The Blue Book

Ludwig Wittgenstein made his students dictate a lecture series he gave to them. The book was covered in blue and thus is called “The Blue Book”. In this book, Wittgenstein treated the essential problem of language and thinking.

There is the fundamental gap between the language and the object that the language is trying to identify. For instance, if one says “Please take the pencil there” to his or her mother, how the mother can make sure that the pencil she took is definitely the object, i.e. “the pencil there”? Take another example. Let’s say that your friend says she feels pain. How can you know that?

There are two reasons of the problem, according to Wittgenstein.

One is the usage of word. We don’t have ostensive meaning in words. Most of the words have various meaning, and it is not possible to let one word to identify a specific object, or in other words, no fixed definition can exist. According to Wittgenstein, objects of thought are not the facts, but shadows of facts. We have certain sensations not referring to the object. Thus, he says: “We are unable clearly to circumscribe the concepts we use; not because we don’t know their real definition, but because there is no real definition to them.” (page 25)

Only what we can do is to set the context and to make the gap narrower. As Bertrand Russell wrote in his book “The Problems of Philosophy“, to collect more sense data could help to fill the gap between the cognition and the object. However, the gap will never be eliminated. What I see cannot be exactly equals to what she sees.

Regarding this point, he quotes what Saint Augustine said: “How is it possible that one should measure time? For the past can’t be measured, as it is gone by; and the future can’t be measured because it has not yet come, and the present can’t be measured for it has no extension.”

Another reason of the problem is the usage of grammar. Here, Wittgenstein seems to use the word “grammar” as something like logical correctness. He claims that we often misuse the grammar and understand the things metaphorically. For instance, we say “The sun rises from the east sea”, but it is not grammatically correct, as the reality is that the earth rotate around the sun.

Take another example. We think thinking as an activity. However, an activity needs to have the location where it takes place. Where is the locality of the activity? In fact, thinking is operating with signs, and not the activity. Thus Wittgenstein argues that: “By misunderstanding the grammar of our expressions, we are led to think of one in particular of these statements as giving the real seat of the activity of thinking.” (page 16)

After pointing our the problem in our thinking, he tries to fix it.

“The scrutiny of the grammar of a word weakens the position of certain fixed standards of our expression which had prevented us from seeing facts with unbiased eyes. Our investigation tried to remove this bias, which forces us to think that the facts must confirm to certain pictures embedded in our language.” (page 43)

To fix the problem, he introduces the concept of “Language Game”, which is the form of language with which a child begins to make use of words. The concept is described in “The Brown Book”.

Remarks

I was just surprised by how smart he is. When I read great books, what I mainly feel is the authors’ belief, perspectives, passion etc, all of which move me pretty much. However, I do not often sense the smartness of the authors. I think it is a book of the genius. Though a bit redundant, his line of reasoning is elegant, and I wish if I could do the same in the future.

Another remark is that, ironically, it is quite difficult to find remarks. He just forces us to face the fundamental problem in our thinking. As we often lose our words when we face unfavorable or surprising truth, I was just overwhelmed by the book.

Reference:

Ludwig Wittgenstein, "The Blue and Brown Books", Wiley-Blackwell, 1991/1/16

Bertrand Russell, "The Problems of Philosophy", Dover Publications, 1999/1/26

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Everyone wants to give a good impression to the others. There are two ways an individual can express oneself; one is verbal communication and another is non-verbal communication. Among the two communication styles, nonverbal communication plays a critical role in forming one’s own impression. Then, how we can manage our impression through non-verbal communication?

Erving Goffman gives us some implications through his book, “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life”, in which he gives us the implication on how the character of the situation and self image is made, using metaphor of dramaturgy.

In a drama, a performer plays a role of someone who is not him/herself in the fictional situation. Let’s say a performer plays Caesar in Rome. The performer is not Caesar in reality, and it’s been 2000 years since Rome era, but audiences feel that the performer is Caesar and the stage is Rome. Why? It is because in the drama, all factors collectively create coherent images of the role and the situation. Performers, attires, teams, stages etc are all harmonized and create consistent image of the world.

This dramaturgical approach gives us some important implications.

First, an image in the society is composed of various but coherent factors, and if even one of the factors is disruptively damaged, it would be very difficult to fix the images. For instance, if you pick up a cellphone while you play the role of Caesar, everything in the drama is destroyed, because existence of the cellphone cannot be consistent with coherent images of the situation and the roles.

The coherence also represents the cultures and values of specific era. It is historical, social, political and cultural product, and that is why prof. Goffman limits his discussion in the realm of western society.

Second implication is about the situation. Situation has significant influence toward the people in it, as once the situation is defined, all performers will follow it. For instance, you cannot wear jeans in Rome era to keep your image as a civil in Rome. Moreover, once the situation is defined, individuals in it, as a team, collaborate to maintain the situation. The team works as if it is a secret society to keep the situation unchanged, Goffman mentioned:

“A team, then may be defined as a set of individuals whose intimate co-operation is required if a given projected definition of the situation is to be maintained. A team is a grouping, but it is a grouping not in relation to a social structure or social organization but rather in relation to an interaction or series of interactions in which the relevant definition of the situation is maintained.

We have seen, and will see further, that if a performance is to be effective, it will be likely that the extent and character of the co-operation that makes this possible will be concealed and kept secret. A team, then, has something of the character of a secret society. … Thus a team, as used herein, is the kind of secret society whose members may be known by non-members to constitute a society, even an exclusive one, but the society these individuals are known to constitute is not the one they constitute by virtue of acting as a team.” (page 104)

This implies that in any social interactions, when you want to give favorable impressions to others, the first thing you have to do is to define the situation and let every participant accept it. Prof. Goffman says that that exactly is the social technique that we usually use to maintain one’s own impression.

From the different perspective, the fact explains why dress codes are critical in some situations. Attire is one of the tools to preserve the situation.

Third is the role of the back stage. No one shows the back stage of a drama to the audience, because it should not belong to the situation. Instead, the front stage belongs to the situation. This implies that the front stage is where one plays his or her social life, and the back stage is where one leads his or her private life. This may explain why we often differentiate “on” and “off” in our everyday life.

Remarks

I was surprised to see that this book covers the idea of “atmosphere”, since the Japanese often talk of the atmosphere and often misunderstand as if the atmosphere is unique to them. It is not. Wherever society exists, there could be the atmosphere (the “situation”) which force the participants to follow, regardless of the intensiveness of it.

The second thing I found interesting is the requirements to give the intended impression. If you want to be like someone else, you need to keep consistency in every action you take. It is a hard task, as only one dissonance will ruin the whole image.

The third is the methodology. The author used a drama to analyze our social interaction. I don’t know deeply why he came up with the idea, but, to me, implication is clear: analyze gimmicks or fictions to analyze our society. Gimmicks, fictions, or something work, because there are fundamental rule or common sense of the society behind the gimmicks and fictions. That is, as prof. Goffman did, when you analyze a currently popular gimmick very deeply (maybe facebook?), you may be able to find out fundamental social values dominant in this era.

Finally, the book showed us the power of metaphor. As "Metaphor We Live by" argued, our conception is in many cases metaphorical.

Reference:

Erving Goffman, "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life", Anchor Books, 1959

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, "Metaphors We Live by", University of Chicago Press (2nd edition)

Metaphors We Live by

The essence of metaphor is to understand and experience one concept in terms of one another. For example, when we say, “argument is war”, we understand the concept of argument such that it has many similarities with war.

We often use metaphor, but we may have underestimated the value and influence of it. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, the authors of “Metaphors We Live by”, argued that our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

Types of metaphor

According to the authors, there are four types of metaphor.

The first is structural metaphor, in which one concept is metaphorically structured in terms of another. Example: time is money.

The second is orientational metaphor, by which one organizes a whole system of concepts with respect to one another. Example: happy is up / sad is down. The characteristic of orientational metaphor is that way of the orientation represents the culture. For instance, “happy is up” is based on the culture in which people associate “up” with something good.

The third is ontological metaphor. In this metaphor, a concept is understood as entity or human beings. For instance, when we say “this recession is killing me”, we are personifying the recession.

The fourth is new metaphor. This is a metaphor that we personally find particularly forceful, insightful, and appropriate, given our experiences as members of our generation and our culture. For instance “love is a collaborative work of art” is the one. Many maxims are new metaphor.

Metaphor and our conceptual system

Every conceptual system has grounding, structure, relation among concepts, and definition. The authors claim that our conceptual system is based on metaphorical reasoning. Let me show how it goes.

In Prof. Lakoff and Johnson’s perspective, experience is the ground. Every understanding and reasoning starts with it.

Through experience, for example when we experience a conversation, we see many aspects in the experience: participants, parts, stages, causation, purpose, linear sequence, etc. These multidimensional structures of experience characterize “experiential gestalts”, which are ways of organizing experiences into structured whole (page 81). (Gestalt is the German word meaning “wholeness”)

These gestalts play important role in coming up with metaphor. When we make a metaphor, we use some elements in gestalts of our experience. For instance, in the “argument is war” metaphor, the gestalt for conversation is structured further by means of correspondences with selected elements of the gestalt for war. In this way, by using elements of the gestalts as a bridge, we understand one concept using our experience, and that is the metaphorical process of concept structuring.

Thus, according to the authors, the concept of definition is more vague than we usually think. They argued that we can only define and understand a concept metaphorically, i.e. we understand it primarily in terms of concepts for other natural kinds of experiences.

“On our account, individual concepts are not defined in an isolated fashion, but rather in terms of their roles in natural kinds of experiences. Concepts are not defined solely in terms of inherent properties; instead, they are defined primarily in terms of interactional properties. Finally, definition is not a matter of giving some fixed set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of a concept; instead, concepts are defined by prototypes and by types of relations to prototypes. Rather than being rigidly defined, concepts arising from our experience are open-ended. Metaphors and hedges are systematic devices for further defining a concept and for changing its range of applicability.” (page125)

Remarks

Objectivity and universality

Logical conclusion of the authors’ argument is to deny the universal truth or concept. They say, “ we do not believe that there is such a thing as objective truth, though it has been a long-standing theme in Western culture that there is.” (page 159) In their perspective, reasoning is based on one’s experience, which is very specific and varied among individuals. Everyone has different experience, and especially in the case that we communicate with those who have totally different background, it is extremely difficult to share objective and universal principle.

Although the authors deny the objectivism and spent a lot of pages attacking the notion, I still believe that there could be a few universal and objective values that all human beings can share as a common sense. Granted, the scope of the common sense could be very narrow, but such fundamental things as valuing life and love could form the basis of universal principles.

Experience and knowledge

Their argument reminds me of what my father had done for me when I was a child. Although I was raised in a financially challenged family, my father took my brothers and me to many places, seas, mountains, museums, etc. Those experiences may have expanded elements of the gestalts, thus leading to development of my intelligence.

The theory also makes me to understand why people understand one situation very differently. That difference may be coming from the difference of experiences, and the way to expand and develop understanding of others, the key would be experience the things as much as one can.

Reference: George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, "Metaphors We Live by", University of Chicago Press (2nd edition)

Thougt and Language

Another book of Vygotsky is Thought and Language, which studies the relationship between thought development and language.

Thought development and language

Since available technologies are limited in the early 20th century, he started with the analysis of apes’ language to study human mind development. Vygotsky reviews experiments of apes speech in which apes do have a relatively well-developed “language”, but it lacks intellect. That is, apes’ language is entirely subjective – can only express emotions, never designate or describe objects or express thought. On the other hand, apes have thought process thanks to its usage of tools at primary level.

Given the facts, Vygotsky claimed that thought and speech have different genetic roots, and two functions develop along different lines and independently of each other up to a certain point in time. Apes and infants do not go beyond that point, and their actions have only a subjective meaning. However, human beings, at the very young age, they exceeds the point, and then thought becomes verbal, and speech rational. (page 79 to 83) The transformation that the child experiences after exceeding the point is essential and qualitative; it is not the continuation of the development made so far. After that point, the nature of the development itself changes, from biological one to socio-historical. That is, when thought and language become intertwined in their development, the driving force of the development is the socio-cultural factors that one experiences in his or her life.

Vygotsky thus concludes that thought development is determined by language, i.e. by the linguistic tools of thought and by the sociocultural experience of the child. Thanks to language, children can develop inner speech, which is essential to enhance intelligence of the human beings.

In more detail, Vygotsky thought that human being’s mental operations generally develop in four stages. In the first stage, speech lacks intelligence and thought lacks language. The second stage is called “naïve psychology”, in which a child begins to use tools as the application of experience. In the third stage, a child counts on his fingers, resorts to mnemonic aids, and so on. In speech development it is characterized by egocentric speech. The fourth stage comes at the end, and the child begins to count in his head, to use “logical memory” to operate with inherent relations and inner signs, i.e. external experience is internalized in the child’s sign system. (page 86 to 87)

Development of concept

Another question was how people develop conceptual thinking, which is vital part to build the sign system within human beings. Vygotsky argued that the first phase of concept formation is complex formation, i.e. the child unites diverse objects in groups under a common “family name”, the formation process that goes through several stages. The second phase is the formation of “potential concepts”, which is formed by singling out certain common attributes in complexes. In both, the use of the word is an integral part of the developing processes, and the word maintains its guiding function in the formation of genuine concepts, to which these process lead.

Vygotsky thought that the development process which enable concept formation begins very early stage at childhood, but it takes time until the intellectual functions form the psychological basis of the process of concept formation ripen, take shape, and develop. The development by which one can achieve concept formation is not the quantitative growth from the earlier stage, but it is the qualitative new leap.

In the first stage, word meaning denotes nothing more to the child than a “vague syncretic conglomeration of individual objects” (page 110). Then during the next stage, word meaning is about the organization of the child’s visual field. In the next stage, one’s syncretic image is composed of elements taken from different groups or heaps that have already been formed by the child.

Having gone through the process above, the child will undergo “thinking in complexes”. Complex is composed of many concepts (e.g. an apple is composed of such concepts as red, sweet, juicy, etc). According to Vygotsky, there are five types of complex: associative type, collections, chain complex, diffuse complex and pseudo-concept (phenotypically resembling the adult concept, but psychologically very different one).

The principal function of complexes is to establish bonds and relations. Complex thinking begins the unification of scattered impressions; by organizing discrete elements of experience into groups, it creates a basis for later generalizations (concept formation).

Upon complex thinking, one can attain concept formation, which requires abstract thinking, i.e. single out elements from a complex. Concept formation is not that easy. When we see one complex, say, an apple, we find many concept in this complex – sweet, red, juicy, etc. That is why the concept formation should follow the many stages mentioned above. In the beginning, one starts with the “potential concepts”, or the elements chosen as having common natures, and after then one can finally form concepts in his or her mind.

Thought and word

In the final part of this book, Vygotsky tried to explain the relation between thought and word. For the more sophisticated analysis, he divided word into phonetic word (voice) and semantic word (meaning), speech into external speech and inner speech, and thought into verbal thought and non-verbal one.

According to Vygotsky, speech and thought collectively create dynamic process. They are delicate, changeable relations between processes, which arise during the development of verbal thought (page 254).

Vygotsky argued that thought is engendered by motivation (desires, needs, interests, and emotions). Then, the thought generates inner speech, then in meanings of words (semantic), and finally in words (phonetic). The process is very complex, and since a direct transition from thought to word is impossible, there is always the hidden thought, the subtext. This dynamic process creates and leads evolution of thought and speech, or the inner sign system of human beings.

Remarks

The book was a bit verbose (frequently digress from the main line and jump into analyses of other’s studies), and it took time for me to fathom what the author mentions. Moreover, even without digression, the concept mentioned in this book was not easy to me.

The implication is tremendous. The book brought me about more profound understanding of words and speech. It also gave me the opportunities to think about the value of writing blog: as the outer speech (writing as well) is deeply interconnected with my thought, blog writing is the process to verbalize my inner speech, and lead to the evolution of my mind and thought. If I succeeded in verbalizing my thought, I would be able to initiate the deeper conversation with myself (by seeing this blog), and that would bring about the further evolution of my mind. Empirically, that is what happened when I wrote my Japanese blog, and hope the same in this blog.

Reference: Lev Vygotsky, "Thought and Language", The MIT Press (revised edition), 1986/Aug/28

Mind in Society

A brief history of pre-Vygotsky psychology

Until the mid nineteenth century, psychology has been a part of philosophy. The change came when three books were published almost simultaneously. Darwin argued the essential continuity of man and other animals in “Origin of Pecies”, making human mind to be experimented as it is for animals. Fechner authored “Die Psychophysik”, which provided a detailed, theoretical explanation of the relation between changes in specifiable physical events and verbalizable psychic responses. The third book was “Reflexes of the Brain” by Sechenov who had advanced out understanding of simple sensory-motor reflexes by using techniques that isolated nerve-muscle preparations from the living organism.

Once psychology became independent academic fields, people encountered key questions such as “what are the relationships between animal and human behavior, environmental and mental events, and physiological and psychological process?” One school, founded by Wilhelm Wundt in 1880, described the contents of human consciousness into their relation to external stimulation. However, Wundt ruled out such sensations as feelings of awareness or perception of relations as elements of consciousness. He concluded that human’s complex mental functions are out of the scope of psychology.

Only after WWI, scholars began to analyze human-specific higher process, e.g. thought, language, and volitional behavior, and Lev Vygotsky was the one who constructed a theory of human psychological process, arguing that the higher psychological process of human beings is due to a multiplication and complication of principles derived from animal psychology. That means, it is not the principles of psychological process that bring about difference between human and animal thought process, but the socio-economic reasons that make human thought process more sophisticated and complex than those of animals.

Marx and Engels, by whom Vygotsky were significantly influenced, noted that human beings created tool system by which they responded to the world totally in the different way from other animals. “The animal merely uses external nature, and brings about changes in it simply by his presence; man, by his changes, makes it serve his ends, masters it. This is the final essential distinction between man and other animals.”

Vygotsky thought that like tool systems of Marx and Engels, sign sytems (language, writing, number systems) are created by societies over the course of human history and change with the form of society and the level of its cultural development. He believed that the internalization of culturally produced sign systems brings about behavioral transformations and forms the bridge between early and later forms of individual development.

Sign system

In the book “Mind in Society”, he analyzed psychological development process of children. Through the comparison between human children and animals, he claimed that what distinguishes human from animals is the sign-system. Thanks to the sign system, even a small child is able to plan and execute the complex procedures.

Signs are the artificial and self-generated stimuli. For instance, when we are in a hot room, not only we feel the heat (original stimulus), but also we understand the situation using a word “hot”(sign). Thanks to language, human beings extend the operation of memory beyond the biological dimensions. Sign system is the complex thought system inside the human mind, developed by tool and speech. By using the sign system, human beings can perceive the “real objects”, i.e. “human beings do not see the world simply in color and shape but also as a world with sense and meaning” (page 33).

Originated from language, the sign system enables children to provide for auxiliary tools to cope with complicated tasks, to overcome impulsive action, to plan a solution to a problem prior to its execution, and to master their own behavior (page 28). “The system of signs restructures the whole psychological process and enables the child to master her movement. It reconstructs the choice process ona totally new basis.” (page 35)

Children’s development of mind

Vygotsyky noted that “sign-using activity in children is neither simply invented nor passed down by adults; rather it arises from something that is originally not a sign operation and becomes one only after a series of qualitative transformations. Each of these transformations provides the conditions for the next stage and is itself conditioned by the preceding one; thus, transformations are linked like stages of a single process, and are historical in nature.” (Page 46)

Infants represent the development of minds of human beings. Higher psychological functions (i.e. psychological functions of human beings) developed through dialectical process: interweaving of two lines of psychological development: one is biological origin, and another is sociocultural origin. Vygotsky claimed that “the history of the development of the higher psychological functions is impossible without a study of their prehistory, their biological roots, and their organic disposition. The developmental roots of two fundamental, cultural forms of behavior arise during infancy: the use of tools and human speech. This alone places infancy at the center of the prehistory of cultural development. “ (Page 46)

Signs and tools

Tool use is also human specific behavior. Tool and speech are together essential human natures, but they are different in their functions. Tools work as the conductors of human action, and it is externally oriented and is used to master the nature. Instead, sign system works to regulate human internal minds, and it is internally oriented and is used to master one’s own behavior.

Vygotsky thought that the combination of tool and signs is the essence of psychological activity. Thanks to these two tools, human beings can internally (in mind) construct an external operation, the construction process called “internalization” (page 56). Vygotsky noted the process of internalization consists of a series of transformation:

• An operation that initially represents external activity is reconstructed and begins to occur internally: learning how to swim would be examples. One learn external activity (swim) and then will be able to image it inside one’s mind
• An interpersonal (between persons) process is transformed into an intrapersonal (inside person) one: from conversation into self reflection
• The transformation of an interpersonal process into an intrapersonal one is the result of a long series of developmental events

Implication to education

Originally, the book aims to improve the child education. Using the arguments I introduced above, he placed importance on understanding children’s zone of proximal development. Zone of proximal development is “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers (page 86)”. When children face “tasks in the zone”, they need the assistance from teachers, and in the future the tasks will be out of the zone, i.e. children will be able to do it by themselves. That exactly is the psychological development. Through the assistance, children can imitate what their teachers & adults do, and that imitation go beyond the limits of children’s own capability. Once children experience it through imitation, they will be able to “internalize” the process, and then to reproduce the action by themselves in the future.

That is why Vygotsky emphasized that the children’s psychological development (internalization) often comes after the learning. As a practical implication, we can say that it is crucial to understand whether students need your assistance now.

He also emphasized the importance of play in children’s development. As now we understand, play (e.g. playing house) helps the development process for the tasks in the zone of proximal development. Through the play, or imitating adult’s behaviors, children will be what they cannot do independently now, and eventually they master what they cannot do before (internalization).

Remarks

It is a impressive book. Although Marx and Engels provided general model of relationship between material conditions and upper structure, as far as I know they did not provided the model to describe human psychological development. Vygotsky illuminated the development process of human mind, which is purely a historical product. The model he provided is still the foundation of developmental psychology.

Another thing I feel curious is that how our mind will be in 21st century. We now live in the unprecedented age, which will mark the ICT revolution, the third revolution after the agricultural and industrial revolution. Today, people are far more connected than before, and that will bring us about the significant psychological development. Under the circumstances, what will be the main subjects or problems of human mind? To imagine the answer to the question is exciting.

Reference: Lev Vygotsky, "Mind in Society - Development of Higher Psychological Processes", Harvard University Press

Why I write English blog

I know my English is awful now. It irritates me that I cannot articulate my ideas fully as I can do in Japanese or Korean. That said, I cannot avoid undergoing this painful process to improve my English. After I spent several years writing my Japanese blog, my Japanese has dramatically improved, and eventually I could publish my first book at the age of 27 from one of the most well-known Japanese publishers.

My father always told me that if you want to do something significant in the world, it is vital to use English almost as a mother tongue. Indeed, he was right in some sense. Even if you continue to live in your native countries, English fluency will enable you to be more successful to change the world.

Why so? It's because in 21st century English-speaking communities are where the world's wisdom and information are accumulated. Most of them won't be translated into your native languages. The information gap between English and the other languages would be widened significantly in 21st century. The main reason is the advancement of information and communication technology. Beforehand, even if one living in India is fluent in English, he or she had no many opportunities to share his idea with those who live in the US. However, now, if you can use English, you can communicate with English speakers (most of them use English as a lingua franca) all over the world. Thus, the knowledge and wisdom of the world's intelligence would be compiled onto English-speaking communities. It is obvious if you compare English wikipedia with Japanese one, see TED, read academic & business magazines, etc.

One may say that auto-translation will be in place shortly, and we may not need to learn English in the future. Granted, perfect computer translators will be available in the future, but given the current pace of technological advancement, I guess it will take at least a decade until auto-translators will be perfect for practical use, and it will take more until auto-interpretors are available. That 10 years could bring us about notable delay in learning new ideas, and it may be difficult to recoup.

Caveat1: needless to say, to be fluent in English is necessary but not sufficient. What I wanted to emphasize is that English fluency is a "prerequisite".

Caveat2: maybe I exaggerated too much. Of course, there will still be the great intellectuals even though they cannot use English. What I wrote is the probability and expected value.

That is why I began my English blog. Probably I will publish my book in English by 2017.

Business Model Generation

"Business Model Generation" is a nice book to come up with business models. The contents of this book are not quite new – rather, if you want to acquire profound understanding on this topic, Philip Kotler’s “Marketing Management”, a thick book with academic analyses and lively examples. However, this book is great at delivering key ideas in marketing.

The coolest thing in this book is its “Business Model Canvas”, which is available at http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/canvas. The business model canvas neatly shows the relationship among elements of business model: customer segments, value propositions, channels, customer relationships, revenue streams, key resources, key activities, key partnerships and cost structure.

Using the canvas, the authors show how the successful business models (e.g. Google) work. To visualize and design your business idea, the canvas would be the good start.

Using the business model canvas, the book tells us 5 key steps in creating and managing business model.

1. Mobilize: prepare for a successful business model design
2. Understand: Research and analyze elements needed for the business model design effort
3. Generate and test viable business model options, and select the best
4. Implement the business model prototype in the field
5. Adapt and modify the business model in response to market reaction

I recommend to read this book in the following way: read the first chapter “Canvas”, which is the core of the book. Then go to page 249, which shows the entire process of business model generation with relevant pages. You have your particular issues, so maybe it’s better to jump into the relevant sections first.

Reference: "Business Model Generation", Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur

The evolution of cooperation

“Under what conditions will cooperation emerge in a world of egoists without central authority?”

Robert Axelrod starts with this impressive sentence in his book “the evolution of cooperation”, which exerted significant influence on many fields: prevention of war, social evolution, cooperation among animals, human history, evolutionary game theory, networks of trust and reciprocity that build social capital, microeconomics, science fiction, etc.

Axelrod’s tit-for-tat in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma situation

By using iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma situation, Axelrod starts tackling the question. There are player A and B, and they can choose either defect (D) or cooperate(C). Under the circumstances, there are four outcomes (using the set up of his paper):

• R if both cooperate
• S if A cooperates and B defects
• T if A defects and B cooperates
• P if A defects and B defects

The author conducted his famous “computer tournament”, and found that in the iterated game, tit-for-tat is the best strategy. Tit-for-tat is the strategy to choose C in the first, and then mimic the strategy that other player chooses in the previous game. Then, if the players are all incentivized to maximize one’s own payoff, then they will adopt tit-for-tat, he claims. Thus, Axelrod’s analysis starts from the assumption that the player chooses tit-for-tat.

Let’s say player A and B adopt tit-for-tat strategy. Then, the pay off would be:

R + wR +w^2R + w^3R …

= R / (1- w)

where w = discount factor

Axelrod compared the payoff with other two strategies. One is the strategy to always choose D and the other is to alternate D and C (these two are the only potential invaders of tit-for-tat). Then, the payoff of the player will be the following:

• (T + wP)/(1-w)
• (T + wS)/(1-w^2) = wS + w^2T + w^3S…

Thus, if and only if the below conditions are satisfied, the tit-for-tat strategy is invaded by the other strategies:

• w≧(T-R)/(T-P)
• w≧(T-R)/(R-S)

If the probability of meeting certain types of players is statistically distributed, then we can provide the expected payoff of each strategy and come up with the conditions on which tit-for-tat thrives.

The result implies that tit-for-tat would be the best strategy in the following cases:

• The future is important (i.e. discount factor is enough high)
• The players interact frequently (i.e. the number of iteration is large)
• The probability to meet tit-for-tat (or “nice”) player is high

In chapter 3, he provides several additional propositions on the strategy’s robustness and stability in the prisoner’s dilemma situation. Then, he concludes:

“Thus cooperation can emerge even in a world of unconditional defection. The development cannot take place if it is tried only by scattered individuals who have no chance to interact with each other. But cooperation can emerge from small clusters of discriminating individuals, as long as these individuals have even a small proportion of their interactions with each other. Moreover, if nice strategies (those which are never the first to defect) come to be adopted by virtually everyone, then those individuals can afford to be generous in dealing with any others. By doing so well with each other, a population of nice rules can protect themselves against clusters of individuals using any other strategy just as well as they can protect themselves against single individuals. “

Application

The author applied his arguments in various fields. One was biology. In the paper published in “Science”, Robert Axelrod and William D. Hamilton (co-author) pointed out the certain cooperation shown in mutualistic symbioses: the fungus and alga that compose a lichen; the ants and ant-acacias, where the trees house and feed the ants which, in turn protect the tees; and the fig wasps and fig tree, where wasps, which are obligate parasites of fig flowers, serve as the tee’s sole means of pollination and seed set. They argue that symbioses mainly illustrate the other recent extension of evolutionary theory, the theory of reciprocation.

They said, their contribution in this area is as follows:

• They provided the probabilistic game theory model in a biological context, formalizing the strategic possibilities inherent in the situations
• Their analysis of the evolution of cooperation considers not just the final stability of a given strategy, but also the initial viability of a strategy in an environment dominated by non-cooperating individuals
• Their applications include behavioral interaction at the microbial level

Criticism from economists

When I read this book, I thought that some conclusions are not quite new in economics, or maybe it even exaggerates results of the game. As imagined, there were many criticisms from economists, as Ken Binmore summarized in his article. He says:

“Other game theorists may protest at my recognizing someone who knew no game theory at the time he made his contribution and still resolutely ignores game-theoretic commentary on his work, but it is inescapable that the evolutionary ideas pioneered by Axelrod now provide the standard approach to the equilibrium selection problem in game theory. But it is necessary to insist that to recognise Axelrod as a pioneer in evolutionary equilibrium selection is to endorse neither his claims for the strategy TIT-FOR-TAT, nor his unwillingness to see what theory can do before resorting to complicated computer simulations.”

http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/1/1/review1.html

In game theory, there already are fruitful theoretical results in iterated game, and Axelrod deliberately or indeliberately seems to ignore them. His usage of the famous “computer tournament” and of the examples seem to be arbitrary, as the arguments are lacking theoretical grounds. That said, the criticism does not destroy his entire contribution to the world, I believe. He provided the framework to think about the evolution from the perspective of game theory.

Remarks

It is a book of optimism. We can imagine what will happen in the future of cooperation. As written in this book, the more probability of continuing the game, the more cooperations. As ICT development is making us closer and more related to each other, there will be more chances of cooperation in the future. Actually, that is what’s going on in some spheres such as collaborative consumption, open source programming, etc.

My another remark is about problem solving. Technological advancement provides problems to solve. In this book, thanks to the development of computational power, the author could assess the strength of tit-for-tat strategy. Whenever one seeks for great problems, it may wise to look at the set of available technologies.

Reference

• “The evolution of cooperation” (Academic paper published in Science, Robert Axelrod and William D. Hamilton)
• “The evolution of cooperation” (Book, Robert Axelrod)
• Review by Ken Binmore, http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/1/1/review1.html

Making Democracy Work

I read a book “Bowling Alone”, in which Robert Putnam, the author, illuminated the social performance and strength of civic community. “Making Democracy is his historical book by which much of “social capital” concept proliferated.

The central question in this book is “What are the conditions for creating strong, responsive, effective representative institutions?”

The author was lucky. He had the opportunity to gather the data of Italy, which experienced the shift from centralized government system to localized one. There were 20 regional governments established during 1970s, and the 20 institutions in Italy significantly differed in their social, economic, political, and cultural contexts.

It is said that the state of institution shapes politics and the institutions are shaped by the history (i.e. it is “path dependent”). The book tries to examine that hypothesis.

1. How to measure institutional performance

Firstly, the author introduces measures of “institutional performance”. The conception of institutional performance in this study rests on a simple model of governance:

Societal demands -> political interaction -> government -> policy choice -> implementation

In this sense, a high-performance democratic institution must be both responsive and effective, that is, sensitive to the demands of its constituents and effective in using limited resources to address those demands. The author used twelve factors in determining institutional performance (page 67-):

• Cabinet stability : factor loading in institutional performance index is 0.874 (page 75)
• Budget promptness: 0.851
• Statistical and information services (which enhances the prompt and effective response to the public demand): 0.807
• Quality of the reform legislation (comprehensiveness, coherence and creativeness of the legislation, each graded from 1 to 5): 0.797
• Legislative innovation (evaluated by the factors such as strip mining regulation, promotion of fisheries, air/water pollution control, etc.): 0.779
• Provision of publicly supported day care centers per person eligible for the service: 0.681
• The number of family clinics per person: 0.640
• Industrial policy instruments (whether the regional government used six policy instruments: regional economic development plan, regional land use plan, industrial parks, regional development finance agencies, industrial development and marketing consortia, and job-training programs): 0.625
• Agricultural spending capacity: 0.580
• Local health unit expenditures: 0.577
• Housing and urban development: 0.545
• Bureaucratic responsiveness (evaluated through asking fake questions to the local bureaucracies) : 0.468

The institutional performance index composed of these 12 factors indicated striking correlation with their own historical performance and citizen satisfaction correlation (evaluated by the question “how satisfied or unsatisfied are you with the way in which this region is governed?”) and the community leaders’ satisfaction correlation(pp 76 - 81). The fact implies that institutional performance has autocorrelation (during the period, the original gap between north and south has been widened) and is well-designed to measure institutional performance in the sense that the performance augments civil satisfaction.

2. Which factors determine institutional performance - the impact of civic community

There are three schools in explaining institutional performance. The first school claims that institutional design determines the performance, the thought that has its roots in formal legal study, such as J.S. Mill’s “Considerations on Representative Government”. The second school emphasizes socioeconomic factors. They argue that the improvement of institutional performance is due to the modernization of economy.

The third school argues that sociocultural factors explain the institutional performance, and the book devoted much of its pages for examining that hypothesis.

The author argues that strength of civic community is positively correlated with institutional performance. The communitarian idea has its longest history (starting from Greek philosophy), but is feeble in these days, especially after the liberalism came to the center of political philosophy, partly because the communitarian is confused or associated with the totalitarian.

To evaluate the performance of civic community, the author used the

following factors (pp87-):

• Civic engagement
• Political equality
• Solidarity, trust, and tolerance
• Civil associations (sports clubs, cultural and scientific activities, music, etc)

The author induced “civic community index”, measured by preference voting (factor loading -0.947), referendum turnout (0.944), newspaper readership (0.893), scarcity of sports and cultural associations(-0.891). (pp96)

The civic community index shows striking results: in almost all measurements, the civic community index shows clear correlation (negative or positive) with numbers related to institutional performance: clientelism and “particularized contacting” (-) (scarce in high civic index regions), political equality (+), electoral reformism (+), clericalism (measured by church marriage rate, unti-divorce referendum, etc) (-), citizens’ feeling of powerlessness (-), satisfaction with life (+), and so on.

3. Tradition made civic communities

Prof. Putnam argues that the civic community index is coming from the civic tradition. He shows that northern part of Italy (which showed strong performance) has its civic traditions. He shows that the civic traditions correlation (based on data from 1860 to 1920) strongly is correlated to civic community index today. (pp151)

Through quoting the history, Putnam also shows that the regions without strong social tie have suffered the lack of social capital for more than a thousand year. Why is it the case? The economics theory tells us how this could happen.

Civil collaboration can be described as “iterated game” in game theory. In this set-up, there could be two equilibrium. One is cooperative and another is non-cooperative. Overall, aggregated utility of the parties would increase under the cooperative game, but it is not always the case, and often parties fall into the situation called “Prisoner’s dilemma”, where total utility of the players is lower than when they collaborate. Once the game becomes non-cooperative, it is difficult to flip the situation. Putnam claims that civic community and thus the social capital prevent the people from getting to the Prisoner’s Dilemma situation. It enhances mutual trust and thus people can be cooperative.

What the book argues is, as shortly written in the final chapter, common in microfinance. RCA (rotating credit association) is the common one as a basic microfinance scheme, and there are different types of local credit associations.

4. Remarks

What I firstly came up with was the imitation of empirical analysis about the society. One difficulty is lack of enough and neutral data, and the difficulty of numerical definition was another. Regarding the lack of enough neutral data, the author was fortunate in that they had the great opportunity to conduct empirical analysis in Italy, which experienced unique governmental changes. However, regarding the difficulty of numerical definition, it is unclear if the author overcame it. It is always possible that the author could use measurements arbitrarily (e.g. it is difficult to clarify why the civic community index in page 96 composes the four factors)

Another is the potential reverse of communities. In philosophy, communitarian notably gained the strongest popularity since the civil revolution era. Other social scientists such as Putnam also claim the importance of communities to enhance social performance.

The final remark is about its implication for organization management. In business fields, some try to revisit the value of Asian style management which requires strong social tie and commitments. Shared value and culture will enable organizations to keep internal communities. Also, the autonomy of each division would make it easy for large companies to form a small group.

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

Professor Sandel, as he does in his famous lecture series, invites us to make philosophical thinking through assuming concrete situations, the common way of reasoning in moral and political philosophy. Through using vivid examples, he represents ethical dilemma, or conflicting of moral principles, in which we ask to ourselves “what is the right thing to do?”. This book tries to answer to that question.

I. Three approaches to justice

Professor Sandel classified the approaches to justice into three ways. And the book devoted most of the contents for mentioning the strength and justice of the three approaches.

1. Maximize welfare: utilitarianism

Jeremy Bentham founded the doctrine of utilitarianism which exerts a powerful hold on the thinking of policy makers, economists, business executives, and ordinary citizens to this day. According to him, the highest principle of morality is to maximize happiness, or utility. (later John Stuart Mill contributed for the development of utilitarianism such that it becomes more humane one)

There are several objections casted to utilitarianism.

One is that it fails to respect individual rights. According to utilitarianism principle, it is possible to throw christians to lions for the sake of the happiness of the crowds (in ancient Rome), or, in general, sacrifice of individuals for the sake of majorities is allowed.

Second criticism toward utilitarianism is that utilitarianism assumes a common value among individuals, such that we can aggregate preferences of all the people. (Regarding this point, I don’t think the utilitarianism needs to assume uniformed utility function; as economists tried to establish their theory of expected utility hypothesis, they came up with some fundamental assumptions which are sufficient conditions to use the principle of utility maximization, thanks to the great contributions of John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern.)

(By the way, though I do not agree with Bentham’s idea totally, I respect him in that he is strictly consistent with what he believes in. He provided in his will that his body be preserved, embalmed, and displayed at University College London. That was his answer to the question “of what use could a dead man be to the living?” He thought, in the case of great philosophers, it is better to preserve one’s physical presence in order to inspire future generations of thinkers, rather than making one’s corpse available for the study of anatomy.

2. Respect freedom:

There are two schools holding this view: Laissez-faire school or fairness school. Those who hold laissez-fair view are free-market libertarians who believe that justice consists in respecting and upholding the voluntary choices made by consenting adults. The people who support fairness views think that justice requires policies that remedy social and economic disadvantages and give everyone a fair chance at success.

Kant gave another refinement of freedom. According to him, to act according to a law I gave myself – not according to the dictates of nature or social convention - is the freedom. Only human beings with reason can do it, and in that sense person is different from any other creatures. He placed importance on duty but on inclination (moral), autonomy but on heteronomy (freedom), and categorical imperative independent from the situation but on hypothetical imperatives dependent on the condition (reason). Prof Sandel articulately summarized the relationship among moral, freedom and reason from page 116 to 124 in this book. Let me quote a part of it.

“Acting morally means acting out of duty – for the sake of the moral law. The moral law consists of a categorical imperative, a principle that requires us to treat persons with respect, as ends in themselves. Only when I act in accordance with the categorical imperative am I acting freely. For whatever I act according to a hypothetical imperative, I act for the sake of some interest or end given outside of me. But in that case, I’m not really free; my will is determined not by me, but by outside forces – by the necessities of my circumstance or by the wants and desires I happen to have.”

Many of objections against libertarians are senseless, but there are a few strong criticisms toward libertarianism.

- Is “free choice” really free and fair?

Professor Sandel quotes the case of a homeless living under a bridge. He may need to make a “free contract” for the sake of his life (e.g. the contract asks him to offer kidneys with price of just USD 100, far cheaper than it usually takes), regardless of the intrinsic unfairness of the contract

- Is libertarianism right in light of civic virtue and common good?

For example, in many countries, conscription is the obligation as a citizen, but when we select the market system in drafting militaries, the problem that David M. Kennedy mentioned would occur: “A hugely preponderant majority of Americans with no risk whatsoever of exposure to military service have, in effect, hired some of the least advantaged of their fellow countrymen to do some of their most dangerous business while the majority goes on with their own affairs unbloodied and undistracted.” (from “The Wages of a Mercenary Army”) Jean-Jacques Rousseau said that the state in which citizens serve with their money than with their persons is not far from its fall. Here, professor Sandel says, the important issue to be discussed is that “what obligations do citizens of a democratic society owe to one another, and how do such obligations arise? (p90)”, the argument that “communitarians (seems like prof. Sandel does not like to be called so)” often make.

- Potential downgrading of personality

Let us think about surrogacy contracts (i.e. trade of pregnancy) and kidney trades. If we make even these things tradable in the market, the trade may lead to degrade those properties close to personalities. Immanuel Kant emphasized the distinction between persons (worthy of respect) and mere objects or things (open to use) as fundamental distinction in morality. In his “Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals”, he argues that morality is about respecting persons as ends in themselves on the ground that human beings possess reason.

3. Cultivate virtue: Communitarian

In contemporary society, the view is often associated with cultural conservatisms or the religious right.

Established by Aristotle, communitarian philosophy has the longest history than anyone else. Central to Aristotle’s political philosophy are two ideas (chapter 8):

- Justice is teleological. Defining rights requires us to figure out the telos (a Greek word meaning the purpose, end, or essential nature) of the social practice in question

- Justice is honorific. To reason about the telos of a practice – or to argue about it – is, at least in part, to reason or ague about what virtues it should honor and reward

According to Aristotle, virtue is not knowledge. It should be the integration of knowledge, habit and practical wisdom.

He insisted the importance of action. Habit is the first step in moral education, but that is not enough. The challenge is to do the right thing “to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way”. That means moral virtues requires judgment, a kind of knowledge Aristotle calls “practical wisdom”.

Above is the basis on which Aristotle claims that politics is essential to one’s good life (life following moral virtue). The laws of the polis inculcate good habits, form good character, and set us on the way to civic virtue. Also, the life of the citizen enables us to exercise capacities for deliberation and practical wisdom that would otherwise lie dormant. (here, citizen has narrower meaning than we use today)

II. Libertarian vs Communitarian

Libertarian’s criticism toward communitarian

Kant and Rawls reject Aristotle’s teleology because it doesn’t seem to leave us room to choose our good for ourselves. Libertarian place more importance on choice, not fit. Communitarian view could be somewhat totalitarian.

Communitarian’s Claim

In chapter 9, professor Sandel finally claim the flaw of libertarian.

“I do not think that freedom of choice – even freedom of choice under fair conditions- is an adequate basis for a just society. What’s more, the attempt to find neutral principles of justice seems to me misguided. It is not always possible to define our rights and duties without taking up substantive moral questions; and even when it’s possible it may not be desirable.

The weakness of the liberal conception of freedom is bound up with its appeal. If we understand ourselves as free and independent selves, unbound by moral ties we haven’t chosen, we can’t make sense of a range of moral and political obligations that we commonly recognize, even prize. These include obligations of solidarity and loyalty, historic memory and religious faith – moral claims that arise from the communities and traditions that shape our identity. Unlesswe think of ourselves as encumbered selves, open to moral claims we have not willed, it is difficult to make sense of these aspects of our moral and political experience.”

Here I would note that the controversy between libertarian and communitarian regarding moral is not totally different. They agree each other to some extent. Let me summarize it.

a. Natural duties: universal and don’t require consent: agreed

b. Voluntary obligations: particular and require consent: agreed

c. Obligations of solidarity: particular and don’t require consent: disagreed

Here, obligations of solidarity are the obligations native to the one’s own situation. For example, if we see two children drawing, one is your kid and one is not, you would help your child first. Prof. Sandel argues that “if you believe that patriotism has a moral basis, if you believe that we have special responsibilities for the welfare of our fellow citizens, then you must accept the third category of obligation – obligations of solidarity or membership that can’t be reduced to an act of consent”. (P234)

The obligations of solidarity may sound like it is expanded selfishness. In fact, it is not. These obligations ask us to act as if the community is the unit of moral behavior to the certain extent. That is, I am responsible for the deed of my community, regardless of past or present.

“Obligations of solidarity and membership point outward as well as inward. Some of the special responsibilities that flow from the particular communities I inhabit I may owe to fellow members. But others I may owe to those with whom my community has a morally burdened history, as in the relation of Germans to Jews, or of American whites to African Americans. Collective apologies and reparations for historic injustices are good examples of the way solidarity can create moral responsibilities for communities other than my own. Making amends for my country’s past wrong is one way of affirming my allegiance to it.”

III. Remarks

It is a nice book as a political philosophy class 101. Though professor Sandel holds his position as a communitarian, he made fair assessment of utilitarianism and liberalism. Introducing practical examples (maybe that is the way of Aristotle), he illuminated the strength and weaknesses of three main ideas in political philosophy.

The communitarian view reminds me of the idea I learned when I was a high school student. The view told me to admire my parents and my community, and correct them if they are not doing the right thing. It was not ethnocentrism, but the moral principle based on community. If applied correctly, communitarian idea would develop the society, which is, especially in developed country, dominated by libertarianism and utilitarianism.

The book is also useful for those who are interested in and participate into the social action to alleviate poverty, famine, etc. Those people are definitely following one’s own moral principle, and it would be beneficial to verbalize what you believe in. This book helps you to shape your idea of justice.