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WHY SHOULD WE TEAM REASON?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2018

Katharine Browne
Katharine Browne*
Affiliation:
Langara College, 100 W.49th Avenue, Vancouver, BC, V5Y 2Z6, Canada. Email: kbrowne@langara.ca. URL: www.katharinebrowne.com
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Abstract:

Team reasoning is thought to be descriptively and normatively superior to the classical individualistic theory of rational choice primarily because it can recommend coordination on Hi in the Hi-Lo game and cooperation in Prisoner's Dilemma-type situations. However, left unanswered is whether it is rational for individuals to become team members, leaving a gap between reasons for individuals and reasons for team members. In what follows, I take up Susan Hurley's attempt to show that it is rational for an individual to become a team member. I argue that her account fails to show that becoming a team member is necessary to gain the advantages of coordination in Hi-Lo games or cooperation in Prisoner's Dilemma-type situations, and that individuals will often fare better reasoning as individual agents than as members of a team. I argue further that there is a more general problem for team reasoning, specifically that the conditions needed to make it rational for a team member to employ team reasoning make becoming a team member unnecessary.

Keywords

CooperationcoordinationHi-Lo gamePrisoner's Dilemmateam reasoning
Type
Article
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , July 2018 , pp. 185 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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