Evolution, Co-operation and Rationality

• The Project
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  • Conferences
  • Workshops
• Members & Associates
• Publications

This project is supported by the AHRC

Workshops

"Social Norms in Social Sciences"

Monday February 14th 2011  10am-6.30pm

• 10.00     H. Peyton Young (Economics, Oxford)  "The Dynamics of Social Innovation"
• 11.00     Giacomo Sillari (Philosophy, Pisa)  "Rule-following and Coordination"
• 12.15     Rick O'Gorman (Psychology, Essex)  "Social norms: The psychology viewpoint"
• 1.15       Lunch
• 2.30       Francesco Guala (Economics & Philosophy, Milan)
  "The Effect of Group Identity on Individual Behaviour: Collective Agents vs Collective Norms"
• 3.30      Jonathan Grose & Cedric Paternotte (Philosophy, Bristol)
  "Social Norms and Game Theory: Harmony or Discord?"
• 4.45      Jean-Paul Carvalho (Economics, Oxford)  "Veiling"
• 5.45      Chiara Lisciandra  (Philosophy of Science, Tilburg)  "On the Emergence of Descriptive Norms"

Recent years have seen a renewed interest in social norms.  How  can we define them and explain why people follow them, whether  they be norms of etiquette, cooperation or fairness?  These questions have been raised in numerous fields, from philosophy  and social psychology to economics and game theory, which have led to various accounts.  This interdisciplinary workshop aims to gather, compare and possibly integrate these different perspectives, by considering empirical evidence as well as theoretical accounts.

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Wednesday November 18th 2009

• 3.00 - 4.30 Herbert Gintis (Economics; University of Siena, Santa Fe Institute, Central European University)
  "Five Principles for the Integration of the Behavioral Sciences"  (PDF, 196 kB)

• 4.45 - 6.15 Hilary Greaves (Philosophy, Oxford)    "Epistemic Decision Theory"

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Friday February 13th 2009

• 10am    Jonathan Grose   (Philosophy. Bristol):               "Machiavellian Feelings"
  Abstract:  My claim is that our capacity to feel emotions has been selected, in part, because it helps us to deceive others.  Consciously feeling an emotional episode has utility because it allows the emoter to improve their control of expression and this has been one of the selective pressures in favour of conscious feelings via body-maps in somatosensory regions.  In making an argument for this claim I draw on empirical results on the neurobiology of emotions from Antonio Damasio.  These results lead me to expand recent suggestions on Machiavellian emotions by Paul Griffiths, to include the feeling part of an emotional episode.  Finally, I make some more general comments about the Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis.
• 11am    Ken Binmore        (Economics. UCL, Bristol):     "Natural Justice"
  Abstract: John Mackie's Inventing Right and Wrong argues that a naturalistic theory of human morality needs to be based on anthropological studies viewed from the perspective of game theory. This talk summarizes how my book Natural Justice attempts to put his advice into practice.
• Noon    James Marshall    (Computer Science, Bristol): "Kin Selection and Reciprocal Cooperation"

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Saturday November 24th 2007.

Pre-project workshop