Los indicadores socioeconómicos y su medición

The thought under consideration is that part of morality is concerned with Prisoner’s- Dilemma type cases. This thought is controversial. Ken Binmore, for instance, claims that game theorists ‘think it just plain wrong to claim that the Prisoner’s Dilemma embodies the essence of the problem of human co-operation.’2 _{According to Binmore, the Prisoner’s}

Dilemma is a neat representation of a situation in which defection is always the rational strategy, regardless of how altruistic we are feeling. Kantian (or other constructivist) accounts

which attempt to show how it can be rational to co-operate (whether simply as a constraint on practical reason, or in an attempt to maximise joint goods) are entirely misguided. Binmore presents a ‘knock-down refutation of this nonsense’, which runs as follows.3 First, note that elements of the pay-off matrix which indicate the possible outcomes of the Prisoner’s Dilemma are supposed to represent gains – or, as Binmore has it, preferences. It makes more sense to talk of preference-ordering, rather than absolute gains, since the prisoners may, for instance, be entirely indifferent to money or have peculiar, or very different, attitudes towards captivity.4 _{And the way in which we detect people’s preferences is by examining the choices}

that they make. So if ‘co-operation’ were rational, then it would be preferred (since both agents are assumed to be rational), and hence represented by a higher pay-off in each case (regardless of whether the opponent ‘co-operates’ or ‘defects’). But the essence of the

Prisoner’s Dilemma is that it is in A’s interest to defect when B defects, and to defect when B co-operates. Hence, showing that it is rational to co-operate merely shows that the Prisoner’s Dilemma is no longer a Dilemma – it is a ‘Delight’. Put more simply: if each prisoner would choose to co-operate even if the other were to defect, then the pay-offs change, and there is no dilemma.

Does this argument conclusively demonstrate that it can never be rational to co-operate in PD situations? In the narrow sense in which Binmore understands the contents of the pay-off matrix, it certainly seems to. But it is far from clear that we should run together rational

2 _{Binmore 2005: 63.} 3 _Ibid.

4 _{There is, of course, a problem of ‘adaptive preferences’: the downtrodden, unfortunate, or uninformed}

may appear content with their lot, even though they are obviously much worse off than their equally- content neighbour (see Sen 1988: 45). Alternatively, I may convince myself that I never really wanted to be a professional rugby-player, although this preference arises (let us suppose) as a defensive response to being woefully unsuited to playing rugby. As Nietzsche puts it, ‘[w]hen stepped on, a worm doubles up. That is clever. In that way he lessens the probability of being stepped on again. In the language of morality: humility.’ (Nietzsche 1990, §31).

choice, preference, and gain in quite this way. Clearly, if rational choice and preference are identified, then behaviour indicates preferences. And it is often taken as axiomatic that rational agents will choose whatever has the highest payoff – where ‘payoff’ doesn’t mean ‘money / happiness / etc. for the agent’, but rather just ‘whatever the agent values’. Now it is not obvious that what the agent values just is whatever the agent would rationally choose, nor that either of these is identical to what the agent consistently prefers (and, as Binmore points out, what does the work in game theory is consistency of choice).5 _{But I think that Binmore’s}

argument runs too fast, for at least two reasons.

The first of these begins by pointing out that, despite what the argument shows, maybe morality did arise as a response to PD cases. The kinds of Prisoner’s Dilemmas with which

philosophers tend to be concerned are well-described: we are indeed concerned with cases where, were it not for some altruistic or moral motivation, it would be rational to reliably defect. But given altruism, it can be rational to co-operate. Morality thus has an important role in dealing with what would otherwise be PD cases, for although it may be unable to show

non-moral agents that it would be rational for them to co-operate, it can provide a way in

which groups of agents can transform Dilemmas into Delights.6 _{Suppose that the two}

Prisoners are equally averse to time spent in prison, and hence value mutual co-operation over joint defection to the same extent. If each side prefers to co-operate in any case, then mutual co-operation becomes even more strongly preferred.

The second is that, regardless of agents’ preferences, we may still talk of them being harmed or benefited by the choices that they make. Perhaps – quite plausibly – I reliably choose to smoke cigarettes. If preferences reflect value from the agent’s perspective, then smoking cigarettes is valuable to me. As it happens, I smoke cigarettes because I am weak-willed, rather than because I actually prefer to smoke. Our actual choices, however consistent or predictable, need not always reflect what is in our best interests, what is of most value to us, nor our deep-seated preferences (although they may, at least sometimes, provide

overwhelming evidence in that direction). Similarly with so-called ‘adaptive preferences’: it is clear that people’s choices may on occasion reflect a lack of hope, or be constrained by a malign way of viewing the world, and that, consequently, the world is full of downtrodden

5 _{See Broome 2004: 31 – 39 &}

passim.

6 _{See Blackburn 1998: 184, ‘So-called countertheoretical actions do not reveal the irrationality of the}

players, but the impropriety of this application of the theory.’ That is, co-operation in apparent Prisoner’s Dilemmas should raise a question about what is being modelled, rather than a facile dismissal of the actors as irrational.

housewives who are ‘happy with their lot’, would-be rugby players who do nothing to fulfil their ambition, etc.7 _{This is in contrast to modern utility theory, which}

‘ . . . doesn’t say that Eve chooses a rather than b because the utility of a exceeds that of b. On

the contrary, the utility of a is chosen to be greater than the utility of b because it has been

observed that Eve always chooses a rather than b.’8

To reiterate: even were the equation of utility with choice warranted, we could still retain the notion that the Prisoner’s Dilemma is a relevant test case. Showing that it would be rational to co-operate amounts to turning the Dilemma into a Delight: that consequence is innocuous. But the equation of utility with choice is unwarranted. Regardless of whether the one is a reliable indicator of the other, we ought not to identify the two.