About the principle that individuals always act to maximize their own expected utility, Blackburn asks, "Are we dealing with a human universal, characteristic of us simply through our species-wide natures, or with a very specific cultural self image: the ideology of 'possessive individualism' or Western capitalism?" (135). Here, Blackburn questions whether we can truly understand a model based on self-interest as a universal one, or whether it is based fundamentally on the culture it developed from. In response, he says that there are three possible statuses about the principle, that the thesis be "an empirical truth," a "normative truth," or "analytical or definitional" (135). Blackburn asks a fundamental question about philosophical accounts that can be used to evaluate the critical assumptions taken to be true within philosophical models, such as the economic one.
Blackburn again stresses the difference between theoretical and empirical accounts when he discusses the Prisoners' Dilemma (177). He says that the problem includes both a theoretical game and an empirical game, the first representing how individuals perhaps would act under a given type of society while the latter explaining how individuals actually do act (and how it is rational for them to do so). Both accounts are important to Blackburn: the first is an exercise under which we can see how convention/culture will define how individuals in a society ought to address collective action problems. In doing so, individuals can consciously decide how they ought to be like how parents will try to raise their children to act given their notions of how others act within society. The empirical dilemma allows some people to "...co-operate, or play dove....defect, or play hawk" without being "rational or irrational because of that" (182). Because this game focuses on how individuals actually do act, it permits persons to value results (positive and negative) unequally as we do in real life.
Regardless of the completeness of Blackburn's account, I think he is right to emphasize the distinctness of the role's that empirical and theoretical versions serve. We ought to always assess each account by the type of account it is describing so that we can better evaluate the validity and completeness thereof.
I agree and I think that his arguments about game theory, intentions, and truth are rather enlightening in the context of our discussions of self-interest and rationality. Situations differ. People differ from one another. People differ individually. Therefore "to invoke a blanket diagnosis of 'irrationality'" can be, in many circumstances, "useless."
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