ABSTRACT
The behavior of individual people has often been modeled by analogy with that of communities of people. Plato, Hume, and Freud, among many others, posited divided selves to explain a range of phenomena, especially moral compromise, weakness of will, self-defeating dispositions and actions, and feelings of equivocation. More recently, the philosopher Daniel Dennett (1978, 1987, 1991a) has explained both intentional behavior and consciousness by positing armies of stupid internal homunculi that compete with one another for control of the stories people tell about themselves to others, and thereby to themselves. Thomas Schelling (1978, 1980, 1984) has accounted for some common behavioral patterns that puzzle his fellow economists – notably apparent preference reversal over time – by reference to the dynamics of self-control. He models this by reference to sub-personal interests that form coalitions to capture a person’s overall behavior, and which must make and regularly renegotiate trade-offs in order to preserve their bargains in the face of inducements to defect from other sub-personal interests.
