Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996 14:21:15 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: evolutionary/economic analogy? -Reply


On Fri, 12 Apr 1996, Lisa Rogers wrote:

> 
> >>> Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>  4/11/96 
> I'm not endorsing "rational choice" evolutionary theory in the manner
> of J.M. Smith, just remarking that it exemplifies the role of
> analogy, or a role for analogy, in the exact sciences. 
> 
> Lisa:  Why not endorse John Maynard Smith?  I think his little book
> on _Evolution and the Theory of Games_ is a gem.  This and other work
> have reframed evolutionary theory in powerful and useful ways.  


Bercause I don't know enough biology and anyway I'm suspicious of RCT,
despite my reputation on this list.
 > 
> JS: In fact the theory only applies by analogy to people as
> biological organisms, because while we do have mental states it's
> absurd to say that as a matter of empirical fact anyone tries to
> maximize evolutionary fitness.
> 
> Lisa:  Well... I think that's a very complicated issue, and I tend to
> disagree.  I know there are lots of reasons that it doesn't look that
> way in some cultures, but it is explicit in many, and is underlying
> for all biological organisms.  Brain/mind/mentality itself is a
> product of evolution, and what does an adaptation do, but chase
> fitness.

I don't lnow about you, but I myself do not seek to maximize fitness. I
got a vasectomy after two kids, in fact. Haven't uou noticed taht people
have other aims than reproducing themselves? Even when they do reproduce a
lot, in poorer societies, it's often arguably as a sort of social
insurance. 

> 
> JS:  The point is that the analogy is constitutive of the structure
> of the theory.  No analogy, no theory. 
> 
> Lisa:  This I don't get.  The way I see it, if there weren't already
> economic methods of dealing with diminishing returns, tradeoffs,
> free-riders, cooperation and collective action problems, evolution
> theorists would have invented them.  It is the actual structure of
> nature, natural selection and its products that we want to capture
> with the theory.  [That's how I generally view science and
> theory-building.]

Sure, we want to know how the world is. But to do this we have to
conceptualize it. With RCT biology, we conceptualize by analogy to
economic behavior. That's what makes the theory what is is, RCT biology.
If the evolutionary theorists rather than the economists had started the
ball rolling, we might havea  different theoretical structure, with an
economics based on biological analogies.

--Justin




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