No Harm Done? An Experimental Approach to the Nonidentity Problem

Discussions of the non-identity problem presuppose a widely shared intuition that actions or policies that change who comes into existence don't, thereby, become morally unproblematic. We hypothesize that this intuition isn’t generally shared by the public, which could have widespread implications concerning how to generate support for large-scale, identity-affecting policies relating to matters like climate change. To test this, we ran a version of the well-known dictator game designed to mimic the public's behavior over identity-affecting choices. We found the public does seem to behave more selfishly when making identity-affecting choices, which should be concerning. We further hypothesized that one possible mechanism is the notion of harm the public uses in their decision-making and find that substantial portions of the population seem to each employ distinct notions of harm in their normative thinking. These findings raise puzzling features about the public’s normative thinking that call out for further empirical examination

Nash, bargaining and evolution

Evolutionary accounts of morality tend to consider behavior in rather simple scenarios. For instance, evolutionary work on fairness focuses on the division of a windfall and, importantly, assumes the position of those involved are entirely symmetric. We consider more complicated strategic settings and find that there is a strong tendency for evolution to produce divisions consistent with the so-called Nash bargaining solution. We also uncover the evolutionary importance of comprehensiveness, an often-overlooked feature of division problems

Locke, Nozick and the state of nature

Recently, philosophers have drawn on tools from game theory to explore behavior in Hobbes’ state of nature (Vanderschraaf in Econ Philos 22:243–279, 2006; Chung in J Am Philos Assoc 1:485–508, 2015). I take a similar approach and argue the Lockean state of nature is best conceived of as a conflictual coordination game. I also discuss Nozick’s famous claim regarding the emergence of the state and argue the path to the minimal state is blocked by a hitherto unnoticed free-rider problem. Finally, I argue that on my representation of the Lockean state of nature both widespread conflict and lasting peace are possible. This, I contend, is in line with one popular interpretation of Locke (Simmons in Polit Theory 17:449–470, 1989)

Responsiveness and robustness in the David Lewis signalling game

We consider modifications to the standard David Lewis signalling game and relax a number of unrealistic implicit assumptions that are often built into the framework. In particular, we explore realistic asymmetries that exist between the sender and receiver roles. We find that endowing receivers with a more realistic set of responses significantly decreases the likelihood of signalling, while allowing for unequal selection pressure often has the opposite effect. We argue that the results of this paper can also help make sense of a well-known evolutionary puzzle regarding the absence of an evolutionary arms race between sender and receiver in conflict of interest signalling games

Power, Bargaining, and Collaboration

Collaboration is increasingly popular across academia. Collaborative work raises certain ethical questions, however. How will the fruits of collaboration be divided? How will the work for the collaborative project be split? In this paper, we consider the following question in particular. Are there ways in which these divisions systematically disadvantage certain groups? We use evolutionary game theoretic models to address this question. First, we discuss results from O'Connor and Bruner (unpublished). In this paper, we show that underrepresented groups in academia can be disadvantaged in such situations by dint of their small numbers. Second, we present novel results exploring how the hierarchical structure of academia can lead to bargaining disadvantage. We investigate models where one actor has a higher baseline of academic success, less to lose if collaboration goes south, or greater rewards for non-collaborative work. We show that in these situations, the less powerful partner is disadvantaged in bargaining over collaboration

Responsiveness and robustness in the david lewis signaling game

We consider modifications to the standard David Lewis signaling game and relax a number of unrealistic implicit assumptions that are often built into the framework. In particular, we motivate and explore various asymmetries that exist between the sender and receiver roles.We find that endowing receivers with a more realistic set of responses significantly decreases the likelihood of signaling, while allowing for unequal selection pressure often has the opposite effect. We argue that the results of this article can also help make sense of a well-known evolutionary puzzle regarding the absence of an evolutionary arms race between sender and receiver in conflict-of-interest signaling games

Responsiveness and robustness in the David Lewis signaling game

We consider modifications to the standard David Lewis signalling game and relax a number of unrealistic implicit assumptions that are often built into the framework. In particular, we explore realistic asymmetries that exist between the sender and receiver roles. We find that endowing receivers with a more realistic set of responses significantly decreases the likelihood of signalling, while allowing for unequal selection pressure often has the opposite effect. We argue that the results of this paper can also help make sense of a well-known evolutionary puzzle regarding the absence of an evolutionary arms race between sender and receiver in conflict of interest signalling games

Inclusive Fitness and the Problem of Honest Communication

Inclusive fitness has been under intense scrutiny in recent years, with many critics claiming the framework leads to incorrect predictions. We consider one particularly influential heuristic for estimating inclusive fitness in the context of the very case that motivated reliance on it to begin with: the Sir Philip Sidney signalling game played with relatives. Using a neighbour-modulated fitness model, we show when and why this heuristic is problematic. We argue that reliance on the heuristic rests on a misunderstanding of what it means for two organisms to be related and perpetuates a mischaracterization of the role of the ‘relatedness’ parameter in inclusive fitness

Correction to: The varieties of impartiality, or, would an egalitarian endorse the veil?

The citations of Figures 1, 2, 3 and 4 were placed after the figures in the original publication of the article. However, they should be placed prior the placement of figures. The correct citations with the figures are given in this correction. The original article was corrected.(Figure presented.)