Formal structures and social reality

Abstract

In the this paper, I take up some analytical questions about the theory of games and its application to social reality. I emphasize the importance of thinking, not in terms of one-off games or even of repeated trials, but in terms of the general motivations or dispositions that exist in a society. In the second part, I consider some complications in the idea of a motivation to cooperate, and the relation of that idea to the idea of trust. In the third part, I offer some very general speculations about the motivations that might be necessary or sufficient to sustain a social framework of cooperation.

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