SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF SELFISH GENE THEORY

Evolutionary game theorists identify a single organizing principle, the “differential survival of replicating entities,” and apply it to all members of the animal king­dom. Human society is no different from a hive of bees with respect to meeting the requirement of maximizing fitness on an individual level.

and patterns of stable regularity, or norms, emerge on this basis. Groups of individuals cannot act in concert because all individuals have the perpetual incentive to defect, and individual selection reinforces narrow self-interested maximization.^[637] In evolutionary game theory, the currency of utility is fitness. This is not determined by subjective whim, but must reflect objective survival conditions structured by scarce resources and adaptive advantage in procur­ing them. Strategies of action are crucial. Whereas in classical game theory, the payoffs may be considered to be subjective values freely adopted by agents, in evolutionary game theory, the values structuring games express the material conditions necessary for reproduction. Preferences, or the payoffs of the games, are determined systemically in accordance with externally imposed success criteria. A far-reaching debate considers whether it is in fact the case that biological actors must evolve to be narrowly self-interested in accordance with objectively defined survival criteria.^[638] However, it is clear that the axioms of rational choice theory, which require actors to act as if they had preferences over outcomes, are purported to pertain to life because biological reality is such that surviving requires acting as though one is maximizing fitness in accordance with objective, externally imposed standards. Behavioral norms, or typical behavior, arise and are sustained specifically because the actors exhibiting this behavior depend on it for their survival.

Contrary to evolutionary game theorists, most economists insist that the reward structure of games, reflecting expected utility, is the subjective prefer­ence of individuals.⁶⁶ Economists resist the idea that there are objective values that individuals must maximize as a condition of their survival and reproduction.⁶⁷ Even though Karl Marx may have been intrigued by and con­gratulatory of Dawkins’s insights, a tension of worldviews exists between economic science and evolutionary game theory. Marx would agree that people confront a reward structure externally imposed on them that directly correlates to their likelihood of surviving and propagating. He would agree that differ­ential access to the material conditions of life leads to differential success directly measurable in procreative success. Yet since the late nineteenth century, economic science has shied away from any language of objective needs, insisting that value only exists in the eyes of the beholder.⁶⁸ The game theoretic reliance on interpersonally transferable utility represents a middle ground that acknowl­edges a pre-social, ontologically significant source of value that denies inter­personal comparability of experiential satisfaction.

The final point of this chapter is to elucidate the implications of Dawkins’s selfish gene argument for understanding social norms. The evolutionary stable strategy, or ESS, refers not only to the game theoretic equilibrium of John Nash’s mutual-best-reply. It has the additional connotation that each enacted strategy exists in equilibrium with all the other enacted strategies such that no small perturbation would destabilize it. The continuity between classical game theory and evolutionary game theory lies in the specification that norms and

⁶⁴ Pettit, “Three Aspects of Rational Explanation,” 2002, 183.

⁶⁵ Recall Dawkins’s assignment of numeric payoffs and discussion about the difficulty of identify­ing actual rewards. See also Hargreaves Heap and Varoufakis’s introduction of the ESS, Game Theory, 2004, 214-220. Evolutionary game theorists observe that the specific numbers of pay­offs, although mathematically necessary to solve games, are not required to gain insights into the evolution of animal populations.

⁶⁶ Herbert Gintis proposes a “biological basis for expected utility” linked to survival; see his Bounds of Reason, 2009, 16.

⁶⁷ Partha Dasgupta is an exception here; see his Inquiry into Well Being and Destitution (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1993), 324-333.

⁶⁸ Lionel Robbins, Nature and Significance of Economic Science (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, [1932^2007) provides one of the most authoritative statements of this now main­stream position. Amartya Sen’s approach to social choice and poverty dutifully reflects this well- accepted sentiment. Dasgupta, in contrast, works to reintroduce objective needs in terms of caloric intake, Inquiry into Well Being and Destitution, 1993, 324-333. customs are Nash equilibria. In Herbert Gintis’s words, “at least since [Thomas] Schelling[^,s Strategy of Conflict, i960] and [David] Lewis['s Convention, 1969], game theorists have interpreted social norms as Nash equilibria.”^[639] In game theoretic terms, norms are patterns of interconnected action that exist in equilibrium; no one would have any reason to change his or her action.^[640] Mutual cooperation in a Prisoner’s Dilemma or Chicken game is not self­sustaining by this analysis, then, because individuals are motivated to cheat or defect.^[641]

Game theorists accept that strategic rationality stipulated by noncooperative game theory provides means to model and explain programmed behavior, norms or regularities of conduct reflecting survival imperatives, and deliberate choice.^[642] Rational choice theory makes it possible to move seamlessly between these domains, as well as to the level of public policy and institutional design.

Therefore, regular patterns of behavior, social customs, and all laws are viewed as the product of games played by selfish genes or selfish individuals. No other explanation can gain purchase unless it can be distilled down to expected individualistic strategic utility maximization of factual finite fungi­ble resources.^[644] This places the social science dictated by the fundamental assumptions of game theory on a collision course with other paradigms, including Jurgen Habermas’s deliberative democracy and discursive ethics, as well as all non-instrumental views of normativity.^[645] Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene, with its preeminent acknowledgment of the evolutionary versions of Nash’s game theoretic equilibrium, makes clear the far-reaching range of non­cooperative game theory to interpret all behavioral interactions in its terms.