The Evolution of Social Contracts
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3079398 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael Vlerick (0000-0002-0664-1509) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 181-203 |
| Publication date | 2019-08-27 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Social Ontology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2196-9663 • E-ISSN: 2196-9655 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/jso-2019-0041 |
| OpenAlex | W3008853912 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 66 |
Influential thinkers such as Young, Sugden, Binmore, and Skyrms have developed game-theoretic accounts of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. Social contracts are sets of commonly understood rules that govern cooperative social interaction within societies. These naturalistic accounts provide us with valuable and important insights into the foundations of human societies. However, current naturalistic theories focus mainly on how social contracts solve coordination problems in which the interests of the individual participants are (relatively) aligned, not competition problems in which individual interests compete with group interests (and in which there are no group beneficial Nash equilibrium available). In response, I set out to build on those theories and provide a (more) comprehensive naturalistic account of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. My central claim is that social contracts have culturally evolved to solve cooperation problems, which include both coordination and competition problems. I argue that solutions to coordination problems (which I spell out) emerge from "within-group" dynamics, while solutions to competition problems (which I also spell out) result largely from "between-group" dynamics
Competition (biology · Coordination game · Economics · Epistemology · Microeconomics · Nash equilibrium · Naturalism · Positive economics · Set (abstract data type · Social dynamics · Social science · Sociology · Spell · Computer Science · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies · Game Theory and Applications · Ecology
Evolution of the Social Contract
The Grammar of Society
Natural Justice
Biological signals as handicaps
Subjectivity and correlation in randomized strategies
Mate selection—A selection for a handicap
The cost of honesty
The Logic of Animal Conflict
Sustaining cooperation in laboratory public goods experiments
Social semantics
The genetical evolution of social behaviour. II
Third-party punishment and social norms
The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I
The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism
Governing the Commons
The Economics of Rights, Co-operation and Welfare
Rules, Games, and Common-Pool Resources
Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange
A Cooperative Species
The evolution of costly displays, cooperation and religion
Turtle hunting and tombstone opening
The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure
Cultural group selection, coevolutionary processes and large-scale cooperation
Not By Genes Alone
Signals
Individual Strategy and Social Structure
The cultural evolution of institutional religions
You better play 7
Sacrifice and Stigma
Cooperation, Culture, and Conflict
Egalitarian Behavior and Reverse Dominance Hierarchy [and Comments and Reply]
Why aren't we all hutterites
Complex societies
Self-Interest and the Design of Rules
Signalling theory and the evolution of religious cooperation
Anomalies
The Evolution of Social Contracts
| Citations per year | 0.71 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2019 - 2024 (6) |
| Highly cited | No |