Gauthier and the rationality of justice

2002

Satisficing, or being "good enough," is the fundamental obligation of rational decision makers. We cannot rationally choose an option, even when we do not know of anything better, unless we know it is good enough. Unfortunately, we are not often in the position of knowing that there could be no better option, and hence that the option must be good enough. A complete search through all logical possibilities is often impractical, particularly in multi-agent contexts, due to excessive computational difficulty, modeling complexity, and uncertainty. It can be equally impractical, if it is even possible, to determine the cost of the additional required search to find an option that is good enough. In a departure from the traditional notion of satisficing as a species of bounded rationality, satisficing is here redefined in terms of a notion of intrinsic rationality. Epistemic utility theory serves as the philosophical foundation of a new praxeological decision-making paradigm of satisficing equilibria that is applicable to both single-and multiple-agent scenarios. All interagent relationships are modeled by an interdependence function that explicitly accommodates both self and group interest, from which multilateral and unilateral selectability and rejectability mass functions can be derived and compared via the praxeic likelihood ratio test.

dialectica, 2006

Erkenntnis, 1994

Abstract: In A Theory of Justice Rawls attempts to build justice as fairness out of little more than the rational self-interestedness of (properly situated) contracting parties. This means that, in order to properly develop justice as fairness as a viable alternative to utilitarianism, Rawls must establish that the rational contracting parties he envisions—the occupants of the original position—would prefer his two principles of justice over the utilitarian’s principle of utility maximization; that is, Rawls must establish that the occupants would will his two deontological principles of justice and not a utilitarian principle that leaves rights, liberties, and primary goods and their distribution contingent upon circumstances that the occupants cannot anticipate from their position behind the veil of ignorance. Rawls’ argument to this effect hinge upon his contention that parties situated within the original position would apply a decision procedure known as maximin, which is a pessimistic approach to decision making, requiring one to select the option—or, in this case, the set of society-structuring principles—with the best worst case scenario, i.e. to maximize the minimum returns. In focussing on decision theory and in grounding his argument for justice as fairness upon a minimal number of normative axioms, Rawls meant for his theory to establish as both absolute and rational the prohibition against sacrificing the individual at the altar of aggregate welfare. This paper contends that this project fails on its own terms. The primary contention of this paper is simply that, even with his own assumption made, Rawls is incorrect in arguing the occupants of the original position would apply maximin. Rather, in the absence of an additional assumption that the parties in the original position are perfectly risk averse—an assumption Rawls explicitly denies making—such occupants would apply the alpha-index decision procedure and not maximin when they adjudicate between competing potential principles. [Undergraduate Paper]

Philosophical Studies, 2000

Philosophia, 1987

Philosophical Studies, 2014

For contractarians, justice is the result of a rational bargain. The goal is to show that the rules of justice are consistent with rationality. The two most important bargaining theories of justice are David Gauthier's and those that use the Nash's bargaining solution. I argue that both of these approaches are fatally undermined by their reliance on a symmetry condition. Symmetry is a substantive constraint, not an implication of rationality. I argue that using symmetry to generate uniqueness undermines the goal of bargaining theories of justice.

Social Justice Research, 1998

Both theoretical and empirical arguments against the reduction of justice motives to basic self-interest are forwarded. Elegant economic analyses of justice motivations do not prove that self-interest is at the basis of justice motives. The theoretical fruitfulness of reductionism in motivational analyses is questioned. Instead, a plea for clear theoretical conceptualizations and unambiguous operationalizations of a multiplicity of human motives

Game Theory Relaunched, 2013