The Origins of Unfairness

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In your other book, you talk about the origins of inequality. You point out that we can use game theory to explain why it might seem rational to do something that ends up with a deeply unfair division of labor in our society. Yes. And this really relates also to biology, because people bring up the same thing like, well, you know, a peacock tail maybe is reasonable in some way if it can get the peacock,you know, to mate,. But it costs so much riht. It's hard to drag this thing around. Can that really be a reasonable adaptation? I think it depends how you're about these things.

You can’t always get what you want, as a wise person once said. But we do try, even when someone else wants the same thing. Our lives as people, and the evolution of other animals over time, are shaped by competition for scarce resources of various kinds. Game theory provides a natural framework for understanding strategies and behaviors in these competitive settings, and thus provides a lens with which to analyze evolution and human behavior, up to and including why racial or gender groups are consistently discriminated against in society. Cailin O’Connor is the author or two recent books on these issues: Games in the Philosophy of Biology and The Origins of Unfairness: Social Categories and Cultural Evolution.

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Cailin O’Connor received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of California, Irvine. She is currently Associate Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science and a member of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Science at UCI. Her works involves questions in the philosophy of biology and behavioral science, game theory, agent-based modeling, social epistemology, decision theory, rational choice, and the spread of misinformation.

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