Thought for the day: neoclassical atomicons resemble brain injured humans
from Merijn Knibbe
I’m reading a book of the paradigm-changing Dutch neurologist Dick Swaab. According to him, autopsies as well as experiments as well as MRI scans show that morality is hard wired into our brain. ‘Mirror-neurons’ become active when we see people doing something, mimicking the observed behavior. Their joy is our joy, their pain is our pain. One hour after birth, babies already show this reaction. According to Swaab: ‘empathy is an automatic reaction which does not only show in the … pre frontal cortex but also in evolutionary old parts of the brain … when two monkeys obtain the same reward for a job, everything is fine … when one gets a higher reward … the other one will throw his reward away and will refuse cooperation’. People are empathic (and envious) by nature.
Now remember that, according to Paul Samuelson, the neo classical atomicon does not know ‘envy or empathy’. Do people like that exist? Yes, according to Swaab they do. People with severe injury to the pre frontal cortex show no empathy. Faced with moral dilemma’s, they are cold, detached calculators – unlike ‘normal’ people. They do not know empathy, according to Swaab. They do have an official clinical name. Sociopaths.
Swaab, D., ‘We zijn ons brein. Van baarmoeder tot Alzheimer’ (uitgeverij contact, 2010)
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A really amusing and representing the sad reality article.
PS I am looking for editors specialising in real economicw and interested in publishing my new book titled “the lethal crisis”, which became a best seller in Greece. Its translation in english is ready.
Maria Negreponti-Delivanis
Regarding “the neo classical atomicon,” there is much to criticize in neoclassical doctrine, but the “atomicon” seems to me to be a straw-man. Neoclassical doctrine is based on utility only from narrow self-interest, but that does not necessarily deny gratification from relationships. Indeed, utility theory cannot prescribe ends, i.e. what provides utility, only that people seek to maximize utility, and that they economize in that seeking. I do agree, however, that sympathy, as described by Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, has been undervalued by neoclassical doctrine.
I would be surprised to learn there wasn’t an empathy gene. It seems fairly clear that empathy comes naturally to us, or at least some of. I have heard that our ability to feel empathy does not fully develop until we are in our mid 20s. As a parent of three teenagers, I can quite believe it.
But turning to economics, is this not the inference of Robert Axelrod and his work on prisoners dilemma type models, suggesting tit for tat for a logical strategy in situations involving trust. So, if this is so, then it seems reason to suppose evolution has hard coded into us a pre-disposition to trust, which may also relate to empathy.
I’m wondering when the rest of us monkeys will throw our rewards away and refuse cooperation (worker rebellion?)
We’ll see, but I wonder if the monkey who refused to cooperate had a regular feeding schedule. Do we have that alternative? We probably do, but we will have to conceive of it and build it ourselves.
I am not sure that I agree with Fred that the atomicon is a ‘straw man.’ It may be possible to incorporate the idea of gratification from relationships, or it might not. It may hinge on how this idea is incorporated. As I recall, if my utility level is affected by another person’s level of consumption, a unique stable solution to the constrained optimization problem of maximizing my utility given my budget constraint does not exist, or is much more difficult to find. Utilitarianism DOES prescribe an end – individual utility.
Even here, preferences are taken as given. But the existence of human relationships changes preferences. While this admits the possibility of utility based on relationships, it also drastically complicates any notion of welfare analysis.
It is a critique of a very strict methodological individualism. Even if you admit relationships with other people as a cause of utility, that does not meet the methodological critique that this kind of reductionism is absurd. The individual is the ultimate decider, whatever information she uses, be it only consumer goods, or relationships like love , friendship, and respect.
I agree the problem is less with the straw man of the atomicon, but with methodological individualism. It is clear to me from reading books like Franz de Waal on chimpanzees, or Robert Sapolsky on baboons, that both species are much more “individualistic” than we are – and less able to cooperate (Sapolsky notes a remark that “chimpanzees are what baboons would like to be, but lack the self control). Neurology tells us of the critical importance of early human interaction to shaping our brains – we are hard-wired, or shaped – to be ultra-social. So many of our decisions are not about maximising individual utility but maximising group utility (across varying and shifting groups). This is, I believe, very difficult if not impossible to model mathematically, but still remains the case.