Formal Structures and Social Reality

In the first part of this paper, I take up some analytical questions about the theory of games and its application to social reality. I emphasize the importance of thinking, not in terms of one-off games or even of repeated trials, but in terms of the general motivations or dispositions that exist in a society. In the second part, I consider some complications in the idea of a ‘motivation to cooperate’, and the relation of that idea to the idea of trust. In the third part, I offer some very general speculations about the motivations that might be necessary or sufficient to sustain a social framework of cooperation.