Don Ross

TWO STYLES OF NEUROECONOMICS

I distinguish between two styles of research that are both called “neuroeconomics”. Neurocellular economics (NE) uses the modelling techniques and mathematics of economics – constrained maximization and equilibrium analysis – to model relatively encapsulated functional parts of brains. This approach rests upon the fact that brains are, like markets, massively distributed information-processing networks over which executive systems can exert only limited and imperfect governance. Harrisons (2008) deepest criticisms of neuroeconomics do not apply to NE. However, the more famous style of neuroeconomics is behavioural economics in the scanner . This is often motivated by complaints about conventional economics frequently heard from behavioural economists. It attempts to use neuroimaging data to justify arguments for replacing standard aspects of microeconomic theory by facts and conjectures about human psychology. Harrisons grounds for unease about neuroeconomics apply to most BES, or at least to its explicit methodology. This methodology is naively reductionist and illegitimately assumes that economics should not do what all successful science does, namely, model abstract aspects of its target phenomena instead of would-be complete and fully ecologically situated facsimiles of them.

Emotions as Strategic Signals

In this article, we ask how much, if anything, of Robert Frank’s (1988, 2004) theory of emotions as evolved strategic commitment devices can survive rejection of its underlying game-theoretic model. Frank’s thesis is that emotions serve to prevent people from reneging on threats and promises with enough reliability to support cooperative equilibria in prisoner’s dilemmas and similar games with inefficient dominant equilibria. We begin by showing that Frank, especially in light of recent revisions to the theory, must be interpreted as endorsing a version of so-called ‘constrained maximization’ as proposed by Gauthier (1986). This concept has been subjected to devastating criticism by Binmore (1994), which we endorse: no consistent mathematical sense can be made of games in which constrained maximization is allowed. However, this leaves open the question of whether Frank has identified a genuine empirical phenomena by means of his confused theoretical model. We argue that he in fact has; but that seeing this depends on our rejecting a muddled folk-psychological model of emotions, which Frank himself follows, according to which emotions are inner states of people. Instead, following Dennett (1987, 1991) and other so-called ‘externalist’ philosophers of cognitive science, we argue that emotions, properly speaking, are social signals coded in culturally evolved intentional conventions that find their identity conditions outside of individuals, in the social environment. As such, their evolutionary proper functions lie in their capacity to enable individuals to solve what we call ‘game determination’ problems - that is, coordination on multiple-equilibrium meta-games over which base-games to play. This allows emotions to indeed serve as commitment devices in assurance games (though not in prisoner’s dilemmas). Thus the empirical core of Frank’s thesis is recovered, though only by way of drastic revisions to both the game theory and the psychology incorporated in his model.

Evolutionary game theory and the normative theory of institutional design: Binmore and behavioral economics:

In this article, I critically respond to Herbert Gintiss criticisms of the behavioral-economic foundations of Ken Binmores game-theoretic theory of justice. Gintis, I argue, fails to take full account of the normative requirements Binmore sets for his account, and also ignores what I call the ‘scale-relativity’ considerations built into Binmores approach to modeling human evolution. Paul Seabrights criticism of Binmore, I note, repeats these oversights. In the course of answering Gintiss and Seabrights objections, I clarify and extend Binmores theory in a number of respects, integrating it with Kim Sterelnys and Don Rosss recent (respective) work on the evolution of people as cultural entities. The account also yields a novel basis for choosing between socialism (broadly conceived) and what Binmore calls ‘whiggery’ as normative political programs.

What to say to a skeptical metaphysician: a defense manual for cognitive and behavioral scientists.

A wave of recent work in metaphysics seeks to undermine the anti-reductionist, functionalist consensus of the past few decades in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. That consensus apparently legitimated a focus on what systems do, without necessarily and always requiring attention to the details of how systems are constituted. The new metaphysical challenge contends that many states and processes referred to by functionalist cognitive scientists are epiphenomenal. It further contends that the problem lies in functionalism itself, and that, to save the causal significance of mind, it is necessary to re-embrace reductionism. We argue that the prescribed return to reductionism would be disastrous for the cognitive and behavioral sciences, requiring the dismantling of most existing achievements and placing intolerable restrictions on further work. However, this argument fails to answer the metaphysical challenge on its own terms. We meet that challenge by going on to argue that the new metaphysical skepticism about functionalist cognitive science depends on reifying two distinct notions of causality (one primarily scientific, the other metaphysical), then equivocating between them. When the different notions of causality are properly distinguished, it is clear that functionalism is in no serious philosophical trouble, and that we need not choose between reducing minds or finding them causally impotent. The metaphysical challenge to functionalism relies, in particular, on a naïve and inaccurate conception of the practice of physics, and the relationship between physics and metaphysics.

An Item Response Theory Analysis of the Problem Gambling Severity Index

Increases in the availability of gambling heighten the need for a short screening measure of problem gambling. The Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) is a brief measure that allows for the assessment of characteristics of gambling behavior and severity and its consequences. The authors evaluate the psychometric properties of the PGSI using item response theory methods in a representative sample of the urban adult population in South Africa (N = 3,000). The PGSI items were evaluated for differential item functioning (DIF) due to language translation. DIF was not detected. The PGSI was found to be unidimensional, and use of the nominal categories model provided additional information at higher values of the underlying construct relative to a simpler binary model. This study contributes to the growing literature supporting the PGSI as the screen of choice for assessing gambling problems in the general population.

The Methodologies of Neuroeconomics

We critically review the methodological practices of two research programs which are jointly called ‘neuroeconomics’. We defend the first of these, termed ‘neurocellular economics’ (NE) by Ross (2008), from an attack on its relevance by Gul and Pesendorfer (2008) (GP). This attack arbitrarily singles out some but not all processing variables as unimportant to economics, is insensitive to the realities of empirical theory testing, and ignores the central importance to economics of ‘ecological rationality’ (Smith 2007). GP ironically share this last attitude with advocates of ‘behavioral economics in the scanner’ (BES), the other, and better known, branch of neuroeconomics. We consider grounds for skepticism about the accomplishments of this research program to date, based on its methodological individualism, its ad hoc econometrics, its tolerance for invalid reverse inference, and its inattention to the difficulties involved in extracting temporally lagged data if peoples anticipation of reward causes pre-emptive blood flow.

The economic and evolutionary basis of selves

This paper aims to reconcile radical anti-individualism about people, according to which people are dynamic products of social dynamics, with neoclassical economic formalism and standard evolutionary game theory. The point of doing so is to face empirical facts coming from the cognitive and behavioral sciences, without throwing away any more of our well established modeling technology than we have to. The paper develops a high-level framework for modeling game determination, the process by which people strategically interact (play games) to determine which ranges of subsequent games will be played by their future selves that will have been sculpted from the preference refinements resulting from the earlier games.

Ontic Structural REalism and Economics

Ontic structural realism (OSR) is crucially motivated by empirical discoveries of fundamental physics. To this extent its potential to furnish a general metaphysics for science may appear limited. However, OSR also provides a good account of the progress that has been achieved over the decades in a formalized special science, economics. Furthermore, this has a basis in the ontology presupposed by economic theory, and is not just an artifact of formalization.

The Economic Agent: Not Human, But Important

The paper reviews the standard concept of the economic agent as featured in contemporary microeconomics, showing why the practice of economists does not equate this agent to a person, and why economists’ longstanding interests in ‘individualism’ and ‘microfoundations’ should not be interpreted as suggesting otherwise. This provides the basis of an account of how economists should respond to widespread criticisms reflecting normative phenomenalism, the view that ‘good’ scientific conceptual frameworks should describe manifest phenomena. The paper then discusses why and how (some) behavioral economists propose to modify agency in light of studies of people, in cases where normative phenomenalism is not assumed. This proposal is resisted on the basis of an argument against the view held by increasingly many behavioral economists that their program collapses into the ambition of the new ‘neuroeconomics’ to identify and explain the processes by which brains comparatively value actual and prospective rewards. The paper argues that what it dubs ‘neurocellular economics’, the programme of research initiated by Paul Glimcher, some of his NYU-based colleagues, and his current and former students, is importantly different in its implicit attitude to standard economic agency from a more reductionist version of neuroeconomics that has lately been stapled to BE in would-be service of a paradigm shift. Having explained why neurocellular economics preserves rather than challenges the standard concept of economic agency, the paper defends the continued use of that concept against calls for its replacement by objects and processes identified through psychological and neuroscientific observation.

Neuroeconomics and Economic Methodology

This paper critically reviews the first decade of neuroeconomic research from a methodological perspective. It examines details of specific examples of neuroeconomic hypothesis construction and testing in order to illustrate and substantiate a critical perspective articulated in previous work (Harrison and Ross 2010). According to this view, neuroeconomics is methodologically Janus-faced. To the extent that neuroeconomists have sought to provide neural foundations for revisionist behavioral economics, the results have in general been unconvincing. However, the chronologically original brand of neuroeconomics, which developed organically from the study of reward processing and learning by computational learning theorists, consistently demonstrates applications of sound economic methods. Furthermore, its most explicit methodological architect, Paul Glimcher, has clearly articulated a research program that directly and formally integrates computational learning theory with standard microeconomics.