The behavioral sciences have flourished by studying how traditional and/or rational behavior has been governed throughout most of human history by relatively well-informed individual and social learning. In the online age, however, social phenomena can occur with unprecedented scale and unpredictability, and individuals have access to social connections never before possible. Similarly, behavioral scientists now have access to “big data” sets – those from Twitter and Facebook, for example – that did not exist a few years ago. Studies of human (...) dynamics based on these data sets are novel and exciting but, if not placed in context, can foster the misconception that mass-scale online behavior is all we need to understand, for example, how humans make decisions. To overcome that misconception, we draw on the field of discrete-choice theory to create a multiscale comparative “map” that, like a principal-components representation, captures the essence of decision making along two axes: aneast–westdimension that represents the degree to which an agent makes a decision independently versus one that is socially influenced, and anorth–south dimensionthat represents the degree to which there is transparency in the payoffs and risks associated with the decisions agents make. We divide the map into quadrants, each of which features a signature behavioral pattern. When taken together, the map and its signatures provide an easily understood empirical framework for evaluating how modern collective behavior may be changing in the digital age, including whether behavior is becoming more individualistic, as people seek out exactly what they want, or more social, as people become more inextricably linked, even “herdlike,” in their decision making. We believe the map will lead to many new testable hypotheses concerning human behavior as well as to similar applications throughout the social sciences. (shrink)

This article addresses the question of how, if at all, citizens can sustain an effective sense of political belonging without sacrificing other sources of ethical identity. We begin with a critical analysis of Rousseau's classic considerations of politics and religion, which concludes that membership of a sub-political ethical community is incompatible with an effective sense of political belonging. This critique leads us to a consideration of the basic character of contemporary constitutional-democratic polities (drawing on the work of James Tully) and (...) of Waldron's account of the circumstances of politics. These considerations are developed into the claim that we can identify two sources of political belonging: recognition and acknowledgement - which correspond to two aspects of democratic citizenship: as status and as mode of being. On the basis of this claim, we argue that an effective sense of political belonging can be compatible with membership of sub-political ethical communities iff members of the political community are characterised by the majoritarian virtue of civic responsiveness and the minoritarian virtue of civic endurance. We sketch the character of these virtues and the relationship to one another in arguing that only the widespread presence of both kinds of virtue is sufficient to secure citizens' confidence in the polity and hence its stability. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine how the idea of self-rule is dramatised and articulated in the Protagoras and the Gorgias with respect to the apparently different treatments of hedonism. Looking at the former dialogue, I describe how the hedonist premise develops from a dramatic image of disorder, specifically the absence of self-rule. I then consider whether the evidence from that dialogue has any bearing on the Gorgias’ discussion of hedonism. I conclude that the Socratic rejection of hedonism in that text (...) is about the Calliclean abandonment of any concern for self-rule, an abandonment that actually masquerades as a commitment to self-rule. This analysis is used to present a more general account of what Socrates considers to be the capacities required for good citizenship. (shrink)

Contemporary appeals for a deepening of civic friendship in liberal democracies often draw on Aristotle. This paper warns against a certain kind of attempt to use Aristotle in our own theorising, namely accounts of civic friendship that characterise it as similar in some way to Aristotelian virtue friendship. The most prominent of these attempts have focused on disinterested mutual regard as a basic ingredient in all Aristotelian forms of friendship. The argument against this is that it inadequately accounts for the (...) idea of a virtue friend as another self, which we find in Aristotle’s thought. When we attend closely to that, we see that civic friendship is different in a fundamental way from virtue friendship because virtue friends are keenly committed to the moral improvement of one another. It is argued that Aristotle does not see civic friendship in the same way. However, if this argument about the differences between the forms of friendship cannot be accepted, the paper argues that we should not draw on Aristotle for an understanding of civic friendship because any similarity it might have to virtue friendship would license illiberal interventions in the lives of citizens in service of some idea of moral improvement. A seeming connection between Aristotelian civic friendship and thick conceptions of citizenship is replaced with a connection between it and thinner conceptions. (shrink)

The behavioral sciences have flourished by studying how traditional and/or rational behavior has been governed throughout most of human history by relatively well-informed individual and social learning. In the online age, however, social phenomena can occur with unprecedented scale and unpredictability, and individuals have access to social connections never before possible. Similarly, behavioral scientists now have access to “big data” sets – those from Twitter and Facebook, for example – that did not exist a few years ago. Studies of human (...) dynamics based on these data sets are novel and exciting but, if not placed in context, can foster the misconception that mass-scale online behavior is all we need to understand, for example, how humans make decisions. To overcome that misconception, we draw on the field of discrete-choice theory to create a multiscale comparative “map” that, like a principal-components representation, captures the essence of decision making along two axes: aneast–westdimension that represents the degree to which an agent makes a decision independently versus one that is socially influenced, and anorth–south dimensionthat represents the degree to which there is transparency in the payoffs and risks associated with the decisions agents make. We divide the map into quadrants, each of which features a signature behavioral pattern. When taken together, the map and its signatures provide an easily understood empirical framework for evaluating how modern collective behavior may be changing in the digital age, including whether behavior is becoming more individualistic, as people seek out exactly what they want, or more social, as people become more inextricably linked, even “herdlike,” in their decision making. We believe the map will lead to many new testable hypotheses concerning human behavior as well as to similar applications throughout the social sciences. (shrink)

This paper presents a political reading of the Phaedrus. It is argued that the dialogue’s speeches on love describe types of political leadership and that, using the Socratic account of the statesman as someone who promotes moral improvement, political relations are not bound by institutions. Political relations become those in which one person affects the moral development of another and, thus, political ‘space’ is between people, not in specific locations. As a result, this new kind of forum must affect the (...) way we think of critical Socratic citizenship. Specifically, it introduces a more extensive understanding of critical engagement and incorporates an imperative to be self-critical through interaction with others. (shrink)

We propose using a bi-axial map as a heuristic for categorizing different dynamics involved in the relationship between quality and popularity. The east–west axis represents the degree to which an agent’s decision is influenced by those of other agents. This ranges from the extreme western edge, where an agent learns individually (no outside influence), to the extreme eastern edge, where an agent is influenced by a large number of other agents. The vertical axis represents how easy or difficult it is (...) for an agent to discern the relative quality of available choices. When a case study is located on the map, it becomes easier to select the range of tools to use for understanding and predicting the relation between quality and popularity. (shrink)

In the most comprehensive treatment of Plato 's Crito to date, Richard Kraut says: ‘If possible, the Crito ought to be interpreted in a way that makes it consistent with the Apology and the other early Platonic dialogues.’ My aim in the following paper is sympathetic to this view. However, the consistency I find is wider in scope than the reconciliation of Socrates' commitment to disobedience in one dialogue and his apparent rejection of disobedience in the other. I seek a (...) reconciliation between the Socratic charge to live an examined life and the demands of a life under law. (shrink)

Although the beliefs, preferences, and constraints (BPC) model may account for individuals independently making simple decisions, it becomes less useful the more complex the social setting and the decisions themselves become. Perhaps rather than seek to unify their field under one model, behavioral scientists could explore when and why the BPC model generally applies versus fails to apply as a null hypothesis. (Published Online April 27 2007).

We agree that the emergence of cumulative technological culture was tied to nonsocial cognitive skills, namely, technical-reasoning skills, which allowed humans to constantly acquire and improve information. Our concern is with a reading of the history of cumulative technological culture that is based largely on modern experiments in simulated settings and less on phenomena crucial to the long-term dynamics of cultural evolution.