Don Ross

Ladyman and Ross argue that analytic metaphysics is a misguided enterprise that should give way to a naturalized metaphysics that aims to reconcile everyday and special-scientific ontologies with fundamental physics as the authoritative source of knowledge on the general structure of the universe. Le Bihan and Barton (argue, as against this, that analytic metaphysics remains useful as a basis for the body of work in AI known as “applied ontology.” They stop short of claiming, however, that analytic metaphysics is useful as metaphysics. I consider a basis for making the stronger claim: Smith's project for building what he claims to be metaphysical foundations for applied ontology (and for AI generally). Ultimately, the stronger claim is rejected; but in the course of this dialectic new aspects of the naturalistic metaphysical project come to light, including relationships between it and the traditional metaphysical project of providing foundations for philosophical semantics of truth and reference.

I consider two lessons from philosophy that, if economists were better aware of them, could improve undergraduate pedagogy in economics. First, economists should familiarise themselves with the understanding of the nature of preferences and beliefs that is becoming the majority view in the philosophy of cognitive science, that they are externally attributed from the intentional stance, rather than internal representational states. This would make the idea of revealed preference easier for students to grasp, and could be taught simply as part of the introduction of utility functions, thus requiring no extra-economic digression. Second, economists should recognise that the idea of general rationality adds nothing to the concept of agency, and should stop using the former idea in the classroom because it serves only to confirm counter-productive stereotypes of economists as bossy suppressors of warm values.

Recently, philosophers have developed an extensive literature on social ontology that applies methods and concepts from analytic metaphysics. Much of this is entirely abstracted from, and unconcerned with, social science. However, Epstein (2015) argues explicitly that analytic social metaphysics, provided its account of ontological ‘grounding’ is repaired in specific ways, can rescue social science from explanatory impasses into which he thinks it has fallen. This version of analytic social ontology thus directly competes with radically naturalistic alternatives, in a way that helps to clarify what makes some metaphysics genuinely scientific (that is, part of the scientific enterprise and worldview). I consider this competition, marshal considerations against the value to social science of analytic metaphysics, and sketch a contrasting scientific metaphysics for understanding the implications of revisionist social ontology in unified scientific ontology.

Productive expenditure on road infrastructure contributes to economic growth as a factor of production, complement to other factors of production, stimulus to factor accumulation, stimulus to aggregate demand, and industrial policy tool. On the other hand, unproductive or insufficient investment in road infrastructure may crowd out private sector investment, increase operational costs, reduce the life-span of private sector capital, necessitate private capital adjustment costs, decrease labour productivity, and impinge on human development. This paper uses economic growth theory to explain the roles of road infrastructure investment in the growth process, with reference made to studies that confirm the relevance, direction, and magnitude of these effects in South Africa. Details of national development policies, the geographic structure of the South African economy, the state of the country’s rail sector, and freight, personal travel, proximity to basic services, rural-urban migration, and household agriculture statistics are also incorporated in the discussion to emphasise the importance of sound road investment policy in South Africa.

Many road authorities, including those in South Africa, are unable to reliably identify and prioritise the maintenance of two essential road categories: roads that are required to satisfy citizens’ constitutional right to access basic services; and roads that maximise potential economic growth. This issue stems from reliance on the current set of classification systems, which lack the requisite detail to determine a road’s significance in connecting communities to basic service facilities, the volume and type of economic activity it supports, and overlaps between these functions. This paper therefore presents an economics-based road classification system customised for the South African road network. The new system disaggregates roads into four classes: Basic Access Roads; Strategic Roads; Tactical Roads; and Surplus Roads. The characteristics and maintenance priority level of each road class are addressed, along with an identification methodology that authorities can use to include this information within their asset management systems to improve expenditure and investment outcomes.

We consider motivations for acknowledging that people participate in multiple levels of economic agency. One of these levels is characterized in terms of subjective utility to the individual; another, frequently observed, level is characterized in terms of utility to social groups with which people (temporarily) identify. Following Bacharach (2006), we describe such groups as ‘teams’. We review Bacharach’s theory of such identification in his account of ‘team reasoning’. While this conceptualization is useful, it applies only to processes supported by deliberation. As this is only one of a range of causal mechanisms underlying behaviour by humans and other strategic agents, a more general account is desirable. We then argue that Stirling’s (2012) account of ‘conditional games’ achieves the desired generalization.

We consider the potential contribution of economics to an interdisciplinary research partnership between sociology and neuroscience (‘social neuroscience’ or ’social neuroeconomics’). We correct a misunderstanding in previous literature over the understanding of humans as ‘social animals’, which has in turn led to misidentification of the potential relevance of game theory and the economics of networks to the social neuroscience project. Specifically, it has been suggested that these can be used to model mindreading. We argue that mindreading is at best a derivative and special basis for social coordination, whereas the general and pervasive phenomenon on which it depends is mindshaping. We then outline the foundations of Conditional Game Theory as a mathematical model of mindshaping, which extends game theory without displacing its classic solution concepts, and which exploits economists’ experience in modeling networks.

Political scientists have conventionally assumed that achieving democracy is a one-way ratchet. Only very recently has the question of “democratic backsliding” attracted any research attention. We argue that democratic instability is best understood with tools from complexity science. The explanatory power of complexity science arises from several features of complex systems. Their relevance in the context of democracy is discussed. Several policy recommendations are offered to help stabilize current systems of representative democracy.

The idea that democracy is under threat, after being largely dormant for at least 40 years, is looming increasingly large in public discourse. Complex systems theory offers a range of powerful new tools to analyse the stability of social institutions in general, and democracy in particular. What makes a democracy stable? And which processes potentially lead to instability of a democratic system? This paper offers a complex systems perspective on this question, informed by areas of the mathematical, natural, and social sciences. We explain the meaning of the term 'stability' in different disciplines and discuss how laws, rules, and regulations, but also norms, conventions, and expectations are decisive for the stability of a social institution such as democracy.

The Gambling Animal synthesises material from multiple disciplines, which presents a challenge for any individual reviewer with a specific focus of disciplinary expertise. The critical analyses that have been produced for the symposium rise, at least as a set, to that challenge. In this article, we respond to our reviewers. Responding to them has led us to reflect more deeply on various aspects of our natural history of human risk management, with comparative attention to elephants. We hope that readers who cannot prioritise reading our book will gather a useful sense of what it aims to accomplish and how, and that other readers will be inspired by the symposium to turn attention to the book itself.

Ainslie’s picoeconomics of gambling provides the basis for a case study of the way in which mentalistic and neuroscientific models of behaviour can be used to complement one another in furnishing relatively complete explanations. Ainslie’s model explains the complex ambivalence experienced and reported by addicts. However, this ambivalence is also experienced, with respect to certain consumption targets by non-addicts. Attention to the neurocellular dynamics of addictive choice is necessary to explain a further property of addiction, namely, preoccupation and crowding out of attention to alternative activities and objects of thought. All addicts suffer from overdrafts of willpower accounts in Ainslie’s sense; but not all people whose wills are bankrupt with respect to a consumption target are addicted to that target. Furthermore, deficits of willpower can _cause_ addiction – but only to targets over which agents can exercise fine control of consumption intervals.

In various contributions over many years, I have argued that the core methodology of mainstream microeconomics can best be defended by reference to Dennett’s intentional stance. This elucidating relationship is mutual: we can also learn about the logic of the intentional stance as a basis for behavioural science by examining it in action in economics. This examination directs attention to a specific broad theme in the history of the behavioural sciences, the subtle relationship between behaviourism and realism about intentional concepts.

Recent scientific findings about human decision making would seem to threaten the traditional concept of the individual conscious will. The will is threatened from "below" by the discovery that our apparently spontaneous actions are actually controlled and initiated from below the level of our conscious awareness, and from "above" by the recognition that we adapt our actions according to social dynamics of which we are seldom aware. In Distributed Cognition and the Will, leading philosophers and behavioral scientists consider how much, if anything, of the traditional concept of the individual conscious will survives these discoveries, and they assess the implications for our sense of freedom and responsibility. The contributors all take science seriously, and they are inspired by the idea that apparent threats to the cogency of the idea of will might instead become the basis of its reemergence as a scientific subject. They consider macro-scale issues of society and culture, the micro-scale dynamics of the mind/brain, and connections between macro-scale and micro-scale phenomena in the self-guidance and self-regulation of personal behavior. Contributors: George Ainslie, Wayne Christensen, Andy Clark, Paul Sheldon Davies, Daniel C. Dennett, Lawrence A. Lengbeyer, Dan Lloyd, Philip Pettit, Don Ross, Tamler Sommers, Betsy Sparrow, Mariam Thalos, Jeffrey B. Vancouver, Daniel M. Wegner, Tadeusz W. ZawidzkiDon Ross is Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Finance, Economics, and Quantitative Methods at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Professor of Economics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. David Spurrett is Professor of Philosophy at the Howard College Campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Harold Kincaid is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Ethics and Values in the Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. G. Lynn Stephens is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

There is a strong formal analogy between proposition‐wise supervenience of collective doxastic rationality on individual doxastic rationality and supervenience of social choice functions on individual choice functions. In light of this analogy, the basis for List and Pettit's impossibility theorems can fruitfully be compared with the basis for Arrow's. This helps to explain why List and Pettit can derive no impossibility theorem for set‐wise supervenience. However, there are empirical reasons for doubting that set‐wise supervenience of collective doxastic rationality on individual doxastic rationality is necessary; a systematic feedback relationship between the former and some individual behavioral dispositions is probably sufficient to dissolve mysteries about group agency. Group doxastic rationality need not supervene on individual rationality.

There is a broad consensus in the leading general literature on norms and norm-change that norms are conditional, and based on descriptive and normative expectations. Expectations are a sub-set of beliefs. Hence some primary barriers to norm-change arise from dynamics among beliefs, and between beliefs and preferences. However, the literature has under-examined the distinction between two such barriers, preference falsification and pluralistic ignorance. We clarify the implications of the distinction for two leading conceptual frameworks (due to Kuran and Bicchieri, respectively), and ultimately for explicit models, of norms and norm change. We furthermore explain how, once this clarification is in place, the two models are naturally reconciled by interpreting the concepts of belief – and also preference – that they incorporate as based on attribution from Dennett’s intentional stance.

The paper compares Ladyman and Ross’s version of naturalized metaphysics, Rainforest Realism, with the comprehensive scientific metaphysics recently articulated by a physicist, David Deutsch. Major similarities of the two positions are described and discussed, illustrating the relevance of metaphysics to science. However, a failure of consistent naturalism on Deutsch’s part is also identified and criticized: Deutsch promotes the Everettian multiverse interpretation of quantum physics on the basis of a philosophical commitment to classical determinism. Deutsch also fails to appreciate that a broadly realistic attitude to physical theory does not require denying that some important scientific achievements involve using models and their elements as instruments. Both of these errors are traced to an overly strict dichotomy between pure formalism and empirically interpreted content. In quantum mechanics, Bohr’s version of the Copenhagen interpretation fails to be a fully fledged ‘interpretation’ according to currently dominant philosophical opinion. Ladyman and Ross criticize this opinion. The deep structure of the world is arguably not mathematical but statistical, and there is no such thing as ‘purely formal statistics’. The principles of statistics are generalizations of recurrent patterns found in data; and such structuring of data is the core business of both science and its metaphysical unification. Contrary to Deutsch’s claims, Enlightenment optimism about the capacity for limitless expansion of knowledge is compatible with the hypothesis that the world is irreducibly and fundamentally stochastic. Among great philosophers, C. S. Peirce anticipated this hypothesis. Ladyman and Ross’s metaphysics can be re-described in terms of it, as follows: the world is the totality of non-redundant statistics, not of things.

Much work in game theory concerns mechanisms by which players can infer information about the utilities and beliefs of other players based on actions within games and pre-play signals. When game theory is applied to interactions among people, such analysis interprets them as ‘mindreading’. Recent work in cognitive science, however, suggests that human coordination rests more centrally on ‘mindshaping’, where interactants determine preferences jointly. As mindshaping is strategic, there is motivation to extend game theory to accommodate it. Conditional Game Theory (CGT) is a strategic theory of mindshaping. We show how it can be used to help players of standard games identify correlated equilibrium, and thus solve games. We then extend CGT to address a challenge to the relevance of correlated equilibrium to empirical choice data, by showing how pre-play analysis using CGT can reconcile the Harsanyi Doctrine – assumed common priors among Bayesian players – with rank-dependent choice as observed in economic experiments.

I investigate the extent to which there might be, now or in the future, non-human animals that partake in the kind of fully human-style consciousness that has been taken by many philosophers to be the basis of normative personhood. I first sketch a conceptual framework for considering the question, based on a range of philosophical literature on relationships between consciousness, language and personhood. I then review the standard basis for largely a priori skepticism about the possibility that any non-human animal could experience FHSC and be a person to any extent, and indicate empirically motivated grounds for rejecting such skepticism, at least with respect to a select group of hypersocial candidate species with communication systems we do not currently know are not languages: corvids, parrots, elephants, and toothed whales. Relevant facts about elephants are reviewed in some detail, as a mini case study. While it is suggested that elephants might partake in the sort of consciousness characteristic of personhood to some extent, grounds are given for expecting that this extent is sharply limited by comparison with normal humans. As these grounds are mainly aspects of elephants’ external niche, however, rather than known limitations in their inboard cognitive or representational capacities, the surprising conclusion emerges that elephants might acquire FHSC, and thereby become persons, if they can be brought into conversation with humans, a possibility opened by considerations canvassed in the paper.

We consider the potential contribution of economics to an interdisciplinary research partnership between sociology and neuroscience. We correct a misunderstanding in previous literature over the understanding of humans as ‘social animals’, which has in turn led to misidentification of the potential relevance of game theory and the economics of networks to the social neuroscience project. Specifically, it has been suggested that these can be used to model mindreading. We argue that mindreading is at best a derivative and special basis for social coordination, whereas the general and pervasive phenomenon on which it depends is mindshaping. We then outline the foundations of Conditional Game Theory as a mathematical model of mindshaping, which extends game theory without displacing its classic solution concepts, and which exploits economists’ experience in modeling networks.