(WP 2010-08) Neuroeconomics: Constructing Identity

This paper asks whether neuroeconomics will make instrumental use of neuroscience to adjudicate existing disputes in economics or be more seriously informed by neuroscience in ways that might transform economics. The paper pursues the question by asking how neuroscience constructs an understanding of individuals as whole persons. The body of the paper is devoted to examining two approaches: Don Ross’s neurocellular approach to neuroeconomics and Joseph Dumit’s cultural anthropological science organization approach. The accounts are used to identify boundaries on single individual explanations. With that space Andy Clark’s external scaffolding view and Nathaniel Wilcox’s socially distributed cognition view are employed

(WP 2020-01) The Sea Battle Tomorrow: The Identity of Reflexive Economic Agents

This paper develops a conception of reflexive economic agents as an alternative to the standard utility conception, and explains individual identity in terms of how agents adjust to change in a self-organizing way, an idea developed from Herbert Simon. The paper distinguishes closed equilibrium and open process conceptions of the economy, and argues the former fails to explain time in a before-and-after sense in connection with Aristotle’s sea battle problem. A causal model is developed to represent the process conception, and a structure-agency understanding of the adjustment behavior of reflexive economic agents is illustrated using Merton’s self-fulfilling prophecy analysis. Simon’s account of how adjustment behavior has stopping points is then shown to underlie how agents’ identities are disrupted and then self-organized, and the identity analysis this involves is applied to the different identity models of Merton, Ross, Arthur, and Kirman. Finally, the self-organization idea is linked to the recent ‘preference purification’ debate in bounded rationality theory regarding the ‘inner rational agent trapped in an outer psychological shell,’ and it is argued that the behavior of self-organizing agents involves them taking positions toward their own individual identities

(WP 2014-03) Bounded Rationality and Bounded Individuality

This paper argues that since the utility function conception of the individual is derived from standard rationality theory, the view that rationality is bounded suggests that individuality should also be seen as bounded. The meaning of this idea is developed in terms of two ways in which individuality can be said to be bounded, with one bound associated with Kahneman and Tversky’s prospect theory and the ‘new’ behavioral economics and a second bound associated with Simon’s evolutionary thinking and the ‘old’ behavioral economics. The paper then shows how different bounded individuality conceptions operate in nudge economics, agent-based modeling, and social identity theory, explaining these conceptions in terms of how they relate to these two behavioral economics views of bounded rationality. How both the ‘new’ and ‘old’ individuality bounds might then be combined in a single account is briefly explored in connection with Kirman’s Marseille fish market analysis

Evolution of Time Preferences and Attitudes Towards Risk

This paper explores a general model of the evolution and adaption of hedonic utility. It is shown that optimal utility will be increasing strongly in regions where choices have to be made often and decision mistakes have a severe impact on fitness. Several applications are suggested. In the context of intertemporal preferences, the model offers an evolutionary explanation for the existence of conflicting short- and long-run interests that lead to dynamic inconsistency. Concerning attitudes towards risk, an evolutionary explanation is given for S-shaped value functions that adjust to the decision-maker’s environment.Evolution of Utility, Risk Attitudes, Time Preferences

On the intertemporal allocation of consumption, mortality and life-history strategies

This paper studies the bio-evolutionary origin of time preference. By examining human life-history strategies, it demonstrates that time discounting and mortality reflect the age-variation in the value of survival, which in turn depends on future reproduction and production. Consistent with empirical findings, it also suggests that our biologically endowed time preference is positive, reaches its lowest at around age twenty and increases thereafter, and is higher when exchange transactions involve a reduction in present consumption than when they involve an increase in present consumption.

Human Essence: Toward A Relational Reconstruction

This chapter opens with a social constructionist perspective on human essences. As proposed, essences are not given in nature, but constructed within cultural traditions. Thus, the major challenge is not that of “getting it right” about the essence, but generating accounts that may contribute to society. A criterion of reflective pragmatism is proposed in which questions of contribution and critique prevail. In this light the chapter places in critical light the bio-cognitive and neurological explanations of human nature, especially focusing on the ideological and political implications of these orientations. In contrast, discussion opens on relational conceptions of human essence. Several approaches are considered, including symbolic interactionism and object relations theory in psychoanalysis. However, a fully relational account abandons the individual as the fundamental unit of analysis in favor of relational process out of which the very conception of the individual is formed (or not). Several practical implications are treated including the potentials of relational responsibilit

\u3ci\u3eDemocracy\u27s Discontent\u3c/i\u3e in a Complex World: Can Avalanches, Sandpiles, and Finches Optimize Michael Sandel\u27s Civic Republican Community?

In Democracy\u27s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy, Michael Sandel looks about him and finds a vast and complex world governed by impersonal institutions and structures, in which discontented, anxious, and frustrated individuals are losing control over the forces that govern their lives, and in which the moral fabric of community is unraveling. His solution is to revitalize the civic strand of freedom found in republican politics and thus equip individuals to govern themselves. Sandel wonders how civic republicanism can exist in today\u27s world. Historically, republicanism has found a home in small, bounded places, which were largely self-sufficient and inhabited by people whose living conditions, education, and commonality enabled them to deliberate about public concerns. His structural answer is to disperse sovereignty both upwards and downwards of the modem nation state into a multiplicity of political communities and social institutions. His normative answer is to infuse substantive moral discourse back into public political debate

Biotechnology and the Creation of Ethics

Biotechnology promises to change the course of evolution. Rather than patiently waiting as natural selection channels the forces of biology into contouring the nature and character of the organisms that populate our world, biotechnology allows humans to directly manipulate the basis of life itself. By allowing the deliberate reorganization of the genetic programs of organisms, biotechnology affords the greatest revolution in scientific and cultural understanding in history. It also is beginning to severely strain our established concepts of right and wrong and to require us to rethink most of our basic moral assumptions.