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Communism and the Incentive to Share in Science

Heesen, Remco (2015) Communism and the Incentive to Share in Science. In: UNSPECIFIED.

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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? Michael Strevens provides a partial answer to these questions by showing that scientists should be willing to sign a social contract that mandates sharing. However, he also argues that it is not in an individual credit-maximizing scientist's interest to follow this norm. I argue against Strevens that individual scientists can rationally conform to the communist norm, even in the absence of a social contract or other ways of socially enforcing the norm, by proving results to this effect in a game-theoretic model. This shows that the incentives provided to scientists through the priority rule are sufficient to explain both the origins and the persistence of the communist norm, adding to previous results emphasizing the benefits of the incentive structure created by the priority rule.


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Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (UNSPECIFIED)
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Heesen, Remcorheesen@andrew.cmu.edu
Keywords: philosophy of science, social structure of science, communist norm, priority rule, formal epistemology
Subjects: General Issues > Decision Theory
General Issues > Science and Policy
Depositing User: Remco Heesen
Date Deposited: 18 Sep 2015 21:06
Last Modified: 18 Sep 2015 21:06
Item ID: 11684
Subjects: General Issues > Decision Theory
General Issues > Science and Policy
Date: 24 August 2015
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/11684

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