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SOCIAL CONVENTIONS Introduction Copyright © 2013 SAGE Publications. Not for sale, reproduction, or distribution. 900 Social Conventions To be sure, Gauthier’s account is subject to Morris, C. W. (1996). A contractarian account of moral another objection to contractarianism, to which I justification. In W. Sinnott-Armstrong & M. Timmons have already alluded: He supposes that the basic (Eds.), Moral knowledge? New readings in moral contract would be shaped by the relative bargain- epistemology (pp. 215–242). Oxford, England: Oxford ing power of the parties involved. Rawls’s and University Press. Harsanyi’s versions avoid this problem, for they Plato. (1974). The republic (G. M. A. Grube, Trans.). insist that one must consider what persons would do Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. when a decision must be reached under conditions Rawls, J. (1958). Justice as fairness. Philosophical Review, of radical uncertainty (where one’s relative power 57, 164–194. vis-à-vis others is unknown). A more convinc- Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ing approach, perhaps, would be to argue, as this author does, that there would be significant negative long-range consequences for all if persons were to continually press whatever relative advantages they have over others. SOCIAL CONVENTIONS Edward McClennen This entry reviews the major theoretical accounts of social conventions. It first introduces briefly their See also Bargaining Theory; Collective Rationality; philosophical origin and then goes on to present the Common Goods; Conventions, Logic of; Cooperation/ Coordination; Cost–Benefit Analysis; Law, Social first contemporary systematic account of social con- Phenomenon of; Normativity; Promises and ventions in terms of game theory. This is followed by Agreements; Public Goods; Rational Expectations; an overview of some of the main theories and uses Rationality and Social Explanation; Reflective of social conventions in current work in the philoso- Equilibrium; Social Choice Theory; Social phy of social science. Conventions; Social Norms; Social Rules Introduction Further Readings Many of our everyday social interactions are regu- lated by conventions. Eating manners, the kind of Buchanan, J. (1975). The limits of liberty. Chicago, IL: clothes we wear at the office, and the side of the University of Chicago Press. road on which we drive are a few mundane exam- Dowrkin, R. (1977). Justice and rights. In Taking rights ples. Roughly, a social convention is a customary, seriously (pp. 150–183) . Cambridge, MA: Harvard arbitrary, and self-enforcing rule of behavior that University Press. is generally followed and expected to be followed Epicurus. (1964). Epicurus: Letters principal doctrines and in a group or in a society at large. When a social Vatican sayings (R. M. Geer, Trans.). Englewood Cliffs, convention is established, everybody behaves in a NJ: Prentice Hall. quasi-agreed-upon way, even if they did not in fact Gauthier, D. (1986). Morals by agreement. Oxford, explicitly agree to do so. A social convention can England: Clarendon Press. Harsanyi, J. C. (1953). Cardinal utility in welfare thus be seen as a kind of tacit agreement that has economics and the theory of risk taking. Journal of evolved out of a history of previous interactions. Political Economy, 61, 434–435. The study of social convention is relevant for Harsanyi, J. C. (1955). Cardinal welfare, individualistic the social sciences since much of social order can ethics, and interpersonal comparisons of utility. Journal in fact be explained in terms of conventions and, of Political Economy, 63, 309–321. thus, as social regularities that emerge and are sus- Hobbes, T. (1996). Leviathan or the matter: Forme & tained without the need of centralized planning and power of a common-wealth ecclesiasticall and Civill (R. external enforcement by the state. In philosophy, the Tuck, Ed. & Trans.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge notion of social convention is appealing especially University Press. to those who aim to formulate naturalistic theories McClennen, E. (2012). Rational cooperation. Synthese, of normative phenomena in general (i.e., obligation, 187 (1), 65–93. law) and of morality in particular. Copyright © 2013 SAGE Publications. Not for sale, reproduction, or distribution. Social Conventions 901 Origin: David Hume with instances of successful coordination in a class of similar situations in the past, they will project this The 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume pattern into the future. Precedent is seen as a source was the first to point to the relevance of conven- of one kind of salience, which makes one coordina- tional regularities to addressing both of these issues. tion equilibrium a focal point and thus prominent Aiming in particular to demystify the nature of with respect to any possible alternative. property and justice, Hume suggested that a conven- tion corresponds to a pattern of mutually beneficial Contemporary Approaches behavior that a group of agents follow when they know that such a pattern is mutually beneficial and The focus of Lewis’s theory is mainly on how con- that they expect each other to follow this pattern ventions, once established, reproduce themselves. A instead of another. compatible but complementary approach addresses the problem of how conventional regularities emerge in the first place. Combining insights coming from First Systematic Account: David Lewis theoretical biology, Robert Sugden, for instance, has In modern times, the Humean approach to conven- employed evolutionary game theory to study the ori- tions has been revived by the philosopher David gins of conventions. The most general mechanism Lewis, whose theory clarifies the customary, arbi- that has been suggested to explain their evolution trary, and self-enforcing nature of conventions. is that of symmetry breaking. Avoiding collisions at Adopting a game-theoretic approach, Lewis pro- a crossroad, for instance, requires a rule that speci- posed that a convention is a solution to a coordi- fies who is supposed to stop and who is supposed nation problem arising in recurrent interactions. A to move forward. Since, however, in the absence of coordination problem is considered as a situation any convention the positions of all the drivers are characterized by at least two coordination equilib- symmetrical, by observing each other’s behavior, the ria. A coordination equilibrium is a combination of evolutionary dynamics cannot converge on one of actions—one for each player—in which each player the coordination equilibria. However, if the players is strictly motivated to perform his component of the can also discriminate among contextual features of combination, conditional on his believing that the their situation, they might exploit an arbitrary sym- other players will perform theirs. Moreover, there metry to solve this problem. For instance, if drivers exists at least one alternative combination of actions condition their behavior on who is coming from the that has the same property. Finally, for each player, right, they might evolve a convention that assigns if a player performs his share of the combination, he priority to those coming from that side of the road. prefers that the other players perform theirs. When Thus, arbitrary cues can boost the evolution of arbi- an interaction contains at least two coordination trary regularities. equilibria and when coincidence of interests between Though the importance of conventions in solving the players prevails, the players are facing a coordi- coordination problems has been exploited in many nation problem. areas of the social sciences (from economics to lin- A classical example of a coordination prob- guistics and law), limiting the role of conventions lem is that of choosing the same side of the road only to situations in which the interests of the play- in order to drive safely. If, in a society, a regular- ers coincide is indeed an undue restriction. Actually, ity in behavior in which each individual picks his theoretical models in biology, economics, and phi- share of a coordination equilibrium is established, losophy have shown that together with conventions then, according to Lewis’s definition, this regularity of coordination, conventions of partial conflict can is a convention. Since a conventional regularity is also emerge and stabilize. Robert Sugden and Brian sustained if there is a system of concordant mutual Skyrms have shown, for instance, that a conven- expectations of conformity, a crucial component of tion of partial conflict in which property rights are any theory of convention is explaining the origins assigned to the first person to take possession of a of these concordant mutual expectations. According previously unowned item can evolve by exploiting to Lewis, the source of these mutual expectations is the same symmetry-breaking mechanism sketched precedent: If the agents have a shared acquaintance above. Copyright © 2013 SAGE Publications. Not for sale, reproduction, or distribution. 902 Social Epistemology Finally, even if a social convention is often of these disciplines. This entry begins by discussing regarded as a mere regularity in behavior, it has three types of social epistemology that canvass these often been suggested that it also has a normative possibilities, followed by an extended discussion force. Margaret Gilbert, for instance, has argued of the most ambitious form of social epistemology, that a social convention has an intrinsic normativity which attempts to bridge the analytic/continental
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