The Philosophy of Sociality offers new ideas and conceptual tools for philosophers and social scientists in their analysis of the social world.

This work provides a rigorous analysis of what Tuomela calls ‘the we-perspective’. Tuomela's overarching project is to argue that ‘conceptualizing social life and theorizing about it requires the use of group concepts, indeed the we-perspective and, especially, the we-mode.’ Already some of the complexities of Tuomela's approach will be evident – viz. in the distinction, implied in the above quotation and carried through systematically throughout the work, between the ‘we-perspective’ and the ‘we-mode’. For, indeed, it is possible, on his account, (...) to take up the we-perspective from the I-mode and, indeed, this is probably quite common, but is not adequate to ground the analysis of social and institutional concepts. As Tuomela puts it, ‘The concept of social institution is a we-mode concept, and in actual practice, at least some we-mode thinking and acting is required for institutions to function adequately.’ Since ‘we-mode’ is the more central notion, let us begin with that. It will be instructive to quote Tuomela at length : " Agent A, a member of group g, has ATT, the attitude ATT with content p, in … ". (shrink)

Guala raises important questions about the misinterpretation of experimental studies that have found that subjects engage in costly punishment. Instead of positing that punishment is the solution for social dilemmas, earlier research posited that when individuals facing a social dilemma agreed on their own rules and used graduated sanctions, they were more likely to have robust solutions over time.

This paper provides strong evidence challenging the self-interest assumption that dominates the behavioral sciences and much evolutionary thinking. The evidence indicates that many people have a tendency to voluntarily cooperate, if treated fairly, and to punish noncooperators. We call this behavioral propensity “strong reciprocity” and show empirically that it can lead to almost universal cooperation in circumstances in which purely self-interested behavior would cause a complete breakdown of cooperation. In addition, we show that people are willing to punish those who (...) behaved unfairly towards a third person or who defected in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with a third person. This suggests that strong reciprocity is a powerful device for the enforcement of social norms involving, for example, food sharing or collective action. Strong reciprocity cannot be rationalized as an adaptive trait by the leading evolutionary theories of human cooperation (in other words, kin selection, reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity, and costly signaling theory). However, multilevel selection theories of cultural evolution are consistent with strong reciprocity. (shrink)

La ética del discurso es un óptimo fundamento para la ética cívica de una sociedad moralmente pluralista, pero siempre que no se contente con su dimensión procedimental, sino que saque a la luz su dimensión cordial. Sólo que entonces pasa de ser ética del discurso a ethica cordis. El presente trabajo intenta dar ese paso, y con ese fin cubre tres etapas: 1) en qué medida son necesarios los vínculos, 2) en qué consiste el vínculo discursivo, 3) cómo el vínculo (...) comunicativo incluye el discursivo y va más allá, dando lugar a una ética de la razón cordial. (shrink)

La Neuroética necesita un marco de ética filosófica desde el que interpretar, integrar y criticar el progreso neurocientífico en el ámbito moral. Este artículo intenta: 1) Mostrar en qué medida este marco es necesario. 2) Abordar la cuestión del método adecuado para construirlo. 3) Compilar los principales tópoi de las neurociencias que el marco debería interpretar e integrar. 4) Mostrar cómo la ética del discurso puede ser un marco adecuado para la neuroética. 5) Señalar algunas insuficiencias de ese marco y (...) sugerir para superarlas una ética de la razón cordial. (shrink)

A model is presented to account for the natural selection of what is termed reciprocally altruistic behavior. The model shows how selection can operate -against the cheater (non-reciprocator) in the system. Three instances of altruistic behavior are discussed, the evolution of which the model can explain: (1) behavior involved in cleaning symbioses; (2) warning cries in birds: and (3) human reciprocal altruism. Regarding human reciprocal altruism, it is shown that the details of the psychological system that regulates this altruism can (...) be explained by the model. Specifically, friendship,d islike, moralistic aggression, gratitude, sympathy, trust, suspicion, trustworthiness, aspects of guilt, and some forms of dishonesty and hypocrisy can be explained as important adaptations to regulate the altruistic system. Each individual human is seen as possessing altruistic and cheating tendencies, the expression of which is sensitive to developmental variables that were selected to set the tendencies at a balance appropriate to the local social and ecological environment. (shrink)