What motives underlie the ways humans interact socially? Are these the same for all societies? Are these part of our nature, or influenced by our environments?Over the last decade, research in experimental economics has emphatically falsified the textbook representation of Homo economicus. Literally hundreds of experiments suggest that people care not only about their own material payoffs, but also about such things as fairness, equity and reciprocity. However, this research left fundamental questions unanswered: Are such social preferences stable components of (...) human nature; or, are they modulated by economic, social and cultural environments? Until now, experimental research could not address this question because virtually all subjects had been university students, and while there are cultural differences among student populations throughout the world, these differences are small compared to the full range of human social and cultural environments. A vast amount of ethnographic and historical research suggests that people's motives are influenced by economic, social, and cultural environments, yet such methods can only yield circumstantial evidence about human motives. Combining ethnographic and experimental approaches to fill this gap, this book breaks new ground in reporting the results of a large cross-cultural study aimed at determining the sources of social preferences that underlie the diversity of human sociality. The same experiments which provided evidence for social preferences among university students were performed in fifteen small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of social, economic and cultural conditions by experienced field researchers who had also done long-term ethnographic field work in these societies. The findings of these experiments demonstrated that no society in which experimental behaviour is consistent with the canonical model of self-interest. Indeed, results showed that the variation in behaviour is far greater than previously thought, and that the differences between societies in market integration and the importance of cooperation explain a substantial portion of this variation, which individual-level economic and demographic variables could not. Finally, the extent to which experimental play mirrors patterns of interaction found in everyday life is traced.The book starts with a succinct but substantive introduction to the use of game theory as an analytical tool and its use in the social sciences for the rigorous testing of hypotheses about fundamental aspects of social behaviour outside artificially constructed laboratories. The results of the fifteen case studies are summarized in a suggestive chapter about the scope of the project. (shrink)

Recent investigations have uncovered large, consistent deviations from the predictions of the textbook representation of Homo economicus (Roth et al, 1992, Fehr and Gächter, 2000, Camerer 2001). One problem appears to lie in economists’ canonical assumption that individuals are entirely self-interested: in addition to their own material payoffs, many experimental subjects appear to care about fairness and reciprocity, are willing to change the distribution of material outcomes at personal cost, and reward those who act in a cooperative manner while punishing (...) those who do not even when these actions are costly to the individual. These deviations from what we will term the canonical model have important consequences for a wide range of economic phenomena, including the optimal design of institutions and contracts, the allocation of property rights, the conditions for successful collective action, the analysis of incomplete contracts, and the persistence of noncompetitive wage premia. Fundamental questions remain unanswered. Are the deviations from the canonical model evidence of universal patterns of behavior, or do the individual’s economic and social environments shape behavior? If the latter, which economic and social conditions are involved? Is reciprocal behavior better explained statistically by individuals’ attributes such as their sex, age, or relative wealth, or by the attributes of the group to which the individuals belong? Are there cultures that approximate the canonical account of self-regarding behavior? Existing research cannot answer such questions because virtually all subjects have been university students, and while there are cultural differences among student populations throughout the world, these differences are small compared to the range of all social and cultural environments. To address the above questions, we and our collaborators undertook a large cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public good, and dictator games.. (shrink)

Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity results from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of (...) small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model – based on self-interest – fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral variability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life. Key Words: altruism; cooperation; cross-cultural research; experimental economics; game theory; ultimatum game; public goods game; self-interest. (shrink)

We would like to thank the commentators for their generous comments, valuable insights and helpful suggestions. We begin this response by discussing the selfishness axiom and the importance of the preferences, beliefs, and constraints framework as a way of modeling some of the proximate influences on human behavior. Next, we broaden the discussion to ultimate-level (that is evolutionary) explanations, where we review and clarify gene-culture coevolutionary theory, and then tackle the possibility that evolutionary approaches that exclude culture might be sufficient (...) to explain the data. Finally, we consider various methodological and epistemological concerns expressed by our commentators. (shrink)

Experiments are not models of cooperation; instead, they demonstrate the presence of the ethical and other-regarding predispositions that often motivate cooperation and the punishment of free-riders. Experimental behavior predicts subjects' cooperation in the field. Ethnographic studies in small-scale societies without formal coercive institutions demonstrate that disciplining defectors is both essential to cooperation and often costly to the punisher.

Emotions, according to David Hume, are “simple and uniform impressions,” “internal” impressions which are related to other impressions according to an empirically demonstrable set of “laws of association.” The notion that an emotion is “simple” and a mere “impression” accounts for the relatively little attention the topic of “the passions” has received in modern philosophy, at least until very recently. Unlike “ideas,” to which such “impressions” are usually contrasted, emotions are thought to be preconceptual, unintelligent, irrational, causal products of “animal (...) spirits” of a sub-human nature, mere “feelings” which deserve none of the careful analysis so often dedicated to the structures of perception, knowledge and reason. In Descartes’ treatise on the passions, for example, “animal spirits” and the crude physiology of emotions take priority over his quick and often glib quasi-conceptual analyses of them. His analysis is thoroughly strait jacketed by the dubious dualism that usually bears his name, and ever since, the question whether emotions should be thought of as mere “feelings” or “impressions” or rather conceived of in terms of their physiology and manifestations in behavior has dominated what little study of emotions existed before this century. (shrink)

One of the leading thinkers to emerge in the postwar conservative intellectual revival was the sociologist Robert Nisbet. His book The Quest for Community, published in 1953, stands as one of the most persuasive accounts of the dilemmas confronting modern society. Nearly a half century before Robert Putnam documented the atomization of society in Bowling Alone, Nisbet argued that the rise of the powerful modern state had eroded the sources of community—the family, the neighborhood, the church, the guild. (...) Alienation and loneliness inevitably resulted. But as the traditional ties that bind fell away, the human impulse toward community led people to turn even more to the government itself, allowing statism—even totalitarianism—to flourish. This edition of Nisbet’s magnum opus features a brilliant introduction by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat and three critical essays. Published at a time when our communal life has only grown weaker and when many Americans display cultish enthusiasm for a charismatic president, this new edition of The Quest for Community shows that Nisbet’s insights are as relevant today as ever. (shrink)

Chasing the fading contours if the past. Pursuing points of intersection. Encounters with aging literary figures and surviving witnesses to history. Excavating printed artifacts in the back rooms of used book shops. Locating of equipment lost or discarded. Conversations with Paul Bowles & Mohammed Mrabet, Brion Gysin, "Pauline Réage, Robert Graves, Maurice Girodias, Berthe Cleyrergue, Edouard Roditi, Allen Ginsberg & Peter Orlovsky." --Back cover.

The first Ethics Bowl competition was established in the 1990s by Dr. Robert Ladenson of the Illinois Institute of Technology to help students reason through ethical challenges they will face in their personal and professional lives, and help them develop responsibilities as citizens of a democracy. Since then, the Ethics Bowl format and its pedagogical goals have been adapted to many other academic disciplines and a variety of student and professional populations. Our aim was to quantify the growth of (...) the Ethics Bowl concept by enumerating and describing extant Ethics Bowl programs, outlining both pedagogical goals and operational aspects. Using respondent-driven sampling, we identified 20 Ethics Bowl programs across the globe, reaching tens of thousands of participants annually, and an additional two programs preparing to launch in the near future. We conclude by making recommendations for pedagogical and operational dimensions of the programs. (shrink)

Explaining Norms is a work in philosophy of social science aspiring to provide an account of norms, their general character, their kinds ðformal, legal, moral, and socialÞ, what they can explain, and what explains their dynamic ðemergence, persistence, and unravelingÞ. The authors engage with various positions in ethics, political philosophy, and ðto some extentÞ the philosophy of law. The discussion is rewarding and inventive—it provides distinctive and intriguing views on several topics ðe.g., on the distinction between moral and social normsÞ. (...) There are a lot of ideas here. Perhaps this is predictable, given that the work is a product of four capable minds. What is surprising is the range of ideas and arguments on which the authors manage to agree and out of which they construct one reasonably cohesive account. Given the wide range of literatures discussed, readers are likely to find much of interest. Not surprisingly, some related literatures do seem to be underplayed—treated in a few footnotes and somewhat by the way, with little development of systematic connections. There are thriving literatures in comparative psychology/ ethology, moral psychology, and cultural anthropology that are devoted to how we humans manage to cooperate and coordinate as we do. While there are footnotes to some of this literature ðsee the index for, e.g., Boyd, Bowles, Camerer, Gintis, and HenrichÞ, many readers would have benefited from a discussion that more fully related the position developed in Explaining Norms to that work in experimental economics and anthropology. Discussing the relationships with work in moral psychology and ethology would also have been appreciated ðHaidt, de Waal, and Tomasello are not mentionedÞ. Still, there is very much to like about what is treated here. The authors seek conceptually individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for being a norm. On the account provided, norms are something on the order of normative principles accepted in some group ð3–4Þ. Thus, norms involve some normative principle, possessing “a certain generality of scope and application.” These principles need not be objectively correct or fitting, and they may be objectively “simply awful” ð3Þ. The central questions have to do with what is involved in some group accepting these normative principles. The authors locate their position in two dimensions. (shrink)

Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone and subsequent works has analysed the phenomenon that American society increasingly avoids various community driven activities, such as civic associations, activities with friends and family (Putnam, Bowling Alone. Simon and Schuster, New York; 2006). In this paper we introduce the idea that a counterpart to this social trend is a global addiction to fame and celebrity. We believe that the global internet is one of the major drivers of this search for fame (...) for the sake of being famous. However, most people aspiring to be famous celebrities will not succeed in this quest, and become disappointed. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the ethical implications of such social contagion, bandwagon effects in today's global business environment towards fame and celebrity. The contribution of this paper is to provide a future direction for research on business ethics in terms of this growing global phenomenon of fame and celebrity addiction. (shrink)

Critics of Robert Nozick's libertarian political theory often allege that the theory in general and its account of property rights in particular lack sufficient foundations. A key difficulty is thought to lie in his account of how portions of the world which no one yet owns can justly come to be initially acquired. But the difficulty is illusory, because the concept of justice does not meaningfully apply to initial acquisition in the first place. Moreover, the principle of self-ownership provides (...) a solid foundation for Nozick's libertarianism, and when seen in the light of that principle and its full implications, the standard purported examples of injustices in acquisition are revealed to be nothing of the kind. Footnotesa The original draft of this paper was written in the summer of 2002 while I was a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University. I thank the directors of the Center, Fred D. Miller, Jr., Ellen Frankel Paul, and Jeffrey Paul, for hosting me. I also thank colloquium audience members at Bowling Green State University for comments on that draft. (shrink)

Marshalling a mind-numbing array of data, Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam, in his book Bowling Alone, shows that on virtually every conceivable measure, civic participation, or what he refers to as “social capital,” is plummeting to levels not seen for almost 100 years. And we should care, Putnam argues, because connectivity is directly related to both individual and social wellbeing on a wide variety of measures. On the other hand, social capital of the “bonding kind” brings with it (...) the ugly side effect of animosity toward outsiders. Given the increasing heterogeneity of our world, the goal therefore must be to enhance connectivity of the “bridging sort,” i.e., connecting across differences. This, in turn, requires that we first clarify what bridging communicative styles looks like. Examining communication as it might transpire in Kant’s kingdom of ends, through the perspective of Habermas’ “communicative action,” and within the scientific community, offers a compelling suggestion that there is a way of communicating such that, if adopted, one would come to view others as if they were persons, i.e., that a bridging communicative style facilitates a kind of bonding that sees through differences toward the commonality of personhood. This paper will briefly explore how communicating toward personhood might be promoted. (shrink)

In this article, I take up two arguments in favor of the discursive model of legal argumentation: the claim to correctness argument and the dual nature thesis. The argument of correctness implies the dual nature thesis, and the dual nature thesis implies a nonpositivistic concept of law. The nonpositivistic concept of law comprises five ideas. One of them is the special case thesis. The special case thesis says that positivistic elements, that is, statutes, precedents, and prevailing doctrines, are necessary for (...) law in order to achieve legal certainty. Without this, law would not be as perfect as it could possibly be. But it says, at the same time, that this alone would not be enough to fulfill the claim to correctness. The claim to correctness refers not only to the real dimension of law, defined by statutes, precedents, and prevailing doctrines, but also to its ideal dimension, defined, first and foremost, by justice. The special case thesis is my oldest thesis. It has remained an essential element of my system over the years. Its connection with four other theses—the Radbruch formula, the human rights thesis, the idea of deliberative democracy, and principles theory—does not change this at all. On the contrary, this connection has lent greater strength to the special case thesis. (shrink)

Protecting the people we experiment on --"Inside the black box" : becoming and being IRB members -- Weighing risks and benefits and undue inducement -- Defining research and how good it needs to be -- What to tell subjects : battles over consent forms -- From "nitpicky" to "user-friendly" : inter-IRB variations and their causes -- Federal agencies vs. local IRBs -- The roles of industry -- The local ecologies of institutions -- Trusting vs. policing researchers -- Bad behavior: research (...) integrity -- Researchers abroad : studies in the developing world -- Changing national policies -- Conclusions : other changes. (shrink)

These are the answers I gave to Brian Bix, Peter Koller, Ralf Posher, Torben Spaak, Timothy Endicott, and Jan Sieckmann at the end of a splendid conference day in 2018. The critique given to me concerned important aspects of three main themes in my work: the claim to correctness, human and constitutional rights, and the ideal dimension of law. In the last decades I have attempted to connect these themes systematically. The result is the idea of democratic constitutionalism as an (...) institutionalization of practical reason. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 3-19 [Access article in PDF] Some Reflections about Community and Survival Rita M. Gross University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Many studies have indicated that at both ends of the life cycle human beings more readily survive and flourish if they experience significant contact with other humans, if they experience nurturing, love, and relationship. Having physical needs met, by itself, is not sufficient. Both infants and old (...) people, as well as people recovering from serious illness, are much more likely to survive if, in addition to having their physical needs met, they experience the emotional well-being brought about by sufficient companionship.Though the issue is less discussed, one wonders why things would be different in those phases of the life cycle in which one is seemingly more independent. How can adults flourish and thrive without sufficient companionship, love, and community? How do adults react to the absence of these important elements of life? I would suggest that relatively helpless infants, invalids, and aged people simply die, but adults have enough power and independence to react to their loneliness and frustration in ways that lash out at the social fabric that fails to love and nurture them sufficiently. In Buddhist psychology an organism's two most frequent reactions to stimulation are grasping at something or aggression toward it. I would suggest that unnurtured adults express their frustration with loneliness and lack of love precisely in those two ways. We have discussed these reactions in our previous sessions on war and on consumerism and its attendant environmental degradation.I agreed very reluctantly to write a paper for this session on community. I am reluctant for two reasons. First, I have already written on community, do not wish to repeat myself, and am not sure I have anything new to say. Thus, I end up with the option of being more personal in my reflections than I usually am. (I know some of you will think that could not be possible, because I always go too far on that score. My apologies.) Second, as a female academic and someone with no family who has been single most of my life, I know only too well the loneliness and frustration that come with living in a society with declining "social capital," to use the phrase so aptly employed by Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone. The topic is simply too painful for me, because I know intimately, by virtue of their absence in my life, the importance of companionship, friendship, and community. I appreciated all the [End Page 3] graphs and documentation in Putnam's book, but despite my many years of intense involvement in the Buddhist world, I already knew in my gut the main thesis of his book. Nevertheless, much of what I will write about in this paper is informed by Putnam's book, as well as by David Korten's The Post-Corporate World and bell hooks's All About Love, both of which I recommend as relevant reading materials as we prepare to discuss the topic of community.By contrast, for our first discussions of community in our 1987 meetings, I was eager to make a contribution. 1 I had discovered something, or so it seemed to me, that was both painful and important. In the early 1980s I began to realize that despite the energy and loyalty I brought to my Buddhist community, I was still lonely and was not experiencing the friendship, community, companionship, and support that seemed to me to be implied in the act of "going for refuge to the sangha. " Instead, people constantly told me that being alone was essential to Buddhist practice—a claim that I would contend has more to do withWestern notions of individualism and self-reliance than with Buddhism. Understandably, these values are especially strong among convert Buddhists, who had to defy convention and assert their individuality in the process of becoming Buddhists. Nevertheless, we were signing on to honor the refuge of sangha, not merely the refuges of Buddha and dharma, a point that is still underappreciated by many... (shrink)

Peut-on élucider le sens de la phénoménologie? La première section est consacrée à Husserl, la seconde à Hannah Arendt et la troisième à l’expérience phénoménologique d’autrui. La première partie vise à montrer que la phénoménologie de Husserl porte en elle des thèmes par lesquels elle se soustrait au cadre métaphysique dans lequel elle s’est formée. La deuxième partie prétend que la phénoménologie politique de Hannah Arendt conduit à une mise en question de l’idéologie des droits de l’homme mais aussi à (...) une justification de l’idée des droits de l’homme. Cette section comprend en elle la reproduction d’un débat oral qui avait eu lieu sur France culture entre Claude Lefort, Alain Finkielkraut et Robert Legros. La troisième partie porte sur l’expérience phénoménologique d’autrui. Elle montre que cette expérience prolonge et renouvelle d’une part la conception kantienne de l’expérience du proprement humain, et d’autre part la conception tocquevillienne de l’expérience du semblable. L’examen de l’expérience phénoménologique d’autrui s’achève par une confrontation entre Arendt et Levinas. (shrink)

These three impressive volumes seem likely to be for some time the standard collection of Leibniz’s writings in Italian translation. Replacing two volumes of 1967-68, with the same title and publisher, which were edited by Domenico Omero Bianca, the new translation by Massimo Mugnai and Enrico Pasini offers the Italian reader an outstandingly comprehensive selection of Leibniz’s works in a presentation richly though unobtrusively illuminated by the latest scholarship. My chief aim in this review will be to give scholars working (...) in English an idea of the lines of study suggested by this new product of Italian scholarship, and the resources available in it. (shrink)

Tekst niedostępny online z racji zgody na publikację przekładu tylko w wersji drukowanej.

A model of what an edition of a philosohic text for an introductory level should be. Introduction does an admirable job of putting Berkeley's thought in the intellectual context of its time. --Gary C. Hatfield.

Leibniz's version of the ontological argument, a modal argument for theism on which he worked most intensively in the 1670s, has two stages. The first, an “incomplete” proof, concludes that God can only be a necessary being, and therefore if God's existence is possible, then God exists. The second stage is an a priori argument that the existence of such a necessary God is indeed possible. Leibniz's fullest attempts at a possibility proof turn on his conception of a most perfect (...) being, and the chapter concludes that they are not likely to succeed, in part because of difficulties in connecting the concepts of perfection and necessary existence. (shrink)