Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-cphqk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-11T05:45:43.377Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Social Deliberation: Nash, Bayes, and the Partial Vindication of Gabriele Tarde

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2012

J. McKenzie Alexander
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

At the very end of the 19th century, Gabriele Tarde wrote that all society was a product of imitation and innovation. This view regarding the development of society has, to a large extent, fallen out of favour, and especially so in those areas where the rational actor model looms large. I argue that this is unfortunate, as models of imitative learning, in some cases, agree better with what people actually do than more sophisticated models of learning. In this paper, I contrast the behaviour of imitative learning with two more sophisticated learning rules (one based on Bayesian updating, the other based on the Nash-Brown-von Neumann dynamics) in the context of social deliberation problems. I show for two social deliberation problems, the Centipede game and a simple Lewis sender-receiver game, that imitative learning provides better agreement with what people actually do, thus partially vindicating Tarde.

Type
Research Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 164 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

References

REFERENCES

Alexander, J. McKenzie. 2007. The Structural Evolution of Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alexander, J. McKenzie. 2009. “Local Interaction and the Dynamics of Rational Deliberation.” Philosophical Studies. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Alexander, Jason and Skyrms, Brian. 1999. “Bargaining with Neighbors: Is Justice Contagious?” Journal of Philosophy 96(11): 588–98.Google Scholar
Fey, Mark, McKelvey, Richard D., and Palfrey, Thomas R.. 1996. “An Experimental Study of Constant-Sum Centipede Games.” International Journal of Game Theory 25: 269–87.Google Scholar
Gigerenzer, Gerd and Selten, Reinhard. (eds.) 2001. Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hollis, Martin. 1994. The Philosophy of Social Science: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 2002. “Gabriel Tarde and the End of the Social.” In Joyce, P. (ed.), The Social in Question, pp. 117–32. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lehrer, Keith and Wagner, Carl. 1981. Rational Consensus in Science and Society. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David K. 1969. Convention: A Philosophical Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
McKelvey, Richard D. and Palfrey, Thomas R.. 1992. “An Experimental Study of the Centipede Game.” Econometrica 60(4): 803–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millet, Jean. 1970. Gabriel Tarde et la philosophie de l'Histoire. Paris: Vrin.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, Robert W. 1981. “Games of Perfect Information, Predatory Pricing, and the Chain Store.” Journal of Economic Theory 25: 92–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skyrms, Brian. 1990. The Dynamics of Rational Deliberation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Skyrms, Brian. 2009. “Evolution of Signalling Systems with Multiple Senders and Receivers.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 364: 771–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smead, Rory. 2008. “The Evolution of Cooperation in the Centipede Game with Finite Populations.” Philosophy of Science 75: 157–77.Google Scholar
Tarde, Gabriel. 1890/1903. The Laws of Imitation. Trans. Elsie Clews Parsons from 2nd French ed. New York: Henry Holt and Company.Google Scholar
Vanderschraaf, Peter and Alexander, J. McKenzie. 2005. “Follow the Leader: Local Interactions with Influence Neighborhoods.” Philosophy of Science 72: 86–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar