Download Reading group programme

Reading Group Program. Alternate Fridays 1.30-2.30
Venue: Samir Okasha‘s office, Department of Philosophy, 9 Woodland Road
For further information on please email <mailto:[email protected]>
Autum 2010
We will be reading Kim Sterelny‘s Jean Nicod Prize Lectures from 2008.
Available at http://www.institutnicod.org/lectures2008_outline.htm
Summer 2010
Skyrms, B. 2010 Signals: Evolution, Learning and Information. OUP
http://www.lps.uci.edu/skyrms/index.html
Spring 2010
Robson, A. 2009 ―Why Would Nature Give Individuals Utility
Functions?‖ Journal of Political Economy 109: 900-914
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/322083
Queller, DC, and Strassmann, JE. 2009. ―Beyond society: the evolution of
organismality.‖ Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 364, 3143-3155
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~evolve/pdf/2010/QuellerPhilTrans.pdf
Gintis, H. 2009 Bounds of Reason Princeton: Princeton University Press
Autumn 2009
Lehmann L. and Keller L. 2006. The evolution of cooperation and altruism - A general
framework and a classification of models. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 19:13651376.
http://www.stanford.edu/~lehmann/TargetReview.pdf
http://www.stanford.edu/~lehmann/TargetReviewSuppMat.pdf
Grafen, A. 2006. Various remarks on Lehmann and Keller‘s article. Journal of
evolutionary Biology 19, 1397-1399
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~grafen/cv/RemarksLK.pdf
Lehmann L., Keller L., West S., and Roze D. 2007. Group selection and kin selection:
Two concepts but one process. PNAS 104:6736-6739.
http://www.stanford.edu/~lehmann/KinGroup.pdf
http://www.stanford.edu/~lehmann/KinGroupSuppMat.pdf
Lehmann L., Foster K., Borenstein E., and Feldman M. 2008. Social and individual
learning of helping in humans and other species. Trends in Ecology and Evolution
23:664-671.
http://www.stanford.edu/~lehmann/ISLHelp.pdf
Grafen, A. 1999. ‗Formal Darwinism, the individual-as-maximising-agent analogy, and
bet-hedging‘. Proceedings of the Royal Society (London) B, 266, 799-803.
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~grafen/cv/FormDarw.pdf
Grafen, A. 2007. The formal Darwinism project: a mid-term report. Journal of
evolutionary Biology 20, 1243-1254.
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~grafen/cv/fdpmidterm.pdf
Grafen, A. 2008. The simplest formal argument for fitness optimisation. Journal of
Genetics, 87, 421-433.
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~grafen/cv/simplest.pdf
Gardner, A, and A. Grafen. 2009. Capturing the superorganism: a formal theory of group
adaptation. Journal of Evolutionary Biology
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~grafen/cv/GardnerGrafen.pdf
Summer Vacation 2009: We will be reading a selection, from the list below, of papers
by speakers invited to our conference on September 18th-20th.
Bicchieri, C. 2008 ―The Fragility of Fairness: An Experimental Investigation on the
Conditional Status of Pro-social Norms‖
Nous (Philosophical Issues 18 Interdisciplinary Core Philosophy), 227-246
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cb36/downloads/articles/FragilityOfFairness.pdf
Bicchieri, C. 2008 ―How Expectations Affect Behavior: Fairness Preferences or
Fairness Norms?‖ in Rationality and Social Responsibility: Essays in honor of Robyn
Mason Dawes. L. Krueger (ed.).
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cb36/downloads/articles/HowExpectationsAffectBehavior.pdf
Todd, P. M., & Gigerenzer, G. (2007). ―Environments that make us smart: Ecological
rationality.‖ Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 167-171
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118000106/issue
ABSTRACT—Traditional views of rationality posit generalpurpose decision mechanisms based on logic or
optimization. The study of ecological rationality focuses on uncovering the ‗‗adaptive toolbox‘‘ of
domain-specific simple heuristics that real, computationally bounded minds employ, and explaining how
these heuristics produce accurate decisions by exploiting the structures of information in the
environments in which they are applied. Knowing when and how people use particular heuristics can
facilitate the shaping of environments to engender better decisions.
Berg, N., & Gigerenzer, G. (2007). ―Psychology implies paternalism? Bounded
rationality may reduce the rationale to regulate risk-taking‖ . Social Choice and Welfare,
28, 337-359.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/x4035383775715w9/fulltext.pdf
Abstract Behavioral economists increasingly argue that violations of rationality axioms provide a new
rationale for paternalism – to ―de-bias‖ individuals who exhibit errors, biases and other allegedly
pathological psychological regularities associated with Tversky and Kahneman‘s (in Science 185:1124–
1131, 1974) heuristics-and-biases program. The argument is flawed, however, in neglecting to distinguish
aggregate from individual rationality. The aggregate consequences of departures from normative decisionmaking axioms may be Pareto-inferior or superior. Without a well-specified theory of aggregation,
individual-level biases do not necessarily imply losses in efficiency. This paper considers the problem of
using a social-welfare function to decide whether to regulate risk-taking behavior in a population whose
individual-level behavior may or may not be consistent with expected utility maximization. According to
the social-welfare objective, unregulated aggregate risk distributions resulting from non-maximizing
behavior are often more acceptable (i.e., lead to a weaker rationale for paternalism) than population
distributions generated by behavior that conforms to the standard axioms. Thus, psychological theories that
depart from axiomatic decision-making norms do not necessarily strengthen the case for paternalism, and
conformity with such norms is generally not an appropriate policy-making objective in itself.
Guth, W. (with Vittoria Levati and Matteo Ploner). 2008 ―Social identity and trust - An
experimental investigation‖ Journal of Socio-Economics 37, 1293-1308
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6W5H-4NK4G6C-71&_cdi=6571&_user=121739&_orig=browse&_coverDate=08%2F31%2F2008&_sk=999629995&view=c
&wchp=dGLzVtz-zSkzV&md5=06d4ab752689e93d3e2c27e2de8b6904&ie=/sdarticle.pdf
Abstract
We experimentally examine how group identity affects trust behavior in an investment game. In one treatment, group
identity is induced purely by minimal groups. In other treatments, group members are additionally related by outcome
interdependence established in a prior public goods game. Moving from the standard investment game (where no group
identity is prompted) to minimal group identity to two dimensional group identity, we find no significant differences in
trust decisions. However, trust is significantly and positively correlated with contribution decisions, suggesting that
―social‖ trust is behaviorally important.
McElreath, Boyd, R., Gigerenzer, G., Glöckner, A., Hammerstein, P., Kurzban, R.,
Magen, S., Richerson, P., Robson, A., Stevens, J. 2008 ―Individual decision
making and the evolutionary roots of institutions.‖ In Better than Conscious, eds. C.
Engel & W. Singer. pp 325-342. MIT Press
Bowles, S. & Hammerstein, P. (2003). ―Does market theory apply to biology?‖ In
Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation, ed. P. Hammerstein, pp. 153-165,
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hammerstein, P. & Leimar, O. (2006). ―Cooperating for direct fitness benefits.‖ Journal
of Evolutionary Biology, 19, 1400-1402
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118631932/PDFSTART
Among the great variety of highly stylized models for the evolution of cooperation, some are actually sharpening
our eyes. The Prisoner‘s Dilemma, for example, helps us understand ‗free riding‘ and the difference between oneshot
and repeated interactions; Hamilton‘s basic kin selection model for the evolution of altruism highlights
the role of genetic correlations among interacting individuals, etc. What fruitful models of this kind create is a
sensitivity to factors that might be crucial to understanding real cases of cooperation. Lehmann & Keller (2006,
L&K) rightly emphasize that the identification of selective forces for cooperation can be obscured if one fails to
sharply distinguish between these factors. L&K classify the factors into four categories, the first being direct
fitness benefits to a cooperator. We wish to extend their argument by focusing on this first category, drawing
attention to important further distinctions that arise from taking biological facts and a broader theoretical background
into account. Our commentary emphasizes the scope of direct fitness benefits in cooperation and discusses ways of
unfolding the richness of phenomena captured by this category. If one accepts, as seems likely to be true, that the great
range of mutualistic species interactions and the mindboggling integrated complexity of cells and organisms are largely
products of direct fitness benefits, it is rather surprising how little effort has gone into modelling these forms of
cooperation, compared with the arguably much smaller categories of reciprocity or interactions among relatives, not to
mention green-beard genes. We wish to point to important ideas and mention some open questions about the role of
direct fitness benefits in the evolution of cooperation.
McNamara, J.M., Z. Barta, L. Fromhage, A.I. Houston, 2008, ―The coevolution of
choosiness and cooperation.‖ Nature 451 189-192
http://puma.unideb.hu/~zbarta/cikk/McNamaraJM_2008_Nature451_189.pdf
Explaining the rise and maintenance of cooperation is central to our understanding of biological systems 1,2 and
human societies3,4. When an individual‘s cooperativeness is used by other individuals as a choice criterion, there
can be competition to be more generous than others, a situation called competitive altruism5. The evolution of
cooperation between non-relatives can then be driven by a positive feedback between increasing levels of
cooperativeness and choosiness6. Here we use evolutionary simulations to show that, in a situation where
individuals have the opportunity to engage in repeated pairwise interactions, the equilibrium degree of
cooperativeness depends critically on the amount of behavioural variation that is being maintained in the
population by processes such as mutation. Because our model does not invoke complex mechanisms
such as negotiation behaviour, it can be applied to a wide range of species. The results suggest an important role
of lifespan in the evolution of cooperation.
Houston AI, McNamara JM, Steer MD (2007) ―Do we expect natural selection to
produce rational behaviour?” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society BBiological Sciences 362:1531-1543
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/362/1485/1531.full.pdf+html
We expect that natural selection should result in behavioural rules which perform well; however, animals
(including humans) sometimes make bad decisions. Researchers account for these with a variety of
explanations; we concentrate on two of them. One explanation is that the outcome is a side effect; what
matters is how a rule performs (in terms of reproductive success). Several rules may perform well in the
environment in which they have evolved, but their performance may differ in a ‗new‘ environment (e.g. the
laboratory). Some rules may perform very badly in this environment.We
use the debate about whether animals follow the matching law rather than maximizing their gains as
an illustration. Another possibility is that we were wrong about what is optimal. Here, the general idea
is that the setting in which optimal decisions are investigated is too simple and may not include
elements that add extra degrees of freedom to the situation.
Trimmer, P., Bogacz, R., Houston, A. I., Marshall, J. A. R., McNamara, J. M., Mendl,
M., Paul, E. (2008) ―Mammalian choices: combining fast-but-innacurate and slow-butaccurate decision-making systems.” Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B:
Biological Sciences 275, 2353-2361
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/275/1649/2353.full.pdf+html
Empirical findings suggest that the mammalian brain has two decision-making systems that act at different
speeds.We represent the faster system using standard signal detection theory.We represent the slower (but
more accurate) cortical system as the integration of sensory evidence over time until a certain level of
confidence is reached.We then consider how two such systems should be combined optimally for a range of
information linkage mechanisms. We conclude with some performance predictions that will hold if our
representation is realistic.
Skyrms, B. 2008 ―Signals‖ Presidential Address of the Philosophy of Science
Association 2006. Philosophy of Science, 75 (December 2008) pp. 489–500
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/594501
Skyrms, B. 2008 "Trust, Risk, and the Social Contract" Synthese 160:21-25.
http://www.metapress.com/content/q51361g1058u3654/fulltext.pdf
Abstract The problem of trust is discussed in terms of David Hume‘s meadowdraining example. This is
analyzed in terms of rational choice, evolutionary game theory and a dynamic model of social network
formation. The kind of explanation that postulates an innate predisposition to trust is seen to be unnecessary
when social network dynamics is taken into account.
West, S.A., El Mouden, C. & Gardner, A. Social evolution theory and its application to
the evolution of cooperation in humans. Working Paper:
Abstract
The occurrence of cooperation poses a problem for the biological and social sciences.
However, many aspects of the biological and social science literatures on this subject
have developed relatively independently, with a lack of interaction. This has led to a
number of misunderstandings on how natural selection operates, and the conditions under
which cooperation can be favoured. Our aim here is to provide an accessible overview of
evolutionary work on cooperation, emphasising common misconceptions.
West, S.A., Griffin, A.S. & Gardner, A. (2007) Evolutionary explanations for
cooperation. Current Biology, 17, R661-R672.
Natural selection favours genes that increase an organism’s ability to survive and reproduce. This would appear to
lead to a world dominated by selfish behaviour. However, cooperation can be found at all levels of biological
organisation: genes cooperate in genomes, organelles cooperate to form eukaryotic cells, cells cooperate to make
multicellular organisms, bacterial parasites cooperate to overcome host defences, animals breed cooperatively,
and humans and insects cooperate to build societies. Over the last 40 years, biologists have developed a
theoretical framework that can explain cooperation at all these levels. Here, we summarise this theory, illustrate
how it may be applied to real organisms and discuss future directions.
Kümmerli, R., Gardner, A., West, S.A. & Griffin, A.S. (2009) Limited dispersal, budding
dispersal, and cooperation: an experimental study. Evolution 63, 939-949.
Numerous theoretical studies have investigated how limited dispersal may provide an explanation for the evolution of
cooperation, by leading to interactions between relatives. However, despite considerable theoretical attention, there has
been a lack of empirical tests. In this article, we test how patterns of dispersal influence the evolution of cooperation, using
iron-scavenging in the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa as our cooperative trait. We found that relatively limited
dispersal does not favor cooperation. The reason for this is that although limited dispersal increases the relatedness
between interacting individuals, it also leads to increased local competition for resources between relatives. This result
supports Taylor’s prediction that in the simplest possible scenario, the effects of increased relatedness and local
competition exactly cancel out. In contrast, we show that one way for cooperation to
be favored is if individuals disperse in groups (budding dispersal), because this maintains high relatedness while reducing
local competition between relatives (relatively global competition).
Binmore, K. 2008 "Do Conventions Need To Be Common Knowledge?'' Topoi 27:17-27
http://www.metapress.com/content/qt16397312k42719/fulltext.pdf
Abstract. Do conventions need to be common knowledge in order to work? David Lewis builds this
requirement into his definition of a convention. This paper explores the extent to which his approach finds
support in the game theory literature. The knowledge formalism developed by Robert Aumann and others
militates against Lewis‘s approach, because it shows that it is almost impossible for something to become
common knowledge in a large society. On the other hand, Ariel Rubinstein‘s Email Game suggests that
coordinated action is no less hard for rational players without a common knowledge requirement. But an
unnecessary simplifying assumption in the Email Game turns out to be doing all the work, and the current
paper concludes that common knowledge is better excluded from a definition of the conventions that we
use to regulate our daily lives.
Summer Term 2008/9
Peter Godfrey Smith 2009 Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection
Oxford University Press. View the contents at:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Darwinian-Populations-Natural-Selection-GodfreySmith/dp/0199552045/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241689433&sr=8-2
Sample chapter 4 http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~pgs/index.html
Spring Term 2008/9
23rd Jan. Brian Skyrms, 'Darwin meets the Logic of Decision'.
Philosophy of Science, Vol. 61, No. 4. (Dec., 1994), pp. 503-528.
<http://www.cadi.ro/V/images/Skyrms%201994%20Darwin%20Meets%20the%20Logic%20of%20Decisi
on_Correlation%20in%20Evolutionary%20Game%20Theory.pdf>
6th Feb. H. Allen Orr, 'Absolute Fitness, Relative Fitness and Utility'
Evolution, Volume 61, Issue 12 (2007) (p 2997-3000)
<http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/117958677/PDFSTART>
13th Feb. Steven A. Frank and Montgomery Slatkin ―Evolution in a Variable
Environment‖
The American Naturalist, Vol. 136, No. 2 (Aug., 1990), pp. 244-260
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2462327
20th Feb. A. Robson, 'The Biological Basis of Economic Behaviour'
Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Mar., 2001), pp. 11-33
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2698453
6th March. J. McNamara, A. Houston and M. Steer, 'Violations of Transitivity under
Fitness Maximisation'
Biol Lett. 2007 August 22; 3(4): 365–367.
<http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2390660>
20th March. L. Samuelson and L. Swinkels, 'Information, Evolution and Utility'
Theoretical Economics 1 (2006), 119–142
<http://econtheory.org/ojs/index.php/te/article/viewFile/20060119/452>
April 3rd. W. Guth, 'An Indirect Evolutionary Approach to Explaining Co-operative
Behaviour by Reciprocal Incentives'
International Journal of Game Theory (1995) 24: 323-344ernational Journal of Game Theory (1995) 23344International Journal of Game Theory (1995)
<http://www.springerlink.com/content/r1158p201w8996j2/fulltext.pdf>
Autumn Term 2008/9
Richard McElreath and Robert Boyd. 2007 ―Mathematical Models of Social Evolution‖
University of Chicago Press