Ryan P Muldoon

University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Philosophy, Faculty Member

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Ryan Muldoon is a Professor of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo. Before joining UB in 2015, he was a Senior Research Fellow in the Philosophy, Politics and Economics program at the University of Pennsylvania. He was also a Core Author of the 2015 World Development Report at the World Bank. His research aim has been developing New Diversity Theory, a novel approach to social and political philosophy that he first began developing in his 2016 book Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World. His work emphasizes the value of diversity, dynamism and discovery. His work, which ranges from political philosophy to the philosophy of science, relies on the tools and insights of the interdisciplinary field of Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
Supervisors: Cristina Bicchieri

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Daniel D. Hutto

University of Wollongong

Ian James Kidd

University of Nottingham

Galen Strawson

The University of Texas at Austin

Gunnar Björnsson

Stockholm University

David Brunsma

Virginia Tech

Cristina Bicchieri

University of Pennsylvania

Don Ross

University College Cork

Kristen J Gremillion

Ohio State University

Scott R. Stroud

The University of Texas at Austin

Richard Bellamy

University College London

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Papers by Ryan P Muldoon

Trustworthiness Is a Social Norm, but Trusting Is Not

Routledge eBooks, Apr 2, 2021

Previous literature has demonstrated the important role that trust plays in developing and mainta... more Previous literature has demonstrated the important role that trust plays in developing and maintaining well-functioning societies. However, if we are to learn how to increase levels of trust in society, we must first understand why people choose to trust others. One potential answer to this is that people view trust as normative: there is a social norm for trusting that imposes punishment for noncompliance. To test this, we report data from a survey with salient rewards to elicit people's attitudes regarding the punishment of distrusting behavior in a trust game. Our results show that people do not behave as though trust is a norm. Our participants expected that most people would not punish untrusting investors, regardless of whether the potential trustee was a stranger or a friend. In contrast, our participants behaved as though being trustworthy is a norm. Most participants believed that most people would punish someone who failed to reciprocate a stranger's or a friend's trust. We conclude that, while we were able to reproduce previous results establishing that there is a norm of reciprocity, we found no evidence for a corresponding norm of trust, even among friends.trust, reciprocity, social norms, punishment

Modelling Norms by Corinna Elsenbroich and Nigel Gilbert

Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 2014

The Collective Dimension of Science, special issue of Synthese

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2014

Justice without Agreement

Social Science Research Network, Oct 14, 2016

Exploring tradeoffs in accommodating moral diversity

Philosophical Studies, Nov 23, 2016

This paper explores the space of possibilities for public justification in morally diverse commun... more This paper explores the space of possibilities for public justification in morally diverse communities. Moral diversity is far more consequential than is typically appreciated, and as a result, we need to think more carefully about how our standard tools function in such environments. I argue that because of this diversity, public justification can (and should) be divorced from any claim of determinateness. Instead, we should focus our attention on procedures-in particular, what Rawls called cases of pure procedural justice. I use a modified form of the procedure ''I cut, you choose'' to demonstrate how perspectival diversity can make what looks like a simple procedure quite complex in practice. I use this to reframe disputes between classical liberal and contemporary liberal approaches to questions of public morality, arguing that classically liberal procedures, such as a reliance on the harm principle, can generate rather illiberal-looking outcomes when used in a morally diverse community. A seemingly less-principled approach, which simply balances burdens, appears to generate outcomes that look closer to what we would expect from classical liberalism. However, since both approaches are based on pure procedures that we can justify without reference to outcomes, it remains indeterminate which we ought to choose.

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On the emergence of descriptive norms

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, May 7, 2013

A descriptive norm is a behavioral rule that individuals follow when their empirical expectations... more A descriptive norm is a behavioral rule that individuals follow when their empirical expectations of others following the same rule are met. We aim to provide an account of the emergence of descriptive norms by first looking at a simple case, that of the standing ovation. We examine the structure of a standing ovation, and show it can be generalized to describe the emergence of a wide range of descriptive norms.

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Trustworthiness is a social norm, but trusting is not

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Jan 31, 2011

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Expanding the Justificatory Framework of Mill's Experiments in Living

Utilitas, Feb 3, 2015

In On Liberty, Mill introduced the concept of ‘experiments in living’. I will provide an account ... more In On Liberty, Mill introduced the concept of ‘experiments in living’. I will provide an account of what Mill saw to be the basic problem he was addressing – the extensive pressure to fit in with the crowd, and how this bred mediocrity. I connect this to worries about public reason models of justification. I argue that a generalized version of Mill's argument offers us a better path to political justification stemming from experimentation. Rather than grounding political justification on shared political reasons, we justify our political culture on our ability to reject consensus views and try alternatives.

Speech, Sorting, and Discovery

Routledge eBooks, Jul 25, 2022

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Social Norms and Social Order

Routledge eBooks, Dec 30, 2020

Diversity and the social contract

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Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World: Beyond Tolerance

Diversity and the Division of Cognitive Labor

Philosophy Compass, Jan 18, 2013

In epistemology and the philosophy of science, there has been an increasing interest in the socia... more In epistemology and the philosophy of science, there has been an increasing interest in the social aspects of belief acquisition. In particular, there has been a focus on the division of cognitive labor in science. This essay explores several different models of the division of cognitive labor, with particular focus on Kitcher, Strevens, Weisberg and Muldoon, and Zollman. The essay then shows how many of the benefits of the division of cognitive labor flow from leveraging agent diversity. The essay concludes by examining the benefits and burdens of diversity, particularly in the evaluative diversity that can be found in interdisicplinary science.

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Review of Modelling Norms

Review of:Elsenbroich, Corinna and Gilbert, Nigel (2013) Modelling Norms. Springer-Verlag: Berlin

Does (mis)communication mitigate the upshot of diversity?

PLOS ONE, Mar 24, 2023

This paper contributes to the literature on how diversity impacts groups by exploring how communi... more This paper contributes to the literature on how diversity impacts groups by exploring how communication mediates the ability of diverse individuals to work together. To do so we incorporate a communication channel into a representative model of problem-solving by teams of diverse agents that provides the foundations for one of the most widely cited analytical results in the literature on diversity and team performance: the “Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem”. We extend the model to account for the fact that communication between agents is a necessary feature of team problem-solving, and we introduce the possibility that this communication occurs with error, and that this error might sometimes be correlated with how different agents are from one another. Accounting for communication does not give us reason to reject the claim associated with the theorem, that functionally diverse teams tend to outperform more homogeneous teams (even when the homogeneous teams are comprised of individuals with more task relevant expertise). However, incorporating communication into our model clarifies the role that four factors play in moderating the extent to which teams capture the benefits of functional diversity: i) the complexity of the problem, ii) the number of available approaches to solving the problem, iii) the ways of encoding or conceptualizing a problem, and iv) institutional characteristics, such as how teams work together. Specifically, we find that whether (and to what extent) teams capture the benefits of functional diversity depends on how these four factors interact with one another. Particularly important is the role institutional dynamics (like search methods) play in moderating or amplifying interpersonal frictions (like miscommunication), and notably we find that institutions that work in one setting can be counterproductive in other settings.

Social Norms

Routledge eBooks, Feb 28, 2022

Norms, Nudges, and Autonomy

Springer eBooks, 2018

Liberal states traditionally rely on a reasonably narrow set of tools for engaging in social regu... more Liberal states traditionally rely on a reasonably narrow set of tools for engaging in social regulation. All of these tools are meant to change individual behaviors. Laws come with implicit force, financial regulations come with monetary carrots and sticks, and information provision informs people of the things that policymakers think they should know. Each of these is meant to guide individual choice making by changing how people evaluate their available options. Because this set of tools is meant to change individual behaviors, it is worth considering what implicit assumptions this set of tools makes about the individuals whose behaviors policymakers are looking to change. Behavioral and social science has not only found some limitations on existing policy tools but has also pointed in the direction of some new tools as well. This is because the model of human choice and behavior is now richer. Nudges and norms provide an expanded toolset for policymakers but raise interesting questions about the legitimacy of the state taking advantage of reductions in agency to achieve policy ends. I argue that this framing misconstrues the situation and suggest that the appropriate guide to any options in the policy tool kit is one of nurturing rather than inhibiting citizen autonomy. Sometimes, this will recommend the use of norms or nudges in place of the standard policy tools.

Reflections on game theory

Metascience, Feb 20, 2018

Perspective-Dependent Harm

Social Science Research Network, 2015

Feinberg defines harm as a setback to interests. The standard account of harm has been understood... more Feinberg defines harm as a setback to interests. The standard account of harm has been understood as a counterfactual comparative: a harmful event makes things go worse for the subject than things would have gone otherwise. This essay concerns a different kind of harm: perspective-dependent harm. While this class of harms differs from the standard harms that are commonly explored in value theory in that they depend on how the harmed agent sees the world, they still fall under the standard definition of harm. However, they expand the set of what counts as a harm, and introduce unique challenges for redress. A consequence of perspective-dependence in harm claims is that we may wish to socially recognize a group of harms that we may individually take ourselves to be immune to. In sufficiently diverse societies, there will be a variety of harms that may only be experienced by subsets of the population. One response is to reject their social legitimacy as grounding reasons for redress. I argue that this would risk stripping our public sphere of real sources of harm that require social legitimation and redress. Our diversity of perspectives has as a consequence a diversity of harm claims. If we wish our set of social rules to offer equal treatment and protection, it must be responsive to a variety of sources of harms. In particular, it creates new challenges relating to how we balance the burdens of harm and redress across affected parties in such a way that respects everyone’s beliefs and autonomy.