Incentives, institutions, and the language of politics

This dissertation examines the extent to which widespread incentives shape the linguistic behavior of agents in political settings, and how these incentives are in turn shaped by both the political environment they inhabit and the political institutions with which they interact. It thus extends a form of incentive-based institutional analysis familiar from political economy to topics in philosophy of language (in particular, philosophy of social and political language). Such analyses offer both explanatory and practical benefits. Regarding the former, they allow us to explain otherwise puzzling linguistic behaviors as the behaviors of agents rationally responding to incentives. Regarding the latter, the recognition that institutions shape behavior by limiting the payoffs and penalties for certain actions suggests that, by modifying background institutions, we can—in principle—alter linguistic behavior. The first chapter of the dissertation, ‘Bad Language Makes Good Politics’, outlines a general framework for the application of incentives-based institutional analysis to linguistic behavior in politics. I focus on a range of behaviors that are typically evaluated negatively by both the academics who investigate them and the general public. These behaviors include inaccurate language (such as lying, bullshitting, misinformation, and disinformation), insincere language (such as virtue signaling and grandstanding), and unclear language (such as deliberate vagueness and euphemisms). After sketching how each of these behaviors can be rational, I discuss how institutional reforms could reduce their prevalence by changing the incentives that make them rational. However, I raise two serious complications for putative reforms: they create serious risk of abuse, and they preclude seemingly beneficial instances of so-called bad language. The next two chapters develop more focused applications of the wider theme. In ‘Bullshit in Politics Pays’, I argue that misinformation proliferates in political settings because truth-directed inquiry competes at the margin with other values. In short, pursuing the truth is costly—sometimes too costly, relative to our other ends. As such, the (subjective) benefits of caring about the facts are frequently outweighed by the (subjective) costs. More crudely: in politics, it pays to be a bullshitter, sometimes literally. And in ‘Rational Conceptual Conflict and the Implementation Problem’, I discuss an underappreciated practical problem facing proponents of conceptual engineering—that is, scholars and activists who seek to evaluate concepts and, if possible, improve or replace them. I argue that efforts to engineer concepts will very often be impeded by agents who are incentivized to oppose such efforts. I discuss the practical implications of this problem for the burgeoning field of conceptual engineering, before suggesting some strategies to mitigate it.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference