Extract
A theory of docile society: the role of altruism in human behavior.
ABSTRACT
Herbert A. Simon is widely known for his studies on rationality, artificial intelligence and for his pioneering approach to organizational studies. In one of his latest works, he presented a theory of human interaction, focused on the conflict between the selfish and the altruistic that can be seen as the essence of human relationships. The model is quite ambiguous: (1) it follows a kind of social Darwinism that (2) postulates selfish individuals' extinction. Taking up Simon's hypotheses on altruism, docility, and selfish behavior, we develop an alternative model of human interaction. The main objective of the paper is to show that rejecting neo-Darwinism and assuming slight complications in the model can explain more in terms of social system interactions. We assume that docility and then altruism, in a technical sense, is the basis of social interaction as it shapes the whole system. It is worth noting that, in our model, selfish individuals do not disappear. Keywords: docility, altruism, social system, bounded rationality, social interactions, social Darwinism 1. INTRODUCTION This paper analyzes a model of social systems that is developed on the basis of one of Herbert A. Simon's later ideas (1990, 1993). (1) The model here outlined tries to explain the interactions between selfish and altruist individuals. The word "selfish" here refers to the paradigmatic homo economicus of neo-classical studies, based on the work of utilitarian theorists such as Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Selfish behavior is clearly defined by the fundamental works of the fathers of the economic discipline, starting with Edgeworth (1881), and continuing with Friedman's (1953; Friedman and Savage, 1948) and Becker's (1974, 1976) contributions, just to mention a few of the most important Authors. The point is that the selfish individual behaves in a fully self-interested and rational way, has an ordered set of preferences, and does not care about the other members of the economic system. The social, psychological, cultural, moral, and political spheres do not overlap with the economic one, and are completely separated or separable. This division does not mean that the mentioned spheres do not exist, but that they are economically irrelevant: they do not interfere with economic decision-making This approach has never left the economic basis for explaining human behavior, and strong traces still remain in recent microeconomic work (see, for example, MasColell, Whinston and Green, 1995). In this paper, we present an alternative model of economic and social interactions, where the individual docile/altruist behavior fits the social environment. The model is based on Simon's original (1993), however, our new model develops further Simon's one, so that we obtain different data that express a novel algorithm and values. This new framework describes social dynamics, we believe, in a clearer and more realistic way. 1.1 The Problem of Altruism While defining selfish behavior is quite easy, it seems to be much more difficult to do the same for the "altruist." The altruistic individual behav...See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
