Individuality and Entanglement: The Moral and Material Bases of Social Life by Herbert Gintis (review)

Multidisciplinary approaches including economics, sociology, anthropology, moral philosophy, and social behavior give this book a seductive power to catch one's attention very easily, but at the same time call for gradual introspection in order to provide an analytical framework regarding the fundamental characteristics of human societies. Through the voice of the author, the pages of this book outline the frame of social behavior as a result of gene–culture coevolution, the theory of human sociality, and game theory.

Through this approach, Gintis sets the book in twelve chapters that open new reflective doors for the reader. In addition, the author argues that anybody may sacrifice personal benefits on behalf of the well-being of others and on behalf of universal moral principles.

The first chapter, "Gene-Culture Coevolution," is built upon the idea that for our species, "the epigenetic information takes the form of culture that accumulates long-term reliability across generations" (p. 1). Culture includes social norms, behavior, and techniques that determine which genes will be rewarded in a given society. According to that theory, both gene and culture are transmitted across generations and are the forces of evolution. Moreover, they undergo mutations that are adaptive over time, and they improve the success of the population. One of the best examples of gene–culture coevolution is the psychology of speech and the improvement of the capacity to communicate through nonverbal language.

The next two chapters continue the ideas expressed by the author in the first chapter and focus on the political side as part of the behavioral disciplines. Political theory and the election process are explained through compartmental choice. Starting from the affirmation that "human minds are networked and cognition is distributed across minds,"¹ the author introduces the notion of distributed effectivity. The real power of behavioral sciences is the modeling of individual choice as rational choice. Individual behavior can be modeled as maximizing an objective function according to preference, orderings, and constraints. Consequently, rational choice theory provides a powerful defense of political democracy. Gintis explains how democracy gives people the same power in public life as markets give them in their personal: the power to implement preferred social outcomes.

Starting with the chapter "Power and Trust in Competitive Markets," the author begins a discussion of the complexity of concrete approaches, bringing to the forefront of the discussion the links between political, economic, and sociological theories. These theories converge upon power relations, reflected by political theory, and moral behaviors, as a characteristic of powerful and productive economic systems.

A successful economy is obtained only with the distribution of political power in the economy and with the moral commitment of market participants. Even if the "model of general market" described by Walras tries to reduce the relation between people to a relation between things, the "general equilibrium model" described here is the key characteristic of a market economy: the owners of capital and their representatives almost always control the firm.

At the same time, Gintis examines the idea that the rational choice model is fundamental in analyzing social behavior, but it does not explain individual preferences. To understand those preferences, it is necessary to explain the psychology of a goal directed toward an intentional behavior, touching on evolutionary theory and heuristics. The social preference function is related to its current motivational state, previous experience, and future plans, all connected to one's social situation.

The next chapters of this book present the three dimensions of preferences developed by humans as behaviors: self-regarding (what we want for ourselves), other regarding (our care about other people's well-being), and universal (regarding either self or other). Real human beings experience a mismatch between what people should value and what they do value. In the author's opinion, humans treat certain regulations in a conventional manner, but social rules are morally binding. Consequently...