Kai Spiekermann

Suite D5, Room 1, Ext. 4329

Hi! I'm Kai, 29 years old, currently a PhD candidate in London (LSE), but originally from Germany. I have a political science background, but I'm now somewhere between the frontiers of political theory, philosophy and (maybe a bit of) sociology. My interests include social dynamics, subtle processes of norm enforcement, cooperation, evolutionary game theory, and the links of these with political philosophy and ethics. (Very short summary: It's a mess! ;-)

Yes, I do have a life apart from my thesis (right now I'm trying to finish the bloody thing, so maybe I don't...), and this life consists of going to the theatre, visiting galleries, watching movies, trying new bars, cooking, and a lot of non-academic reading.

I'm looking forward to meeting you in June! Kai

k * p * spiekermann () lse * ac * uk

http://personal.lse.ac.uk/spiekerm/

Also, here are my answers to Dan's questions:

1. Main Interests:

I'm a political philosopher with a political science background. I'm interested in norm emergence and compliance, computational models of social processes, and philosophy of the social sciences.

2. Expertise:

I've set up some small simulations in Mathematica (and I like to get better at it). However, (assuming that there will many much more prolific programmers around), I think my core expertise for the group will be on the theoretical side, e.g. philosophical issues of model-building, moral philosophy and model-building, links with political science, etc.

3. What I hope to get out of the CSSS

Apart from learning new stuff and looking across disciplinary boundaries, I'm particularly interested in meeting people who share my interest in applying computational models in philosophy and the social sciences. But it would also be cool if I end up doing something completely different in the end!

4. Possible projects:

a.) One big question which has been on my mind for quite a while: What is the the use of computational models in the social sciences from a descriptive / prescriptive / philosophy of science perspective? Maybe we can work on one aspect of this question...

b.) Recently, Geoff Brennan and Philip Pettit described the "Economy of Esteem" (2004) as a major reason why people obey social norms. Roughly speaking, people want other people to think well of them and adapt their behavior accordingly. Can we think of agent-based models of esteem exchange? Are there interesting dynamics of esteem?