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Douglas Yarn led an environmental ethics seminar on Sept. 19. Yarn teaches alternative dispute resolution and professional responsibility in the Georgia State University College of Law; his current research interests include the role of dueling in conflict resolution, testosterone levels in lawyers and the biological basis of a sense of justice. Some highlights:
“There is a relationship between concepts of justice and biology; there exists a connection between morality and justice, and between biology and moral behavior. . . . You’ve got to ask this question: what is justice weighed against? . . .
“The Prisoner’s Dilemma game [demonstrated during the seminar] puts into conflict the individual’s interests versus the collective interest. Cooperation revolves around these repeat encounters through the notion of reciprocity. . . . The problem of survival involves an equilibrium, but because the context changes and the balance changes, justice is relative and basic manifestations of justice are rooted in time and space. . . . People are rude in New York City, but people are not rude in Cordele, Ga., and I think that there is a reason for that--in New York City, there is less cost to being rude to people they will not see again.”
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