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Communism and the Incentive to Share in Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Remco Heesen
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Abstract

The communist norm requires that scientists widely share the results of their work. Where did this norm come from, and how does it persist? I argue on the basis of a game-theoretic model that rational credit-maximizing scientists will in many cases conform to the norm. This means that the origins and persistence of the communist norm can be explained even in the absence of a social contract or enforcement, contrary to recent work by Michael Strevens but adding to previous work emphasizing the benefits of the incentive structure created by the priority rule.

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Research Article
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Philosophy of Science , Volume 84 , Issue 4 , October 2017 , pp. 698 - 716
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Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Thanks to Kevin Zollman, Michael Strevens, Jan Sprenger, Teddy Seidenfeld, Stephan Hartmann, Lee Elkin, Liam Bright, Thomas Boyer-Kassem, Carl Bergstrom, Arif Ahmed, two anonymous referees, and audiences at the Bristol-Groningen Conference in Formal Epistemology, the Logic Colloquium in Helsinki, and EPSA15 in Düsseldorf for valuable comments and discussion. This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation under grant SES 1254291 and by an Early Career Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust and the Isaac Newton Trust.

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