The mechanisms responsible for the fine tuning of development, where the wildtype phenotype is reproduced with high fidelity, are not well understood. The difficulty in approaching this problem is the identification of mutant phenotypes indicative of a defect in these fine‐tuning control mechanisms. Evolutionary biologists have used asymmetry as a measure of developmental homeostasis. The rationale for this was that, since the same genome controls the development of the left and right sides of a bilaterally symmetrical organism, departures from (...) symmetry can be used to measure genetic or environmental perturbations. This paper examines the relationship between asymmtry and resistance to organophosphorous insecticides in the Australian sheep blowfly, Lucilia cuprina. A resistance gene, Rop‐1, which encodes a carboxylesterase enzyme, also confers a significant increase in asymmetry. Continued exposure of resistant populations to insecticide has selected a dominant suppressor of the asymmetry phenotype. Genetic evidence indicates that the modifier is the L. cuprina Notch homologue. (shrink)

Evolutionary attempts to explain morality tend to say very little about what morality is. If evolutionary game theory aspires not merely to solve the ‘problem of altruism', but to explain human morality or justice in particular, it requires an appropriate conception of that subject matter. This paper argues that one plausible conception of morality (a sanction-based conception) creates some important constraints on the kinds of evolutionary explanations that can shed light on morality. Game theoretic approaches must either (...) meet these constraints, or defend an alternative conception of morality. Skyrms’ model of the evolution of justice is found to violate the constraints imposed by the sanction-based conception. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary research is becoming more and more popular. Many funding bodies encourage interdisciplinarity, as a criterion that promises scientific progress. Traditionally this has been linked to the idea of integrating or unifying disciplines. Using evolutionary game theory as a case study, Till Grüne-Yanoff (2016) argued that there is no such necessary link between interdisciplinary success and integration. Contrary to this, this paper argues that evolutionary game theory is a genuine case of successful integration between economics and biology, shedding (...) lights on the many dimensions along which integration can take place. (shrink)

Based on the evolutionary game theory, this article constructs a quartet evolutionary game model for debt restructuring with the participation of asset management companies; studies the interactive mechanism of complex behaviors among the government, banks, asset management companies, and enterprises; and analyzes the stability of the strategies of each game subject. It also analyzes the stability of the equilibrium points in the system and finds the stable points that maximize the interests of each subject. Research shows that the (...) government chooses to give specific support, banks choose debt-to-equity swaps, asset management companies choose to provide liquidity, and enterprises choose to work hard, which can better promote the debt restructuring process. Finally, using Matlab2018 software to analyze the impact of each essential element in the debt restructuring on the stability of system evolution, the research results provide a basis for the successful debt restructuring of the enterprises. (shrink)

In this article, I critically respond to Herbert Gintis's criticisms of the behavioral-economic foundations of Ken Binmore 's game-theoretic theory of justice. Gintis, I argue, fails to take full account of the normative requirements Binmore sets for his account, and also ignores what I call the ‘scale-relativity’ considerations built into Binmore 's approach to modeling human evolution. Paul Seabright's criticism of Binmore, I note, repeats these oversights. In the course of answering Gintis's and Seabright's objections, I clarify and extend Binmore (...) 's theory in a number of respects, integrating it with Kim Sterelny's and Don Ross's recent work on the evolution of people as cultural entities. The account also yields a novel basis for choosing between socialism and what Binmore calls ‘whiggery’ as normative political programs. Key Words: theory of justice • bargaining theory • evolutionary game theory • human evolution • Ken Binmore • Herbert Gintis • Kim Sterelny. (shrink)

Coal mine safety management involves many interested parties and there are complex relationships between them. According to game theory, a multiparty evolutionary game model is established to analyze the selection of strategies. Then, a simplified three-party model is taken as an example to carry out detailed analysis and solution. Based on stability theory of dynamics system and phase diagram analysis, this article studies replicator dynamics of the evolutionary model to make an optimization analysis of the behaviors of those (...) interested parties and the adjustment mechanism of safety management policies and decisions. The results show how the charge of supervision of government department and inspection of coal mine enterprise impact the efficiency of safety management and the effect of constraint measures and incentive and other measures in safety management. (shrink)

Major construction projects have a great influence on the national economy and society, wherein cooperative relationship between construction suppliers plays an increasingly significant role in the overall supply chain system. However, the relationships between suppliers are noncontractual, multistage, dynamic, and complicated. To gain a deeper insight into the suppliers’ cooperative relationships, an evolutionary game model is developed to explore the cooperation tendency of multisuppliers. A replicator dynamic system is further formulated to investigate the evolutionary stable strategies of multisuppliers. (...) Then, fourteen “when-then” type scenarios are concluded and classified into six different evolutionary tracks. Meanwhile, the critical influencing factors are identified. The results show that the suppliers’ production capacity, owner-supplier contract, and the owner’s incentive mechanism influence the cooperation tendency of suppliers directly. The managerial implications contribute to insightful references for a more stable cooperative relationship between the owner and suppliers. (shrink)

When social scientists began employing evolutionary game theory (EGT) in their disciplines, the question arose what the appropriate interpretation of the formal EGT framework would be. Social scientists have given different answer, of which I distinguish three basic kinds. I then proceed to uncover the conceptual tension between the formal framework of EGT, its application in the social sciences, and these three interpretations. First, I argue that EGT under the biological interpretation has a limited application in the social sciences, (...) chiefly because strategy replication often cannot be sensibly interpreted as strategy bearer reproduction in this domain. Second, I show that alternative replication mechanisms imply interpersonal comparability of strategy payoffs. Giving a meaningful interpretation to such comparisons is not an easy task for many social situations, and thus limits the applicability of EGT in this domain. Third, I argue that giving a new interpretation both to strategy replication and selection solves the issue of interpersonal comparability, but at the costs of making the new interpretation incompatible with natural selection interpretations of EGT. To the extent that social scientists seek such a natural selection interpretation, they face a dilemma: either face the challenge that interpersonal comparisons pose, or give up on the natural selection interpretation. By identifying these tensions, my analysis pleas for greater awareness of the specific purposes of EGT modelling in the social sciences, and for greater sensitivity to the underlying microstructure on which the evolutionary dynamics and other EGT solution concepts supervene. (shrink)

By introducing the theory of social co-governance into the field of e-commerce intellectual property protection, this paper builds an evolutionary game model among the government, e-commerce platforms, and rights holders, and studies the conditions under the stakeholders form a stable equilibrium state under different constraints. Combined with numerical simulation, the influence of individual factors and factor combinations on the system stability is analyzed. Results shows that: Strictly controlling the action costs and response costs of all parties can enhance their (...) willingness to actively deal with infringement issues; reasonable adjustment of the reward and punishment measures of government supervisory agencies can produce sufficient reverse shock and positive guidance to platform and operators; penalties should be imposed on government supervisory agencies that are not sufficiently supervised; strengthen the construction of the social environment for intellectual property protection, improve the social benefits of actively responding to infringement issues, and increase the sense of acquisition by the government, platforms and rights holders. And it provides certain positive references and suggestions for the government to formulate relevant policies. (shrink)

False information is always produced after the outbreak of major emergencies. Taking this into consideration, this paper discusses the behavior of multiple parties in relation to false information dissemination after major emergencies. First, a game model is constructed, using relevant knowledge of evolutionary game theory, between three parties: regulatory institutions, opinion leaders, and ordinary Internet users. Second, the model equations are solved, and the evolutionary stability strategies of each game party under different circumstances are analyzed. Third, a numerical (...) simulation is applied to the evolutionary trends under different strategy combinations with varying parameters. The results show that the probability of each game party making ideal decisions is positively correlated with the degree of punishment imposed by regulatory institutions on opinion leaders who release false information, the reward provided by regulatory institutions on opinion leaders who release positive information, the degree of participation and satisfaction gained by Internet users in adopting positive information, the richness of authentic content released by opinion leaders, and the psychological identification of Internet users with opinion leaders. Meanwhile, the probability of each game party making ideal decisions is negatively correlated with investigation and evidence collection costs borne by opinion leaders who release positive information, the additional income for opinion leaders who have false information adopted by Internet users, the costs of Internet users’ time and energy when they adopt information released by opinion leaders, and the costs of independently judging the accuracy of information by Internet users. (shrink)

Over the last 25 years, evolutionary game theory has grown with theoretical contributions from the disciplines of mathematics, economics, computer science and biology. It is now ripe for applications. In this book, Daniel Friedman---an economist trained in mathematics---and Barry Sinervo---a biologist trained in mathematics---offer the first unified account of evolutionary game theory aimed at applied researchers. They show how to use a single set of tools to build useful models for three different worlds: the natural world studied by (...) biologists; the social world studied by anthropologists, economists, political scientists and others; and the virtual world built by computer scientists and engineers. The first six chapters offer an accessible introduction to core concepts of evolutionary game theory. These include fitness, replicator dynamics, sexual dynamics, memes and genes, single and multiple population games, Nash equilibrium and evolutionarily stable states, noisy best response and other adaptive processes, the Price equation, and cellular automata. The material connects evolutionary game theory with classic population genetic models, and also with classical game theory. Notably, these chapters also show how to estimate payoff and choice parameters from the data. The last eight chapters present exemplary game theory applications. These include a new coevolutionary predator-prey learning model extending rock-paper-scissors; models that use human subject laboratory data to estimate learning dynamics; new approaches to plastic strategies and life cycle strategies, including estimates for male elephant seals; a comparison of machine learning techniques for preserving diversity to those seen in the natural world; analyses of congestion in traffic networks and the. (shrink)

This study presents an evolutionary game to model interactions among stakeholders with potential conflicts, including the operational enterprise of incineration plant, the local government, and the residents nearby. System dynamics is used to simulate the change of strategic actions corresponding to the three players, in order to seek for the evolutionary stability strategies. A numerical case is proposed to demonstrate the game theory application, in which the impacts of governmental incentive and punishment on the player’s actions are investigated. (...) The results indicated that administrative penalty is effective not only in motivating the enterprises to upgrade treatment facilities for ensuring environmental quality but also in helping the local government and residents to approach dominant strategies. Policy implications are given based on the results to lay out a foundation for the alleviation of the conflicts. (shrink)

To reveal the mechanisms of firms’ technological strategic choices between innovation and imitation, an evolutionary game model is proposed from the perspective of the behavioral biases. First, behavioral biases such as reference point dependence, loss aversion, and probability weighting can be defined and modeled based on the prospect theory. Second, according to the firm theory, a Cournot or Stackelberg game modeled with a technology spillover effect and intellectual property protection is applied to portray the interaction between firms. Third, an (...) improved evolutionary game model is provided by incorporating behavioral biases into the framework of the decision-making process. Finally, the simulation analysis of some important factors, such as intellectual property protection, patent fees, innovation risks, decision-making attitudes, and consumers’ price preference on firms’ technological strategic choices, is presented. The corresponding results show that innovation risk is an important factor affecting the technological strategic choices of firms, increasing the intellectual property protection and the patent fee for technology transfer can effectively control the spillover effect of technology, there is a partial U-shaped relationship between the consumers’ price preference and innovation, and the behavioral biases such as reference point dependence, loss aversion, and probability weighting will change the perception of payoff and risk and will eventually induce firms to adopt the innovation strategy. (shrink)

Construction is one of the most dangerous industries because of its open working environment and risky construction conditions. In the process of construction, risk events cause great losses for owners and workers. Most of the risk events are closely related to unsafe behaviors of workers. Therefore, it is of great significance for contractors to establish management measures, e.g., incentive and punishment mechanism, to induce workers to reduce unsafe behaviors. This paper aims to take the incentive and punishment mechanism into consideration (...) and develop an evolutionary game model to improve the effectiveness of safety management. The evolutionary stability strategies which can help reduce unsafe behaviors are obtained and analyzed. Results show that there are 12 equilibrium strategies under the condition of different parameters. Specifically, the incentive and punishment mechanism has played an important role for the evolution direction. A balanced incentive and punishment mechanism for the investment and positive stimulus for workers can effectively promote both sides to take positive behaviors, and then realize good evolutionary stable situations. In addition, the initial perceptions of both sides have a decisive impact on the evolution direction. Strengthening communication with the mutual trust between both sides can improve safety performance of both sides. This study is valuable for contractors to design appropriate incentive and punishment measures and establish relevant strategies to promote safe behaviors of construction workers. (shrink)

Should evolution replace rational choice as the guiding paradigm for game theory? Evolutionary game theory provides an intriguing perspective from which to critique the hyper-rational assumptions of classical economic game theory. In contrast to economic game theory, evolutionary game theory is better suited to descriptive rather than normative domains. It is argued that a pluralism of paradigms holds the best promise for theoretical innovation in game theory.

It is sometimes claimed that evolutionary game theory provides a basis fordoing without rationality. The author defends the thesis that on any plausibleconstrual of the assumptions underlying evolutionary game theory, it cannotprovide a plausible basis for deviations from rationality. But on any plausibleconstrual of rationality, evolutionary game theory cannot provide an alternativethat coincides with the outcomes dictated by considerations of rationality,either. Key Words: evolutionary game theory • game theory • rationality • Skyrms.

In numerous studies, experimental economists have documented the fact that people tend to propose that divisible goods be divided equally. It has often been proposed, most notably by the sociobiologists, that this tendency may have a biological basis, and might be the product of evolution and natural selection. ;My dissertation addresses methodological and philosophical problems that arise in the course of establishing this naturalistic claim. Specifically, the focus of this dissertation is on the project of using evolutionary game theory (...) to model the emergence of behavioral norms in a population. ;Chapter 1 briefly surveys the experimental economics literature that supports the existence of such behavioral propensities, and gives an overview of the dissertation. Chapter 2 introduces the fundamental concepts of game theory and evolutionary game theory. Chapter 3 argues that certain robustness failures may be overcome if group selection mechanisms are incorporated into the evolutionary models. Chapter 5 defends Peter Railton's causal theory of explanation, and argues that it best accommodates the dynamical models of evolutionary game theory. Chapter 6 addresses the question of whether a descriptive account of the origins of our moral intuitions is relevant to the normative project of identifying our moral obligations, and critiques arguments by Peter Singer and Peter Unger that our moral intuitions lack justification. (shrink)

Low-carbon technological innovation is the main means to develop a low-carbon economy, and network knowledge sharing and collaborative innovation is an effective model for the development of low-carbon technologies. First of all, this article adopts a decision-making experiment and evaluation laboratory method and interpretation structure model, combines the two methods, extracts the advantages of the two, and discards the shortcomings of the two, thus constructing a new optimized and upgraded interpretation structure model. We give methods to explore the main influencing (...) factors of collaborative innovation of low-carbon technologies for online knowledge sharing. Based on the industrial network knowledge sharing and cooperation network environment, the network evolution game model of network knowledge sharing knowledge collaboration is constructed to study the rewards and punishments, the profit distribution rate, the knowledge potential difference, and the parameter pairing of the network knowledge sharing cooperation network structure in the process of network knowledge sharing and collaborative knowledge innovation. The influence of the network knowledge sharing cooperation strategy is obtained through simulation to change the size of the relevant parameters so that the network knowledge sharing cooperation agent chooses the network evolution game of the sharing strategy to realize the optimal evolutionary stable strategy. According to the simulation results, this article proposes suggestions from the following aspects, aiming to improve the overall knowledge synergy effect of the network knowledge sharing and cooperation network. (shrink)

China’s E-commerce market is very active. Despite the impact of COVID-19, the market has ushered in major development opportunities. Alongside, the level of intellectual property protection in China is constantly improving. However, there are relatively few studies on intellectual property protection in the field of E-commerce. This study introduces the theory of social cogovernance and explores the construction of China’s E-commerce intellectual property protection system with the participation of collective organizations. Evolutionary game method is applied to model construction. Through (...) numerical simulation, the study analyzes the evolution of E-commerce platform and collective organization strategic choice. The results depict that improving the open space provided by E-commerce platforms for collective organizations and strengthening their public service capabilities can promote the construction of social cogovernance systems. The establishment of reasonable reward and punishment mechanisms can increase cooperation enthusiasm. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implications for governments, E-commerce platforms, and collective organizations, to improve the level of intellectual property protection in E-commerce. This study can provide suggestions for China’s E-commerce intellectual property protection, improve the overall level of intellectual property protection in China, and provide a reference for global E-commerce intellectual property protection. (shrink)

Public information is a social resource that connects all aspects of social life, regulates social activities and public behaviors, and plays a very important role in influencing public trust. Based on the perspective of communication, we divide the government into two ways to release public information, that is, mass communication and personalized recommendation. Moreover, the public can choose to acquire or not acquire a strategy. Then, this study conducts an evolutionary game between the government and the public to analyze (...) the influence of public information on the public in China. Our objective is to find how the evolutionary path changes between the two players when strategies are changing. Then, a simulation analysis is presented in six scenarios to illustrate the results. The results show that the two players can converge to different stable statuses under different situations. (shrink)

As a common social network, the SNEM plays an important role in emergency management. Magnitude emergencies are characterized by high complexity and uncertainty, and it is impossible to rely on the government for emergency management alone. We should absorb multiple subjects to build the SNEM and carry out extensive emergency mobilization in the whole society. The SNEM can integrate resources, gather consensus, promote participation, and reduce risks. The analysis of the types, generation mechanism, subject behavior, and strategy selection of the (...) SNEM aid in adopting appropriate mobilization strategy based on magnitude emergencies, achieving the adaptation of the SNEM and emergency scenarios. By constructing the evolutionary game model of the SNEM for magnitude emergencies, taking China as an empirical sample, this paper explores the behavior evolution law and stable strategy of the government, social organizations, and the public. The results showed that the symbiotic SNEM with a positive response of social organizations and the public under the path of high-intensity mobilization by the government is the best strategy combination, and it is conducive to maximizing the emergency joint force. (shrink)

In this paper we revise Reinforcement Learning and adaptiveness in Multi-Agent Systems from an Evolutionary Game Theoretic perspective. More precisely we show there is a triangular relation between the fields of Multi-Agent Systems, Reinforcement Learning and Evolutionary Game Theory. We illustrate how these new insights can contribute to a better understanding of learning in MAS and to new improved learning algorithms. All three fields are introduced in a self-contained manner. Each relation is discussed in detail with the necessary (...) background information to understand it, along with major references to relevant work. (shrink)

When game theory was introduced to biology, the components of classic game theory models were replaced with elements more befitting evolutionary phenomena. The actions of intelligent agents are replaced by phenotypic traits; utility is replaced by fitness; rational deliberation is replaced by natural selection. In this paper, I argue that this classic conception of comprehensive reapplication is misleading, for it overemphasizes the discontinuity between human behavior and evolved traits. Explicitly considering the representational roles of evolutionary game theory brings (...) to attention neglected areas of overlap, as well as a range of evolutionary possibilities that are often overlooked. The clarifications this analysis provides are well-illustrated by—and particularly valuable for—game theoretic treatments of the evolution of social behavior. (shrink)

The implications of game theory models of the evolution of strategies of exchange are explored with respect to the evolution of moral dispositions. I argue that dispositions to practice tit for tat strategies could have evolved, but the moral behaviours to which they give rise do not fare well on criteria of morality. Inasmuch as the strategy implicit in the Golden Rule is unconditional, it could not have evolved in environments containing strategies that exploit it. However, dispositions to invoke conditional (...) principles such as those that prescribe that people cooperate with those they observe cooperating and shun those they observe behaving selfishly, could have been selected in some conditions and may have given rise to the evolution of indirect reciprocity. The key to the evolution of morality is discrimination in favour of cooperators and against cheaters and selfish individualists. The limitations of game theory in the explanation of human morality are acknowledged. (shrink)

Evolutionary theory provides a firm foundation for the unification of the behavioral sciences, and the beliefs, preferences, and constraints (BPC) model is a useful analytical tool for understanding human behavior. However, evolutionary theory suggests that if other-regarding preferences expressed by humans have evolved under selection, they are ultimately, if not purely, in the constrained, relative self-interests of individuals who express them. (Published Online April 27 2007).

This paper concerns two composite Lewis-Skyrms signaling games. Each consists in a base game that evolves a language descriptive of nature and a metagame that coevolves a language descriptive of the base game and its evolving language. The first composite game shows how a pragmatic notion of truth might coevolve with a simple descriptive language. The second shows how a pragmatic notion of probability might similarly coevolve. Each of these pragmatic notions is characterized by the particular game and role (...) that it comes to play in the game. (shrink)

Classical and evolutionary game theory attempt to explain different phenomena. Classical game theory describes socially and temporally isolated encounters while evolutionary game theory describes macro-social behavioural regularities. The actors in classical game theory are payoff maximizers whose identity remains fixed during the course of play. By contrast, in evolutionary game theory, the players are constantly changing, and the central actor is a replicator -- an entity having some means of making approximately accurate copies of itself. However successful (...) in its own realm, evolutionary game theory is ill-constructed to model the phenomena addressed by classical game theory. We must look to as yet undeveloped principles to achieve classical game theory's unfulfilled promise. I indicate a possibly fruitful step in this direction. (shrink)

Recent years have seen increased interest in the question of whether it is possible to provide an evolutionary game-theoretic explanation for certain kinds of social norms. I sketch a proof of a general representation theorem for a large class of evolutionary game-theoretic models played on a social network, in hope that this will contribute to a greater understanding of the long-term evolutionary dynamics of such models, and hence the evolution of social norms.

As a form of the informal economy, countries around the world have different policies towards street vendors. This paper constructs a law enforcement game model composed of the Chengguan, street vendors, and urban residents in China. Based on the evolutionary game theory, we achieved the evolutionary stable equilibrium points under complying with different constraint conditions by solving the replicator dynamic equations of parties in the dynamic system. Through the gradual stability analysis of the equilibrium point, the stable strategy (...) of the evolutionary game can be calculated. It is found that the flexible law enforcement behavior of urban management departments plays an important leading role in urban street governance. Flexible law enforcement not only requires macro policy arrangements but also tests the executive wisdom of street bureaucrats. (shrink)

Evolutionary game theory has recently furnished some exciting theoretical and experimental insights regarding the birth of social power and discrimination. But can this type of theory illuminate the history and nature of capitalism? The answer turns out to be negative: evolutionary models are bound to remain either insufficiently evolutionary or hopelessly indeterminate. However, social theorists have much to gain from understanding what would breathe social life into evolutionary game theory's models: a proper historical account of the (...) sources of behavioral variety, and an adaptive mechanism that leaves room for the cunning of human reason. (shrink)

This paper considers whether the available evidence from archeology, biological anthropology, primatology, and comparative gene-sequencing, can test evolutionary game theory models of cooperation as historical hypotheses about the actual course of human prehistory. The examination proceeds on the assumption that cooperation is the product of cultural selection and is not a genetically encoded trait. Nevertheless, we conclude that gene sequence data may yet shed signi cant light on the evolution of cooperation.

The early Schlick developed an evolutionary biological account of play. He contrasted play with work. Where work encompasses all activity that is undertaken for the sake of some practical outcome, play renders what was previously a mere means into an end enjoyable in itself. Schlick thus distinguished between aesthetic, religious, scientific, and ethical game types. This paper shows that this typology underlies his later attempts to naturalize these fields, and allows us to clarify the relation between object-games and (...) their description within the scientific game. Schlick's demarcation between aesthetic and scientific games arguably prefigures the Vienna Circle's anti-metaphysical stance. (shrink)

Mixed-strategy equilibria are typically rather unstable in evolutionary game theory. “Monocyclic” games, such as Rock–Paper–Scissors, have only mixed equilibria, some of which are “stable” in the sense that sequential best replies lead to them; yet, even these games are prone to stable cycles under discrete-time simultaneous best replies, giving an unusual equilibrium-selection problem. This article analyzes such games in a random-utility setting where changing strategies is costly, and the speed of the dynamic is, thus, endogenous. The (...) stochastically stable outcome is determined by the cost of switching strategies; when switching costs are high, mixed equilibria are selected, whereas when switching costs are low, cycles are selected. (shrink)

Evolutionary game theory and public goods games offer an important framework to understand cooperation during pandemics. From this perspective, the COVID-19 situation can be conceptualized as a dilemma where people who neglect safety precautions act as free riders, because they get to enjoy the benefits of decreased health risk from others’ compliance with policies despite not contributing to or even undermining public safety themselves. At the same time, humans appear to carry a suite of evolved psychological mechanisms aimed (...) at curbing free riding in order to ensure the continued provision of public goods, which can be leveraged to develop more effective measures to promote compliance with regulations. We also highlight factors beyond free riding that reduce compliance rates, such as the emergence of conspiratorial thinking, which seriously undermine the effectiveness of measures to suppress free riding. Together, the current paper outlines the social dynamics that occur in public goods dilemmas involving the spread of infectious disease, highlights the utility and limits of evolutionary game-theoretic approaches for COVID-19 management, and suggests novel directions based on emerging challenges to cooperation. (shrink)

While prior models of the evolution of altruism have assumed that organisms reproduce asexually, this paper presents a model of the evolution of altruism for sexually reproducing organisms using Hardy–Weinberg dynamics. In this model, the presence of reciprocal altruists allows the population to evolve to a stable polymorphic population where the majority of organisms are altruistic. Further, adding stochasticity leads to even larger numbers of altruists, while adding stochasticity to an analogous asexual model leads to more selfish organisms. The contrast (...) between these outcomes demonstrates why it may be important to pay attention to the underlying genetics of a population. (shrink)

A variety of robustness objections have been made against evolutionary game theory. One of these objections alleges that the games used in the underlying model are too arbitrary and oversimplified to generate a robust model of interesting prosocial behaviors. In this paper, I argue that the robustness objection can be met. However, in order to do so, we must attend to important conceptual issues regarding the nature of fairness, justice, and other moral concepts. Specifically, we must better understand (...) the relationship between moral concepts and formal characterizations of games. (shrink)

The ‘phenotypic gambit,’ the assumption that we can ignore genetics and look at the fitness of phenotypes to determine the expected evolutionary dynamics of a population, is often used in evolutionary game theory. However, as this paper will show, an overlooked genotype to phenotype map can qualitatively affect evolution in ways the phenotypic approach cannot predict or explain. This gives us reason to believe that, even in the long-term, correspondences between phenotypic predictions and dynamical outcomes are not robust (...) for all plausible assumptions regarding the underlying genetics of traits. This paper shows important ways in which the phenotypic gambit can fail and how to proceed with evolutionary game theoretic modeling when it does. (shrink)

Let us define prejudice as a propensity to treat members of a particular outgroup as having less moral worth than members of one's own group. Racism and sexism are kinds of prejudice, but so, too, is homophobia, as well as some fervent nationalisms.1 Prejudice is viewed as a problem for evolutionary ethics: prejudice clearly exists in our world, yet we also deem prejudice immoral.2 How can an evolutionary account explain the fit of a trait x at the same (...) time as explaining the fit of a trait that tries to expunge x? If moral traits are those with fit , why would we not say prejudice is moral, as opposed to immoral? If both prejudice and moral indignation against prejudice can be explained on evolutionary models, what use are evolutionary models? This problem is a specific application of the general descriptive-normative problem. As even one of the evolutionary game theory pioneers, Maynard Smith, observes, "A scientific theory—Darwinism or any other—has nothing to say about the value of a human being."3 Assuming Smith is not doubting that humans have value, I believe that he is wrong here. The value of human beings is not something that we discover. Rather, we find that ascribing value to human beings confers advantage to the ascribers, and that advantage can be tracked through evolutionary models. (shrink)