Word: logics
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Limits of Economics); of cancer; in Princeton, N.J. Morgenstern noted that classical economics -and many of its "neoclassical" adherents-has exhibited a dismal track record in predicting and interpreting phenomena. After viewing numerous examples of multivariable decision making in game situations (poker was a Morgenstern favorite), he used mathematics, logic and the relatively simple economic-behavioral concept of "utility maximization" to devise a general theoretical framework which often demonstrated remarkable predictive power. He also applied his theory to such diverse areas as nuclear arms negotiations, computer science and complex business decisions for the government and private industry...
When he was asked at a press conference about the logic of this, the President took up John Kennedy's line. "Well," said Carter, "as you know, there are many things in life that are not fair, that wealthy people can afford and poor people can't." Anatole France in the last century appraised that kind of elegant fatalism: "The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges...
...order to judge the principle of fairness. The undoubted risks of making abortion too easily available are outweighed by the risks of making it too difficult or impossible to obtain. Since the only intelligent argument to be made for abortion is that it is a social necessity, fairness and logic dictate that it must be available especially to those who, wanting it, cannot afford it. To say that abortion, while legal, is immoral but that only the poor shall be saved from this immorality by a fastidious government is not only unfair but absurd...
According to sociobiologists, evolution produces organisms that automatically follow this mathematical logic, as if they were computers, totting up the genetic costs or benefits of helping out relatives who bear many of the same genes. If aiding the relatives increases the chances that familial genes will prosper and propagate, the organism will act altruistically?even to the extent of giving up its life, as a parent may, for example, by rushing into a burning house to save a child. Yet in humans, this genetic push is less binding; sociobiologists believe that human social behavior is largely controlled by facultative genes?...
...threatening. He says, for example, that only about 10% to 15% of human social behavior is genetically based. (After this less-than-scientific guess, Sahlins replied with some dry academic mockery that human behavior cannot be reduced to 10% biology, 5% physics, 3% chemistry, .7% geology, 81% symbolic logic and .3% the action of heavenly bodies...