There are numerous red herrings in that last reply of yours. I know you think I went off on a red herring first, by switching from the topic from morality to politics and economics, but that’s not thought through. Instead of talking past each other as usual, banging away at morality while using our different frames of reference, I decided to try to get to the heart of the disagreement, which has to do, I think, with that difference in our chosen theoretical languages.
The underlying question all along, then, has to do with the status of our conceptual frameworks. Is game theory part of philosophy? Is one of those “languages” logically prior to, or more fundamental than, the other? Is one of them somehow deficient? For you see, if the way we think in general about philosophical matters is based on a giant fallacy or some underhanded move, there’s no need to attend to the conclusions drawn while using that mode of thought. You could explain morality as a competition between strategies, and I could insist that while that conclusion follows from game theory, I reject the scientistic pretensions behind the mere literary (metaphor-based) extension of game theory beyond its proper domain of formal games.
And I referred to the common political and economic uses of game theory to illustrate the problems I have with that approach to philosophical problems. So no, I committed no red herring fallacy. I switched topics from the superficial to the heart of the matter in the good old philosophical matter. If that’s wrong, sue me.
So when you say, “the reason you oppose game theory as a basis for morality is that you don't like capitalism,” that’s not at all the logic of the matter. Rather, I don’t like what the common ideological uses of game theory indicate about the arbitrariness of its overextended uses. If game theory can be so misused in politics and economics, why couldn’t it be misused in morality?
You cheerfully agree that game theory can be misused because, as you point out, anything can be, but that’s not the point. I’m talking about a specific potential for misuse based on the overextension of this theoretical framework. The whole thing is just a metaphor dressed up with rigorous math. If game theory is indeed a theory in the scientific sense, that math should be used in models that have real-world applications. Where are the nontrivial predictions born out by experimental tests of game theory in biology or economics?
The cold warrior’s and the neoliberal’s uses of game theory don’t bode well for its scientific status outside its proper domain. I have no trouble conceding that strategic games can have a “geometry” or logic, or even that we can abstract from such games to generalize about analogous matters. But the further we extend those analogies, the weaker they’ll be. I think they’re certainly weak if we’re talking about natural selection and the genes’ “strategy” for transmitting copies of themselves to future generations.
Regarding natural selection, you say, “Natural selection is a tautology—what survives, survives. Game theory explains why what survives survived. Natural selection doesn't do that.”
That doesn’t sound right to me at all. Darwin’s theory already explains why certain species survive by saying they’re the fittest to the environment. As the environment changes, so do species as they adapt. The fittest aren’t just the ones that survive, but the ones that adapt best to the environment. It’s funny that you should adopt the Creationist’s view of natural selection to make room for the importance of game theory. You say I’m “desperate” to be rid of game theory, whereas you seem desperate to keep it.
In any case, even if the game theoretic way of talking in sociobiology weren’t wholly fallacious or vacuous, I don’t see how such a game theoretic explanation of natural selection or of the emergence of morality would have scientific authority. Game theory would be a rigorous way of cashing out the implications of a metaphor. Now, there may be metaphors in science, too, but if a way of speaking were just a metaphor, that wouldn’t make it scientific. The metaphor must be empirically tested to be a scientific model.
If a game theoretic explanation of morality is philosophical rather than scientific, so be it. In that case, the explanation wouldn’t be logically prior to mine since I’m also attempting to explain things philosophically. And I would happily include competition between strategies for plus-sum outcomes as a factor in the natural emergence of morality.
I don’t think that factor suffices to account for all forms of morality, though. Certainly, it doesn’t account for duty-based kinds. You’re talking about utilitarianism and the interest in maximizing happiness. I talk about existential obligations to maximize honourable suffering. Happiness is for unenlightened sheeple. Intellectual elites don’t compromise with the masses; the former see through the delusions and daydreams that sustain the latter’s ignoble contentment. As a result, culture divides into esoteric and exoteric conceptions, and society into the sectors of marginalized cynicism and mainstream benightedness.
Maybe morality emerged initially as a utilitarian adaptation, to increase solidarity in bands of hunter-gatherers. Of course, morality could take on exaptations so saying morality has to retain that initial function would be the genetic fallacy.
You say I commit that fallacy when I point to earlier misuses of game theory. But that’s not so, since I stipulated that the math that formalizes the nature of competitive strategies in a game may be politically and economically neutral. I never inferred, for example, that because game theory has been hijacked by neoliberals, the underlying math has no possible socialist applications.
Lastly, in response to my reminder that politics, economics, and natural selection aren’t literally games, you say, “That's semantic nonsense. Game theory abstracts; it does not trivialize. The "is not a game" trope is about connotation. It has no place in this conversation.”
That’s an interesting choice of words when you say the abstraction doesn’t trivialize. The question I’m raising is whether an abstraction can be so overstretched as to be unfalsifiable and thus itself a triviality. Similarly, if we anthropomorphize the ultimate causes of the natural order, our religious metaphors may inform the myths that “explain” everything under the sun. But those explanations would be empty because the analogy between a person building a house and the process that produces galaxies would be tenuous at best.
If natural selection isn’t a game, the question is how game-like it is. How strong is the analogy? If the analogy is weak, you can speak all you like about competitive strategies in nature, and that talk would be unfalsifiable and its applications trivial. Again, to rescue the utility of that way of talking, it needs to be half-way scientific. What predictions does game theory make in the domain of morality? That we eventually try to compromise for the common good? Or that different strategies are tried out, including antisocial ones, and there’s no guarantee which, if any, will triumph?
If all you’re saying is that morality is a matter of trying out different ways to live together while avoiding absolute chaos, and while having no prediction about how these strategies coalesce into a final solution, it sounds trivial to me. If you’re saying that the ultimate goal of moralists is to reach plus-sum outcomes, I hold out duty-based conceptions of morality as counterexamples.
Or if what you’re saying is that the natural basis of morality (what it is) makes nonsense of the myths and delusions that occupy the mainstream discourse about morality, I’d agree. But that’s a consequence of naturalistic philosophy in general.
