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The Altruists’ Dilemma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Colin Grant
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Abstract:

The claim of neutrality made on behalf of “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” has been re-enforced by Kay Mathiesen’s creation of “The Altruist’s Dilemma.” That this represents a neutral variation on “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” is compromised, however, by the failure of “The Altruist’s Dilemma” to deal with altruism in a full sense. The difference illustrates how, in contrast to its professed neutrality, “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” involves very definite views of humanity and the nature of life itself. This is confirmed by Mathiesen’s misreading of O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi.”

Type
Response Article
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , April 2004 , pp. 315 - 328
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2004

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References

Notes

1. Daniel R. Gilbert, Jr., “The Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Prisoners of the Prisoner’s Dilemma,” Business Ethics Quarterly 6(2) (1996): 165–78. Business Ethics Quarterly 9(1) (1999) of was devoted largely to articles on “The Prisoner’s Dilemma.”

2. Robert C. Solomon, “Game Theory as a Model for Business and Business Ethics,” Business Ethics Quarterly 9(1) (1999): 18.

3. Kevin Gibson, William Bottom, and J. Keith Murnighan, “Once Bitten: Defection and Reconciliation in a Cooperative Enterprise,” Business Ethics Quarterly 9(1) (1999): 75.

4. Solomon, “Game Theory,” 18.

5. Ken Binmore, “Game Theory and Business Ethics,” Business Ethics Quarterly 9(1) (1999): 31–32.

6. Kay Mathiesen, “Game Theory in Business Ethics: Bad Ideology or Bad Press?” Business Ethics Quarterly 9(1) (1999): 38.

7. Ibid., 40.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., 41.

10. Ibid., 40.

11. Auguste Comte, System of Positive Polity, vol. 1 (New York: Burt Kranklin, 1875), 146, 500.

12. Colin Grant, Altruism and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 56.

13. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Second Edition, ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 522, in Peter Vanderschraaf, “Hume’s Game-Theoretic Business Ethics,” Business Ethics Quarterly 9(1) (1999): 55.

14. Peter Vanderschraaf, “Hume’s Game-Theoretic Business Ethics,” Business Ethics Quarterly 9(1) (1999): 62.

15. Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

16. Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation, p. 119, in Kevin Gibson, William Bottom, and J. Keith Murnighan, “Once Bitten: Defection and Reconciliation in a Cooperative Enterprise,” Business Ethics Quarterly 9(1) (1999): 76.

17. Binmore, “Game Theory and Business Ethics,” 34.

18. On “kin altruism” see: W. D. Hamilton, “The Genetical Theory of Social Behavior,” The Journal of Theoretical Biology 7 (1964): Part I, 1–16, Part II, 17–32. On “reciprocal altruism” see: Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1975), 3f. For a popular account of the sociobiological treatment of altruism, see: Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (London: Granada, 1978).

19. Sociobiology Study Group, “Sociobiology: A New Biological Determinism,” in Biology as a Social Weapon, ed. Ann Arbor Science for the People Editorial Collective (Minneapolis: Burgers Publishing Co., 1977), 145.

20. M. T. Ghiselin, The Economy of Nature and the Evolution of Sex (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 247.

21. D. D. Barash, The Whispering Within (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), 167f.

22. Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1978), 165.

23. Solomon, “Game Theory,” 24.

24. Gilbert, Jr., “The Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Prisoners of the Prisoner’s Dilemma,” 165–78.

25. See: Colin Grant, Altruism and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

26. Gibson, Bottom, and Murnighan, “Once Bitten: Defection and Reconciliation in a Cooperative Enterprise,” 81.

27. Mathiesen, “Game Theory,” 44.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid.

31. Binmore, “Game Theory,” 34.

32. Ibid.

33. O. Henry, The Best Short Stories of O. Henry (New York, The Modern Library, Random House, 1945), 7.