Online research in philosophy

The kind of commitment to moral rules that characterizes effective interaction between persons in, among others places,manufacturing and commercial settings is characteristically treated by economists and game theorists as a public good, the securing ofwhich requires the expenditure of scarce resources on surveillance and enforcement mechanisms. Alternatively put, the view is that,characteristically, rational persons cannot voluntarily guide their choices by rules, but can only be goaded into acting in accordancewith such rules by the fear of social and formal sanctions. On (...) this way of thinking, rational individuals are condemned to having to settlefor the "second-best" results that are thereby implied. This conclusion rests not only on an appeal to a consequentialist perspective, butalso a separability principle. Against this, it is argued that consequentialism itself offers a basis for the rejection of the separability principle, and a defense of the thesis that, for a wide range of realistic cases, being disposed to voluntarily guide one's choice by rules (on the condition that others can be expected to do so as well) is a necessary condition of engaging in rational interaction. (shrink)

Michael Bratman''s restricted two-tier approach to rationalizing the stability of intentions contrasts with an alternative view of planning, for which all of the following claims are made: (a) it shares with Bratman''s restricted two-tier approach the virtue of reducing the magnitude of Smart''s problem; (2) it, rather than the unrestricted two-tier approach, is what is argued for in McClennen (1990); (3) there does not appear to be anything in the central analysis that Bratman has provided of plans and intentions (both (...) in his book,Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason, and in the article Planning and the Stability of Intention) that precludes his adopting this alternative approach; and (4) it is an approach that neither requires nor encourages any distinction between the standards appropriate to artificial and to human intelligence. (shrink)

In this major contribution to the theory of rational choice the author sets out the foundations of rational choice, and then sketches a dynamic choice framework in which principles of ordering and independence follow from a number of apparently plausible conditions. However there is potential conflict among these conditions, and when they are weakened to avoid it, the usual foundations of rational choice no longer prevail. The thrust of the argument is to suggest that the theory of rational choice is (...) less determinate than many suppose. (shrink)