!
+
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+
+ most of the population. This would seem to provide ammunition for the
+ socialconstructivists, but of course it depends on them believing that
+ collectiveaction agencies like the State will have sufficient
+ information to distinguish thesuperior outcomes. Perhaps all that can
+ be said on this matter is that, if youreally believe that evolutionary
+ forces will do the best that is possible, then it isbeyond dispute that
+ these forces have thrown up people who are predisposedto take
+ collective action. Thus it might be argued that our
+ evolutionarysuperiority as a species derives in part precisely from the
+ fact that we are pro-active through collective action agencies rather
+ than reactive as we would beunder a simple evolutionary scheme.
+
+Page 234:
+
+ Turning to another dispute, that between social constructivism and
+ spontaneousorder within liberal political theory, two clarifications
+ have occurred. The first isthat there can be no presumption that a
+ spontaneous order will deliveroutcomes which make everyone better off,
+ or even outcomes which favour
+
+Page 234:
+
+ Thesetheoretical moves will threaten to dissolve the distinction
+ between action andstructure which lies at the heart of the game
+ theoretical depiction of social lifebecause it will mean that the
+ structure begins to supply reasons for action andnot just constraints
+ upon action. On the optimistic side, this might be seen asjust another
+ example of how discussions around game theory help to dissolvesome of
+ the binary oppositions which have plagued some debates in
+ socialscience—just as it helped dissolve the opposition between gender
+ and classearlier in this chapter. However, our concern here is not to
+ point to requiredchanges in ontology of a particular sort. The point is
+ that some change isnecessary, and that it is likely to threaten the
+ basic approach of game theory tosocial life.
+
+Page 234:
+
+ Secondly, on the difficult cases where equilibrium selection
+ involveschoices over whose interests are to be favoured (i.e. it is not
+ a matter ofselecting the equilibrium which is better for everyone),
+ then it is notobvious that a collective action agency like the State is
+ any better placed tomake this decision than a process of spontaneous
+ order. This may come asa surprise, since we have spent most of our time
+ here focusing on theindeterminacy of evolutionary games when agents are
+ only weaklyinstrumentally rational.
+
+Page 235:
+
+ In other words the very debate within liberal political theory over
+ socialconstructivism versus spontaneous order is itself unable to come
+ to aresolution precisely because its shared ontological foundations are
+ inadequatefor the task of social explanation. In short, we conclude
+ that not only willgame theory have to embrace some expanded form of
+ individual agency, if itis to be capable of explaining many social
+ interactions, but also that this isnecessary if it is to be useful to
+ the liberal debate over the scope of theState.
+
+Page 237:
+
+ sabotage
+
+Page 238:
+
+ What it does mean is thatour interpretation of results must be cautious
+ and that, ultimately,laboratory experiments may only be telling us how
+ people behave inlaboratories.
+
+Page 241:
+
+ becausethere are some players who are unconditionally cooperative or
+ ‘altruistic’ in theway that they play this game and, secondly, because
+ whether someone iscooperative or not seems to be determined by one’s
+ background, rather thanby how clever (or rational) he or she is (see
+ adjacent box on the curse ofeconomics). In this sense, the evidence
+ seems to point to a falsification of theassumption of instrumentally
+ rational action based on the pay-offs
+
+Page 242:
+
+ divisions of an army are stationed on two hill-tops overlooking a
+ valley inwhich an enemy division can be clearly seen. It is known that
+ if both divisionsattack simultaneously they will capture the enemy with
+ none, or very little, lossof life. However, there were no prior plans
+ to launch such an attack, as it wasnot anticipated that the enemy would
+ be spotted in that location. How will thetwo divisions coordinate their
+ attack (we assume that they must maintain visualand radio silence)?
+ Neither commanding officer will launch an attack unless heis sure that
+ the other will attack at the same time. Thus a classic
+ coordinationproblem emerges.Imagine now that a messenger can be sent
+ but that it will take him about anhour to convey the message. However,
+ it is also possible that he will be caughtby the enemy in the meantime.
+ If everything goes smoothly and the messengergets safely from one
+ hill-top to another, is this enough for a coordinated attackto be
+ launched? Suppose the message sent by the first commanding officer
+ tothe second read: ‘Let’s attack at dawn!’ Will the second officer
+ attack at dawn?No, unless he is confident that the first commanding
+ officer (who sent the
+
+Page 242:
+
+ message) knows that the message has been received. So, the
+ secondcommanding officer sends the messenger back to the first with the
+ message:‘Message received. Dawn it is!’ Will the second officer attack
+ now? Not untilhe knows that the messenger has delivered his message.
+ Paradoxically, noamount of messages will do the trick since
+ confirmation of receipt of the lastmessage will be necessary regardless
+ of how many messages have been alreadyreceived.
+
+Page 242:
+
+ We see that in a coordination game like the above, even a very
+ highdegree of common knowledge of the plan to attack at dawn is not
+ enough toguarantee coordination (see Box 8.3 for an example of how
+ different degreesof common knowledge can be engendered in the
+ laboratory). What is needed(at least in theory) is a consistent
+ alignment of beliefs (CAB) about the plan.1And yet this does not
+ exclude the possibility that the two commandingofficers will both
+ attack at dawn with very high probability. How successfullythey
+ coordinate will, however, depend on more than a high degree ofcommon
+ knowledge. Indeed the latter may even be un-necessary providedthe time
+ of the attack is carefully chosen. The classic early experiments
+ byThomas Schelling on behaviour in coordination games have confirmed
+ this—
+
+Page 246:
+
+ Thus in experiments, Pareto superiority does not seem to be a
+ generalcriterion which players use to select between Nash equilibria
+ (see also Chapter7). In conclusion, so far it seems that the way people
+ actually play these gamesis neither directly controlled by the
+ strategic aspects of the game (i.e. thelocation of the best response
+ marks (+) and (-) in the matrix) nor by the size ofthe return from
+ coordinating on non-Nash outcomes such as (R3, C3): it is
+ aso-far-unexplained mixture of the two factors that decides.
+
+Page 251:
+
+ To phrase this conclusion slightly differently, but in a way which
+ connectswith the results in the next section, bargaining is a ‘complex
+ socialphenomenon’ where people take cues from aspects of their social
+ life whichgame theory typically overlooks. Thus players seem to base
+ their behaviouron aspects of the social interaction which game theory
+ typically treats asextraneous; and when players share these extraneous
+ reference points such
+
+Page 258:
+
+ What we have here is an evolution ofsocial roles. Players with the R
+ label develop a different attitude towardsreflective cooperation to
+ those players with the C role in spite of the fact that theRs and the
+ Cs are the same people. In other words, the signal which causes
+ theobserved pattern of cooperation seems to be emitted by the label R
+ or C. Thisreminds us of the discussion in Chapter 7 about the capacity
+ of sex, race andother extraneous features to pin down a convention on
+ which the structure ofdiscrimination is grounded.
+
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+
+ Experimentation with game theory is good, clean fun. Can it be more
+ thanthat? Can it offer a way out of the obtuse debates on CKR, CAB,
+ NEMS,Nash backward induction, out-of-equilibrium behaviour, etc.? The
+ answerdepends on how we interpret the results. And as interpretation
+ leaves plentyof room for controversy, we should not expect the data
+ from the laboratoryunequivocally to settle any disputes. Our suspicion
+ is that experiments are togame theory what the latter is to liberal
+ individualism: a brilliant means ofcodifying its problems and of
+ creating a taxonomy of time-honoureddebates.There are, however,
+ important benefits from experimenting. Watchingpeople play games
+ reminds us of their inherent unpredictability, their sense offairness,
+ their complex motivation—of all those things that we tend to forgetwhen
+ we model humans as bundles of preferences moving around some pay-
+
+Page 258:
+
+ radical breakwith the exclusive reliance of instrumental rationality is
+ also necessary.
+
+Page 260:
+
+ At root we suspect that the major problem is the one that the
+ experimentsin the last chapter isolate: namely, that people appear to
+ be more complexlymotivated than game theory’s instrumental model allows
+ and that a part ofthat greater complexity comes from their social
+ location.We do not regard this as a negative conclusion. Quite the
+ contrary, it standsas a challenge to the type of methodological
+ individualism which has had afree rein in the development of game
+ theory.
+
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+
+ Along the way to this conclusion, we hope also that you have had
+ fun.Prisoners’ dilemmas and centipedes are great party tricks. They are
+ easy todemonstrate and they are amenable to solutions which are
+ paradoxical enoughto stimulate controversy and, with one leap of the
+ liberal imagination, theaudience can be astounded by the thought that
+ the fabric of society (even theexistence of the State) reduces to these
+ seemingly trivial games—Fun andGames, as the title of Binmore’s (1992)
+ text on game theory neatly puts it. Butthere is a serious side to all
+ this. Game theory is, indeed, well placed toexamine the arguments in
+ liberal political theory over the origin and the scopeof agencies for
+ social choice like the State. In this context, the problems whichwe
+ have identified with game theory resurface as timely warnings of
+ thedifficulties any society is liable to face if it thinks of itself
+ only in terms ofliberal individualism.
+
+Page 260:
+
+ The ambitious claim that game theory will provide a unified foundation
+ for allsocial science seems misplaced to