Sober &amp; Wilson’s evolutionary arguments for psychological altruism: a reassessment

Schulz, Armin W.

doi:10.1007/s10539-009-9179-5

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…In the passage quoted earlier, Smith (1776) suggests that the core of the distinction between humans and dogs in their propensity to trade lies in the sophistication of their egoism. While both individual humans and individual dogs are egoistic in the sense of looking to get the best for themselves without an inherent ("ultimate"-Sober and Wilson 1998;Stich 2007;Schulz 2011) concern for the interests of others, humans recognize that others have their own interests, and that mutually beneficial outcomes can be achieved through trade rather than all-out fighting. 4 This is a useful start towards characterizing the propensity to trade, and it does get at several important aspects of this propensity.…”

Section: The Propensity To Tradementioning

confidence: 99%

Tools of the trade: the bio-cultural evolution of the human propensity to trade

Schulz

2022

Biol Philos

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Humans are standouts in their propensity to trade. More specially, the kind of trading found in humans-featuring the exchange of many different goods and services with many different others, for the mutual benefit of all the involved parties-far exceeds anything that is found in any other creature. However, a number of important questions about this propensity remain open. First, it is not clear exactly what makes this propensity so different in the human case from that of other animals. Second, it is not clear why other animals did not acquire this propensity to the extent that humans did. Third, it is not clear what explains the fact that the extent to which humans engage in trade is culturally highly variable. The paper argues that at the heart of the human-animal divergence in this propensity is the particular socio-cultural environment in which humans evolved. This has led them to sometimes, but not always, acquire the cognitive technology (writing, algebra, tallying devices, money, etc.) to support a sophisticated disposition and capacity for reciprocal cooperation, and deep and wide concepts of property and exchange value.

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Section: The Propensity To Tradementioning

confidence: 99%

Tools of the trade: the bio-cultural evolution of the human propensity to trade

Schulz

2022

Biol Philos

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“…Sober and Wilson's argument simply intends to provide us with one line of empirical evidence for altruism; it is not meant to be decisive. The point is that we can use Sober and Wilson's argument, in conjunction with other lines of evidence (drawn from, say, neuroscience or social psychology) to provide a convincing case for altruism (see Schulz 2011).…”

Section: Section 3 Two Arguments Against I-hedonismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two types of psychological hedonism

Garson

2016

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in

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“…With this in mind, it is important to distinguish two ways in which evolutionary theory can be seen to enter into economics: evidentially and heuristically (see also Schulz 2011bSchulz , 2011c. 3 These two ways are not mutually exclusive, in that some set of evolutionary considerations can be both evidentially and heuristically useful to a particular economic hypothesis; however, the two ways can come apart and therefore need to be distinguished from each other.…”

Section: Evolutionary Economicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…4 Of course, this evolutionary evidence need not be taken for the final word on the matter in question: the point is just that these evolutionary considerations confirm the truth of the economic hypothesisthey raise the probability of that hypothesis being true. For this reason, whether or not the evolutionary considerations end up swamped by other considerations, they at least need to be taken into account when assessing the hypothesis in question (see also Schulz 2011c). 5 By contrast, if evolutionary theory is used heuristically, the aim is to suggest novel economic hypotheses or ideas that it would be interesting to explore further or which would allow one to better test other, existing economic hypotheses or ideas.…”

Section: Evolutionary Economicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the Hype

Schulz

2012

Philosophy of the Social Sciences

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In this paper, I consider the recent resurgence of "evolutionary economics"the idea that evolutionary theory can be very useful to push forward key debates in economics-and assess the extent to which it rests on a plausible foundation. To do this, I first distinguish two ways in which evolutionary theory can, in principle, be brought to bear on an economic problem-namely, evidentially and heuristically-and then apply this distinction to the three major hypotheses that evolutionary economists have come to defend: the implausibility of rational choice theory as an account of economic rationality, the idea that firms are autonomous economic agents, and the need for a more dynamic, less equilibrium-focused economic methodology. In each of these cases, I conclude negatively: the relevant evolutionary considerations neither suggest interesting and novel hypotheses to investigate further (the hallmark of heuristic devices) nor are backed up by the needed data to constitute genuine evidence. I end by distinguishing this criticism of evolutionary economics from others that have been put forward in the literature: in particular, I make clear that, unlike those of other critics, the arguments of this paper are based on epistemic-not structural-considerations and therefore leave more room for a plausible form of evolutionary economics to come about in the future. Keywords evolutionary economics, rational choice, theory of the firm, equilibrium analysis Article Schulz Philosophy of the Social Sciences 43 (1) economics" simply refers to the application of evolutionary theory to economic issues. For example, much of the recent work on cultural evolution can be applied to various economic questions (after all, economies are parts of human culture), and the same goes for work on cognitive and neural evolution (after all, economics has much to do with thought and decision making) (for more on the former, see, e.g., Boyd and Richerson 2005;Henrich et al. 2004;Skyrms 1996; for more on the latter, see, e.g., Camerer 2007; Glimcher, Dorris, and Bayer 2005). On this understanding of "evolutionary economics," no further theoretical commitments are made by the program: in particular, what, exactly, the upshot is of this application of evolutionary theory to economicswhat hypotheses it yields or supports-is being left open.Precisely this is different on the narrower understanding of the term, however: there, a specific set of economic doctrines is said to be supported by evolutionary considerations. 2 Most important among these doctrines are the following three (see also Vromen 2001; Hodgson 1999):1. Economic agents are only boundedly rational. 2. Firms are economic agents of their own. 3. Economies are dynamic, nonequilibrium systems and need to be analyzed as such.

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Sober & Wilson’s evolutionary arguments for psychological altruism: a reassessment

Cited by 10 publications

References 6 publications

Tools of the trade: the bio-cultural evolution of the human propensity to trade

Tools of the trade: the bio-cultural evolution of the human propensity to trade

Two types of psychological hedonism

Beyond the Hype

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