This book review was written by Eugene Kernes
“Here is a major parallel between behavior theory and economics. Economics makes no distinction between needs and wants; it has no theory of value. Individual desires will be particular and idiosyncratic, and all one can say is that people will always want something and will act in such a way as to maximize want satisfaction. So it is with rewards and punishments. Behavior theorists spent many years trying to identify some property that all rewards had in common – trying to develop a theory of value based on the biological needs of an organism. All such attempts failed. Sure there is a universal need for food and water, and food and water seem to work as reinforcers for all species, but plenty of other things also work as reinforcers – for some species but not others.” – Barry Schwartz, Chapter 5: Behavior Theory and Human Nature, Pages 117-118
“Second, with the emergence of human beings, there came a
new influence on action that does not exist in the rest of nature. That influence is culture. People live in cultures, and these cultures
have an enormous, nonbiological influence on what they do. Culture provides an alternative to the genes
as a route of transmission of behavioral characteristics from generation to
generation. And culture-induced changes
in behavioral characteristics progress much, much faster than genetic
ones. Culture has, in effect, made
evolution obsolete. Thus human
rationality and human culture pose challenges to the sociobiological
explanation of human nature.” – Barry Schwartz, Chapter 7: The Limits of
Evolutionary Biology, Page 181
“It is not that people aren’t selfish and greedy, for perhaps they are. Rather, it is that they aren’t selfish and greedy by nature. The social conditions in which people live can make them selfish and greedy – can make selfishness and greed the only games in town. But social conditions can be altered and, with them, selfishness and greed. The disciplines in question have mistakenly treated the particular social conditions in which we live as representative of the universal human condition. As a result, they have mistaken local culture and historical truths about people for nature laws. As a further result they have helped contribute to the perpetuation of these conditions by appealing to their natural inevitability.” – Barry Schwartz, Chapter 11: Summing Up, Page 294
Is This An Overview?
While moral philosophy provides alternatives for what people
should do and the values people should hold.
Social science explains what people do, and the values people have. The effectiveness of science to enable people
to understand the world, and used what was learned to intervene in environments
and situations, has had the effect of changing the focus from moral philosophy
to social science. But the scientific
account of how people do anything, does not explain what people should do. Explanations of how people behave, does not
justify conclusions about what people should do. The freedom of choice about what to do, is
left to the individual.
Within the study of physics, scientists can study the
properties of objects without extraneous influences. There are problems when scientists study
humans without extraneous influences.
Influences such as culture.
People rely on the experiences of others to overcome their individual
limited experiences, through the various institutions that make culture. Sharing information about alternatives ways
to be, or what people ought to not do. The
claims social science makes about human nature, depend on the institutions the
people are part of. Institutions that
reinforce certain values. By changing
institutions, the values change.
Economics, sociology, and psychology are making the case that human
nature is based on selfishness, but with different institutions, human nature
can become something else entirely.
What Was The Influence Of Hobbes?
For Hobbes, human nature was a never-ending war of all
against all. To overcome the
destruction, people would need to surrender themselves to a common authority. An authority that would keep human nature in
check. For Hobbes, people had no control
over their nature, had no self-restraint.
Restraint would need to be imposed upon people from an external source,
such as a powerful state.
The fields of economics, sociology, and psychology had
converged on Hobbes understanding, using science.
What Does Economics Think Of Human Nature?
For economics, the market is supposed to be guided by an
invisible hand. A method by which
unorganized individuals’ behavior influenced to benefit all. For behavior to be beneficial, requires a
specific type of person and market.
Economics thinks of people as rational economic agents. A rational economic agent is able to express
preference between commodities, preferences are stable over time, chooses to
maximize preferences, the preferences are transitive, chooses the same product
for a lower price, has diminishing marginal utility, and has compete
information.
Economics wants markets that are free and competitive. Free and competitive markets occur when there
are a large number of small firms, little product differentiation, resources
are mobile, producers and consumers have perfect knowledge, products are
exclusionary, participants have fairly equal resources, and firms maximize
profit.
What Are The Limits To Economics?
There are limits to how economics understands human
nature. People do not always behave
rationally as people do not always express preferences with commodities,
because commodities have various incomparable or incommensurable features. People do not always pick the cheapest
commodity, preferences are not always transitive, do not have complete
information, do not maximize their preferences, and preferences are
systematically unstable over time.
Welfare for each person is not an absolute, not the amount
they have in their possession. Welfare is
relative to other people, as welfare depends on how much other people have.
Markets are a human creation, and managed with human
intent. Society determine what products
can be exchanged, and the restraints on behavior of the firms and
consumers.
What Does Biology Think Of Human
Nature?
Within evolutionary biology,
members within a species have characteristics that are passed through the
genes. Members of the species make
similar choices in similar circumstances to maximize preferences.
For Darwin, the competition of limited resources would
result in the spread of genes for the individuals who obtained those resources,
and a reduction in numbers of those who did not obtain the resources. Individuals within a species are varied, but
the successful members would pass their advantageous qualities to offspring. Over successive generation, the advantageous qualities
would be characteristic of the species.
The assumption in evolutionary biology is that selfish
organisms have generally determined behavior to maximize reproductive success. For evolutionary biology, the pursuit of
self-interest through natural competition ensures the fittest survive. Charity is antagonistic to the species as charity
enables weakness to spread.
What Are The Limits To Biology?
There are limits to biology, which
include a time discrepancy. Evolution
takes a very long time to affect a species.
Behaviors that might have been optimal under previous situations which a
species evolved in, might not be optimal under the situations the species finds
itself in. Evolution cannot change a
species behavior quickly enough to accommodate changing situations. As organisms can find themselves in
unpredictable environments, the sudden environmental changes can render long
term evolution useless. Alternately,
culture provides an alternative for transmitting behavior characteristics
across generations that is much faster than genetic transmissions.
Unlike the operations of evolution,
people can make goals and plans to achieve those goals, rather than just
opportunistic changes in variations.
Rational actors make variations that are functionally relevant, rather
than being dependent on chance. People
can change the environments people find themselves in, rather than having to biologically
adapt to the environment. Evolutionary
explanations cannot distinguish between adapting to the environment, and
adapting the environment.
What Does Psychology Think Of
Human Nature?
Within psychology, behavior theory
has a principle of reinforcement. The
principle of reinforcement is a method by which people figure out how to obtain
what they want. The assumption is that
the behavior of species changes when the behavior stops being profitable. Behaviors change to new contingencies. Contingencies based on the environment, not
on planning or reason.
What Are The Limits To
Psychology?
The limits to behavior theory
includes that there are other influences that can interfere with principle of
reinforcement. Laboratories are
constructed to prevent other influences than reinforcement. Making reinforcement possible only under
those very specific conditions, but not normally possible. Food and water are basic reinforcers for all
species, but there are various reinforcers which work for some species but not
others.
Caveats?
This book can be difficult to read. Although contains introductory contents, is
not an introductory book.
The focus of the book is to explain how economics, biology,
and psychology explain human nature, and the limits of each scientific
field. Although the claims about the
limitations of the ideas in the fields have validity, the remarks against
specific people involved are not. The
remarks contain retroactive claims about the people and ideas involved in each
field. The claims are made about the
people held to be foundational, who are Adam Smith, Charles Darwin, and B. F.
Skinner. The foundational individuals
are held responsible even as the discussion is about the ideas developed after
the foundational individuals’ work, or how others have interpreted the work of
the foundational individuals. The
remarks also assume that there is broad agreement within the fields. Not only do the fields have diverse views
that do not agree on the value of various ideas. But also, the way science works, is by
gradually improving ideas through error correction.
