Because of its complexity, contemporary scientific research is almost always tackled by groups of scientists, each of which works in a different part of a given research domain. We believe that understanding scientific progress thus requires understanding this division of cognitive labor. To this end, we present a novel agent-based model of scientific research in which scientists divide their labor to explore an unknown epistemic landscape. Scientists aim to climb uphill in this landscape, where elevation represents the significance of the (...) results discovered by employing a research approach. We consider three different search strategies scientists can adopt for exploring the landscape. In the first, scientists work alone and do not let the discoveries of the community as a whole influence their actions. This is compared with two social research strategies, which we call the follower and maverick strategies. Followers are biased towards what others have already discovered, and we find that pure populations of these scientists do less well than scientists acting independently. However, pure populations of mavericks, who try to avoid research approaches that have already been taken, vastly outperform both of the other strategies. Finally, we show that in mixed populations, mavericks stimulate followers to greater levels of epistemic production, making polymorphic populations of mavericks and followers ideal in many research domains. (shrink)

Very diverse societies pose real problems for Rawlsian models of public reason. This is for two reasons: first, public reason is unable accommodate diverse perspectives in determining a regulative ideal. Second, regulative ideals are unable to respond to social change. While models based on public reason focus on the justification of principles, this book suggests that we need to orient our normative theories more toward discovery and experimentation. The book develops a unique approach to social contract theory that focuses on (...) diverse perspectives. It offers a new moral stance that author Ryan Muldoon calls, "The View From Everywhere," which allows for substantive, fundamental moral disagreement. This stance is used to develop a bargaining model in which agents can cooperate despite seeing different perspectives. Rather than arguing for an ideal contract or particular principles of justice, Muldoon outlines a procedure for iterated revisions to the rules of a social contract. It expands Mill's conception of experiments in living to help form a foundational principle for social contract theory. By embracing this kind of experimentation, we move away from a conception of justice as an end state, and toward a conception of justice as a trajectory. (shrink)

In epistemology and the philosophy of science, there has been an increasing interest in the social aspects of belief acquisition. In particular, there has been a focus on the division of cognitive labor in science. This essay explores several different models of the division of cognitive labor, with particular focus on Kitcher, Strevens, Weisberg and Muldoon, and Zollman. The essay then shows how many of the benefits of the division of cognitive labor flow from leveraging agent diversity. The essay concludes (...) by examining the benefits and burdens of diversity, particularly in the evaluative diversity that can be found in interdisicplinary science. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

In this paper we argue that there is a kind of moral disagreement that survives the Rawlsian veil of ignorance. While a veil of ignorance eliminates sources of disagreement stemming from self-interest, it does not do anything to eliminate deeper sources of disagreement. These disagreements not only persist, but transform their structure once behind the veil of ignorance. We consider formal frameworks for exploring these differences in structure between interested and disinterested disagreement, and argue that consensus models offer us a (...) solution concept for disagreements behind the veil of ignorance. (shrink)

A descriptive norm is a behavioral rule that individuals follow when their empirical expectations of others following the same rule are met. We aim to provide an account of the emergence of descriptive norms by first looking at a simple case, that of the standing ovation. We examine the structure of a standing ovation, and show it can be generalized to describe the emergence of a wide range of descriptive norms.

Scientific research is almost always conducted by communities of scientists of varying size and complexity. Such communities are effective, in part, because they divide their cognitive labor: not every scientist works on the same project. Philip Kitcher and Michael Strevens have pioneered efforts to understand this division of cognitive labor by proposing models of how scientists make decisions about which project to work on. For such models to be useful, they must be simple enough for us to understand their dynamics, (...) but faithful enough to reality that we can use them to analyze real scientific communities. To satisfy the first requirement, we must employ idealizations to simplify the model. The second requirement demands that these idealizations not be so extreme that we lose the ability to describe real-world phenomena. This paper investigates the status of the assumptions that Kitcher and Strevens make in their models, by first inquiring whether they are reasonable representations of reality, and then by checking the models' robustness against weakenings of these assumptions. To do this, we first argue against the reality of the assumptions, and then develop a series of agent-based simulations to systematically test their effects on model outcomes. We find that the models are not robust against weakenings of these idealizations. In fact we find that under certain conditions, this can lead to the model predicting outcomes that are qualitatively opposite of the original model outcomes. (shrink)

This paper examines a series of Schelling-like models of residential segregation, in which agents prefer to be in the minority. We demon- strate that as long as agents care about the characteristics of their wider community, they tend to end up in a segregated state. We then investigate the process that causes this, and conclude that the result hinges on the similarity of informational states amongst agents of the same type. This is quite di erent from Schelling-like behavior, and sug- (...) gests (in his terms) that segregation is an instance of macro behavior which can arise from a wide variety of micro motives. (shrink)

This paper explores the space of possibilities for public justification in morally diverse communities. Moral diversity is far more consequential than is typically appreciated, and as a result, we need to think more carefully about how our standard tools function in such environments. I argue that because of this diversity, public justification can be divorced from any claim of determinateness. Instead, we should focus our attention on procedures—in particular, what Rawls called cases of pure procedural justice. I use a modified (...) form of the procedure “I cut, you choose” to demonstrate how perspectival diversity can make what looks like a simple procedure quite complex in practice. I use this to reframe disputes between classical liberal and contemporary liberal approaches to questions of public morality, arguing that classically liberal procedures, such as a reliance on the harm principle, can generate rather illiberal-looking outcomes when used in a morally diverse community. A seemingly less-principled approach, which simply balances burdens, appears to generate outcomes that look closer to what we would expect from classical liberalism. However, since both approaches are based on pure procedures that we can justify without reference to outcomes, it remains indeterminate which we ought to choose. (shrink)

In On Liberty, Mill introduced the concept of . I will provide an account of what Mill saw to be the basic problem he was addressing – the extensive pressure to fit in with the crowd, and how this bred mediocrity. I connect this to worries about public reason models of justification. I argue that a generalized version of Mill's argument offers us a better path to political justification stemming from experimentation. Rather than grounding political justification on shared political reasons, (...) we justify our political culture on our ability to reject consensus views and try alternatives. (shrink)

As scientists begin to study increasingly complex questions, many have turned to computer simulation to assist in their inquiry. This methodology has been challenged by both analytic modelers and experimentalists. A primary objection of analytic modelers is that simulations are simply too complicated to perform model verification. From the experimentalist perspective it is that there is no means to demonstrate the reality of simulation. The aim of this paper is to consider objections from both of these perspectives, and to argue (...) that a proper understanding and application of robustness analysis is able to resolve them. ‡The author would like to thank Cristina Bicchieri, Michelle Foa, Paul Humphreys and Michael Weisberg for their helpful comments and suggestions. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania, 433 Logan Hall, 249 S. 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104-6304; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Previous literature has demonstrated the important role that trust plays in developing and maintaining well-functioning societies. However, if we are to learn how to increase levels of trust in society, we must first understand why people choose to trust others. One potential answer to this is that people view trust as normative: there is a social norm for trusting that imposes punishment for noncompliance. To test this, we report data from a survey with salient rewards to elicit people’s attitudes regarding (...) the punishment of distrusting behavior in a trust game. Our results show that people do not behave as though trust is a norm. Our participants expected that most people would not punish untrusting investors, regardless of whether the potential trustee was a stranger or a friend. In contrast, our participants behaved as though being trustworthy is a norm. Most participants believed that most people would punish someone who failed to reciprocate a stranger’s or a friend’s trust. We conclude that, while we were able to reproduce previous results establishing that there is a norm of reciprocity, we found no evidence for a corresponding norm of trust, even among friends. (shrink)

This article examines a series of Schelling-like models of residential segregation, in which agents prefer to be in the minority. We demonstrate that as long as agents care about the characteristics of their wider community, they tend to end up in a segregated state. We then investigate the process that causes this and conclude that the result hinges on the similarity of informational states among agents of the same type. This is quite different from Schelling-like behavior and suggests that segregation (...) is an instance of macrobehavior that can arise from a wide variety of micromotives. (shrink)

In this work, we present a mathematical model for the emergence of descriptive norms, where the individual decision problem is formalized with the standard Bayesian belief revision machinery. Previous work on the emergence of descriptive norms has relied on heuristic modeling. In this paper we show that with a Bayesian model we can provide a more general picture of the emergence of norms, which helps to motivate the assumptions made in heuristic models. In our model, the priors formalize the belief (...) that a certain behavior is a regularity. The evidence is provided by other group members’ behavior and the likelihood by their reliability. We implement the model in a series of computer simulations and examine the group-level outcomes. We claim that domain-general belief revision helps explain why we look for regularities in social life in the first place. We argue that it is the disposition to look for regularities and react to them that generates descriptive norms. In our search for rules, we create them. (shrink)

A core set of assumptions in economic modeling is that rational agents, who have a defined preference set, assess their options and determine which best satisfies their preferences. The rational actor model supposes that the world provides us with a menu of options, and we simply choose what’s best for us. Agents are independent of one another, and they can rationally assess which of their options they wish to pursue. This gives special authority to the choices that people make, since (...) they are understood to be the outcomes of the agent’s considered judgments. However, we have come to see that the independence assumption does not always hold in the way that we may have initially thought. Social norms can govern our choices even when we disagree with them. Here we can begin to see how the standard model of choice and agency begins to weaken: no longer are my choices wholly mine, but instead there is a subset of choices that are governed by the broader culture that I live in. Social norms constrain my behavior with informal coercion — my desire to remain a community member in good standing requires me to behave in accordance with the community’s social norms. What I wish to challenge more substantively is the claim that the menu of choices agents “see” is in fact the objective set of options that is transparently provided by the world. Instead, I argue that the options that people perceive and the evidence they use to make choices are mediated by perspectives. Perspectives can importantly interact with social norms to make some norms more resilient to change, and others harder to adopt. This further shapes both our descriptive and normative understanding of agency. Our choices are not over all of the objectively available options, but over the options that we can see. The evidence we marshal to support our choices is not the full set of evidence, but the evidence that we recognize as salient. This is not to deny that individuals have agency, but rather we need a more nuanced understanding of the nature of this agency. (shrink)

The philosophical tradition of liberal political thought has come to see tolerance as a crucial element of a liberal political order. However, while much has been made of the value of toleration, little work has been done on individual-level motivations for tolerant behavior. In this article, we seek to develop an account of the rational motivations for toleration and of where the limits of toleration lie. We first present a very simple model of rational motivations for toleration. Key to this (...) model is an application of David Ricardo’s model of trade to thinking about toleration. This model supports the claim that we always have reasons to be as tolerant as possible. We then explore why we do not always see tolerant attitudes in the actual world, and point to some potential preconditions for toleration that the initial model does not capture. Subsequently, we examine a more detailed model that allows us to investigate more carefully the conditions under which tolerant behavior can be rewarded. We conclude by arguing that a consideration of self-interested motivations for toleration is essential to the success of a robust theory of toleration for a diverse society, but that even this approach has its limitations. (shrink)

It is well-known that people will adjust their first-order beliefs based on observations of others. We explore how such adjustments interact with second-order beliefs regarding universalism and relativism in a population. Across a range of simulations, we show that populations where individuals have a tendency toward universalism converge more quickly in coordination problems, and generate higher total payoffs, than do populations where individuals have a tendency toward relativism. Thus, in contexts where coordination is important, belief in universalism is advantageous. However, (...) we also show, across a range of simulations, that universalism will enshrine inequalities and eliminate diversity, and in these cases it seems that relativism has its own advantages. (shrink)

The article makes two substantive contributions to the existing literature on the ethics of international assistance and global justice. First, it builds what we take to be a widely held set of propositions about international assistance into a consistent view, and articulates a strong case against its desirability. Second, it sketches a more attractive alternative. To do so the article uses Sen’s idea of agent-oriented development as a starting point while at the same time providing a generalization of Sen’s account (...) and a justificatory framework that does not rely on the capability approach. (shrink)

In Trust in a Polarized Age, Kevin Vallier gives himself the unenviable and yet essential task of diagnosing and responding to the problem of democratic governa.

Liberal states traditionally rely on a reasonably narrow set of tools for engaging in social regulation. All of these tools are meant to change individual behaviors. Laws come with implicit force, financial regulations come with monetary carrots and sticks, and information provision informs people of the things that policymakers think they should know. Each of these is meant to guide individual choice making by changing how people evaluate their available options. Because this set of tools is meant to change individual (...) behaviors, it is worth considering what implicit assumptions this set of tools makes about the individuals whose behaviors policymakers are looking to change. Behavioral and social science has not only found some limitations on existing policy tools but has also pointed in the direction of some new tools as well. This is because the model of human choice and behavior is now richer. Nudges and norms provide an expanded toolset for policymakers but raise interesting questions about the legitimacy of the state taking advantage of reductions in agency to achieve policy ends. I argue that this framing misconstrues the situation and suggest that the appropriate guide to any options in the policy tool kit is one of nurturing rather than inhibiting citizen autonomy. Sometimes, this will recommend the use of norms or nudges in place of the standard policy tools. (shrink)