Herbert A. Simon - Reason in Human Affairs PDF

Reason in Human Affairs
The Harry Camp Lectures at

Stanford University, 1982
The Harry Camp Memorial Fund

was established in 1959 to make
possible a continuing series of
lecrures at Stanford University on
topics bearing on the dignity and
worth of the human individual.
HERBERT A. SIMON
•
Reason in Human . . . . . . . airs
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1983
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA
Stanford Universirv• Press To the Memory of
Stanford, California
© r983 by the Board of Trustees of the JAS C HA MA R SCHAK
. Le~and Stanford Junior Universitv
Pnnted m the Unired States of Americ~ who had an unshakeable faith in
I SBN o-80+7-11?9 -8 human reason, and an unmatched
LC 82-62448 store of human warmth
Preface
T H E NATURE of human reason-its mechanisms, its

effects, and its consequences for the human condition-
has been my central preoccupation for nearly fifty years.
When the invitation came to deliver the Harry Camp Lec-
rures at Stanford University, I \vondered if I had anything
left to say on the subject . And if there were some such
topic,.had it not already been tho roughly investigated by
such friends on the Stanford campus as Kenneth Arrow,
'
James March, and Amos Tversky-to mention just a fe\v
who work in one part or another of this domain? Putting
aside this concern, real though it is, I decided to use
the occasion of the lectures to explore some byways that
seemed to me interesting 'a nd important, but that had until
now been off the main paths of my own explorations.
Three topics, especially, were the objects of my inquiry:
the relation of reason to intuition and emotion, the anal-
ogy between rational adaptation and evolution, and the
implications of bounded rationality for the operation of
social and political institutions. In the chapters that follow,
I report on these topics \Vithin the framework provided by
the general viewpoint of bounded rationality.
I am indebted to Stanford University for the occasion
••
Vll
PREFACE
and opportunity to prepare these pages, and for the hospi- Contents
tality and stimulation I always enjoy on my visits to the
Stanford campus. I am grateful, too, to Donald T. Camp-
bell~ Richard C. Lewontin, and Edv.rard 0. Wilson, who
provided valuable criticisms of a draft of Chapter 2,
though it is not to be assumed that they would agree with
everything in the final version of that chapter. To them,
and to many friends who have helped guide my education
on evolutionary theory and on other topics addressed in
3
these pages~ I offer my warm thanks. I. Alternative Visions of Rationality
H.A.S. 37
2. Rationality. and Teleology
. Rational Processes in Social Affairs 75

3
III
Index
'
.'.
Vlll
Reason in H11man Affairs
I
1. Alternative Visions of
Rationality
Q N E KIND of optimism, or supposed optimism, ar-

gues that ifwe think hard enough, are rational enough, we
• can solve all our problems. The eighte_enth century, the
Age of Reason, was supposed to have been imbued with
this kind of optimisn1. Whether it actually was or not I will
leave to historians; certainly the h?pes v-ve hold out for
reason in our world today are much more modest.
It is my purpose in these pages to explore from a con-
temporary standpoint the uses and limits of reason in hu-
man affairs. In order to avoid the kind of unwarranted
optimism I have just mentioned, my first two chapters will
be addressed n1ore to the limitations of reason than to its
uses. I will try to redress the balance in my third chapter,
but as I develop my topic I think you will see why I have
taken up the limitations first. Only as we understand those
limitations can we devise procedures to use effectively the
powers that human reasoning capabilities do give us.
In the first chapter, I will focus initially _on the very
powerful formal models of rationality that have been con-
structed in this century and that must be counted among
;
the jewels of intellectual accomplishment in our time.
Since these models are ·well known, I will describe them
3
VIS IONS OF RATIONALITY
VISIONS OF RATIONALITY
things that I have said at length in my previous books, and
onl~ ~riefiy, ~ev~ting most of my discussion to showing especially in Administrative Behavior and The Scienc~s ofthe
Wh), In apphcatlon to real human affairs thev deliver Artificial, both of which are deeply concerned \vtth the
some~hat less .than they appear to promise. ~y intent
But concept of human rationality. In the former, I examined
here IS not mainly cr~ti~al. The .last half of the chapter will the implications of the limits of human rationality for or-
de:elop. a more realistiC descnption of human bounded ganizational behavior. In the latter, I described prope~es
ratton~ty, and will consider to what extent the limited that are common to all adaptive ("artificial") systems, g1V-
cap.ablhty for analysis that is provided by bounded ratio- ing us a basis for constructing a general theory of such
nahty can meet the needs for reason in human affairs. systems. In the present volume I have drawn on this pre-
In the second chapter' I will discuss the thesis no~'a- vious work to the extent necessary to provide a framework
days often as~oci~ted with the discipline of sociobiology, for my discussion. But within this framework I have con-
that the deficiencies of reason will be corrected, for better centrated on topics that remain problematic or controver-
or for wor~e, by the sterner rationality of natural selection. sial and that are of critical importance for understanding
~wo quesnons will be of particular concern in that discus- the role of rationality in human affairs. I have already in-
Sl.on :. first, ~rhether and to what degree altruism can sur- dicated briefly what some of those problematic topics are.
VIVe m a system subjected to the forces ofnatural selection
and.' s~co~d, to what extent selection processes resembl~ THE LIMITS OF REASON
optmuzatlon processes. Modern descendants of Archimedes are still looking for
In the light of the conclusions reached in these two the fulcrum on which thev can rest the lever that is to move
chapters, I will turn in the third to the question of how -
the whole world. In the domain of reasoning, the difficulty
reason ~an be employed effectively in hwnan social affairs. in finding a fulcrum resides in the truism "no conclusions
In SCienc.e one is. supposed to deliver new truths. The without premises." Reasoning processes take symbolic in-
~1ost crushing verdiCt that can be pronounced on a scien- puts and deliver symbolic outputs. The. initial i~puts ~re
tific ~ap:r is the fabled referee's report, scribbled in the axioms, themselves not derived by logtc but slffiply ln-
margtn, ,;"hat's ne\v here is not true, and what's true is duced from empirical observations, ~r even more simply
n~t n~w. ~ut the.se pages are not intended as reports of posited. Moreover, the processes that produce the trans-
sct~ntific. discovenes and will not seek novelty. I will be formations of inputs to outputs (rules of inference) are
sa?sfied If what I have to say is mainly true, even though it also introduced by fiat and are not the products of reason.
wtll not b~ at a~l new. As I shall argue in my discussion of Axioms and inference rules together constitute the ful-
hu~an rattonabty, attention needs to be called periodically crum on which the lever of reasoning rests; but the partic-
to Important old truths. ular structure of that fulcrum cannot be justified by the
At the same time, I do not wish simply to repeat here
5
\
4
VISIONS OF RATIONALITY VISIONS OF RATIONALITY
'
methods of reasoning. For an attempt at such a justifica- are capable of generating normative outputs purely from
tion would involve us in an infinite regress of logics, each descriptive inputs. 1 The corollary to "no conclusions vvith-
as arbitrary in its foundations as the preceding one. out premises" is "no ought's from is's alone." Thus, where~
This ineradicable element of arbitrariness-this Origi- as reason may provide povverful help in finding means to
nal Sin that corrupts the reasoning process, and therefore reach our ends, it has little to say about the ends themselves.
also its products-has two important consequences for There is a final difficulty, first pointed out by Godel, that
our topic here. First, it puts forever beyond reach an unas- rich systems of logic are never complete-there always
sailable principle of induction that would allow us to infer exist true theorems that cannot be reached as outputs by
infallible general laws, without risk of error, from specific applying the legal transformations to the inputs. Since the
facts, even from myriads of them. No number of viewings problem of logical incompleteness is much less important
of white swans can guarantee that a black one will not be in the application of reason to human affairs than the
seen next. Whether even a definite probability statement difficulties that concern us here, I shall not discuss it fur~
can be made about the color of the next swan is a matter ther. Nor will I be concerned with whether the standard
of debate, with the negatives, I think, outnumbering the axioms oflogic and the rules ofinference themselves are to
affirmatives. some extent arbitrary. For the purpose of this discussion, I
Further, the foundations of these inductions-the shall regard them as unexceptionable.
facts-rest on a complex and sometimes unsteady base of Reason, then, goes to work only after it has been sup-
observation, perception, and inference. Facts, especially in plied with a suitable set of inputs, or premises. If reason
science, are usually gathered in with instruments that are is to be applied to discovering and choosing courses of
themselves permeated with theoretical assumptions. No action, then those inputs include, at the least, a set of
microscope \Vithout at least a primitive theory of light and should's, or values to be achieved, and a set of is's, or facts
optics; no human verbal protocols without a theory of about the world in which the action is to be taken. Any
short-term memory. Hence the fallibility of reasoning is attempt to justify these should's and is's by logic will simply
guaranteed both by the impossibility of generating un- lead to a regress to new should's and is's that are similarly
assailable general propositions from particular facts, and postulated.
by the tentative and theory-infected character of the facts
VALUES
themselves.
Second, the principle of "no conclusions without prem- We see that reason is wholly instrumental. It cannot tell
ises" puts forever beyond reach normative statements us where to go; at best it can tell us how to get there. It is a
(statements containing an essential should) \vhose deriva- 1I will not undertake to make the argument here. It was stated well many
tion is independent of inputs that also contain should's. years ago by Ayer, in Language, Truth, and Logic, re\'. ed. (New York, 1946),
None of the rules of inference that have gained acceptance chap. 6.
6 7
gun for hire that can be employed in the service of what- was to combat its program by reason resting on better
ever goals \Ve have, good or bad. It makes a great dif- facmal premises.
ference in our view of the human condition \vhether .we But somehow that calm response does not seem to
attribute our difficulties to evil or to ignorance and irra- match the outrage thatMein J(ampfproduces in us. There
tionality- to the baseness of goals or to our not knowing must be something more to our rejection of its argument,
how to reach them. and obviously there is. Its stated goals are, to put it mildly,
incomplete. Statements of human goals usually clist~
Method in Madness guish between a "we" for w hom the goals are shaped and
A useful, if outrageous, exercise for sharpening one's a "they" whose welfare is not "our" primary concern.
thinking about the limited usefulness of reasoning, taken Hitler's ''we" \vas the German people-the definition of
in isolation, is to attempt to read Hitler's M ein ](ampf "we" being again based on some dubious "facts" about a
analytically-as though preparing for a debate. The exer- genetic difference between Aryan an~ non-~ryan peoples.
cise is likely to be painful, but is revealing about how facts, Leaving aside this fantasy of Nord1c pur~ty, most ~f u~
values, and emotions interact in our thinking about hu- would still define "we" differently from H 1tler. Our 'we
man affairs. I pick this particular example because the might be Americans instead of Germans, or, if \Ve h ad
reader's critical faculties are unlikely, in this case, to be reached a twenty-first-century state of enlightenment, our
dulled by agreement with the views expressed. "we" might even be the human species. In e~ther .case, w_e
Most of us would take exception to many of Hitler's would be involved in a genuine value conflict w1th Metn
"facts," especially his analysis of the causes of Europe's J(ampf, a conflict not resolvable in any obvious way by
economic difficulties, and most of all his allegations that improvements in either facts or reasoning. Our posmla-
Jews and Marxists (whom he also mistakenly found indis- tion of a ''we" -of the boundary of our concern for oth-
tinguishable) were at the root of them . H owever, if we ers-is a basic assumption about what is good and what
were to suspend disbelief for a moment and accept his
is evil.
"facts'' as true, much of the Nazi program would be·quite Probably the greatest sense of outrage that M ein J(~mpf
consistent with goals of security for the German nation or generates stems from the sharpness of the boundary Hnler
even of welfare for the German people. Up to this point, draws between "we" and "they." Not only does he give
the unacceptability of that program to us is not a matter of priority to "we," but he argues that .an! treatment of
evil goals-no one would object to concern for the welfare "they," however violent, is justifiable If 1t advances the
of the German people-or of faulty reasoning from those goals of "we." Even if Hitler's gen~ral g?als and "facts"
goals, but rests on the unacceptability of the factual postu- were accepted, most of us would st11l obJect to the m ea-
lates that connect the goals to the program. From this sures he proposes to inflict on "they" in o rder to nurture
viewpoint, we might decide that the remedy for Nazism the welfare of ''we." If, in our system of values, we do not
8 9
regard "they'' as being without rights, reason will disclose cipal shield against Nazism. Our principal shield was con-
to us a conflict of values a conflict between our value of trary factual beliefs and values.
helping "we" and our general goal of not inflicting harm
on "they." And so it is not its reasoning for which \Ve must De Gustibus Est Disputandum
fault Mein l(ampf, but its alleged facts and its outrageous Recognizing all these complications in the use of rea-
values. . . son, hot or cold, and recognizing also that ought's cannot
There is another lesson to be learned from Mein !(ampf. be derived from is's alone, we must still admit that it is
We cannot read many lines of it before detecting that possible to reason about conduct. For most of the ought's
Hitler's reasoning is not cold reasoning but hot reasoning. we profess are not ultimate standards of conduct but only
w~ have long since learned that when a position is de- subgoals, adopted as means to other goals. For example,
claimed with passion and invective, there is special need to taken in isolation a goal like "live within your income"
examine carefully both its premises and its inferences. We may sound unassailable. Yet a student might be well ad-
have l~ar_ned th~s, but we do not always practice it. Regret- vised to go into debt in order to complete his or her
tably, 1t ts prectsely when the passion and invective reso- education. A debt incurred as an investment in future
~ate with our own inner feelings that we forget the warn- productivity is different from a gambling debt.
tog and become uncritical readers or listeners . Values can indeed be disputed (r) if satisfying them has
. Hitler was an effective rhetorician for Germans pre- consequences, present or future, for other values, (2) if
ctsely because his passion and invectives resonated with they are acquired values, or (3) if they are instrumental to
beliefs and values already present in many German hearts. more final values. But although there has been widespread
The ~eat of his rhetoric rendered his readers incapable of consensus about the rules of reasoning that apply to fac-
applymg the rules of reason and evidence to his argu- tual matters, it has proved far more difficult over the cen-
ments. Nor was it only Germans who resonated to the turies to reach agreement about the rules that should
facts and values he proclaimed. The latent anti-Semitism govern reasoning about interrelated values. Several vari-
and overt anti-Communism of many Western statesmen eties of modal logic proposed for reasoning about impera-
made a number of his arguments plausible to them. tive and deontic statements have gained little acceptance
2
And so we learned, by bitter experience and against our and even less application outside of philosophy.
first quick judgments, that we could not dismiss Hitler as a In the past half century, however, an impressive body of
madman, for there was method in his madness. His prose formal theory has been erected by mathematical statisti-
met standards of reason neither higher nor lower than we 1 state the case against modal logics in Section 3 of my Models ofDiscomy
2
are accustomed to encountering in writing designed to (Dordrecht, 1977) and in "On Reasoning about Actions," chap. 8 of H. A. Si-
mon and L. Sik16ssy, eds., Representation and Meaning (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,
persuade. Reason was not, could not have been, our prin- 1972).
ro II
cians and economists to help us reason about these mat- Third, it assumes that the decision maker can assign a
ters- without introducing a new kind of logic. The basic consistent Joint probability distribution to all furore sets of
idea of this theory is to load all values into a single func- events. Finally, it assumes that the decision maker will (or
tion, the utility function, in this way finessing the question should) choose the alternative, or the strategy, that will
of how different values are to be compared. The compari- maximize the expected value, in terms of his utility function,
son has in effect already been made when it is assumed that of the set of events consequent on the strategy. With each
a utility has been assigned to each particular state of affairs. strategy, then, is associated a probability distribution of
This formal theory is called subjective expected utility future scenarios that can be used to weight the utilities of
(SEU) theory. Its construction is one of the impressive those scenarios.
intellectual achievements of the first half of the twentieth These are the four principal components of the SEU
century. It is an elegant machine for applying reason to model: a cardinal utility function, an exhaustive set of
problems of choice. Our next task is to examine it, and to alternative strategies, a probability distribution of sce-
make some judgments about its validity and limitations. narios for the future associated with each strategy, and a
policy of maximizing expected utility.
SUBJECTIVE EXPECTED UTILITY
Since a number of comprehensive and rigorous ac- Problems with the Theory
Con~epmally, the SEU model is a beautiful object de-
counts of SEU theory are available in the literature, 3 I \Vill
give here only a brief heuristic survey of its main com- serving a prominent place in Plato's heaven of ideas. But
ponents. vast difficulties make it impossible to employ it in any
literal way in making actual human decisions. I have said
The Theory so much about these difficulties at other times and places
First, the theory assumes that a decision maker has a (particularly in the pages ofAdministrative Behavior) that I
well-defined utility function, and hence that he can assign a will make only the briefest mention of them here.
cardinal number as a measure ofhis liking of any particular The SEU model assumes that the decision maker con-
scenario of events over the future. Second, it assumes that templates, in one comprehensive view, everything t~at
the decision maker is confronted with a well-defined set of lies before him. He understands the range of alternative
alternatives to choose from. These alternatives need not be choices open to him, not only at the moment but over the
one-time choices, but may involve sequences of choices or whole panorama of the future. He understands the conse-
strategies in which each subchoice will be made only at a quences of each of the available choice strategies, at least
specified time using the information available at that time. up to the point of being able to assign a joint probability
distribution to future states of the world. He has recon-
3
For example, L. J. SaYage's classic, The Fou11datio11S ofStatistics (Ne,,· York,
1954). ciled or balanced all his conflicting partial values and syn-
'
12 13
thesized them into a single utility function that orders, by production levels, inventories, and work force in a factory
his preference for them, all these future states of the ·world. under conditions of uncertainty. 4 The procedure fits the
The SEU model finesses completely the origins of the SEU model. The utility function is (the negative of) a cost
values that enter into the utility function; they are simply function, comprising costs of production, costs of chang-
there, already organized to express consistent preferences ing the level of production, putative costs of lost orders,
among all alternative futures that may be presented for and inventory holding costs. The utility function is as-
choice. The SEU model finesses just as completely the sumed to be quadratic in the independent variables, an
processes for ascertaining the facts of the present and fu- assumption made because it is absolutely essential if the
ture states of the world. At best, the model tells us how mathematics and computation are to be manageable. Ex-
to reason about fact and value premises; it says nothing pected values for sales in each future period are assumed to
about where they come from. be known. (The same assumption of the quadratic utility
When these assumptions are stated explicitly, it be- function fortunately makes knowledge of the complete
comes obvious that SEU theory has never been applied, probability distributions irrelevant.) The factory is as-
and never can be applied-with or without the largest sumed to have a single homogeneous product, or a set of
computers-in the real world. Yet one encounters many products that can legitimately be represented by a single-
purported applications in mathematical economics, statis- dimensional aggregate.
tics, and management science. Examined more closely, It is clear that if this decision procedure is used to make
these applications retain the formal structure of SEU the- decisions for a factory, that is very different from employ-
ory, but substitute for the incredible decision problem ing SEU theory to make decisions in the real world. All
postulated in that theory either a highly abstracted prob- but one of the hard questions have been ans\vered in ad-
lem in a world simplified to a few equations and variables, vance by the assumption of a known, quadratic criterion
with the utility function and the joint probability distri- function and known expected values of future sales. More-
butions of events assumed to be already provided, or a over, this single set of production decisions has been
microproblem referring to some tiny, carefully defined carved out of the entire array of decisions that manage-
and bounded situation carved out of a larger real-world ment has to make, and it has been assumed to be describ-
reality. able in a fashion that is completely independent of infor-
mation about those other decisions or about any other
SE U as an Approximation
aspect of the real world.
Since I have had occasion to use SEU theory in some of
I have no urge to apologize for our decision procedure
my own research in management science, let me throw the
stone through my own window. Holt, M odigliani, Muth, 4
C. C. Holt, F. Modigliani, J. R. M uth, and H. A. Simon, Planning Produc-
and I constructed a procedure for making decisions about tion, Inventories and Work Force (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., I96o). ,
14- IS
as a useful management science tool. It can be, and has situations, decision makers, no matter how badly they
been, applied to this practical decision task in a number of want to do so, simply cannot apply the SEU model. If
factory situations and seems to have operated satisfac- doubt still remains on this point, it can be dissipated by
torily. What I wish to emphasize is that it is applied to a examining the results of laboratory experiments in which
highly simplified representation of a tiny fragment of the human subjects have been asked to make decisions involv-
real-world situation, and that the goodness of the deci- ing risk and uncertainty in game-like situations orders of
sions it will produce depends much more on the adequacy magnitude simpler than the game of real life. The evi-
of the approximating assumptions and the data support- dence, much of which has been assembled in several arti-
ing them than it does on the computation of a maximizing cles by Amos Tversky and his colleagues, leaves no doubt
value according to the prescribed SEU decision rule. whatever that the human behavior in these choice situa~
Hence, it would be perfectly conceivable for someone to tions-for whatever reasons-departs widely from the
contrive a quite different decision procedure, outside the prescriptions of SEU theory. 5 Of course, I have already
framework of SE U theory, that would produce better de- suggested what the principal reason is for this departure.
cisions in these situations (measured by real-world conse- It is that human beings have neither the facts nor the
quences) than would be produced by our decision rule. consistent structure of values nor the reasoning power at
Exactly the same comments can be made about eco- their disposal that would be required, even in these rela-
nomic models formed within the SEU mold. Their verid- tively siinple situations, to apply SEU principles.
icality and usefulness cannot be judged from the fact that As our next task, we consider what they do instead.
they satisfy, formally, the SED assumptions. In evaluating
them, it is critical to know how close the postulated util- THE BEHAVIORAL ALTERNATIVE
ities and future events match those of the real world. I will ask you to introspect a bit about how you actually
Once we accept the fact that, in any actual application, make decisions, and I will make some assertions that you·
the SED rule supplies only a crude approximation to an can check against your introspections. First, your deci-
abstraction, an outcome that may or may not provide sat- sions are not comprehensive choices over large areas of
isfactory solutions to the real-world problems, then we are your life, but are generally concerned with rather specific
free to ask what other decision procedures, W1related to matters, assumed, whether correctly or not, to be rela-
SEU, might also provide satisfactory outcomes. In partic- tively independent of other, perhaps equally important,
ular, we are free to ask what procedures human beings dimensions of life. At the moment you are buying a car,
actually use in their decision making and what relation you are probably not also simultaneously choosing next
those actual procedures bear to the SEU theory. 5See A. Tversky and D. Kahnemann, "Judgment under Uncertainty: H euris-
I hope I have persuaded you that, in typical real-world tics and Biases,'' Science 185: II24- 3I (1974-), and references ci~ed there.
I6 17
week's dinner menu, or even deciding how to invest in- Fourth, a large part of whatever effort vou devote to
-
making your car-buying decision ·will be absorbed in gath-
come you plan to save.
. Second, when you make any particular decision, even an ering facts and evoking possibly relevant values. You may
Important one, you probably do not work out detailed read Consumer Reports and consult friends; you may visit
sce~arios of the future, complete with probability distri- car dealers in order to learn more about the various alter-
butions, conditional on the alternative vou choose. You natives, and to learn more about your own tastes as ·well.
have a general picture of your life-style a~d prospects, and Once facts of this sort have been assembled, and prefer-
perhaps of one or two major contemplated changes in the ences evoked, the actual choice may take very little time .
near future, and even of a couple of contingencies. When
Bounded Rationality
y~u are considering buying a car, you have a general no-
Choices made in the general way I have just been describ-
tion of your use of automobiles, your income and the
ing are sometimes characterized as instances of bounded
oth~r demands on it, and whether you are thinking of
rationality. Good reasons can be given for supposing that
ge~~g a new job in another city. You are unlikely to
evolutionary processes might produce creatures capable of
env1s1on large numbers of other possibilities that might
bounded rationality. Moreover, a great deal of psychologi-
affect what kind of car it makes sense to buy.
cal research supports the hunch to which our introspec-
Third, the very fact that you are thinking about buying a
tions have led us, namely that this is the way in which
car, and not a house, will probably focus your attention on
human decisions-even the most deliberate-are made.
some aspects of your life and some of your values to the
Let us call this model of human choice the behavioral
~·elative neglect ?f others. The mere contemplation ofbuy-
model, to contrast it with the Olympian model of SEU
mg a car may stimulate fond memories or dreams of travel
and divert y~ur a~ention fr~m the pleasures oflistening t~
theory.
Within the behavioral model of bounded rationality,
stereo or gtvtng dinner parties for friends at home. Hence
it _is unlikely that a single comprehensive utility functio~
one doesn't have to make choices that are infinitely deep in
time, that encompass the whole range of human values,
Will watch over the whole range ofdecisions you make. On
and in which each problem is interconnected with all the
~e contrary, particular decision domains will evoke par-
other problems in the world. In actual fact, the environ~
ticular values, and great inconsistencies in choice may re-
ment in which we live, in which all creatures live, is an
sult from fluctuating attention. We all know that if we
environment that is nearly factorable into separate prob-
~ant to diet, we should resist exposing ourselves to tempt-
lems. Sometimes you're hungry, sometimes you're sleepy,
Ing food. That would be neither necessary nor useful if our
sometimes you're cold. Fortunately, you're not often all
choices were actually guided by a single comprehensive
three at the same time. Or if you are, all but one of these
and consistent utility function. '
19
r8
VIS IONS OF RATIONALITY
needs can be postponed until the most pressing is taken some way of focusing attention of avoiding distraction
care of. You have lots of other needs, too, but these also do (or at least too much distraction) and focusing on the
not all impinge on you at once. things that need attention at a given time. A very strong
We live in what might be called a nearly empty \vorld- case can be made, and has been made by physiological
one in which there are millions of variables that in princi- psychologists, that focusing attention is one of the princi-
ple could affect each other but that most of the time don't. pal functions of the processes we call emotions. One thing
In gravitational theory everything is pulling at everything an emotion can do for and to you is to distract you from
else, but some things pull harder than others, either be- your current focus of thought, and to call your attention to
cause they're bigger or because they're closer. Perhaps something else that presumably needs attention right no\v.
there is actually a very dense network of interconnections Most of the time in our society we don't have to be out
in the world, but in most of the situations we face we can looking for food, but every so often we need to be re-
detect only a modest number of variables or considera- minded that food is necessary. So we possess some mecha-
tions that dominate. nisms that arouse periodically the feeling of hunger, to
Ifthis factorability is not wholly descriptive ofthe world direct our attention to the need for food. A similar account
we live in today and I will express some reservations can be given of other emotions.
about that it certainly describes the world in which hu- Some of an organism's requirements call for continuous
man rationality evolved: the world of the cavemen's ances- activity. People need to have air access to it can be inter-
tors, and of the cavemen themselves. In that world, very rupted only for a short time and their blood must circu-
little was happening most of the time, but periodically late continually to all parts of their bodies. Of course,
action had to be taken to deal with hunger, or to flee human physiology takes care of these and other short-
danger, or to secure protection against the coming winter. term insistent needs in parallel with the long-term needs.
Rationality could focus on dealing with one or a fe\v prob- We do not have to have our attention directed to a lack of
lems at a time, with the expectation that when other prob- oxygen in our bloodstream in order to take a breath, or for
lems arose there would be time to deal with those too. 6 our heart to beat. But by and large, with respect to those
needs that are intermittent, that aren't constantly with us,
Mechanisms for Bounded Rationality
we operate very much as serial, one-at-a-time, animals.
What characteristics does an organism need to enable it
One such need is about as many as our minds can handle at
to exercise a sensible kind of bounded reality? It needs
one time. Our ability to get a\vay with that limitation, and
6
A simple formal model of such rationality is provided by my "Rational to survive in spite of our seriality, depends on the mecha-
Choice and the Structure of the Environment,'' Psychological Review 63: 129-38 nisms, particularly emotional mechanisms, that assure new
(I9S6).
problems of high urgency a high priority on the agenda.
20
21
Second, \Ve need a mechanism capable of generating thing is closely connected with everything else, in whi~
alternatives. A large part of our problem solving consists problems can be decomposed into their component~---:- In
such a world, the kind of rationality I've been descnb1ng
in the search for good alternatives, or for improvements in
alternatives that we already know. In the past 25 years, gets us by.
research in cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence Consequences ofBounded Rationality .
has taught us a lot about how alternatives are generated. I Rationality of the sort described by the behavioral
have given a description of some of the mechanisms in model doesn't optimize, of course. Nor does it even guar-
Chapters 3 and 4 of The Sciences of the Artificial. 7 antee that our decisions will be consistent. As a matter of
Third, we need a capability for acquiring facts about the fact, it is very easy to show that choices made by an organ-
environment in which we find ourselves, and a modest ism having these characteristics will often depend on the
capability for drawing inferences from these facts. Of order in which alternatives are presented. If A is presented
course, this capability is used to help generate alternatives before B, A may seem desirable or at least satisfactory~ but
as well as to assess their probable consequences, enabling ifB is presented before A, B will seem desirable and w1ll be
the organism to maintain a very simple model of the part chosen before A is even considered.
of the world that is relevant to its current decisions, and to The behavioral model gives up many of the beautiful
do commonsense reasoning about the model. formal properties of the Olympian model, b~t in re~rn
What can vve say for and about this behavioral version, for giving them up it provides a way of looking at ratl~
this bounded rationality version, of human thinking and nality that explains how creatures with our mental capaci-
problem solving? The first thing we can say is that there is ties or even, with our mental capacities supplemented
now a tremendous weight of evidence that this theory with all the computers in Silicon Valley-get along in a
describes the way people, in fact1 make decisions and solve world that is much too complicated to be understood
problems. The theory has an increasingly firm empirical from the Olympian viewpoint of SEU theory.
base as a description of human behavior. Second, it is a
theory• that accounts for the fact that creatures stay alive INTUI T IVE RATIONALITY
and even thrive, who-however smart they are or think A third model of human rationality has been much less
they are have modest computational abilities in com- discussed bv social scientists than the two that I've consid-
parison with the complexity of the entire world that sur- ered so far: but is perhaps even more prominent in the
rounds them. It explains how such creatures have survived popular imagination. I've referred to it as the intuitive
for at least the millions of years that our species has sur- model. The intuitive model postulates that a great deal of
vived. In a world that is nearly empty, in which not every- human thinking, and a great deal of the success of human
7
Second ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1981). beings in arriving at correct decisions, is due to the fact
22 23
that they have good intuition or good judgment. The that any kind of complex thinking that involves taking
notions of intuition and judgment are particularly promi- in information, processing that information, and doing
nent in public discussion today because of the research of something \vith it employs both of our hemispheres in
Roger Sperry and others, much supplemented by specula- varying proportions and in various \Vavs. •
tion, on the specialization of the left and right hemi- Of course, brain localization is not the important is-
spheres of the human brain. sue at stake. Regardless of whether the same things or
different things go on in the two hemispheres, the impor·
The Two Sides of the Brain tant question is whether there are two radically different
In the minds and hands of some writers, the notion of forms of human thought-analytic thought and intui-
hemisphere specialization has been turned into a kind of tive thought-and whether \Vhat we call creativitv relies
'
romance. According to this romanticized account, there's largely on the latter.
the dull, pedestrian left side of the brain, which is very
analytic. It either, depending on your beliefs, does the Intuition and Recognition
Olympian kind of reasoning that I described first, or- if What is intuition all about? It is an observable fact that
it's just a poor man's left hemisphere-does the behavioral people sometimes reach solutions to problems suddenly.
kind of thinking I described as the second model. In either They then have an "aha!" experience of varying degrees of
case, it's a down-to-earth, pedestrian sort of hemisphere, intensity. There is no doubt of the genuineness of the
capable perhaps of deep analysis but not of flights of fancy. phenomenon. Moreover, the problem solutions people
Then there's the right hemisphere, in which is stored hu- reach \vhen they have these experiences, \vhen they make
man imagination, creativity all those good things that intuitive judgments, frequently are correct.
account for the abilities of human beings, if they would Good data are available on this point for chess masters.
entrust themselves to this hemisphere, to solve problems Show a chess position, from a mid-game situation in a
• •
1n a creanve way. reasonable game, to a master or grand master. After look-
Before I try to characterize intuition and creativity (they ing at it for only five or ten seconds, he will usually be able
are not always the same thing) in a positive way, I must to propose a strong move-very often the move that is
comment on the romantic view I have just caricatured. objectively best in the position. If he's playing the game
When we look for the empirical evidence for it, we find against a strong opponent, he won't make that move im-
that there is none. There is lots of evidence, of course, for mediately; he may sit for three minutes or half an hour in
specialization of the hemispheres, but none of that evi- order to decide whether or not his first intuition is really
dence really argues that any complex human mental func- correct. But perhaps 8o or 90 percent of the time, his first
tion is performed by either ofthe hemispheres alone under impulse will in fact show him the correct move.
normal circumstances. By and large, the evidence sho\vs The explanation for the chess master's sound intuitions
25
is well known to psychologists, and is not really surpris- acquaintances to them. The estimates come out, as an
ing. 8 It is no deeper than the explanation of your ability, in order of magnitude, around fifty thousand, roughly com-
a matter of seconds, to recognize one of your friends parable to vocabulary estimates for native speakers. Intui-
whom you meet on the path tomorrow as you are going to tion is the ability to recognize a friend and to retrieve from
class. Unless you are very deep in thought. as you walk, the memory all the things you've learned about the friend in
recognition will be immediate and reliable. Now in any the years that you've known him. And of course if you
field in which we have gained considerable experience, \Ve know a lot about the friend, you'll be able to make good
have acquired a large number of "friends"-a large num- judgments about him. Should you lend him money or
ber of stimuli that we can recognize immediately. We can not? Will you get it back if you do ? Ifyou know the friend
sort the stimulus in whatever sorting net performs this well, you can say "yes" or "no" intuitively.
function in the brain (the physiology of it is not under-
stood), and discriminate it from all the other stimuli we Acquiring Intuitions and Judgment
might encounter. We can do this not only with faces, but Why should we believe that the recognition mechanism
with words in our native language. explains most of the "aha!" experiences that have been
Almost every college-educated person can discriminate reported in the literature of creativity? An important rea-
among, and recall the meanings of, fifty to a hundred son is that valid "aha!~~ experiences happen only to people
thousand different words. Someho\v, over the years, we who possess the appropriate knowledge. Poincare rightly
have all spent many hundreds of hours looking at words, said that inspiration comes only to the prepared mind.
and we have made friends \vith fiftv or a hundred thousand Today we even have some data that indicate how long
'
of them. Every professional entomologist has a compara- it takes to prepare a mind for world-class creative per-
ble ability to discriminate among the insects he sees, and formance.
every botanist among the plants. In any field of expertise, At first blush, it is not clear why it should take just as
possession of an elaborate discrimination net that permits long in one field as in another to reach a world-class level
recognition of any one of tens of thousands of different of performance. However, human quality of performance
objects or situations is one of the basic tools of the expert is evaluated by comparing it with the performance of
and the principal source of his intuitions. other human beings. Hence the length of human life is a
Counts have been made of the numbers of "friends" controlling parameter in the competition; we can spend a
that chess masters have: the numbers of different configu- substantial fraction of our lives, but no more, in increasing
rations of pieces on a chessboard that are old familiar our proficiency. For this reason, the time required to pre-
pare for world-class performance (by the people whose
For a survey of the evidence, see my Models of'Thought (New H aven, Conn.,
8
talents allow them to aspire to that level) should be
1979), chaps. 6.2 -6 .5.
roughly the same for different fields of activity.
26
27
Empirical data gathered by my colleague John R. Hayes have gained through our past searches. Hence we would
for chess masters and composers, and somewhat less sys- expect what in fact occurs, that the expert will often be able
tematically for painters and mathematicians, indicate that to proceed intuitively in attacking a problem that requires
ten years is the magic number. Almost no person in these painful search for the novice. And we would expect also
disciplines has produced world-class performances ·with- that in most problem situations combining aspects of nov-
out having first put in at least ten years of intensive learn- elty with familiar components, inruition and search will
ing and practice. cooperate in reaching solutions.
What about child prodigies? Mozart was composing
world-class music perhaps by the time he \Vas seventeen- INTUITION AND EM OT ION
certainly no earlier. (The standard Hayes used for music is Thus far in our discussion of intuitive processes we have
five or more appearances of recordings of a piece of music left aside one of the important characteristics these pro-
in the Schwann catalog. Except for some Mozart juvenilia, cesses are said to possess: their frequent association with
which no one would bother to listen to if thev hadn't been emotion. The searching, plodding stages of problem solv-
"
written by• Mozart, there is no world-class Mozart before ing tend to be relatively free from intense emotion; they
the age of seventeen.) Of course Mozart was already com- may be described as cold cognition. But sudden discovery,
posing at the age of four, so that by age seventeen he had the "aha!" experience, tends to evoke emotion; it is hot
already been educating himself for thirteen years. Mozart cognition. Sometimes ideas come to people when they are
is typical of the child prodigies whose biographies Hayes excited about something.
has examined. A sine qua non for outstanding \Vork is
diligent attention to the field over a decade or more. Emotion and Attention
Hence, in order to have anything like a complete theory
Summary: The Intuitive and Behavioral Models of human rationalitv, we have to understand what role
J
There is no contradiction bet\veen the intuitive model emotion plays in it. Most likely it serves several quite dis-
of thinking and the behavioral model, nor do the two tinct functions. First of all, some kinds of emotion (e.g.,
models represent alternative modes of thought residing in pleasure) are consumption goods. They enter into the
different cerebral hemispheres and competing for control utility function of the Olympian theory, and must be
over the mind. All serious thinking calls on both modes, counted among the goals we strive for in the behavioral
both search-like processes and the sudden recognition of model of rationality.
familiar patterns. Without recognition based on previous But for our purposes, en1otion has particular impor-
experience, search through complex spaces would proceed tance because of its function of selecting particular things
in snail-like fashion. Intuition exploits the knowledge we in our environments as the focus of our attention. Why
28 29
was Rachel Carson's Silent Spring so influential? The

Emotion in Education
problems she described were already known t~ ecologists
I would like to take a brief excursion at this point in
and the other biologists at the time she descnbed them.
order to consider the role of emotion in education. If
But she described them in a \Vay that aroused emotion,
literarv and artistic \vorks have a considerable power to
that riveted our attention on the problem she raised. That ' .
evoke emotions as thev certainly do, does this power sug-
emotion, once aroused, wouldn't let us go off and worry ' .
gest any special role for them in the educational process?
about other problems until something had been done
We all know that the humanities feel a bit besieged
about this one. At the very least, emotion kept the prob-
today. A large proportion of the students. in our unive~
lem in the back of our minds as a nagging issue that
sities appear to want to enroll in law, business, or medi-
wouldn't go away.
cine, and the humanities suffer neglect, benign or other-
In the Olympian model, all problems are permanently
wise. One argument that is often advanced by those who
and simultaneously on the agenda (until they are solved).
would counter this trend is that it may be better, more
In the behavioral model, by contrast, the choice of prob-
effective, for students to learn about the human condition
lems for the agenda is a matter of central importance, and
bv exposure to the artist's and humanist's view of the
emotion may play a large role in that choice.
~orld than by exposure to the scientist's. Of course ~y
Emotion does not always direct our attention to goals
own professional identifications put me on the other. s1de
we regard as desirable. If I may go back to my example of
of the argument, but I think we should look at the tssue
Meinl(ampf, we observed that the reasoning in that book
quite carefully. What are the optimum co~ditions for effi-
is not cold reasoning but hot reasoning. It is reasoning
cient human learning about central and Important mat-
that seeks deliberately to arouse strong emotions, often
ters? Which is better, cold cognition or hot? And \vhich-
the emotion of hate, a powerful human emotion. And of
ever is better, will \Ve find that this is the kind we associate
course, the influence of Mein J(ampf, like that of Silent
with the sciences or the humanities?
Spring or Picasso's Guernica, was due in lar~~ part to the
I should say here that I have heard physicists argue for a
fact that it did have evocative power, the abthty to arouse
strong infusion of hot cognition in teach_ing their subject.
and fix the attention of its German readers on the particu-
The problems that excite them, and motivate them to un-
lar goals it had in mind.
derstand rather abstruse matters,. are the cosmological and
A behavioral theory of rationality, with its concern for
philosophical problems associated with th~ fundamental
the focus of attention as a major determinant of choice,
particles, and with astrophysics and the archit~cture ~f the
does not dissociate emotion from human thought, nor
universe. So perhaps I should not have associated sc1ence
does it in any respect underestimate the powerful effec~s of
strictly with cold cognition.
emotion in setting the agenda for human problem solvtng.
30 31
'
But let me go to a domain \Vhere the point can be made ates a great deal of literature today-at the very time when
more unequivocally and convincingly. Perhaps some of Freudian theories are being revised radically by new psy-
you are familiar with Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon. chological kno\vledge. There are few orthodox Freudians
It is a novel that describes what happens to a particular left in psychology today. Hence there is a danger, if we
person at the time of the Russian purge trials of the 1930's. take this route of asking the humanities to provide an
Now suppose you wish to understand the history of the emotional context for learning, that a kind of warmed-
Western world between the two world wars, and the over Freud will be served to our students in a powerfully
events that led up to our contemporary world. You will influential form. We have to re-evaluate the great human-
then certainly need to understand the purge trials. Are you ist classics to see to what extent they suffer from obsoles-
more likely to gain such an understanding by reading cence through the progress of our scientific knowledge.
Darkness at Noon, or by reading a history book that deals Homer is still alive because the Iliad and the Odyssey
with the trials, or by searching out the published tran- treat mainly of matters in which modern social science has
scripts of the trial testimony in the library? I would vote not progressed much beyond lay understanding. Aristotle
for Koestler's book as the best route, precisely because of is barely alive-and certainly his scientific works are not,
the intense emotions it evokes in most readers. and his logic hardly. And we could have a great argu-
I could go down a long list of such alternatives: War and ment with philosophers as to ·whether his epistemology
Peace versus a treatise on military sociology, Proust and or his metaphysics has anything to say to students today.
Chekov versus a textbook on personality. If I were in a And Lucretius, of course, talking about atoms, has gone
position ·where I had to defend the role of the humanities entirely.
in education, to provide an argument for something like The moral I draw is that, whereas works capable of
the traditional liberal arts curriculum of the earlv, twen- evoking emotion inay have special value for us just by
tieth century, I would argue for them on the grounds that virtue of that capability, if we wish to use them to educate,
most human beings are able to attend to issues longer, to we must evaluate not only their po\ver to rouse emotion
think harder about them, to receive deeper impressions but also their scientific validity when they speak of matters
that last longer, if information is presented in a context of of fact.
emotion- a sort of hot dressing than if it is presented If the humanities are to base their clain1s to a central
whollv without affect.
J place in the liberal curriculum on their special insights into
But educating with the help of hot cognition also im- the human condition> thev must be able to sho\v that their
'
plies a responsibility. If we are to learn our social science picture of that condition is biologically, sociologically, and
from novelists, then the novelists have to get it right. The psychologically defensible. It is not enough, for this par-
scientific content must be valid. Freudian theory perme- ticular purpose, that humanistic works move students.
32 33
VIS IONS OF RATIONALITY VISIONS OF RATIONALITY
They must move them in \vays that will enable them to live processes of intuition. The intuitive theory, I have argued,
with due regard for reason and fact in the real world. I do is in fact a component of the behavioral theory. It empha-
not mean to imply that the humanities do not now meet sizes the recognition processes that underlie the skills hu-
this standard; a detailed assessment of the liberal curricu- mans can acquire by storing experience and by recogniz-
lum in any existing university would certainly not give a ing situations in which their experience is relevant and
simple yes-or-no answer to that question. But I do suggest appropriate. The intuitive theory recognizes that human
that any examination of the appropriate roles of differ- thought is often affected by emotion, and addresses the
ent fields of knowledge in providing the materials of a question of what function emotion plays in focusing hu-
liberal education needs to give close attention both to the man attention on particular problems at particular times.
emotional temperature of material and to its empirical I have left for the next chapter a fourth theory: the
soundness. vision of rationality as evolutionary adaptation. The evo-
lutionary model is a de facto model of rationality; it im-
CONCLUSION
plies that only those organisms that adapt, that behave as if
In this first chapter, I have sought to present three vi- they \Vere rational, will survive. In the next chapter, I shall
sions of rationality: three ways of talking about rational examine these claims of the efficacy and centrality of natu-
choice. The first of these, the Olympian model, postulates ral selection as applied to the exercise of human rationality.
a heroic man making comprehensive choices in an inte-
grated universe. The Olympian vie\v serves, perhaps, as a
model of the mind of God, but certainly not as a model of
the mind of man. I have been rather critical of that theory
for present purposes.
The second, the behavioral model, postulates that hu-
man rationality is very limited, very much bounded by the
situation and by human computational powers. I have
argued that there is a great deal of empirical evidence
supporting this kind of theory as a valid description of
ho\v human beings make decisions. It is a theory of how
organisms, including man, possessing limited computa-
tional abilities, make adaptive choices and sometimes sur-
vive in a complex, but mostly empty, world.
The third, the intuitive model, places great stress on the
34 35
2. Rationality and Teleology
THE PREVIous chapter, in which I examined three

alternative conceptions of rationality, focused not so much
on the rational choices themselves, as on the processes for
arriving at them. It was concerned with the processes of
thinking that underlie judgment and choice, and with the
differences between the models of the decision-making
process that have been proposed over the years by people
interested in rationality.
EVOLUTION VIEWED AS RATIONAL ADAPTATION
It is this view of rationality-from the standpoint of its

results-that has been most prominent in evolutionary
theories. Evolutionary theories explain the way things are
by showing that this is the way they have to be in order for
the organism to survive. How the organism achieves its
well-adapted state is a matter of scientific interest, too, but
from an evolutionary point of view it is secondary to the
basic fact of adaptation or survival. So long as attention is
directed to results, such a theory of rationality is compati-
ble with an Olympian process, a behavioral one, or even an
• • •
mtu1t1ve one.
Thus, it can be thought rational that birds build their
37
RATIONALITY AND TELEOLOGY RATIONALITY AND TELEOLOGY
nests in trees, for that location helps protect eggs and ment. It does not matter at all what process of ratiocina-
young from earthbound predators. There is no implica- tion or what random process, for that matter-achieved
tion in this way of speaking that the parent birds went the adaptation.
through a process of decision-Olympian, behavioral, This answer won,t satisfy us fully if our curiosity about
or intuitive to arrive at this choice of location. Nest- how the world works extends bevond a concern for the
building is simply an instinctual behavior, a highly adap- -
public policy implications of business firm behavior. Even
tive one that has been selected from other, less adaptive ifwe knew, or believed, that only those survived who acted
ones through the processes of evolution. It is in this sense as if they were making rational calculations, we would still
that the outcome of evolutionary processes may be re- wonder just what the survivors did to survive. Perhaps
garded as a form of rationality, and indeed as an alternative miracles and spectacular coincidences do occur constantly
to the forms \Ve considered in the last chapter. in this world; but perhaps also there is some underlying
mechanism that governs survival. Understanding the
'~-if)) Theories ofAdaptation mechanism, we \Vould be in a better position to judge how
One reason for being interested in evolutionary ap- .•. likely it would be to keep the evolving system in the neigh-
proaches to, and interpretations of, rationality, is that borhood of its equilibrium, and whether deviations from
some social scientists, and particularly some economists, equilibrium \vould likely be sufficiently great to affect pol-
have argued that it isn't important to know how people go icy significandy.
about making decisions. It isn't important because we
know, from the fact that they have survived, that they did Variation and Selection
in fact make rational, adaptive decisions. The as-if answer won't satisfv us either unless we can be
'
Milton Friedman takes this point of view in his \veil- sure that the equilibrium arrived at is unique. If different
known essays on methodology. 1 There he argues for an processes would lead us to different equilibria, a result that
"as-if" theory of economic behavior: a theory that busi- \Ve shall see is likely, then process again acquires a central
nessmen and business firms behave as if they had made the role both in understanding the phenomena and in draw-
correct, rational calculations that \Vould be required to ing out their implications for policy.
achieve, let's say, a maximum of utility or profit. The In modern Danvinian biological theories of evolution,
ground for the argument is that only those who succeed for all their emphasis on the result (i.e., survival), there is
in maximizing stay in business; the others have disap- assumed, of course, not a miracle but a mechanism or,
peared from the scene. All that matters in this view are more precisely, a combination of at least two mechanisms.
results success in adapting to the economic environ- These are variation, \vhich creates new forms of life, and
1
Milton Friedman~ Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago~ 1953).
selection, which preserves forms that are \Veil adapted to
39
•
RATIONALITY AND TELEOLOGY RATIONALITY AND T EL EOLOGY
their environments. 2 There are some interesting parallels In economics, Richard N elson and Sidney Winter have
between these D arwinian mechanisms and the mecha- been similarly concerned with defining mechanisms that
nisms I described in the last chapter as underlying a behav- cou ld account for the evolution and adaptation of business
ioral theory of rationality. firms.4 The "genes" of Nelson and Winter are the habits,
According to the behavioral theory, ratio nal choice may routines, and standard operating procedures that firms
require a great deal of selective search in order to discover employ in the conduct of their affairs. From time to time,
adaptive responses. The simplest, most primitive search new practices are devised, which then m ust prove them-
processes require that possible responses be first generated selves in the marketplace in competition with the old. The
and then tested for appropriateness. T he generator-test rationality supported by this process is also closely allied to
mechanism is the direct analogue, in the behavioral theory behavioral rationality, for there is no guarantee that the
of rationality, of the variation-selection mechanism of the system will ever arrive at, or approach, a position of op-
D arwinian theory. Just as in biological evolution we have timality. It is adaptive, but not necessarily optimizing.·
variation to produce new organisms, so in the behavioral A final preliminary rem ark: in applying evolutionary
theory of human rationality we have some kind of genera- ideas to human societies, we need to be a little cautious
tion ~f alternatives- some kind of combinatorial process about the theory's statistical assumptions. In our abstract
that can take simple ideas and put them together in new model of selection of the fittest, we imagine that a number
wavs. And similarly, just as in the biological theory of of models (variations) are produced and tested over a se-
ev~lution the mechanism of natural selection weeds out quence of generations; o ne of them survives the processes
poorly adapted variants, so in human thinking th~ testing of selection. But if we are to apply evolutionary ideas to
process rejects ideas other than those that contnbute to con temporary society, \Ve must ask whether statistical se-
solving the problem that is being addressed. .lection by repeated trials .is feasible. H o\v many nuclear
Among psychologists, Donald T. Campbell has been explosions will it take to determine ·which species are fit
most forceful in pointing out and developing this analogy enough to survive on the globe? Many ofus think that one
3
between Darwinian evolution and behavioral rationality. such explosion would be more than enough to settle this
2I use the term l'ariation rather than mutation because mutation is only one of
issue for the human species, and that there is little sense in
the Darwinian mechanisms (and perhaps not the most important) that create applying the law oflarge numbers or notions of sequential
new for ms .Two other mechanisms ofyariation in classical genetics are crossover testing to nuclear events.
of chromosome segments and inversion. ~u~ most fundame~_cal ~f all is the basi~
reproduction cycle which, through me10SIS and the ~ert1l.1zanon of eggs by Some kinds of experiments are difficult to carry out,
sperm, produces new sets of variant chromosome.combmatlons at each genera- therefore, on a statistical basis, because you can go
tion. I will have more to say about these mechamsms presently.
3 See, for example, D . T. Campbell, "Evolutionary Epistemology,'' in P. A. 4
R . R. Nelson and S. G. Winter, Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change
Schilpp, ed., The Philosaphy ofKarl Papper (La Salle, Ill., l974), I: 413-63 . (Cambridge, Mass., 1982) .
4-0 4-I
through only one generation. If you envision evolution as From our knowledge of how interest compounds, \Ve
a trial-and-error process in which the errors are weeded can readily calculate that an organism with a fitness advan-
out by the forces of selection, this is an inappropriate tage over its competitor of only I.os/r.oo per generation
model when there is only one trial and not room for even a will have twice as many progeny as the competitor within
single error. We need to keep that caution in mind as we fourteen generations. If, as seems to be the case, the hu-
apply evolutionary models to the future development of man species evolved several million years ago, there have
the human species and human society. been about Ioo,ooo generations in which superior fitness
could assert itself. There have been only four or five hun-
THE DARWINIAN MODEL dred generations, of course, since our species shifted from
I have already mentioned the basic mechanisms that a hunting to an agricultural mode of life, but even this·
underlie the Darwinian model of evolution. The process span allo\vs for an enormous amount of selection. Over
of variation produces new forms, and the process of selec- 400 generations, a I.osh.oo fitness advantage would yield
tion evaluates these forms and determines \Vhich shall sur- a 25o,ooofi superiority in number of progeny. Even a
vive. The standard literature on Darwinian evolution, and r.orh.oo advantage would yield a 131I superiority.
especially the formal literature, focuses on the concept On the other hand, if we think that modern industrial
called fitness. Iftwo organisms are trying to live in the same society confronts hwnankind with very different condi-
ecological niche (i.e., are trying to make use of precisely tions·for success and survival from those of agricultural
the same resources), one of the two may produce, on society, then there have been less than a dozen generations
average, more surviving progeny per adult than the other. (at the n1ost generous estimate) on which the new condi-
The more prolific of the nvo organisms is the fitter. If its tions could act-hardly enough to bring about substantial
progeny continue to outcompete the other's, it will soon selection. In any event, when we talk of the effect of selec-
greatly outnumber the less fit organism and \vill even- tion forces on our species, we must specify which part of
tually, because of total resource limitations, drive it to its history we are considering: the long ages of its early
• •
ext1nct1on. development under very primitive conditions, the thou-
sands of years of human agricultural society, or the scant
Fitness two centuries of modern society. Our estimates of the
Central to the Datwinian theory, therefore, is the no- consequences of evolutionary pressure will depend very
tion that fitness is all that counts. All that matters is much on ho\v far we think the ne\ver conditions differ
whether an organism can outbreed its rivals, because the from the older with respect to \vhich characteristics may
species that can occupy a given niche most efficiently be adaptive.
(where efficiency is defined as :fitness) is the one that will From this way of conceptualizing survival of the fittest
'
survive. comes the idea of the selfish gene. A gene cannot afford to
42 43
RATIO N ALI T Y A N D TELEOLO GY
RATIONALITY AND TELEOLOGY
ing at least temporarily unoccupied or occupied only inef-
do anything (if we may anthropomorphize a bit about
ficiently by organisms not specially adapted to them. One
genes) except to be as fit as it can be. Any other course will
form that this proliferation takes, \Vhich has been observed
diminish its chances of survival. Hence an altruistic gene, a
in the study of island populations of closely related species,
gene that looks out for the welfare of others at the expense
is the substitution of two specialized forms for a single
of its own fitness, is an anomaly not likely to be encoun-
generalized form (say, one large and one small species
tered in nature except under rather unusual circumstances,
where there had been a single species of intermediate size).
which I shall discuss presently. The central mechanism in
Each of the two more specialized forms may be more
this model is the competition for niches.
efficient than the single "all-purpose" form in harvesting a
Niche Elaboration particular part of the food range. The smaller variety typ-
The empirical srudy of evolutionary processes, both in ically exploits smaller prey, the larger variety larger prey.
the field and in the laboratory, is largely devoted to un- The specialists might be independently introduced into
derstanding the competition for niches. The theory of the biota, or they could emerge by variation and natural
niche competition has another aspect, however, besides a selection from the original single form.
brute-force struggle for occupancy, an aspect that is some- The theory of niche elaboration has not been as fully
5
times associated with the name ofDurkheim but can also developed in the literature of population genetics as
be found in The Origin of Species. The alternative view the theory of competition among organisms for single
starts with the observation that there are two \vays in niches. 6 The former theory is likely to be considerably
which a creature can seek to survive in a jungle environ- more complicated than the latter, since it must explain the
ment. One \vay is to compete fiercely and successfully for proliferation of niches as well as the proliferation of organ-
an existing niche with other creatures that are trying to isms to fill them. Moreover, an important part of each
organtsm. 's environment
. '
1n such a system is provided by
occupy it. The other way is to find a wholly unoccupied
niche, or to alter and specialize itself in order to be able to the other organisms that surround it. The very creation of J
occupy efficiently (fitly) a niche that is not now occupied niches, and the eventual development of new creatures to
effectively by anyone else. fill them, alters the system in such a way as to allow the
One can conceive of a system in which large numbers of development of still more niches.
different kinds of organisms coexist because the system of Before fleas could evolve and survive, there had to be
niches has proliferated to provide each organism \vith its dogs to provide a niche in which fleas could live. Before
o\vn little cranny, with perhaps additional niches remain- 6
But see G. E. Hutchinson, The Ecological Theater and the Evolutionary Play
(New H aven, Conn., 1965), pp. 26-78; and E. Mayr, Animal Species and Evolu-
5 Emile Durkheim, TheDi1'ision of Labor i1-~ Society (Glencoe, Ul., 1947), Book tion (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), pp. 87-88.
II, chap. 2.
45
44
any animals whatever could evolve, there had to be plants if the picture of a fixed supply of niches is valid, we would
that could sen7e as food and there had to be niches for expect the evolution of new, fitter species sooner or later to
those plants to fill. Consequently, there seem to be two require the obliteration of older, less fit ones.
quite different directions that evolutionary theory can The evidence on this point is conflicting. On the one
take. A more restricted form of the theory can focus, as the hand, it has been said that more than 99 percent of all
classical theory has, on fitness-on the problem ofcompe- species that have existed are now extinct. On the other
tition for a single niche or a fixed system of niches. But hand, numerous species exist today that are found in es-
there is need for a much broader theory, in which the sentially identical form or very similar form, in fos~il rec-
system of niches itself changes and develops simultane- ords from hundreds ofmillions ofyears ago. (This fact was
ously with the development of the niche-filling creatures. once thought to score heavily against Darwinism.) One
This latter theory is in a very early stage of development. can say that some species established their fitness very
There are at least two different ways, then, not neces- early, a fitness that has never been successfully challenged;
sarily mutually exclusive, to explain the large number of but that these offered no barrier to the emergence oflarge
distinct species- of the order of several millions that n~bers of new species that found new and unoccupied
now inhabit the earth. First, because of variations in to- ntches. These facts provide a very different picture of evo-
pography and climate, there might exist hundreds of mil- lutionary history from the nai've "struggle for existence."
lions of distinct microenvironments (niches) to which
species could separately adapt, and these niches may have Variation
been filled gradually as the processes of variation con- What Darwin proposed was a selection mechanism for
tinued to create new kinds of organisms. The niches could evolution. He did not propose a specific mechanism for
have long pre-existed the species that now fill them, and produc~g . variation, and indeed our understanding of
there may remain vast numbers of niches that are unoc- how vanatton comes about is still quite incomplete. Fit-
cupied or occupied at a relatively low level of fitness by ness tells us why better organisms, once created, survive,
organisms not efficiently specialized to suit them. but it gives no hint of the origin ofsuperior organisms that
The alternative picture begins with a largely inorganic can take part in the competitive process. Yet \vithout a
earth offering a more limited range of different microen- source of candidates, the process could not work.
vironments, and it envisions a process whereby new en- The discovery of chromosomes and their recombina-
vironments, and new differences among environments, tion by meiosis in each generation (at least in sexually
are constantly created as new species come into being. If . ... reproducing organisms) provided scientists with a possi-
this alternative picture is valid, or even partially valid, the ble mechanism for generating ne\v forms. However, with
proliferation ofspecies may continue indefinitely; whereas tw'enty chromosome pairs (and fe\v organisms have more),
46 47
•
each existing in two allelic forms, with dominance only ~ons of DNA produced in the normal course of cell divi-
20
2 , about one million, different variants could be gener- SIO~ ~d reproduction would seemingly provide adequate
ated. A million is not a large enough number to account vanation to ac~ount for the m any organismic forms that
for major organismic evolution over any considerable pe- have appeared In the course of evolution. Moreover since
riod of time. Nature would soon run out of possibilities. un~er these circ~stances, only a tiny fraction of the ge-
The further discovery of the multiplicity of genes within netically potential organisms will ever acrually emerge
chromosomes, and of the mutation of individual genes, from the combinatorial process and be tested for their
vastly increased the range of variation possible. However, fitness, we should henceforth speak of the survival of the
mutation is a relatively rare event and most mutations are fitter rather than the survival of the fittest. There would
not adaptive. Biologists have long doubted that mutation seem ~o be no permanent equilibrium ofspecies, since new
by itself was a sufficiently powerful mechanism to account effective co~petitors can arise from the reproductive pro-
for variation. cess at any tune and the vast majority ofpotential competi-
A third discovery was even more significant: that chro- tors have never been generated (and never will be) . This is
mosomes do not recombine exclusively as units. Instead, a a further reason why population genetics needs to attend
great deal of recombination takes place even among the ~o the dynamic processes that generate species, and not
genes in a single chromosome, through crossing-over, in- JUSt to the results of the struggle among existing forms for
version, and other restructuring processes. This recom- occupation of niches.
bination can be quite radical, involving, for example, the
Phenotype and Genotype
duplication or elimination of whole segments of DNA.
The forms and behaviors of organisms, the pheno-
The fact of micro-recombination once again enormously
types, are produced under the strong influence of the
increases the possibilities for variation. Complex orga-
nisms typically carry at least xo,ooo genes (it may be as under!ying genetic structures, the genotypes. But the
many as roo,ooo) in their chromosomes. Now, if each mappmg between genotypes and phenotypes is compli-
gene existed in two alleles, 2 10' 000 = ro 3' 000 different organ- ~at~d. Natural selection ~perates on the phenotypes;
isms could be produced. All of geological time would not It IS they who compete In the environment. Genetic
even begin to suffice to explore this whole space of poten- ~hange operates on the genotypes. All the evidence re-
. Jeers. Lamarckian claims that the experiences or modi-
tial organisms- or even a small part of it. Moreover, re-
fications of a phenotype can act direcdy to modify its
combinations do not take place rarely, as mutations do;
some (e.g., crossing-over) take place frequently and in genotyp~. Natural .selec~ion, which modifies genotype
every cell division by meiosis. freq~encies by causmg differential rates of reproduction
of different phenotypes, is the only linkage between the
Hence, even without frequent mutation, the modifi.ca-
49
two. Parents who have learned algebra do not, alas, in- :md temperament are far more significant, for both biolog-
crease by their experience the algebraic aptitude of their IC~ fi~ess and the human condition, than more specific
progeny. tratts like eye color, cephalic index, or tendency to bald-
A single phenotypic trait-height, for example-may ness. Hence, in the history of the human species, we
be influenced by a number of different genes; converse- would expect selective pressure to have been exerted most
ly, a single gene may influence the development of vari- effectively on general qualities like those just listed. How-
ous traits. Furthermore, a particular favorable value of ever, because of the heterogeneity of these qualities we
a trait may be attained, by different members of a spe- would not expect that pressure to have produced a high
cies, through different allele combinations. We cannot level of genetic uniformitv.J
assume in a human population that all persons of a

given height have the same combination of alleles for Ener;gy Utilization
controlling height. There may be a substantial number of We can also thin~ of species filling niches as drawing
alternative genetic patterns that, holding environment con- on resources, and ultimately on the energy supplied by the
stant, would produce people of the same height. sun. Perhaps the opportunities for the elaboration of
This kind of genetic diversity must be especially charac- niches and the proliferation ofspecies are seriously limited
teristic of complex, heterogeneous traits like "intelligence." by the total energy available to them. We must ~onsider
Natural selection may have, and probably has, produced this possibility.
many alternative genetic foundations for human intel- An important characteristic of living organisms is that
ligent behavior. Some of the genetic variety may show up they do not simply burn up energy (although they do that,
in differential abilities on distinct tasks requiring intel- to~), but us~ energy at relatively high temperatures to
ligence for their performance; but in other cases similar budd up thetr. structur~s, thereby degrading the energy
capabilities may rest on different genetic foundations. For thermodynarrucally whtle converting some of it into or-
example, the capacity and persistence of short-term mem- ganic tissue_. Insofar as energy is converted to organized
ory plays an important role in most cognitive tasks. Quite protoplasrmc structure and not immediately metabolized
different genetic patterns might produce short-term mem- there is no limit ~o the inventory of such energy thatlivin~
ory structures of comparable effectiveness. creatures can budd up over a period of time. Eventually, as
In the human species, more than any other, the phe- processes of death and decay balance the new additions to
notypic variations that are of greatest importance for effec- this inventory, an equilibrium is reached.
tive functioning tend to be very diffuse, rather than partic- I~ the absence of living organisms, the solar energy
ularistic. Such general and heterogeneous qualities as recetved ~y the ~arth is ~e~raded essentially in one step
health, strength, intelligence, dexterity, learning ability, before bemg radtated agatn tnto space. Living organisms,
50 51
by storing energy at intermediate levels~ delay this process Moreovt;r, although these figures give some quantitative
of degradation. The energy is reused~ sometimes four or measure of the total biomass the earth might support, they
five times, as it progresses do\vn the food chain from say nothing about the variety ofniches that can exist or the
plants~ through herbivores and various carnivores, to re- variety of organisms that could occupy these niches. T he
ducers (bacteria and the like). The amount of life that can most plausible hypothesis is that variety increases continu-
be maintained by solar energy is largely determined by the ously to exploit the opportunities for specialization that
efficiency of these processes: what proportion of the en- are provided by the vast and increasing diversity of niches.
ergy is captured for "inventory'' rather than expended for Darwin, inspired by Malthus's observation that un-
metabolism, and how much the energy is degraded at each checked population growth would be geometric, empha-
reuse. sized the limits of growth and the competition for fixed ,
Although photosynthesis may utilize as much as IO or 12 scarce resources. But we have just seen that this is not the
percent of the directly incident radiation, vegetation sel- whole story. Evolution can produce new organisms capa-
dom caprures more than about r percent of the sun's total ble of exploiting energy and other resources that were
energy~ the rest being absorbed in the atmosphere or re- previously wasted or used inefficiently. And this has in fact
flected from the surface. A herbivore or carnivore may happened as animal life came to occupy the new niches
convert a substantial fraction of the energy contained in its provided by plants, and as living forms extended their
food into its own structure and into the energy used in its occupancy of the earth's environment from sea to land.
own metabolism, but in view of the loss through metabo- One would suppose that, perhaps on a smaller scale, this
lism, we can count on a degradation of usable energy by a kind of extension continues today. There is no reason to
factor of nearly ten at each step down the food chain. Nor, think that we are near to a stable equilibrium.
even with the possibilities for energy storage in vegetation
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL E VOLU TI ON
and animal matter, are the recycling times long. The mean
cycle time from the initial moment of photosynthesis We have seen that human biological evolution spans
through the final stage of organic degradation can hardly some Ioo,ooo generations, whereas evolution since the
7
be more than ten or twenty years. emergence of agriculture spans only perhaps 400 genera-
These numbers indicate that there remain large oppor- tions. During the latter period, we have little evidence of
tunities for the more efficient exploitation of solar energy, biological modification of our species, but enormous evi~
hence that a deficiency in solar energy cannot be regard- dence of continuing cultural change. This has led some
ed as a serious limiting factor on continuing evolution. observers to hypothesize that cultural evolution has re-
Data on the sizes of these flows and inventories may be found in E . P.
7
placed genetic evolution as the principal process for con-
Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, 3d ed. (Philadelphia, I97I), chap. 3· tinuing modification of our species. However, it is not
52 53
entirely obvious how this hypothesis can be reconciled genes. Hence a set of social organisms capable of transmit-
with a Darwinian model. In that model it is the gene that ting a culture may undergo evolutionary processes that are
evolves, not the individual, much less a ·whole society. a great deal more complex than the processes oforganisms
In a system organized around the selfish gene, is there not capable of transmitting a culture. For there will be
room for a notion of cultural evolution? The recent \vork mutual interaction whereby the genetic material deter-
of Lumsden and Wilson deals specifically with the prob- mines what kinds of culture traits can develop, while at the
lems of human culture in an evolutionary frame\vork. 8 same time the culture traits that are present at any given
These authors juxtapose with the biological gene a cul- · moment are influencing the fitness and consequent sur-
tural "gene" (cultullfen) that can be transmitted, not bio- vival of variations in the genes. The theory of this kind of
logically but socially, from one person in a culture to an- interaction does not have a large literature today; Lums-
other, and from one generation to another. They argue den and Wilson are perhaps the first to treat of it at book
that we can conceive of a culture as developing by means of length.
a yoked process between a set of biological genes and a set A species that can change its culture is "programmable."
of culturgens. The yoking of the nvo components implies As suggested earlier, the kinds of genetic traits that could
that they must be compatible with each other. The cultur- most effectively exploit the flexibility of behavior of a pro-
gens most likely to be transmitted are those most easily grammable species would be traits broadly applicable to a
perceived and used on the basis of the biological makeup wide range of environments: traits conducive to strength,
of the members of that society. For example, the color good health, dexterity, and, above· all, the ability to think
vocabularies in languages reflect the color-sensing mecha- and learn. Programmability is also conducive to social ex-
nisms of the hmnan eye. Human biological characteristics istence and most effectively exploited in a social environ-
exert strong influences on sexual behavior, infant care, and ment rather than an isolated one. In particular, let us ex-
cognitive processes and strategies. 9 amine a specially important aspect of programmability:
Lumsden and Wilson point out that the reverse propo- susceptibility to accepting programs under social influ-
sition also holds: the presence of certain culture traits (to ence or pressure. I shall refer to this kind of susceptibility
call culturgens by their more usual name) in a society may as "docility." We need not ask which is chicken and which
change the fitness associated with particular biological egg cognitive abilities and temperament adapted to so-
8
C. J, Lumsden and E. 0. Wilson, Genes) Mind, and Culture (Cambridge,
cial living, on the one hand, or human society as an adap-
Mass., 1981). tive mechanism, on the other. Clearlv each reinforces the
9
That human biology strongly molds human behavior is hardly controver- -
other, and in mutual interaction both contribute to fitness.
sial. 'What is much more controversial, ofcourse, is whether differences in individ-
ual biology account for differences in individual (or group) behavior, and if so to It is certainly plausible that under the conditions our
what extent. species has experienced during most of its existence, both
54 55
athletic prowess and intelligence contributed positively to superior genetic fitness of the originators of those traits;
its reproductive success, or fitness. The case has often been they may multiply slowly or not at all, and can become a
made, and hardly needs to be spelled out. It is less obvious smaller and smaller part of the population bearing the
that in recent human generations (say, the last hundred culture they initially developed. On the other hand, if a
years in industrial society) there is any positive relation particular human group has a culture that provides them
between these qualities and numbers of surviving progeny with superior fitness in competition with other groups,
produced. The idea that the link may have been broken by then, ~o long as that culture does not impose self-defeating
recent cultural change is the basis for various policy pro- selec~Ion pressures on the group that possesses it, it may
posals that go under the label of eugenics. I shall not . provide the basis for a genuine "social evolution," i.e., for
address this difficult topic here. To contemplate a society the survival of this group at the expense of others. This can
interceding in the reproductive process to shape its own ?nly happen, ofcourse, if extensive borrowing by compet-
genetic constitution is not a priori foolish. But many com- Ing groups can be prevented. The European conquest of
plexities would have to be dealt with and many booby North America provides perhaps the clearest example of
traps avoided before a satisfactory social policy to this end this process in modern times.
could be formulated. The history of human conquest illustrates how complex
If flexibility (as attained, say, through strength, dex- the relation is between the fitness of cultures and the ge-
terity, or intelligence) is the main route to fitness in a netic .fitness of the culture bearers. The Mongols, in the
programmable social species, then the strong and the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, were highly success-
clever in such a species may have an advantage of fitness ful in conquering a large part of the inhabited world of
that is almost independent of the particular content of the that time. This success did not imply, however, either cul-
culture. They will be the best able to adapt, whatever it is tural or genetic fitness. On the cultural side, they largely
they are adapting to. Hence one can conceive of the cul- adopted the forms of the societies they conquered. On the
ture evolving semi-independently of the species that sup- genetic side, it is not at all clear that the nwnbers of
ports it. The mechanisms for the inheritance of culture Mongol peoples increased more rapidly (if they increased
traits (especially various forms of individual and social at all) than the nrunbers of the various peoples they
imitation) are very different from the mechanisms of bio- conquered.
logical inheritance. Cultural inheritance is distinctly La-
ALTRUISM IN EVOLUTIONARY PROCESSES
marckian; acquired traits can indeed be transmitted.
There are at least two potential consequences of the The term altruism can be construed in a number of
weak linkage between the two evolutionary mechanisms. different ways. The most restrictive concept is pure altru-
On the one hand, the successful spread of a collection of ism or strong altntism: unrequited sacrifice of fitness for
culture traits (e.g., Western industrialism) does not imply the benefit of other organisms. A broader concept, and the
57
one in which we shall be particularly interested, is weak of their genes in common. Hence, the kinship mechanism
altruism, which we shall see means, essentially, enlightened has its greatest plausibility in explaining maternal nur-
self-interest. We speak of\:veak altruism when an individual turance of the young, sibling loyalty and sacrifice, and
sacrifices fitness in the short run but receives indirect long- similar altruistic behaviors among members of the nuclear
run rewards that more than compensate for the immediate family. For the same reason, altruism based on kinship
sacrifice. In recent years population geneticists have eluci- might be expected to occur more frequently with non-
dated a nwnber of mechanisms that can account for the sexual than with sexual reproduction.
evolution of weak altruism. 10 Each of these mechanisms An important extension beyond kinship models of al-
depends on a particular kind of indirect pathway for the truism is found in models based on the concept of a struc-
reward of the altruistic gene. tured deme. We assume an area occupied by a population of
organisms of a particular species, and we assume this en-
Mechanisms That Select for Altruism tire population (the deme) to be divided into a number of
To determine the minimal conditions under which local populations (trait groups). We suppose the life cycle
weak altruism will survive, we describe two mechanisms of the species to be divided into two phases. During the
for altruism that have been investigated: kinship and the first phase, individuals interact only with other individuals
structured deme. in the same trait group. During the second phase, the
l(inship models provide a much discussed mechanism of entire population of the deme mixes homogeneously
weak altruism. If individuals can recognize their close kin, before settling down again into newly constituted trait
then, since the kin carry many of the same genes as the groups. For simplicity, we assume that reproduction and
altruistic individual, sacrifice that contributes to the sur- selection take place during the first phase only.
vival of the kin can increase the fitness of these common Now suppose mutation produces an altruistic gene that
genes. "Recognition" can consist, minimally, of simply causes the altruistic individual to engage in some activity
living in close propinquity to the kin and providing special of benefit to all the members of its trait group (but not to
benefits to near neighbors-no specific ability to distin- other members of the deme ), at some cost to itself. Within
guish kin from strangers is required in this version of the any given trait group, the result will be to increase the
model. fitness of the nonaltruists relative to that of the altruist.
The kinship model is likely to work (i.e., to explain However, there ·will be some variation, from one trait
increased fitness) only if it produces differential effects on group to another, in the ratio of altruists to nonaltruists.
very close kin, for even first cousins have only one-eighth Average fitness will be highest in those trait groups where
IO Anexcellent account of theories of altruism in population genetics will be there are the largest numbers of altruists (since the cost of
found in D . S. Wilson, The Natural Selection of Populations and Communities its altruistic behavior to each altruist is more than compen-
(Menlo Park, Calif., 1980 ).
sated by the altruistic reward it receives from the large
59
number of other altruists in the group). The altruists in some beneficial substance to it. If this activity costs energy
these favored trait groups can have higher fitness than the that could otherwise be used to produce progeny, then the
nonaltruists in groups with higher numbers of nonaltru- fitness of the mutant will be decreased while that of the
ists. It is easy to show rigorously that if there is a suffi- nonaltruistic inhabitants of the same pitcher will be in-
ciently large variance in the proportion of altruists among creased. Good guys do appear to finish last in this kind of
the different trait groups, the average fitness of altruists world but not, as we have seen, if there are different
will exceed the average fitness of nonaltruists, \Vith the proportions of mutants in different plants. An accidental
result that the altruistic gene will replace the nonaltruistic concentration of mutants in one pitcher can turn the ad-
in the population. The variance required to produce this vantage in favor of the mutant strain.
result is not excessive; in fact, if the altruists are distributed The apparent paradox in this result can be dispelled by
among the various trait groups with a variance as great as noting that, on average, altruists will live in trait groups
that of the binomial distribution, the altruistic gene will with a higher proportion of altruists than are present in
prevail. the trait groups inhabited mostly by non-altruists. That
There appear to be a number of systems like this in is to say, on average, altruists will be exposed to a more
nature. By way of illustration, let me describe one dis- benevolent environment in their trait groups than will
cussed by D. S. Wilson. 11 There are certain species of in- non-altruists; hence the altruists will be fitter. 12
sects that live in pitcher plants, where they find little pools In the structured deme model, the altruist receives his
ofwater in which they lay their eggs and raise their young. reward (hence is only a weak altruist) even though the
During one phase of the life cycle these insects live with a only mechanism for selecting him out for reward is his
few others oftheir kind (the trait group) in a single isolated residing in a neighborhood that may also be inhabited by
pitcher, and without interaction with the trait groups re- other altruists. But it is precisely this localization that pro-
siding in other pitchers. Later the insects swarm over a duces the "recognition" of altruists, and their consequent
much larger area (the deme), mixing more or less homo- success. Without this differential return, the altruist would
•
geneously with their cospecifics from all the trait groups not survtve.
prior to settling down again for reproduction in particular
pitchers. Recognition of the Altruist
Suppose one of the insects in a particular pitcher plant As soon as we introduce a wider range of mechanisms
undergoes a mutation leading to activities on its part that for identifying the altruist and rewarding him di:fferen-
make life better for all the insects in the pitcher it 12
The mechanism of the structured deme is analogous to Prisoner's Dilemma
changes, for example, the acidity of the water, or adds strategies described in the next chapter. For a discussion of the connection
between the two concepts, seeR. Axelrod and W. D. Hamilton, ''The Evolution
11 of Cooperation," Science 2n: 1390-96 (March 27, 1981).
Ibid., pp. 21, 35-36.
60 6I
RATIONALITY AND TELEOLO G Y RATI O NALITY AND TELEOLOGY
tially, the potential for the evolution of altruistic behaviors are thereby enabled to produce more progeny than they
(still in this sense of enlightened self-interest) increases otherwise would-that is, unless their rewards increase
enormously. We then don't have to assume that the whole their ability to obtain spouses and to rear children, and
con1petition among a single species is simply a matter of their desire to do so.
tooth and claw, and we can give an explanation of why In fact, the development of a genetic base for altruistic
some nice people survive in the world. Human beings, and behavior would seem to call for the coevolution of three
members of a number of other species as well, have a large sets of traits: (I) a tendency to indicate by our behavior our
ability to recognize individuals with whom they have pre- approval of the altruistic behavior of others (or our disap-
viously interacted and to behave differentially toward proval of selfish behavior), (2) a tendency to respond to
them on the basis of what happened in past interactions. the expressed approval or disapproval of others by feeling
Taking account of this ability, it is easy to construct guilt or shame, and (3) a tendency to reward altruism not
models that will predict the coevolution of altruistic be- only with approval but with opportunities (or respon-
haviors and the reciprocal behaviors of the recipients of sibilities) for increased procreation.
altruism . In such an interacting society, changes in the All three traits are essential. In particular, altruism can
'
behavior of any one organism toward the others can result only be expected to thrive genetically if it contributes to
in mutual reciprocal changes, and an evolution of niches fitness. As remarked earlier, it is easier to see the connec-
can be brought about in this way. Thus the high degree tion between social approval and reproductive success in
of specialization that we actually observe in society has earlier societies than in our society today. Until recent
an obvious evolutionary explanation. Let us look more times, however, that connection must have been strong,
closely at how this may come about. with withdrawal of social support not only barring access
to spouses but generally endangering family survival.
A ltruism in Social Evolution H ence, whether or not such selective pressures are exerted
In a social environment, the particular behavior of any in contemporary societies, there has been no lack of time
given individual may be rewarded or punished by its for the development of genetic traits of human responsive-
neighbors. In viewing society as a niche that may reward ness to social pressure, and of the propensity of humans to
altruistic behavior and thereby modify genetic endow- exert such pressure on each other.
ment in the direction of altruism, we must interpret "re- H owever, as we have seen, many of society's rewards to
ward" in a very particular way. The only rewards that individuals (and punishments as well) have no relation at
count for a Darwinian selection process are rewards that all to fitness. Provided the members of the society, for
increase fitness. Showering riches or glory on people will whatever evolutionary reasons, value these rewards, they
have no genetic consequences unless the rich and famous can be used to induce socially approved behavior, includ-
62
ing behavior usually regarded as "altruistic." Suppose, for Docility may be defined as the propensity to behave in
example, that in a particular society the wealthy do not socially approved ways and to refrain from behaving in
produce more progeny than the poor. Now the desire of ways that are disapproved. Docility, like any other trait, is
wealthy people for esteem may lead them to part with their presumably developed under the influence of the pro-
\vealth for charitable purposes, a behavior usually re- cesses of narural selection. That is, the level of docility will
garded as altruistic. But as long as charitable giving does tend to rise if docility contributes positively to indi~idual
not affect genetic fitness, it is not, from an evolutionary fitness, and to decline if it damages fitness. 13 Remember,
point of view, a genetically altruistic behavior. though, that docility is a propensity to behave not in spe-
Hence sociology defines altruism much more broadly cific ways but in ways defined as appropriate by the society.
than does genetics, and social rewards may support many Hence some of the behaviors imposed on the individual
kinds of socially altruistic behavior that are genetically by this mechanism may increase his fitness; others mav J
neutral. Of course, in any theory that assumes human decrease it. If his docility becomes too selective-accept-
behavior is motivated, this altruism can always be inter- ing only demands that increase his fitness-it is no longer
preted as reciprocal or weak, rather than strong, altruism. docility, hence will not receive the social rewards that are
The rich man gives money but receives acclaim. Neverthe- given for docility.
less, one does not need to demonstrate that, on average, Docility undoubtedly enhances human fitness tremen-
his fitness has been increased to reconcile his socially al- dously by allowing children to enjoy a long period of
truistic behavior with the doctrine of natural selection. dependence, and to acquire effective skills through learn-
The long-term survival of the behavior may be determined ing. It may also, of course, cause children and others to
by the fact that it contributes to the fitness of the whole engage in altruistic behaviors that do not increase their
society, hence is rewarded by the society. fitness. On average, however, the contribution to fitness of
To be sure, in a still longer run, motives like the desire a relatively high level of docility must be positive.
for acclaim would be supported by natural selection only if We can, then, without contradicting the doctrine of the
they contributed, on average, to individual fitness. But "selfish gene," introduce mechanisms for the evolutionary
notice that the linkage is not directly between acclaim and change of an entire society that impose social criteria on the
altruism, but between acclaim and -whatever behavior the selection process. What is required is that re\vard become
society wishes to acclaim. Responsiveness to acclaim is one linked to a generalized set of docile or "obeying" behav-
important form of the more general trait I previously 13Compare the discussion of flexibility and indoctrinability in E. 0. Wilson,
called docility. Let me turn specifically, then, to docility as Soci(}biology (Cambridge, Mass,, 1975). See also D. T Campbell, "On the Genetics
of Altruism and the Counterhedonic Components of Human Culture," Joumal
a basis for altruism. ofSocia/ Issues 28 (3): 21-37 (1972).
iors rather than to specific behaviors. All that is required of highest point. But that result is guaranteed only in a world
these mechanisms is that they contribute on balance to with a single hill. Ifthe organism lives in a world that is full
individual fitness. There is no requirement that each ofthe of eminences and depressions (having a topography like
specific behaviors they enjoin make such a contribution. California's, say), it can find itself on top of all sorts oflocal
As we know from the existence of social insects, there hills ·with nowhere to go but down. And so any evolution-
are other foundations than this one for the evolution of ary argument in which fitness is seen as maximized by
social dependence. However, human social behavior is evolution holds only for local maxima. Unless we think the
peculiarly intertwined with the capacity of humans for world has a very special and simple shape, we should not
thinking and learning. The connection between them lies imagine that evolution "'-'ill lead to anything properly de-
precisely in the evolution of socially responsive mecha- scribable as a global maximum.
nisms like docility. In the more complex \Vorld with many hills, we see also
that the particular path a hill-climbing effort follows can
THE MYOPIA OF EVOLUTION determine which hill the system will endeavor to climb.
J
If we are plarming an action through conscious rational Which mutations happen to occur first can determine in
calculation, and ifwe are smart enough, we can look ahead which ofmany divergent directions the system will evolve.
through some period of time at least a short period- Nothing in the theory of natural selection predicts which
and conceive of the possible consequences of the action particular hill will be climbed. Since the space of all possi-
over that period. In principle, there are no fixed limits to ble variations of organisms is vastly too large to be ex-
the time horiwns that govern the calculation of the conse- plored exhaustively in the whole time of the earth's exis-
quences of action. tence, there are many hills, probably some very high ones,
Such a look-ahead capability contrasts sharply with the that will never be climbed.
mechanisms of biological evolution, which provide only a Various schemes have been proposed for accelerating
very myopic kind of rationality. Fitness tends to select out evolution and diminishing the effects of myopia. Among
those organisms that secure an immediate short-nm ad- these are schemes that preserve not just a single fittest
vantage. The organism, from \Vhatever starting point it genetic strain, but a large number of relatively fit strains,
finds itself, climbs up the local hill of fitness. and allow them to evolve in parallel. 14 Since the "next-
best" strains, at any given time, could be climbing different
Local and Global Maxima hills than the fittest, such a scheme would prevent immecli-
In a very simple world, short-nm advantage would con-
vert continuously into long-run advantage. If you climb a 14
See (H. H olland, A daptation inNatural andArtijicial Systems (Ann Arbor,
M ich ., 1975).
hill in such a world, you eventually get to the world's
66
RATIONALITY AND TELEOLOGY RATIONALITY AND TEL EOLOGY
ate advantage from trapping the process on the slopes of a One important kind of evidence that evolution does not
small hill. However, as applied to biological evolution, a lead to optimization and stability was introduced by Dar-
parallel scheme requires some protection of the ''next- win himself, although he introduced it for a very different
best" strains from direct competition \vith the momen- reason. 15 He referred to the many known instances in
tarily fittest. To some extent, niche specialization could which an alien species, introduced into a new island or
provide that protection. continent, has run riot thanks to its superior fitness in the
We may reach the same conclusion in a slightly different new environment and has eliminated native species. He
way. The Darwinian process is a process of generating took these instances to be evidence-as they are-of the
certain possibilities and then testing them and retaining power of the forces of natural selection. They are equally
the better ones. The achievement of a global maximum evidence of the nonoptimal and nonequilibrium state of
can be guaranteed by such a process only to the extent that the world of evolving organisms. If, for example, the
all likely candidates are actually generated. As we have North American biota had reached an optimum of fitness
seen, if we consider even a single chromosome, \Vith, say, prior to the introduction of the English sparrow, the spar-
1o,ooo genes, each having nvo alleles, the history of the row could not have found a niche. Its invention, as it were,
world does not allow time enough to generate more than a would have been anticipated.
tiny fraction of the 103' 000 possibilities. The success of introduced species, then, is strong evi-
The possible relevance of global optimization becomes dence for the incompleteness of the evolutionary genera-
even more doubtful if the landscape that supports the hill- tor and the consequent inability of the system to reach an
climbing effort is not stationary. If we have a landscape of optimum. In a relative sense, the jitter survive, but there is
evolving, elaborating niches-so that hills spring up ev- no reason to suppose that they are the fittest in any abso~
erywhere, so to speak-then Vt.' e can conceive of a process ' lute sense, or that we can even define \Vhat we mean by
of evolution that doesn't lead to anything one could call an maximum fitness.
optimum, or even a stable equilibrium. Evolution in such Ifwe had lived in the Cretaceous Period, we might have
a world continually opens up new possibilities, new com- imagined that the dinosaurs were highly fit, and so they
binations. Even at the inorganic level, we see that there has were. It is widely thought that they lost their fitness when
been such an evolution. At one time conditions were such they were unable to adapt to a relatively rapid (perhaps
that only a few of the elements could exist in a stable state. even sudden) change in their environment. But can we be
Through the combinatorial processes, there gradually sure that they would not again be highly fit in some parts
evolved the great complexity that \ve see today in the bio- of our contemporary world? Perhaps we do not find them
logical and social worlds. 15
0rigin ofSpecies~ 6th ed. (1872), chap. 12.
68
RATIONALITY AND TELEOLOGY RATIONA L ITY AND TELEOLOGY
here only because they have not been reinvented, and not Science and technology bring about a broadening and a
because they are deficient in fitness for some class of deepening of our perspectives of time and space, for they
present-day niches. Ifthis is conceivably true of dinosaurs, allow us to generate alternatives more rapidly, and they
creatures that at one time \Vere actually generated by the allow better evaluation of these alternatives.
evolutionary process, it appears even more plausible as In a model of niche competition, and especially in a
applied to some subset, large or small, of the irrunense model of niche proliferation, we would expect the evolu-
domain of possible creatures that have simply never been tion of knowledge to be a vital component of the total
generated. evolutionary process. But the only goal one can see in this
evolution is the proliferation of ideas, enriching the collec-
Searching Without Final Goals tion of concepts that exist in the world. And one can talk of
It follows that the teleology of the evolutionary process that proliferatio n of knowledge as the end of the whole
I is of a rather peculiar sort. There is no goal, only a process process, an end in itself.
I of searching and ameliorating. Searching is the end. I sug-
Because traditional evolutionary theories focus on ad-
I gested earlier that evolution is sometimes regarded as .a
aptation to a fixed environment, they speak about ends.
preferred explanation for rationality precisely because It
The ends they speak about are the ends of adaptation, of
doesn't require a detailed explanation of process; the im-
maximizing .fitness to the environment. But evolutionary
portant thing is adaptation, however the adaptation is
theories that emphasize the elaboration of niches describe
brough t about. Evolution permits one to postulate the
a system that is not evolving toward any particular end,
ends without specifying the means. No\V we see that the
except perhaps some kind of growth of complexity.
matter is really the other way around. Evolution, at least in
Human beings, at least some of us, are saddened from
a complex world, specifies means (the processes of varia-
time to time by the notion that the world may be a closed
tion and selection ) that do not lead to any predictable end. space. Perhaps some of you \vere bothered, as children or
From ends without means, we have come full circle to
adults, by the fact that Columbus had already discovered
means without ends.
the New World, and that there \vasn't another world to be
Let me pursue a parallel idea with respect to human
discovered. O ne motive for space travel is that it provides
culture, and specifically \vith respect to the development
the opportunity to reach new worlds that have not yet
of science and technology. Science and technology are not
been occupied. Many people apparently yearn for a vision
things, like automobiles and pmver plants, but are the of a world that is not closed, in which there never comes a
knowledge and computational po\ver that allow us to time when we say, ''Well, now we know everything that is
create such things, and allow us also to consider \vhether
to be known, and we've done everything that is to be
and to what extent we want to manufacture and use them.
done.'' A world of evolving niches, a ' vorld of continually
70 71
RATIONALITY AN D TELEOLO GY RATIONALITY AND TELEOLOGY
increasing complexity, is a world, whatever its other prop- be rewarded through one or more of the indirect paths we
erties, in which we do not have this particular concern. have considered.
Fourth, the most powerful and prominent processes of
C ONCLUSION
competition in the real world may not be competition to
Let me try now to draw the threads together. What does '
occupy a fixed set of niches, but processes of specialization
an evolutionary viewpoint toward rational processes im- and niche elaboration. Hence we don't have to adopt a
ply? First, the acceptance of evolution (and hence of its picture of the world that is all tooth and claw.
kind of rationality) does not commit us to a viewpoint of Evolutionary theory does place strong, if abstract, lim-
global optimization, to the idea that everything is evolving itations on the class of possible worlds. It does say that a
to some stationary optimal state. It commits us only to the world can't continue to exist for any length of time in
belief that there is lots of local adaptation to the current which there are large numbers of creatures that are less
environment, and at the same time constant movement well adapted to their environments than their existing
toward a target that is itself continually moving. competitors are. The former creatures will simply disap-
Second, an evolutionary model of rationality does not pear in the competition.
commit us to a particular mechanism for the rational pro- So evolutionary theory does make predictions, at least
cess. It only suggests the directions in which the process to the extent of telling us that some sorts ofworlds are not
may move. possible worlds, hence not worlds 've should plan for. In
Third, the Darwinian version of evolution, postulating this sense, evolutionary theory is anti-utopian. But, 'vhat-
variation and selection , requires us to take very seriously ever its restrictions, it does not bind us into a straitjacket of
the notion of the selfish gene. Especially in the fi'Xed-niche consistent maximization. Nor does it require us to accept
model, it is hard to find room for anything except a kind of narrow selfishness as the only human m otive that can
•
selfishness. But a closer look shows that there are in fact survive.
powerful mechanisms, the various feedback mechanisms Finally, if we compare evolutionary theory with the
that I described earlier, that can force selfishness to be three models of human rationality• that we described in the
enlightened if it is to increase fitness. When there is appro- previous chapter, we see that it resembles most closely the
priate feedback, unenlightened selfishness can experience behavioral model. In both theories, searching a large space
problems for survival as great as those experienced by pure of possibilities and evaluating the products of that search
altruism. H ence, in a Darwinian world we must expect to are the central m echanisms of adaptation. Both theories
observe many behaviors that in ordinary speech would be are myopic. Such optimization as they achieve is only lo-
described as altruistic, although the altruism may actually cal. They are best described not as optimization processes,
72 73
RATIONALITY AND TELEOLOGY
but as mechanisms capable of discovering new possibili- 3. Rational Processes in

ties that are "improvements" over those attained earlier.
In the following chapter, we will look at the implica-
Social Affairs
tions of these characteristics of adaptive processes for the
application of rationality to human social affairs ..we will
ask what bonnded human rationality can contnbute to
choice and planning in a complex \Vorld.
H Y TALK A B ouT social decision making? Isn't it

enough to talk about individual decision making? Why do
we need social decision making at all? Today there is
abroad in the land the libertarian delusion that individuals
are some sort ofLeibnizian monads (little hard spheres of
some kind), each with a consistent independent utility
function and each interacting with its fellows only through
its knowledge of market prices. Not so. We are not mo-
nads because, among many other reasons, our values, the
alternatives of action that we are aware of, our understand-
ing of what consequences may flow from our actions-all
this knowledge, all these preferences-derive from our
interaction with our social environment. Some of our val-
ues and knowledge were sucked in with our mother's milk;
others were taken, often quite uncritically, from our social
envirorunent. Still others, perhaps, were acquired by re-
acting against that environment, but few indeed, surely, in
complete independence of it.
What is the statistical probability, in a model of inde-
pendent random variation, that in 1970 or thereabouts
several million American students should regard them-
selves as radicals, and that ten years later a comparable
75
74
RATIONAL PRO CESSE S RATIONA L PROCE SSES
majority should decide that the middle of the road is the flowers. When the owners of some vacant land along my
best part to walk on ? As this and inntunerable other phe- daily ro~t~ began, a year ago, to erect some rather ugly
nomena attest, beliefs and values are highly contagious condonunmms, my free income, my public good, was in
from one person to another. An inventory of the beliefs of that measure diminished. But that diminution was not
even the most self-consciously rational among us would reflected in the market prices of those condominiums; the
show that most of those beliefs gain their credibility, not new owners did not have to recompense me for my loss,
from direct experience and experiment, but from their any more than I have to pay for gazing at my neighbors'
acceptance by credible and "legitimate" sources in the flowers. As a result, more ugly buildings are erected than
•
SOCiety. would be if these indirect effects impinged on the decision
In our society,•
and most other modern societies, mar- makers, and gardens are more modest than \vould be opti-
kets in which people exchange goods for money play a mal if the pleasure of viewers were taken into account.
very important role. But markets do not operate in a social Externalities, positive and negative, are woven through
vacuum; they are part of a wider framework of social in- the whole fabric of society. They are important determi-
stitutions. And they o perate with many externalities: that nants of the re\vards that individuals receive, thereby
is to say, many consequences of the actions taken in market vitiating the basic libertarian argument that the state has
economies are not fully incorporated in market prices. no right to interfere with those rewards. What determines
Typical examples are the smoke that blows from your poverty or affiuence? What information about a newborn
chinmey into your neighbor's eyes, or the sound pollution child will best predict the level of comfort it will attain as
that wafts across your fence from his stereo. In every so- an adult? First, its decade of birth, second its native land,
ciety, and particularly in an urban society, many of the third the status of its family. By any reasonable theory of
ways our actions affect other people's lives and values can- causation, these largely explain why very many of us in
not be easily mediated by adjusting market prices. twentieth-century America or Sweden are affluent, and
And just as negative externalities are not appropriately why most people in China and India are poor. We were
penalized by laissez-faire markets, so the production of born at the right or wrong time and place, in families that
public goods is not appropriately rewarded. Many things could or could not give us a head start in the race.
in society that we enjoy we do not pay for. Every morning Even if we accept the argument that the products at-
in Pittsburgh, I receive some public goods (very valuable tributable \Vholly to individual effort are inviolate, that
to me) when I walk to work. I get these goods from the argument places little of the world's income beyond the
fact that my neighbors keep their la\vns nicely green and legitimate reach of taxation or control. If we believe, nev-
trimmed, and maintain lovely plantings of shrubs and ertheless, that the state should exercise great restraint in
77
'
I
RATIONAL PROCESSES RATIONAL PROCESSES
•
redistributing rewards, it must be because the prospect of the events. t~e~selves in all their detail, but only their
redistribution may weaken people's motivation to pro- pattern as It Impinges on our life, on our needs and wants.
duce, not because redistribution is ethicallv• "unfair." The stabilities and predictabilities of our environment
So it's all very well to talk about coming as close as we social and natural, allow us to cope with it within the limit~
can to this state of monadism we call individualism, but at set by our knowledge and our computational capacities.
best the approximation will be very rough indeed. All our
behavior takes place within an intricate environment of THE LIMITS OF INSTITUTIONAL RATIONALITY
institutions, and has innumerable effects on other people. In this chapter I want to discuss institutions but not
Market structures are no substitute for the whole web of with the aim of making simple heroes of them'. On the
social interactions, nor do they justify libertarian policies. cont~a~, I would like also to indicate some ways in which
Social institutions, and particularly political institu- the hmlts of our individual rationality-our individual
tions, have a bad press today. We describe political institu- ability to calculate effective courses ofaction-create prob-
tions, especially, in stereotypic fashion. We refer to them as lems for the design and operation ofour social institutions.
bureaucracies, and we take it for granted that they will My emphasis will be on how the limits on our ability to
operate inefficiently. But there is another way of looking at c~c:Uat~ ~d to behave in a reasonable fashion impose
institutions. As was argued in the first two chapters, we are similar hmits on the capabilities of our institutions.
all very limited in how fully we can calculate our actions
and in how rational we can be in a complicated world. Limits ofAttention
But institutions provide a stable environment for us that The first problem for social behavior arising from hu-
makes at least a modicwn of rationality possible. We can man psychological limits is that our political institutions
reliably expect, for example, that if we walk two blocks in particularly when they are dealing with the "big'' prob~
a certain direction, we will find a food store, and that lems,.must attend to these problems in a serial, one-at-a-
the store will still be there tomorrow. We rely on these time (~rat best a-few-at-a-time) fashion. Unfortunately,
stabilities of our institutional environment, and many the entire range of public problems that need to be dealt
others much less superficial, to be able to make reasonable with c~ot be on the active agenda simultaneously. The
and stable calculations about the consequences of our reason 1s that when questions are important and contro-
behavior. versial (and if they are important, they are usually also
Thus, our institutional environment, like our natural controversial), they have to be settled by democratic pro-
environment, surrounds us with a reliable and perceivable cedures that require the formation of majorities in legisla-
pattern of events. We do not have to understand the un- tive bodies or in the electorate as a whole. Consequently,
derlying causal mechanisms that produce these events, or the voters or the legislators must for periods oftime attend
79
simultaneously to more or less the same thing. Commit- pressures. While we were focusing our attention on infla-
tees of a legislature, of course, may operate in parallel, but tion, we forgot that economies were also supposed to be
at various points in time the entire body must spend time productive, that they were supposed to employ people in
reaching a consensus on the important issues. . useful work so that they could earn money to buy their
The difficulty of focusing attention on more than a few bread. In taking strong measures to deal with infiati~n we
issues at a time produces at least two phenomena, which, I
I
allowed unemployment to grow to levels unknown since
)
though they exist side by side, appear at first blush to be the Great Depression, and left a significant part of our
somewhat contradictory. The first phenomenon is the fad- productive resources unutilized. What then? Unemploy-
dish quality of the behavior of political institutions. To- ment began to compete with inflation for public attention,
ward the end of the 196o's, environmental problems were but with a real possibility that the employment problem
faddish. By faddish I mean nothing bad, simply that a may be solved by allowing inflation to gain new momen-
large part of the available political attention was focused tum. We seem to have a very difficult time in our society
on these matters. During that time it was possible to ob- focusing attention on two problems of this kind simul-
tain legislative approval for many kinds of ne\\r regulations taneously, even problems so closely linked that any mea-
designed to protect and improve the quality of the en- sures we take to deal with one will almost surely affect the
•
vuonment. other.
Then suddenly in 1973, with the first oil shock, we Some people in our society are less susceptible than the
learned that we might not have all the energy we wanted to majority of us to the fads I have just described; they suffer
use, or at least might have to pay a very large price for it. from a different aberration. These are the people whose
We were suddenly an energy-aware society, obsessed with political interests are essentially confined to a single issue,
the energy scarcity and particularly the scarcity of pe- whether it be abortion or the avoidance of abortion, gun
troleum. In trying to deal with this new crisis, we were control or freedom to own firearms, school prayers or
(and still _are) in serious danger of neglecting our concern freedom from religious coercion. Such people react to
with protecting the environment. In the context of our whatever happens to be on the political agenda primarily
political institutions, it seems difficult to remember that a in terms of how it affects their favorite issue. Their vote o~
society may have more than one pressing problem at a candidates for office is determined by the candidates' posi-
•
time. tions on the single issue that obsesses them .
As another example, we became very concerned with M.D. Colm, ]. G. March, and ]. P. Olsen have devel-
inflation a half dozen years ago, and soon we ·were point- oped an interesting model of this phenomenon, to which
ing all our economic policies toward reducing inflationary they have given the inelegant title of "A Garbage Can
So 81
Model of Organizational Choice." 1 Their idea is that there bon dioxide effect; and this would be perilous because, as
are permanent issues, and people permanently attached to everyone knows, the earth is exactly the right tempera-
these issues, in any society or organization. When any ture-or at least human artifacts and institutions are gen-
particular matter comes up for decision, these permanent erally adapted to the temperatures that now prevail. The
buzzing issues descend on it and take over the debate. The same point is illustrated by the inflation-unemployment
organization is never deciding what it purports to be de- example. You can't deal satisfactorily with one member of
ciding. The curriculum committee's formal question is the pair without taking account of the other.
whether requiring course X or course Y would be better But the network of interconnections among problems is
for some group of students. What is really debated is how ~ot dense. Morever, particular problems that are repeti-
requiring course X or course Y would affect the number of tive, ?r that can be anticipated, can be handled in parallel;
faculty slots in departments A and B. that 1s, once we have settled on policies for them and
Both political faddishness and one-issue politics stem agreed on procedures to implement these policies, we can
from the same underlying cause: people's inability to think set up parallel organizations to carry out the procedures.
about a lot of things at once. As a consequence, political !he Fi:e Departm~nt can go its raucous way with only
institutions that are supposed to be dealing with a whole tnterrmttent attentton from the City Council, and it can
range of problems in the society sometimes have great operate at the same time the Police Department is arrest-
difficulty in giving them balanced attention. ing burglars and the Public Works Department is filling
Happily, this difficulty is mitigated a bit by a characteris- potholes. Just as in an individual human being the heart-
tic of the world that was mentioned in the first chapter: the beat goes on regularly without anyone attending to it (it's
fact that not everything is connected closely with every- when it skips a beat that it gets attention), so the routine
thing else. The examples I picked of the difficulties derived ~eeds of a society can be handled in parallel. But adapta-
from people's limited attention span were chosen to em- tion to the novel and the unexpected does require focusing
phasize the difficulty. Energy and environment, for exam- attention on them.
ple, are much more closely linked than would be most l
r Even matters that are independent in other respects may
pairs of problems picked at random. Many of the things become interdependent where they make demands on the
one could do to solve an energy problem might create or same scarce resources. How is military security related to
intensify environmental problems. Thus, for example, if social welfare? By the fact that ifyou spend your dollars for
you burn increased quantities of fossil fuels, the average one, you don't have them to spend for .the other. For this
temperature of the earth may increase because of the car- reason, the governmental budgetary process often be-
1
comes the focus of the interdependence of the different
Administrati-ve Science Quarterly 17: 1-25 (1972).
needs, wants, and goals of the society.
I
'
82
dealing with problems of uncertainty. None of us like

Multiple Values . . . wars. In fact, in this day and age we think of wars as
Another problem deriving from the limtted ratlonahty particularly unpleasant, more unpleasant than they've ever
of individual human beings is that our political and social been in human history. But at the same time we have no
institutions have no easy or magic way of dealing with clear idea whether various actions \Ve might take will make
multiple values like those represented by the confl.icting war more probable or less probable. Will taking a hard line
goals I have been discussing. We have no automatic for- with the USSR (or a soft line) increase or decrease the
mulas, no numbers to compute, that will tell us just how probability of war? Many of us have opinions on this
much emphasis we should put on improving the environ- issue; few ofus attach high certainty to our opinions. Over
ment and just how much on meeting our energy needs. our society as a whole, such certainties as there are about
Like\vise, we have no magic way of dealing with the prob- this and similar matters are conflicting certainties; so we
lem of conflicting interests the problem that each one of have great difficulties in agreeing on a course of action.
us may weigh these values in a different way. In the face ofeven moderate uncertainty, it seems almost
The difficulty is epitomized in Kenneth Arrow's cele- hopeless to strive for "optimal" courses of action. When
brated social welfare theorem, \Vhich demonstrates, under conflicts in values exist, as they almost always do, it is not
quite plausible assumptions regarding the conditions a even dear how "optimal" is to be defined. But all is not
social welfare function should satisfy, that no such func- lost. Reconciling alternative points of view and different
tion can exist. Among the reasonable assumptions under- weightings of values becomes somewhat easier ifwe adopt
lying Arrow's theorem is the postulate that different peo- a satisficing point of view: if we look for good enough solu-
ple are to be allowed to weight their values in different tions rather than insisting that only the best solutions will
ways that we don't want to force all people to have the do. It may be possible and it often is possible to find
same set of values. If we accept assumptions like these, we courses of action that almost everyone in a society will
discover that we really don't know how to compare values tolerate, and that many people will even like, provided we
between people; it's a matter of apples and oranges. Thus, aren't perfectionists who demand an optimum.
under some plausible assumptions about the diversity we Many of the problems created by uncertainty are cap-
want to permit in human choice, we are unable to define a tured by the Prisoner's Dilemma game. T\vo persons have
social \velfare function that would solve the problem of been arrested by the police and charged with a serious
conflict of interest. crime. Without confessions the evidence is adequate only
to convict them on lesser charges, in which event both \Vill
Uncertainty
receive only moderate punishment. The police inform
A third difficulty that social organizations inherit from
each prisoner that if he confesses he will receive a still
the cognitive limitations of their members is difficulty in
milder punishment, but they \vill "thro\v the book" at his
85
/
/
partner; whereas if they both confess, each will be pun- quently adopt relatively benign strategies, and are usuallv
ished fairly severely but much less so than Prisoner A reasonably \veil rewarded for doing so. In contests b~
would be if only Prisoner B confessed. What is the rational tween different computer strategies, the strategy of tit-for-
course of action for the two prisoners? tat does particularly well. This strategy calls for taking the
Prisoner A observes that if B confesses, he (A) will be benign action until the opponent aggresses; then switch-
punished much less severely if he also confesses. But if B ing for one round to the aggressive action; and then, as
does not confess, he (A) will also lighten his own punish- soon as the opponent retreats to the benign action, doing
ment (at B's expense) by confessing. Thus, under either likewise.
3
circumstance, it is rational for A to confess. By the same Roy Radner has sho\vn formally that ifone's goal is not
reasoning, it is rational forB to confess. But if both con- to optimize but simply to reach a satisfactory level of re-
fess, they are much worse off than if neither had confessed. turn, the tit-for-tat strategy can be rational. His result
The analogy of the Prisoner's Dilemma to a nuclear provides one possible explanation for the frequent human
standoff is frighteningly close. How do we make it appear propensity to settle on this strategy. Nevertheless, the
rational to the participants to act with restraint instead of basic Prisoner's Dilemma paradigm sho,vs us how brittle
making a first strike? But the dilemma does not appear are the mechanisms of rationality in the face of uncer-
only in this extreme form; it arises in many bilateral situa- tainty, and especially in the face of uncertainty about the
tions in which there is a conflict of interest in labor actions of another party where there is partial conflict of
•
negotiations, for example, where it is almost always better Interest.
for both sides to avert a strike than to precipitate one. Yet it
may be hard to stabilize the system in the no-strike state. STRENGTHENING INSTITUTIONAL RATIONALITY
Even the assumption that the game is to be played not The institutional limitations just discussed are rather
just once, but repeatedly, does not help matters much. It basic, being rooted in the limits of individual rationality.
remains "advantageous''-at least by many definitions of Nevertheless some institutional arrangements are better
rationality to take aggressive action against the oppo- suited than others to responding rationally to problems of
nent before he can take aggressive action against you. social choice. Organizations may be created to deal \vith
However, empirical studies of humans playing repeated the interrelatedness of decisions. Market structures may
Prisoner's Dilemma games, and computer runs of se- reduce the actors' needs for comprehensive information.
quences of simulated games between players using dif- Adversary proceedings may provide some protection
ferent strategies, sho\v a less grim picrure. 2 Players fre- against neglecting or ignoring relevant facts and values.
2
See A. Rapoport and A.M. Chammah, Prisoner's Dilemma (Ann Arbor, There are a number of familiar wavs in which these and
"
Mich., 1965); R. Axelrod, "Effective Choice in the Prisoner's Dilemma," Journal 3
of Conflict Resolution 24: 13-25, 379-403 (1980). Personal communication.
86
I
other mechanisms can be used to strengthen the role of The Pare~o opt~um is not unique; there may be many
reason in social choice. I should like to conunent briefly• on such optima, different subsets of participants being fa-
some of them. vored by different solutions. However, optima are not my
concern here. I am presenting the more basic and general
Or:ganizations and Markets argument, made many years ago by Hayek, that even with-
First, the routine and repetitive requirements of a so- ~ut a~sumptions of perfect competition and perfect ra-
ciety are handled in parallel by creating specialized groups tionality markets provide a way of restricting how· much
and organizations, each of which deals with one set of \Ve need to know about everyone else's business in order to
issues while the others are dealing with the remainder. If it do our own. The market mechanism may provide a way to
were not so obvious, we might label this the "fundamental ~each tolerable arrangements in a society even if optim~lity
theorem of organization theory." IS beyond reach.
Second, over a wide range of matters, we can use mar- Thus the market can be viewed as one of the mecha-
kets and pricing to limit the amount of information each nisms that enable hwnan beings having limited informa-
person must have about the decisions he is going to make. tion and computational capacity to operate more or less
When I go to the local supermarket, I can decide what to intelligently. Today we see the interesting spectacle of the
buy and what I am going to eat without knowing very socialist nations dealing with some of their problems of
much about how Wheaties and oatmeal are made, or what planning and management by a broader introduction of
the manufacturer's problems are. I need only know the pricing and market mechanisms. They are trying to dis-
price at which he is offering these commodities to me. For sociate the issue ofmarkets from the issue of public versus
this reason, markets and prices have proved to be ex- private ownership in order to use prices as a major tool for
tremely powerful mechanisms in modern societies for allocating resources. To be sure, when we talk about such
helping each of us to make decisions without having to uses of the price mechanism, we must keep in mind that
learn a whole lot of detail about other people who may be the externalities discussed earlier are rarely absent. Mar-
involved. All the relevant information is summed up in the kets can only be used in conjunction with other methods
price we have to pay in order to make the transaction. ofs.ocial control and decision making; they do not provide
This is a very different argument for markets than the an mdependent mechanism for social choice.
optimization argument one finds in some economics :Ve could b~ more ingenious than we are today in using
books. Under very stringent assumptions, involving per- pnce mecharusms effectively where externalities are pres-
fect competition as well as perfect rationality, markets can ~nt. Economists have made many suggestions along these
be shown to lead to a Pareto optimrun-that is, an equi- hnes-for example, setting penalties for emitting smoke
librium such that not everyone's welfare can be increased ~at would _be commensurate at th~ marg.in_with the dam-
simultaneously; for some to gain further, others must lose. , age and nuisance of the smoke. Still, even 1f we extended
88
such procedures to their practical limits, there ':vould re- right to become a party to any process must be defined
main many market externalities-either negative exter- broadly enough so that all who will be significantly af-
-
nalities or public goods . Some, for example those ':vith fected by the decision have an opportunity to contribute
important consequences for health or public safety, \vould their evidence and voice their preferences. In our own
be subject, as today, to direct limitations or regulations. society the notion of interdependence has been increas-
ingly recognized; the courts have steadily broadened the
Adversary Proceedings rules determining who may be heard in any particular
Adversary proceedings are another way of strengthen- case, even one that begins as a dispute between two spe-
ing rationality. I suppose we can call many legislative pro- cific parties. In this way, the courts take account of exter-
cesses, especially legislative hearings and debates, adver- nalities analogous to those that arise in the workings of a
sary proceedings. But we use the adversary process most market system.
•
extensively in our judicial system, where the criterion for
rationality is a most interesting one. The basic criterion of Technical Tools for Decision
justice, which surely aims at satisficing rather than op- Finally, there has been an important development in the
timizing, is that specified procedures be followed. The last thirty years in the technical means available for making
underlying assumption is that if these procedures are fol- decisions about situations with many variables and many
lowed, then, in some long-run sense, the decisions reached interconnections among them. These new tools are usu-
will be tolerable, or even desirable. Hence in legal institu- ally assigned to the disciplines of operations research and
tions we tend to evaluate outcomes not so much directlv as management science and today to artificial intelligence
'
in terms of procedural fairness. as well. It is a special characteristic of these tools that they
Adversary proceedings are like markets in reducing the allow us to formulate, model, and solve problems with
information that participants must have in order to behave thousands ofvariables and thousands of constraints on the
rationally. Thus they provide a highly useful mechanisn1 variables, and to take account of the interactions of all
for systems in which information is distributed \videly these variables and constraints in arriving at a solution.
and in which different system components have different One serious limitation on the applicability of operations
goals. Each participant in an adversary proceeding is sup- research and management science techniques is that they
posed to understand thoroughly his own interests and the require problems to be quantified in such a way that
factual considerations relating to them. He need not unknown mathematical techniques become applicable to
derstand the interests or situations of the other partici- them. For example, to employ linear programming for
pants. Each pleads his own cause, and in doing so, contri - solving a problem, the problem first has to be translated
utes to the general pool of knowledge and underst~ , ·ng. (or folded, or beaten) into a form that expresses it in terms
In order for adversary proceedings to \vork wel~ the of linear equations, linear constraints, and a linear payoff
90 91
RATIONAL PROCESSES
RATIONAL PROCESSES
function. If the world doesn't have these properties, or takes as its inputs-the data, the knowledge, and the theo-
can't be approximated adequately in this way, linear pro- ries that it uses as its givens. Unless those inputs are valid,
gramming won't work. Artificial intelligence techniques, nothing is gamed by manipulating them. If you put bad
by contrast, do not usually require problems to be mathe- data or incorrect kno\vledge into a human thought pro-
matized, but can deal with qualitative considerations or cess, you will get wrong conclusions out the far end.
situations that are wholly qualitative. Consequently, they
are substantially extending the range of problems in which The Mass Media
the modern computer can increase the power of human How adequate is the knowledge base for public policy
analysis. · decisions? All of us, I think, are prepared to point out the
Despite various limitations, these new methods have vagaries of the mass media, and to describe what we don't
allowed us to look at some of the difficult problems in our like about the particular media that displease us most.
world with a concern for side effects and interactions that There seems to be general agreement that there are serious
simply could not have been encompassed before these difficulties with the media as major sources ofthe facts and
tools were introduced shortly after World War II. If \Ve do
J
knowledge we use in the public decision-making process.
find solutions (as I think we will) for the difficult problems Perhaps the most fundamental difficulty is that the me-
of environment and energy-solutions, that is, that han- dia rarely look beyond the news and the fads of the present
dle both sets of problems simultaneously it \vill be be- moment. They emphasize the newsworthy, the sensa-
cause we are able to model the main interactions among tional, the novel. TV is perhaps even a worse offender than
the many facets of these problems, and hence to think the older media on this dimension because it can create
clearlv about tradeoff's.
J
not only a local trend, but a national or international focus
The new analytic tools mark at least one modest step of I ofattention. But even the older media tend to traffic in
!
progress, and provide at least one reason for optimism news rather than in understanding. For example, a person
about our capacity to deal with tlle...increasingly compli- seeking a factually grounded view of American foreign
cated problems which the world is presenting to us. policy toward China is much better advised to read one
or two good books than to read everything he can find
THE PUBLIC INF ORMATION BASE about China in the New York Times over the next year. The
The other major concern in getting our institutions to newspaper will give him a miscellany of transient facts.
make reasonable decisions on big policy questions is the The books will provide a solid, and only slowly changing,
adequacy of our knowledge and information. In the first framework that will make current events coherent and
chapter, I argued that the effectiveness of reason as a tool understandable.
for making decisions depends critically on the facts that it What one really needs to know in order to have an
J
92 93
l
informed view on such a topic is some understanding of informed. But we do have \vays of dealing with that diffi-
Chinese institutions and Chinese history precisely the culty, in matters of public policy as in matters of medicine
kinds of information that are hard to come by in the peri- or plumbing: \Ve rurn to experts. When we can't establish
odical media. The media are busy telling what the action is the relevant facts, we look for an expert \Vho knows them
today, this week. But what's happening today in China is and we listen to what he has to say. •
Sometimes we even
just the product of underlying characteristics and trends in take his advice ·without asking to have it fully explained.
Chinese society, and can't begin to be interpreted correctly How do we find experts who are really expert? How do
by persons who haven't read the right ·books. we accredit and legitimate the experts? Although we don't
The transient character of most of the information ob- always do it very \Veil, our society and other developed
tainable from the media would be of little consequence if societies have been learning how to do it better. For exam-
attention ·were not a terriblv scarce resource. The time
,;
ple, the United States Congress has been turning more
spent reading the newspaper or watching TV is then no and more for information and advice to the National
longer available for acquiring conceptual frameworks Academy of Sciences and its affiliated organizations, the
and backgrouJJ.d-.information-the very information that National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medi-
\Vould make the reports ofmore transitory events intelligi- cine, and the National Research Council. This group of
ble. I suppose a society that became highly sensitive to the institutions is in a position to identify and draw on most of
scarcity of attention might modify its reading habits to the scientific, medical, and engineering expertise in our
allocate attention more efficiently. Although in our own country on any topic relevant to current public policy
society complaints about the flood of information are deliberations.
conunon enough, there is little evidence ofpeople deliber- But how are we sure that these (or any others) are the
ately designing strategies to protect themselves from the right experts? And how do we keep the experts honest-
transient and the evanescent. It seems a novel idea to many how do we make sure their own interests do not color the
people that news need not be ingested simply "because it is advice they give? At one level, the problem of interest-
there." colored advice is solved easilv, •
at another level not easily
•
at
all. It is easy to require that experts disclose financial ties or
Experts professional responsibilities that might lead to a conflict of
But even if we banished information of transitory value interest in providing information and advice. In calling on
from our diets, how would we choose our books? After experts in our society today, as when the government seeks
the responsible citizen reads the books on China, he has to advice through the organizations named above, such a
read one on Afghanistan, and there is no end of books. We requirement of disclosure is routine.
all feel the ovenvhelming difficulty of being appropriately But there is a more subtle question of conflict of interest
94 95
I
RATIONAL PROCESSES l
RATIONAL PROCESSES
I
that derives directly from human bounded rationality. The I Let's appoint an impeccable blue-ribbon conunission to
fact is, if we become involved in a particular activity and
I
find the facts." On the contrary, the almost universal reac-
devote an important part of our lives to that activity, we tion was, ''Why are those irresponsible fellows shooting
will surely assign it a greater importance and value than we off their mouths?"
would have prior to our involvement with it. If a man
I I was relatively close to these events as a member of the
makes a living designing nuclear power plants, it is a good
bet that he would be unlikely to sign a petition against
I President's Science Advisory Committee at that time, and
recall being naively surprised at the insensitivity of the
building a nuclear plant in your town. You probably "insiders" to the depth of public concern. Many of the
would not even bother to ask, but would look elsewhere "insiders" were my friends or acquaintances, persons of
for a signer. high integrity, whom I did not suspect of venality in any
It's very hard for us, sometimes, not to draw from such form. What blinded them to the need for an impartial look
facts a conclusion that human beings are rather dishonest at the facts was the "knowledge" they had acquired,
creatures. Whose food they eat, his songs they sing. Yet through years of association with the development of nu-
most of the bias that arises from human occupations and clear energy; the conviction that this technology was a
preoccupations cannot be described correctly as rooted in boon to mankind, opening up ne\v kinds of productivity,
dishonesty-which perhaps makes it more insidious than relieving us of our dependence on exhaustible fossil fuels ,
if it were. and surely not creating any unusual dangers to health that
Human beings don't see the whole \Vorld; they see the had not already been foreseen and dealt with. The depth of
little part of it they live in, and they are capable of making their commitment prevented them from considering ob-
up all sorts of rationalizations about that part of the world, jectively whether the evidence \vas on their side.
mostly in the direction of aggrandizing its importance. When an issue becomes highly controversial-when it
Let me pursue the nuclear power example a little further, is surrounded by uncertainties and conflicting values-
for it provides many excellent illustrations of the phenom- then expertness is very hard to come by, and it is no longer
enon. More than ten years ago, when two whistle blowers easy to legitimate the experts. In these circumstances, we
at Livermore Laboratory produced some statistics alleg- find that there are experts for the affirmative and experts
edly showing that health dangers from radiation in the for the negative. We cannot settle such issues by turning
vicinity of nuclear plants were substantially greater than them over to particular groups of experts. At best, we may
had been thought, the first reaction of people associated convert the controversy into an adversary proceeding in
with nuclear power was to close ranks. With fe\v excep- which we, the laymen, listen to the experts but have to
tions, they did not say, "Let's look into this more closely. judge betwe_en them.
97
I
unless we take the negative evidence from the revolutions

J(nowledge of Political Institutions as decisive.
Among the deficiencies in our knowledge that interfere With respect to other important issues, however, there
with our effectiveness as participants in the political pro- does exist scientific kno\vledge that could help us design
cess are inadequacies in our understanding of political l
and choose more effective political institutions and proce-
institutions themselves. There are a lot of things only dures, knowledge that political scientists have been accu-
partly understood about human beings that we would mulating and testing for some time. In our society, we
really need to know to be effective and responsible partici- ·have an unfortunate habit of labeling our political institu-
pants in the political process. tions in two different ways. On the days when we are
For example, the correct design of political institutions happy with them, we call them democracy; on the days
depends on a sound appreciation of the perfectibility of when we are unhappy with them, we call them politics. We
man. Certain political and economic arrangements will don't choose to recognize that "politics," used in that pe-
work only if all or most human beings placed under those jorative way, is simply a label for some ofthe characteristics
arrangements will behave altruistically, or at least con- of our democratic political institutions that we happen not
formably with social needs. The New Society must pro- to fancy. Neither "politics" nor ''democracy'' wholly de-
duce a New Man. In our lifetime at least two major social scribes those institutions, and we solve no problems by
revolutions, the Russian and the Chinese, have been pred- labeling their wanted and unwanted aspects in this partic-
icated on the assumption that by changing institutions ular wav• .
one can change human behavior. Most of us have con- Some years ago I accepted the chairmanship of a com-
cluded that neither revolution produced the desired mittee charged with reviewing Pennsylvania's controver-
changes in behavior. Yet the question persists: is there i
sial milk price control law. Some of the other members of
some kind of change in social institutions that will, in fact, the committee were dairy farmers, and others were milk
change human beings in fundamental ways-make them, dealers or officials of the milk truck drivers' union. There
say, more altruistic or obedient to law? Debates on the were also two members who were supposed to represent
treatment of criminals usually hinge on just this question. consumers, and two "public members" with no direct in-
The evolutionary arguments of Chapter 2 suggest that terest in the milk industry. Around the committee table at
•
behavior can indeed be changed by institutions, at least to meetings hardly an hour ever passed without one of my
the extent of increasing or decreasing weak altruism. The committee members pounding the table and inveighing
possibility of producing permanent deep changes-in against "politicians." At one time or another virtually all
docility, say is more problematic. Today there is little the members indulged in this behavior, and they were
empirical foundation for clear answers to these questions completely unselfconscious about it. It never occurred to
99
them that as members of that committee (much more as toward a candidate, he will interpret the candidate's state-
lobbyists, \vhich many ofthem were also) they were politi- ments, whatever they may be, as agreeing with his own
cians. For them, "politician" was simply a cussword, a position on the issue; whereas if the viewer is disposed
term they couldn't imagine applying to themselves. unfavorably toward the candidate, he will interpret the
I
This naivete about politics and politicians pervades our same statements as disagreeing with his position.
society. It is very damaging to our political institutions. So here we all are, glued to our television sets, listening
We would do well to view these institutions with greater to campaign speeches and supposing that somehow or
sophistication; we would do well to recognize that they other we are obtaining information relevant to our deci-
have warts. We can try to remove the warts, but we must sion how to vote. We even have a slogan to justify our
recognize that certain kinds of political phenomena-the conduct: "Vote for the man, not for the party." Suppose
attempt to influence legislation or the administration of that we are interested in predicting what decisions a suc-
laws, the advocacy of special interest-are essential to the cessful candidate will make during his term of office, and
operation of political institutions in a society where there that in particular we wish these decisions to be as nearly in
is, in fact, great diversity of interest, and where most peo- accord with our own values as possible. Is what we can
ple are expected to pay some attention to their own private learn from television or other media about the candidate's
interests. The activities we call "political" are simply an- personal qualities a better or worse predictor of his subse-
other manifestation of the propensity of human beings to quent behavior than his party affiliation? All the evidence I
identify with personal goals and to attempt to realize these know of, and there is a good deal of it, indicates that party
goals in a lawful manner. affiliation is by far the more reliable predictor.
Related to our fallacious beliefs about politics and de- The growing pride of voters in being "independent" of
mocracy are some notions we hold about the basis of party loyalties has greatly weakened political parties in the
voting. There is a widespread belief in our society (or at United States. Not only has it increased the vulnerability
least behavior consistent with such a belief) that after of the political system to demagoguery, but it has signifi-
watching and listening to a candidate on television, one cantly increased the difficulty of formulating and enacting
can make predictions about how he will act if elected to public policies, and in particular offorming majorities that
office. On the contrary, there is a large body of evidence lie close to the mainstream of voters' preferences. For
from social-psychological experiments that human beings nearly two centuries, political parties have served as rea-
watching other human beings (particularly watching them sonably efficient mechanisms in the complex process of
emit words that are intended to be influential) are exceed- compromise and bargaining by which majorities are
ingly poor predictors ofwhat these \vords mean and what formed and public policy formulated. They are so no
they imply in terms of behavior. There is good evidence, longer. The illusion of monadism that underlies the con-
for example, that if a viewer is already favorably disposed ception of the "independent voter," in destroying the be-
100 101
RATIO NAL PROCESSES RATIONAL PROCESSES
havio ral predictability sustained by party organization, public policy? The answer varies, case by case. Let me
has lowered the level of civic rationality.
- pro~ose a triad of examples that more or less span the
I wish I had a list of impeccable prescriptions for re- contmuum.
sponsible citizen behavior in a democracy. Students who First, there are the very crucial, first-priority problems
?~war and peace. H ere \Ve have reason for pessimism, for
li
have had the standard university introductory courses in
political science and economics appear to behave with no .; ' lt IS not clear what kinds of information or knowledge we
greater sophistication in the political arena than voters could gather or what kinds of scientific research we could
who have not taken such courses. That may be a comment undertake that would make it easier than it no\v is to
on the courses, or on the incorrigibility of students. penetrate the confusions and complexities of policies for
Whichever way it is interpreted, it is clear that we haven't maintaining peace. It is particularly difficult if we have
found effective means for civic education. We haven't dis- several goals, as most of us have. We want to preserve
covered a wav to use the limited time and attention people peace; we also want to preserve essential characteristics of
'
are willing to devote to their civic education to produce a our institutions and of our freedoms. I find it difficult to
reasonable level of sophistication about hovv our political .
~ .;., imagine what sorts of improvements in our facrual knowl-
.•..'".
institutions work. We don't know how voters can draw edge would make these problems less perplexing.
effectively on the information that is available to them The main source of difficulty is that questions of \Var
about issues and candidates-or how they should go and peace involve not only uncertainty about our own
about selecting experts whom they will trust. behavior illlder a variety of circumstances that are hard to
Ignorance about the political process has bred cynicism, imagine in advance, but also uncertaint:v about the behav-
• J
of which the pejorative use of "politics" is just one symp- tors of other nations and the kind of outguessing game in
tom. The pedestal on which "democracy'' is placed only \ which we are engaged. I don't know how this could be
sharpens the contrast ben:veen ideal and reality. Probably approached in a scientific way with our present scientific
the best antidotes for this cynicism are education in a knowledge.
realistic picture of democratic political· institutions, and But when ~'e turn to my second example, the pro blem
normative discussion of realizable goals for such institu- of energy and environment, we find a whole gamut of
tions. But I see little sign of either in the media or in research and development procedures that can not onlv
educational institutions. help us bette~ understand the kno\vn technological alte;-
natives and their consequences, but also widen the range
Is ](nowledge the Answer?
of alternatives to be considered. We know a great deal
Do we have available to us (if we get access to it and
better, for example, than we did fifteen years ago, the
would use it) the knowledge we need in order to make
effects on atmosphere and climate of increasing our pro-
reasonably sensible decisions about the major issues of
duction of carbon dioxide, or the effects of acid rain on
102
103
plant growth and lake populations. And we know a great rational-expectationist-or the budget-balancer, or the
deal better how to correct these problems. monetarist, or the Keynesian. This is the principal area of
My third example, economic policy, lies som~where in disagreement today among different schools of economic
the middle of my scale of optimism. The reason 1s that the thought. It's not a very large area, but it occupies an un-
operation of the economy depends critically on .human comfortably strategic location in the structure of eco-
expectations about the future and human re~cttons to nomic theory and its application to public policy.
those expectations, and this is an exceedingly difficult do- As these three examples illustrate, the vigorous pursuit
main to study. . of research and development in the natural and social sci-
It is fashionable today to say that if there are five dif- ences can give us important help in those areas of decision
ferent economists in a room, there are five different opin- where knowledge is a prime limiting factor. But scientific
ions about how the economy operates and how to im- knowledge is not the Philosopher's Stone that is going to
prove its operation. In a way, that is true. By proper solve all these problems.
selection of the experts (requiring or not, as you please,
CONCLUSION
that all hold doctorates in economics), you can get any
advice you want about national economic policies. Yet the I have been proposing that human reason is less a tool
disagreement among economists is mostly ~ted to a for modeling and predicting the general equilibrium of
small number of critical issues and focuses ma1nly on the the \Vhole world system, or creating a massive general
question of how people form expecta~ions about ~e fu- model that considers all variables at all times, than it is a
ture. A supply-sider will tell you that 1fyou make mvest- tool for exploring specific partial needs and problems. I see
ment profitable, either by making ~oney cheap ~r _by relatively little profit from the Olympian view implied by
reducing taxes or in some other way, Investment wtll In- the SEU model of rationality. The evolutionary argument
crease substantially. A rational-expectationist will tell you I developed in the second chapter against the viability of
that people cannot be fooled about the future; t~eir expec- pure altruism suggests that in our formation of public
tations represent realistic estimates of the location of the policy and in our o\vn private decision making it is proba-
equilibrium toward which the economic system is mov- bly reasonable to assume, as a first approximation, that
ing. A Keynesian makes still different assumptions about people will act from self-interest. Hence a major task of
•
expectations. any society is to create a social environment in \vhich self-
Which is correct? Unfortunately we don't know. We interest has reason to be enlightened. If we \Vant an invisi-
simply don't have the facts about how human beings for~ ble hand to bring everything into some kind of social
their expectations and act on them that we would need 1n consonance, we should be sure, first, that our social in-
order to test the hypotheses of the supply-sider or the stitutions are framed to bring out our better selves, and
105
!04
RATIONAL PROCES SE S RATIONAL PROCESSE S
second, that they do not require major sacrifices of self- than Utopia Now (or even Utopia Tomorro\v) . It is more
interest by many people much of the time. reasonable than supposing that those things we c·an hu-
Reason, taken by itself, is instrumental. It can't select man problems h ave associated with them some other
our final goals, nor can it mediate for us in pure conflicts things called solutions, and that once we have discovered
over what final goal to pursue we have to settle these the solutions the problems will go away.
issues in some other way. All reason can do is help us reach In accomplishing the more limited goal, will an appeal
agreed-on goals more efficiently. But in this respect, at to enlightened self-interest suffice? That depends on ·what
least, we are getting better. To som e modest extent, the constraints we put on the enlightenment. Success depends
po\vers of human reason have themselves evolved, espe- on our ability to broaden human horizons so that people
cially our ability to deal with simultaneous relations, and will take into account, in deciding 'A'hat is to their interest,
these new advances in our tools of reasoning can be said to a wider range of consequences. It depends on whether all
represent a qualitative change in human thought. Just as of us come to recognize that our fate is bound up with the
the ability to put our thoughts on paper enabled us, with fate of the whole world, that there is no enlightened or
the invention of \Vriting, to tackle proble1ns of ne\v com- even viable self-interest that does not look to our living in a
plexity, so we have advanced and continue to advance in harmonious way with our total environment.
our ability to predict the consequences of our actions and
to design new alternatives. These advances still leave us far
short of being able to handle all of the world's complex-
ities. But the world-fortunately, even the contemporary
world-is mostly empty, most things being only weakly
related to other things, and it is only ,vith such a \vorld that
human reason needs to cope.
There is no danger of reaching a steady state in our
society, or any other society, in which all problems have
been solved. Such a state \vould in any event be rather dull.
J
It ·w ould be quite enough to keep open for our descen-

dants as wide a range of alternatives as our ancesto rs left
for us, to solve enough of the problems that con1e along so
that our children and our children's children \Vill not find
themselves boxed in anv more narrowlv than \Ve were.
; i
That seems to me a more realizable goal for social policy
!06 10 7
I
Index
•
Index
Adaptive mechanism, 55 74; emotions in, 21; and con-

AdministrativeBehavior, 5, 13 flict of interest, 95-96
Adversary proceedings, 90-91 Brain, 24; hemispheres of, 24f,
Affluence, 77 28; search processes in, 26, 28f
Age of Reason, 3 Bureaucracies, 78
Agricultural society, 43
Alternatives for choice, 12, 13 Campbell, D. T., viii, 40, 65n
Altruism, 4, 57-66, 72- 73; Carson, Rachel, 30
weak, 58, 98 Chamrnah, A. M., 86n
Altruistic gene, 59, 6o Chekov, Anton, 32
Archimedes, 5 Chess, 25, 26, 28
Aristotle, 33 Child prodigies, 28
Arrow, K., vii, 84 Choosing actions, 7. See also De-
Artificial intelligence, 22, 91- cision making
92 Chromosomes, 4-7, 48, 68
Artificial systems, 5 Cognition: hot and cold, 29- 32
Attention, 21, 29 - 30, 79-83- See Cognitive psychology, 22
also under Emotion Cohn, M. D., 81
Axelrod, R., 6m, 86n Cold reasoning, 10, 30- 31
Axioms, s Columbus and the New World,
Ayer, A. J., 7n 71
Commonsense reasoning, 22
Behavioral model of rationality, Computational capacities, 22. See
3-5, 17-23, 28f, 30, 34; com- also Bounded rationality•
pared with natural selection, Conflict of interest, 95-96
39-4-0, 73 Creativity, 24, 27
Bounded rationality, 4 , 19-23, Cretaceous Period, 69
III
INDEX INDEX
Cultural evolution, see Social Holt, C. C., 14, xsn Laissez faire, 76
and-error in, 42; Darwinian,
evolution Homer, 33 Lamarckian evolution, 49, 56
42-49; and energy utilization,
Cultural inheritance, 56 Hot reasoning, IO, 30, 32 Leibnizian monads, 75
52-53; cultural and social, 53-
Culturgen, 54 Humanities, 33, 34 Lewontin, R. C., viii
57; altruism in, 57-66; myopia
Hutchinson, G. E., 45n Libertarianism, 75-78
of, 66-72
Darwin, Charles, 53, 69 Limits of reason, 5-7. See also
Experts, 94-97, 104
Darwinian evolution, 39-49, 54, Identification, 9-10, 95-97 Bounded rationality
Externalities, 77, 89-90
62, 68, 72 Incompleteness of logic, 7 Livermore Laboratory, 96
Extinction, 42, 47 •
Decision making: SEU theory Individualism, 78 Lucretius, 33

of, 12-17; behavioral theory of, Induction: principles of, 6 Lumsden, C. J., 54n, 55
Fallibility of reasoning, 6
17-23; intuitive theory of, Industrial society, 43
Fitness, 42-44, 46-47; in social
23-29; versus instinct, 38; so- Inference rules, 5, 6 Malthus, Thomas, 53
evolution, 54-57; and altru-
cial, 75-107; tools for, 91-92; Inflation, 80-83 Management science, 91
ism, 59-66; and optimality,
information for, 92-105 Instinct, 38 March, J. G., vii, 81
69-71
Degradation of energy, 51-52 Institutional environment, Markets, 75-78, 87-90
Flexibility and fitness, 55-56, 65
Deme, 59-61 78 Mass media, 93-94
Formal models of rationality, 3
Democracy, 99f, 102 Institutional rationality: limits Maxima: local and global, 66, 68
Freudian theory, 32, 33
Discrimination net, 26 of, 79-87; strengthening, Maximizing expected utility, 13.
Friedman, M., 38
DNA, 48f 87-92; and publicinforma· See also Subjective expected
Docility, 55, 64-66, 98-99 rion, 92-102; and knowledge, utility
"Garbage Can Model" ofdecision
Durkheim, Emile, 44 102-5 Mavr, E., 450
making, 81-82 •
Institutions, see Political institu· Mechanisms, 72, 87-89, 101
Generations, 43, 56
Economic policy, 104 tions; Social institutions MeinKampf, 8-ro, 30
Genes, 48, so, 54; altruistic, 59f;
Education, see under Emotion Interrelated values, II Microenvironment, 46
selfish, 65, 72
Emotion, 21, 29-34; and atten- Intuition, 24-34, 35; and emo- Modigliani, F., 14, 15n
Genotype, 49-51 •
tion, 29-30; in education, tl00,29-30 Monadism, 40, 48, 59, 78, 101
Global and local maxima, 66-
31-34 Intuitive rationality, 23-29 Mozart, 28
70
Energy: utilization, 51-53; and Goals: Nazi, 8-xo; in evolution, Mutation, 40, 48, 67
environment, 82-83, 92, 70-72 Joint probability distribution, 13, Muth, J. R., 14, 15n
103-4 Godel, Kun, 7 14 Myopia of evolution, see under
Enlightened self·interest, 58, Gravitational theory, 20 Judgment, 24, 26; acquiring of, Evolution
105-6 Great Depression, 8r 27
Equilibrium, 39, 49, 51, 68, 88- National Academy of Sciences, 95
89; and disequilibrium, 69, Kahnemann, D., 17n Natural selection, 45, 49-50,
Hamilton, W D., 6m
106 Kinship models, 58-59 64-69. See also Fitness
Hayek, F. von, 89
Eugenics, 56 Knowledge in social decision Nearly empty world, 20
Hayes,J. R.,28
Evolution: as rational adapta- making, 92-105 Nelson, Richard, 41
Hitler, Adolf, 8-10
Koestler, Arthur, 32 New Man, 98
tion, 35, 37-42, 70-72; trial- Holland, J. H., 67n
112 II3
INDEX INDEX
..
New Society, 98 Rationality, 79, 87, 105. See also ' Uncertainty, 13-14, 84-87, 97 . Values, 7-12, 19; multiple, 84, 97
• .'
Niches, 44-47, 52-53, 68, 70-73 Bounded rationality; Decision See also Probability Variation, 70, 72, 75
... J
Normative statements, 6 making distributions

Reasoning processes, s-6 '
Nuclear energy, 96 Unemployment, 81, 83 War and Peace, 32
Nuclear war, 86 Recognition processes, 25-27 Uses of reason, 3 Wilson, D. S., ssn, 6o
Utility• function, 12-15, 18, 29 Wilson, E. 0., viii, 54n, 65n
Odum, E. P., 52 Satisficing, 85, 90 Utopia, 107 Winter, S., 41
Olsen, J. P., 81 Savage, L. J., 12n
Olympian rationality, 3, 23, 29- Science and technology, 70f
30, 37-38, 105 Sciences of the Artificial, s, 22
Optimism, 104 Search behavior, 70-72
Optimization, 73, 85, 88, 90; Selection, 39-42, 70, 72
global and local, 68, 69, 72, 73 Selfish gene, 65, 72
Organizations, 82, 84-85, 87-90 SEU, see Subjective expected
Origin ofSpecies) 69n utility
Simon, H. A., 14, 15n
Pareto optimum, 88-89 Social behavior, 66
Phenotype, 49-51 Social evolution, 53-56, 62-66.
Picasso, Pablo, 30 See also Evolution
Political faddishness, 8off Social institutions, 84, 98
Political institutions, 79-83, 93- Social welfare, 83, 84
97; knowledge of, 98-102 Society: rationality in, 75-107
Political parties, 101 Sociobiology, 4 t
•
Politics, 99-102 Sociology, 64 '
Poverty, 77 Specialization, 73
President's Science Advisory Sperry, R., 24
Committee, 97 Structured deme, 59-61
Price mechanism, see Markets Subjective expected utility, 12-
Prisoner's Dilemma game, 85-87 17
Probability distributions, 13-14 Survival of the fittest, 41ff,
Problem solving, 30, 91 49
Programmability, 55
Proust, Marcel, 32 Tastes and values, 12
Public information base, 92-105 Teleology: and evolutionary
process, 70
Radner, R., 87 Tit-for-tat strategy, 87
Rapoport, A., 86n Trait group, 6o ••
'.
Rational expectations, 104 Tversky, A., vii, 17
114 115
'•
•

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Reason in Human Affairs

The Harry Camp Lectures at

The Harry Camp Memorial Fund

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1983

T H E NATURE of human reason-its mechanisms, its

. Rational Processes in Social Affairs 75

Q N E KIND of optimism, or supposed optimism, ar-

was Rachel Carson's Silent Spring so influential? The

THE PREVIous chapter, in which I examined three

EVOLUTION VIEWED AS RATIONAL ADAPTATION

It is this view of rationality-from the standpoint of its

assume in a human population that all persons of a

but as mechanisms capable of discovering new possibili- 3. Rational Processes in

H Y TALK A B ouT social decision making? Isn't it

dealing with problems of uncertainty. None of us like

unless we take the negative evidence from the revolutions

It ·w ould be quite enough to keep open for our descen-

That seems to me a more realizable goal for social policy

Adaptive mechanism, 55 74; emotions in, 21; and con-

Decision making: SEU theory Individualism, 78 Lucretius, 33

Normative statements, 6 making distributions

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