Rossella Pisconti

Problems of Defection in Political and Healthcare Activities

Bernard Williams’ Formal Structures and Social Reality faces some analytic problems concerning the theory of games, especially with reference to its application to social reality. I will make reference to Williams’ argument that the models of social cooperation may not be able to solve the problems of defection. I will try, then, to show how this argument is supported by some explanatory situations in political and healthcare practices. In particular, some complications in the concept of “motivation to cooperate” will be considered. Moreover, the possible correlations between such complications and the situations in which trust operates will be highlighted.