Evolution of the Social Contract

In this new edition of Evolution of the Social Contract, Brian Skyrms uses evolutionary game theory to analyze the genesis of social contracts and investigates social phenomena including justice, communication, altruism, and bargaining. Featuring new material on evolution and information transfer, and including recent developments in game theory and evolution literature, his book introduces and applies appropriate concepts of equilibrium and evolutionary dynamics, showing how key issues can be modeled as games and considering the ways in which evolution sometimes supports, and sometimes does not support, rational choice. He discusses topics including how bargaining with neighbors promotes sharing of resources, the diversity of behavior in ultimatum bargaining in small societies, the Prisoner's Dilemma, and an investigation into signaling games and the spontaneous emergence of meaningful communication. His book will be of great interest to readers in philosophy of science, social science, evolutionary biology, game and decision theory, and political theory

"In this new edition of Evolution of the Social Contract, Brian Skyrms uses evolutionary game theory to analyze the genesis of social contracts and investigates social phenomena including justice, communication, altruism, and bargaining. Featuring new material on evolution and information transfer, and including recent developments in game theory and evolution literature, his book introduces and applies appropriate concepts of equilibrium and evolutionary dynamics, showing how key issues can be modelled as games and considering the ways in which evolution sometimes supports, and sometimes does not support, rational choice. He discusses topics including how bargaining with neighbours promotes sharing of resources, the diversity of behavior in ultimatum bargaining in small societies, the Prisoner's Dilemma, and an investigation into signalling games and the spontaneous emergence of meaningful communication. His book will be of great interest to readers in philosophy of science, social science, evolutionary biology, game and decision theory, and political theory"--

In this pithy and highly readable book, Brian Skyrms, a recognised authority on game and decision theory, investigates traditional problems of the social contract in terms of evolutionary dynamics. Game theory is skilfully employed to offer new interpretations of a wide variety of social phenomena, including justice, mutual aid, commitment, convention and meaning. The author eschews any grand, unified theory. Rather, he presents the reader with tools drawn from evolutionary game theory for the purpose of analysing and coming to understand the social contract. The book is not technical and requires no special background knowledge. As such, it could be enjoyed by students and professionals in a wide range of disciplines: political science, philosophy, decision theory, economics and biology