•  961
    In the latter half of the twentieth century, philosophers of science have argued (implicitly and explicitly) that epistemically rational individuals might compose epistemically irrational groups and that, conversely, epistemically rational groups might be composed of epistemically irrational individuals. We call the conjunction of these two claims the Independence Thesis, as they together imply that methodological prescriptions for scientific communities and those for individual scientists might…Read more
  •  449
    The Epistemic Benefit of Transient Diversity
    Erkenntnis 72 (1): 17-35. 2010.
    There is growing interest in understanding and eliciting division of labor within groups of scientists. This paper illustrates the need for this division of labor through a historical example, and a formal model is presented to better analyze situations of this type. Analysis of this model reveals that a division of labor can be maintained in two different ways: by limiting information or by endowing the scientists with extreme beliefs. If both features are present however, cognitive diversity i…Read more
  •  329
    Network Epistemology: Communication in Epistemic Communities
    Philosophy Compass 8 (1): 15-27. 2013.
    Much of contemporary knowledge is generated by groups not single individuals. A natural question to ask is, what features make groups better or worse at generating knowledge? This paper surveys research that spans several disciplines which focuses on one aspect of epistemic communities: the way they communicate internally. This research has revealed that a wide number of different communication structures are best, but what is best in a given situation depends on particular details of the proble…Read more
  •  276
    Methodology in Biological Game Theory
    with Simon M. Huttegger
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64 (3): 637-658. 2013.
    Game theory has a prominent role in evolutionary biology, in particular in the ecological study of various phenomena ranging from conflict behaviour to altruism to signalling and beyond. The two central methodological tools in biological game theory are the concepts of Nash equilibrium and evolutionarily stable strategy. While both were inspired by a dynamic conception of evolution, these concepts are essentially static—they only show that a population is uninvadable, but not that a population i…Read more
  •  266
    The communication structure of epistemic communities
    Philosophy of Science 74 (5): 574-587. 2007.
    Increasingly, epistemologists are becoming interested in social structures and their effect on epistemic enterprises, but little attention has been paid to the proper distribution of experimental results among scientists. This paper will analyze a model first suggested by two economists, which nicely captures one type of learning situation faced by scientists. The results of a computer simulation study of this model provide two interesting conclusions. First, in some contexts, a community of sci…Read more
  •  212
    Introduction
    Philosophical Studies 147 (1): 1-5. 2010.
    Introduction to 'Skyrmsfest: Papers in Honor of Brian Skyrms' issue of Philosophical Studies, January 2010. Remarks about Brian Skyrms and about the 10 papers in the issue.
  •  194
    The Credit Economy and the Economic Rationality of Science
    Journal of Philosophy 115 (1): 5-33. 2018.
    Theories of scientific rationality typically pertain to belief. In this paper, the author argues that we should expand our focus to include motivations as well as belief. An economic model is used to evaluate whether science is best served by scientists motivated only by truth, only by credit, or by both truth and credit. In many, but not all, situations, scientists motivated by both truth and credit should be judged as the most rational scientists.
  •  167
    Transfer of information between senders and receivers, of one kind or another, is essential to all life. David Lewis introduced a game theoretic model of the simplest case, where one sender and one receiver have pure common interest. How hard or easy is it for evolution to achieve information transfer in Lewis signaling?. The answers involve surprising subtleties. We discuss some if these in terms of evolutionary dynamics in both finite and infinite populations, with and without mutation
  •  137
    Social structure and the effects of conformity
    Synthese 172 (3): 317-340. 2010.
    Conformity is an often criticized feature of human belief formation. Although generally regarded as a negative influence on reliability, it has not been widely studied. This paper attempts to determine the epistemic effects of conformity by analyzing a mathematical model of this behavior. In addition to investigating the effect of conformity on the reliability of individuals and groups, this paper attempts to determine the optimal structure for conformity. That is, supposing that conformity is i…Read more
  •  106
    The theory of games as a tool for the social epistemologist
    Philosophical Studies 178 (4): 1381-1401. 2020.
    Traditionally, epistemologists have distinguished between epistemic and pragmatic goals. In so doing, they presume that much of game theory is irrelevant to epistemic enterprises. I will show that this is a mistake. Even if we restrict attention to purely epistemic motivations, members of epistemic groups will face a multitude of strategic choices. I illustrate several contexts where individuals who are concerned solely with the discovery of truth will nonetheless face difficult game theoretic p…Read more
  •  99
    Separating Directives and Assertions Using Simple Signaling Games
    Journal of Philosophy 108 (3): 158-169. 2011.
  •  96
    Finding Alternatives to Handicap Theory
    Biological Theory 8 (2): 127-132. 2013.
    The Handicap Principle represents a central theory in the biological understanding of signaling. This paper presents a number of alternative theories to the Handicap Principle and argues that some of these theories may provide a better explanation for the evolution and stability of honest communication
  •  81
    Modeling the social consequences of testimonial norms
    Philosophical Studies 172 (9): 2371-2383. 2015.
    This paper approaches the problem of testimony from a new direction. Rather than focusing on the epistemic grounds for testimony, it considers the problem from the perspective of an individual who must choose whom to trust from a population of many would-be testifiers. A computer simulation is presented which illustrates that in many plausible situations, those who trust without attempting to judge the reliability of testifiers outperform those who attempt to seek out the more reliable members o…Read more
  •  80
    We study a low-rationality learning dynamics called probe and adjust. Our emphasis is on its properties in games of information transfer such as the Lewis signaling game or the Bala-Goyal network game. These games fall into the class of weakly better reply games, in which, starting from any action profile, there is a weakly better reply path to a strict Nash equilibrium. We prove that probe and adjust will be close to strict Nash equilibria in this class of games with arbitrarily high probabilit…Read more
  •  74
    Talking to neighbors: The evolution of regional meaning
    Philosophy of Science 72 (1): 69-85. 2005.
    In seeking to explain the evolution of social cooperation, many scholars are using increasingly complex game-theoretic models. These complexities often model readily observable features of human and animal populations. In the case of previous games analyzed in the literature, these modifications have had radical effects on the stability and efficiency properties of the models. We will analyze the effect of adding spatial structure to two communication games: the Lewis Sender-Receiver game and a …Read more
  •  67
    Conservatism and the Scientific State of Nature
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (4): 1057-1076. 2016.
    Those who comment on modern scientific institutions are often quick to praise institutional structures that leave scientists to their own devices. These comments reveal an underlying presumption that scientists do best when left alone—when they operate in what we call the ‘scientific state of nature’. Through computer simulation, we challenge this presumption by illustrating an inefficiency that arises in the scientific state of nature. This inefficiency suggests that one cannot simply presume t…Read more
  •  62
    Modeling and computer simulations, we claim, should be considered core philosophical methods. More precisely, we will defend two theses. First, philosophers should use simulations for many of the same reasons we currently use thought experiments. In fact, simulations are superior to thought experiments in achieving some philosophical goals. Second, devising and coding computational models instill good philosophical habits of mind. Throughout the paper, we respond to the often implicit objection …Read more
  •  59
    Evolutionary considerations in the framing of social norms
    with Brian Skyrms
    Politics, Philosophy and Economics 9 (3): 265-273. 2010.
    In this article, we aim to illustrate evolutionary explanations for the emergence of framing effects, discussed in detail in Cristina Bicchieri’s The Grammar of Society . We show how framing effects might evolve which coalesce two economically distinct interactions into a single one, leading to apparently irrational behavior in each individual interaction. Here we consider the now well-known example of the ultimatum game, and show how this ‘irrational’ behavior might result from a single norm wh…Read more
  •  57
    Fraud and misleading research represent serious impediments to scientific progress. We must uncover the causes of fraud in order to understand how science functions and in order to develop strategies for combating epistemically detrimental behavior. This paper investigates how the incentive to commit fraud is enhanced by the structure of the scientific reward system. Science is an "accumulation process:" success begets resources which begets more success. Through a simplified mathematical model,…Read more
  •  57
    Explaining fairness in complex environments
    Politics, Philosophy and Economics 7 (1): 81-97. 2008.
    This article presents the evolutionary dynamics of three games: the Nash bargaining game, the ultimatum game, and a hybrid of the two. One might expect that the probability that some behavior evolves in an environment with two games would be near the probability that the same behavior evolves in either game alone. This is not the case for the ultimatum and Nash bargaining games. Fair behavior is more likely to evolve in a combined game than in either game taken individually. This result confirms…Read more
  •  56
    Recent research into the evolution of higher cognition has piqued an interest in the effect of natural selection on the ability of creatures to respond to their environment (behavioral plasticity). It is believed that environmental variation is required for plasticity to evolve in cases where the ability to be plastic is costly. We investigate one form of environmental variation: frequency dependent selection. Using tools in game theory, we investigate a few models of plasticity and outline the c…Read more
  •  56
    Optimal Publishing Strategies
    Episteme 6 (2): 185-199. 2009.
    Journals regulate a significant portion of the communication between scientists. This paper devises an agent-based model of scientific practice and uses it to compare various strategies for selecting publications by journals. Surprisingly, it appears that the best selection method for journals is to publish relatively few papers and to select those papers it publishes at random from the available “above threshold” papers it receives. This strategy is most effective at maintaining an appropriate …Read more
  •  53
    The “fair benefits” approach to international research is designed to produce results that all can agree are fair without taking a stand on divisive questions of justice. But its appealing veneer of collaboration masks ambiguities at both a conceptual and an operational level. An attempt to put it into practice would look a lot like an auction, leaving little reason to think the outcomes will satisfy even minimal conditions of fairness.
  •  48
    Plasticity and language: an example of the Baldwin effect?
    with Rory Smead
    Philosophical Studies 147 (1): 7-21. 2010.
    In recent years, many scholars have suggested that the Baldwin effect may play an important role in the evolution of language. However, the Baldwin effect is a multifaceted and controversial process and the assessment of its connection with language is difficult without a formal model. This paper provides a first step in this direction. We examine a game-theoretic model of the interaction between plasticity and evolution in the context of a simple language game. Additionally, we describe three d…Read more
  •  48
    The Handicap Principle Is an Artifact
    Philosophy of Science 82 (5): 997-1009. 2015.
    The handicap principle is one of the most influential ideas in evolutionary biology. It asserts that when there is conflict of interest in a signaling interaction signals must be costly in order to be reliable. While in evolutionary biology it is a common practice to distinguish between indexes and fakable signals, we argue this dichotomy is an artifact of existing popular signaling models. Once this distinction is abandoned, we show one cannot adequately understand signaling behavior by focusin…Read more
  •  43
    Social network structure and the achievement of consensus
    Politics, Philosophy and Economics 11 (1): 26-44. 2012.
    It is widely believed that bringing parties with differing opinions together to discuss their differences will help both in securing consensus and also in ensuring that this consensus closely approximates the truth. This paper investigates this presumption using two mathematical and computer simulation models. Ultimately, these models show that increased contact can be useful in securing both consensus and truth, but it is not always beneficial in this way. This suggests one should not, without …Read more
  •  41
    We study the handicap principle in terms of the Sir Philip Sidney game. The handicap principle asserts that cost is required to allow for honest signalling in the face of conflicts of interest. We show that the significance of the handicap principle can be challenged from two new directions. Firstly, both the costly signalling equilibrium and certain states of no communication are stable under the replicator dynamics ; however, the latter states are more likely in cases where honest signalling s…Read more
  •  30
    Follow the leader : local interactions with influence neighborhoods (review)
    with Marc Ereshefsky, Mohan Matthen, Matthew H. Slater, Alex Rosenberg, D. M. Kaplan, Peter Vanderschraaf, J. McKenzie Alexander, and Gordon Belot
    Philosophy of Science 72 (1): 86-113. 2005.
    We introduce a dynamic model for evolutionary games played on a network where strategy changes are correlated according to degree of influence between players. Unlike the notion of stochastic stability, which assumes mutations are stochastically independent and identically distributed, our framework allows for the possibility that agents correlate their strategies with the strategies of those they trust, or those who have influence over them. We show that the dynamical properties of evolutionary…Read more
  •  27
    Signals without teleology
    with Carl T. Bergstrom and Simon M. Huttegger
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 84 101310. 2020.