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CHAPTER 4 Deconstructing Frank Robert Frank's widely cited 1988 book Passions within Reason represents a heartfelt plea, particularly to social scientists, to recognize the category of altruistic behavior as empirically relevant. For skeptics, it provides an accessible summary of evidence of such behavior. What follows, however, is critical of Frank's second key objective-his attempted explanation of this phenomenon-and is designed to illustrate further the limitations of an economic/evolutionary approach that, from the outset, limits selection to the level of the individual organism. We should applaud Frank's attempt to understand a range ofbehavior that many economists have downplayed, ignored, or even suggested does not exist. He has taken seriously the problem of altruism in a way some more ideologically committed have not. To read this work critically is to take it seriously.! Nevertheless, his analysis is riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions. Not acknowledging in a consistent fashion the limitations of a strictly economic approach, or an evolutionary approach limiting selection to the level of the individual organism, vitiates an analysis that tries to integrate the two approaches. By deconstructing the analysis we can illustrate the pitfalls of trying to explain the origin of altruistic behavior within a model that focuses, from an evolutionary standpoint, on the forces ofindividual level selection alone. Not bringing this issue to the surface leaves one group of scholars secure in knowledge of "flaws" in argument such as this, unable quite to specify them, yet confident, because there is so little "theoretical" foundation for the persistence of altruism, that in fact it does not persist. This is an untenable position because, as Frank and others show, and as is selfevident to many nonacademics, there is a substantial body of experimen1 . Although often referenced, the book has received remarkably little critical attention. A recent exception is Reder 1999 (326-30). For an example of continued uncritical acceptance , see Sterelny and Griffiths 1999. These authors, astute critics and expositors of the biological literatures, describe Passions within Reason as "probably the best book yet on the possible evolutionary significance of a wider range of emotions" (304). Ignored by those convinced altruism is empirically unimportant, Frank's book has been embraced by those who see it as reconciling the standard economic model with other-regarding behavior. 159 160 Altruistically Inclined? tal and observational evidence for such behavior. Of perhaps equal concern , not undertaking this critique leaves another group confident that there are available good individual selectionist explanations of such behavior. Frank implicitly criticizes economists for their skepticism about the empirical relevance of altruistic behavior. He is right to do so. The problem , as in the Trivers model, is the commitment to explain it within an evolutionary framework that precludes the operation of natural selection above the level of the individual organism. Because Frank restricts himself to an evolutionary past in which only individual level selection can have occurred, he must ultimately accept the logic of the pop Darwinism view of evolution: natural selection has necessarily eliminated any otherregarding behavioral predispositions. To account for the emergence of the behavior he wishes to explain, he finds himself forced, as was Trivers, to develop his theory based on rational calculation by self-interested agents. The recurring problem is that, for such an agent, altruistic behavior, were it to be practiced in a population where it manifests itself initially at low frequencies, would be fitness reducing for an individual organism and thus, according to the definition used in this book, irrational. In spite of its evolutionary trappings, Frank's account is at its core narrowly economic and consistent with the assumptions of the standard economic model. Behavior results from constrained maximization of utility functions devoid of arguments reflecting the utility of others. But the issue goes beyond the possible need to add additional arguments to utility functions or modify the way they may enter. There may be limits within which the metaphor of constrained maximization itself is useful in modeling human behavior. A fully evolutionary framework can help us understand these bounds. Passions within Reason goes half the distance, but the effort produces an analysis that is muddled and contradictory. The centerpiece of the theory is a treatment of the strategic role of emotions. By permitting us credibly to commit to threats or promises it might not in the future be in our interest to deliver on, Frank argues, passionate behavior allows us to "solve" problems, like nuclear deterrence, that would otherwise be insoluble. But he never satisfactorily explains...

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