Abstract
Interactive decision-making occurs when three conditions are met: There are at least two decision-makers; the effects of each agent’s decision are co-determined by the decisions of other agents; what each agent does depends on her expectations as to what the other agents will do, and while forming these expectations, she knows that the other agents will form similar expectations regarding her own decision. This type of decision-making—also termed “strategic”—is studied in game theory, a branch of rational choice theory (which in addition to game theory embraces decision theory, concerned with nonstrategic choices, and social choice theory, concerned with the problems of group decision-making). In this essay, we shall try to distinguish and analyze different ways in which game theory—a mathematical theory of interactive decision-making—can contribute to moral philosophy. In our view, one can distinguish eight main ways in which game theory can be gainfully appealed to by a moral philosopher, that is, game theory can be viewed as a tool for better understanding a function of morality; determining the content of moral norms; criticizing certain moral conceptions; analyzing the problem of the validity of moral norms; analyzing the possibility of deriving morality from instrumental rationality; analyzing moral decision-making; analyzing the nature of moral dispositions; analyzing the functions of moral emotions; and analyzing the cultural evolution of moral norms.
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Notes
- 1.
We provide a very broad, rather nonstandard definition of collective-action problems. For instance, Hardin (2007, 59) narrows the notion of a collective-action problem to multiple-person interactions (involving more than two persons) in which the agents have a temptation to act self-interestedly.
- 2.
A different classification of strategic situations, with a corresponding classification of norms, was proposed by E. Ullmann-Margalit (1977). Margalit assumed that every strategic situation can be classified as a combination of three paradigmatic cases: (a) the Prisoner’s Dilemma; (b) coordination problems; and (c) inequality/partiality situations.
- 3.
A similar solution was independently proposed by Gauthier (1986); Gauthier called his solution the “principle of minimizing the maximum relative concession.”
- 4.
The Shapley solution asserts that assuming that each order in which the players join the grand coalition is equally probable, each player should receive her average contribution to this coalition. Excellent overviews of this and other solution concepts which can be interpreted as rules of distributive justice can be found in Brams (1990) and Peyton Young (1995).
- 5.
We have not found this distinction (which seems useful and important to us) in the relevant philosophical or game-theoretic literature. It is, however, contained in nuce in a small fragment of the book by the Polish philosopher Ossowska (1970, 235), in which she comments on a “disquieting” fragment of Hobbes’s De Cive (to be cited below) which suggests that we are not obliged to behave morally toward those who do not behave morally toward us.
- 6.
According to Danielson (1992, 19) a better name than “fundamental justification” would be “reductive justification.”
- 7.
As Gauthier writes “a constrained maximizer is prepared in certain circumstances [i.e., playing against another CM—WZ] to base her actions on a joint strategy [determined by a bargaining solution—WZ], without considering whether some individual strategy would yield her greater expected utility” (ibid., 167).
- 8.
For an argument that reciprocal cooperation can be regarded as a moral strategy, that it is not a “moral monster,” see Danielson 1992, Chap. 6.
- 9.
It could, of course, be argued that a “true” CM can recognize a “false” CM, which would lead to the noncooperative outcome. This, however, fails to take into account the fact that a “false” CM could initially be a “genuine” CM who, just before making her decision, came to the realization that it is irrational to cooperate.
- 10.
- 11.
A Nash equilibrium may be strong or weak. It is strong if for each player the condition holds that her unilateral deviation from this outcome would cause her utility loss. It is weak if for at least one player the condition holds that her unilateral deviation from this outcome would not cause her utility loss but would just not improve her situation, i.e., would yield her the same utility as her equilibrium strategy. Thus, in a weak Nash equilibrium, a player has no incentive to play her equilibrium strategy if she expects her opponent to play her own Nash strategy: She simply does not have an incentive not to play her equilibrium strategy in such a situation; she is therefore indifferent between playing and not playing her equilibrium strategy.
- 12.
It should be noticed, though, that nonmoral emotions are one of the main causes of impulsive, akratic behavior.
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Załuski, W. (2018). Interactive Decision-Making and Morality. In: Bongiovanni, G., Postema, G., Rotolo, A., Sartor, G., Valentini, C., Walton, D. (eds) Handbook of Legal Reasoning and Argumentation. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9452-0_15
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