Rule utilitarianism,rights, obligations and the theory of rational behavior

The paper first summarizes the author's decision-theoretical model of moral behavior, in order to compare the moral implications of the act-utilitarian and of the rule-utilitarian versions of utilitarian theory. This model is then applied to three voting examples. It is argued that the moral behavior of act-utilitarian individuals will have the nature of a noncooperative game, played in the extensive mode, and involving action-by-action maximization of social utility by each player. In contrast, the moral behavior of rule-utilitarian individuals will have the nature of a cooperative game, played in the normal mode, and involving a firm commitment by each player to a specific moral strategy (viz. to the strategy selected by the rule-utilitarian choice criterion) — even if some individual actions prescribed by this strategy, when considered in isolation, should fail to maximize social utility.The most important advantage that rule utilitarianism as an ethical theory has over act utilitarianism lies in its ability to give full recognition to the moral and social importance of individual rights and personal obligations. It is easy to verify that action-by-action maximization of social utility, as required by act utilitarianism, would destroy these rights and obligations. In contrast, rule utilitarianism can fully recognize the moral validity of these rights and obligations precisely because of its commitment to an overall moral strategy, independent of action-by-action social-utility maximization.The paper ends with a discussion of the voter's paradox problem. The conventional theory of rational behavior cannot avoid the paradoxical conclusion that, in any large electorate, voting is always an irrational activity because one's own individual vote is extremely unlikely to make any difference to the outcome of any election. But it can be shown that, by using the principles of rule-utilitarian theory, this paradox can easily be resolved and that, in actual fact, voting, even in large electorates, may be perfectly rational action. More generally, the example of rule utilitarianism shows what an important role the concept of a rational commitment can play in the analysis of rational behavior.     

规范美德伦理学

人们通常认为美德伦理学并不能告诉我们应该做什么。任何认为美德伦理学可以替代道义论和功利主义伦理学的人都会发现自己面对这样一个人们普遍接受的诘难 :“美德伦理学并没有告诉我们应该做什么 ,因为它无法告诉应该怎么做。因此 ,它无法成为替代道义论和功利主义的规范性理论。”文章的目的就是要反驳这一诘难 ,为美德伦理学辩护     

Morality and welfare

The economic theory of utility does not take into account moral behaviour, that is behaviour in which an individual faced with two courses of action may choose the one which is less profitable to him. It is shown in this paper that the economic approach can be broadened to take such behaviour into account. The individual is considered to maximize a higher welfare function whose arguments are (a) his utility and (b) higher goods or moral value. The latter are goals which he ought to achieve. The amount of higher goods achieved depends upon his moral preference. The ranking of different acts is complete - an assumption commonly made in economics with regard to bundles of goods. In an extension of the economic model of optimization over time, the individual is considered to maximize his higher welfare over his lifetime. This may require raising his moral preference.     

The utilitarian contract: A generalization of Rawls' theory of justice

In a series of major papers culminating in A Theory of Justice, John Rawls constructs an alternative to utilitarianism by developing a social contract theory of moral and political philosophy. Unfortunately, Rawls formulates the two basic principles upon which the theory rests in such a way as to restrict (unduly) the contract theory's applicability (see Section I). In this paper we present a more general discussion of the theory of justice that avoids the problems of Rawls' formulation and yet retains the important idea of justice as fairness and the contractarian approach (Section II). Later it is argued that this more general theory constitutes a bridge between the pure utilitarian theories and the social contract doctrines (Sections V and VI). The theory's advantages are demonstrated by applying it to a problem discussed by Rawls, intergenerational equity, and comparing the two solutions (Section III). Further comparisons are made and inferences drawn in the concluding three sections.Without implicating them, we would like to thank James M. Buchanan and David Lyons for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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Individual fairness in Harsanyi’s utilitarianism: operationalizing all-inclusive utility

Fairness can be incorporated into Harsanyi’s utilitarianism through all-inclusive utility. This retains the normative assumptions of expected utility and Pareto-efficiency, and relates fairness to individual preferences. It makes utilitarianism unfalsifiable, however, if agents’ all-inclusive utilities are not explicitly specified. This note proposes a two-stage model to make utilitarian welfare analysis falsifiable by specifying all-inclusive utilities explicitly through models of individual fairness preferences. The approach is applied to include fairness in widely discussed allocation examples.     

Bayesian decision theory,rule utilitarianism,and Arrow's impossibility theorem

The first part of this paper reexamines the logical foundations of Bayesian decision theory and argues that the Bayesian criterion of expected-utility maximization is the only decision criterion consistent with rationality. On the other hand, the Bayesian criterion, together with the Pareto optimality requirement, inescapably entails a utilitarian theory of morality. The next sections discuss the role both of cardinal utility and of cardinal interpersonal comparisons of utility in ethics. It is shown that the utilitarian welfare function satisfies all of Arrow's social choice postulates avoiding the celebrated impossibility theorem by making use of information which is unavailable in Arrow's original framework. Finally, rule utilitarianism is contrasted with act utilitarianism and judged to be preferable for the purposes of ethical theory.     

To Tell or Not to Tell? The Ethical Dilemma of the Would-Be Whistleblower

Despite the growing emphasis placed on the responsible conduct of research, little attention has been devoted to the question of what an individual should do upon discovering research misconduct. This article takes seriously the dilemma of a would-be whistleblower. It identifies ethical considerations that can be taken into account in moral decision-making about reporting research misconduct. It also offers rough guidelines about the moral significance of each consideration in the decision-making process based on the facts of the case in question. The article, therefore, offers tools for a would-be whistleblower to use to arrive at a defensible resolution to a difficult dilemma.     

The ranking assumption

This paper is an attempt to raise some general objections to the whole concept of making decisions on teleological principles. Its scope is finally the whole concept of how we rationally decide, on a teleological basis, to do any act at all. However the arguments developed here arise from the recent discussions about one particular species of teleological decision-making - utilitarianism. Therefore, while I hope that the paper has consequences that are important far beyond this one ethical theory, my objections are phrased in terms of direct arguments about utilitarianism. The recent lively debates on this topic make it easy to ask some interesting questions about this sort of goal-oriented theory. However, if my objections are correct, the scope of these questions is much wider than any one utilitarian theory (or cluster of theories) because my objections are about an assumption that is common to all teleological theories and not just to classical utilitarianism.     

Mind Reading, Deception and the Evolution of Kantian Moral Agents

Classical evolutionary explanations of social behavior classify behaviors from their effects, not from their underlying mechanisms. Here lies a potential objection against the view that morality can be explained by such models, e.g. Trivers' reciprocal altruism . However, evolutionary theory reveals a growing interest in the evolution of psychological mechanisms and factors them in as selective forces. This opens up perspectives for evolutionary approaches to problems that have traditionally worried moral philosophers. Once the ability to mind-read is factored-in among the relevant variables in the evolution of moral abilities and counted among the selection pressures that have plausibly shaped our nature as moral agents, an evolutionary approach can contribute, so I will argue, to the solution of a long-standing debate in moral philosophy and psychology concerning the basic motivation for moral behavior.     

Social Psychology from Flat to Round: Intersubjectivity and Space in Peter Sloterdijk's Bubbles

In this paper I describe the relevance of philosopher Peter Sloterdijk's (1998/2011) book Bubbles for social psychology. Bubbles offers the opportunity for the development of what I call a round social psychology. This is in contrast to the flatness characteristic of some of the more influential contemporary varieties of social psychology. Flat social psychology stays close to the ground, and is focused on the coordination of action. Round social psychology describes the atmosphere that surrounds and makes interaction possible in the first place. It requires a theory that links intersubjectivity with spatiality. To describe flat social psychology I analyze the assumptions of three contemporary versions of social psychology: social cognition theory, Goffman's dramaturgy, and Gergen's relational psychology. I then describe in greater detail Sloterdijk's bubble philosophy and the characteristics of round social psychology.     

Dworkin's moral hermeneutics and sociological theory

As a leading contemporary legal theorist, Ronald Dworkin has been consequential and provocative with respect to the development of jurisprudence. This study selectively applies the general principles of Dworkin's work first to Max Weber's argument for the use of ideal types in the theory construction of social inquiry and then to Talcott Parsons's critique of utilitarianism as a viable theory of social action. The aim is to invigorate, from the vantage point of an interdisciplinary perspective, our understanding of the moral origins of sociological theory.     

Nonlinear social welfare functions

It is argued that Bayesian decision theory is a solution of an important philosophical problem, viz. the problem of how to define rational behavior under risk and uncertainty. The author has shown in earlier papers that if we take the Bayesian rationality postulates seriously, and take an individualistic point of view about social welfare, then our social welfare function must be a linear function of individual utilities: indeed, it must be their arithmetic mean. The present paper criticizes Diamond's and Sen's contention that one of the Bayesian postulates (viz. the sure-thing principle) does not apply to social decisions, even though it may apply to individual decisions. It also criticizes Sen's proposal of making social welfare a nonlinear function of individual utilities. The social welfare function proposed by the author depends on interpersonal utility comparisons. The use of such comparisons is defended. It is also argued that anybody who feels that the utilitarian (i.e., linear) form of the social welfare function is not egalitarian enough, should reject the author's individualism axiom, instead of trying to reject the Bayesian rationality axioms. However, this would be equivalent to giving egalitarian considerations a priority in many cases over humanitarian considerations. Finally, the paper discusses the reasons why even full agreement on the mathematical form of the social welfare function would not give rise to a Utopian state of moral consensus: moral controversies arising from disagreements about what predictions to make about future empirical facts would still remain.     

Early and Middle Adolescents' Reasoning About Moral and Personal Concerns in Opposite‐sex Interactions

This study examined how adolescents coordinate personal and moral concerns in reasoning about opposite‐sex interactions. Sixty‐four early and middle adolescents (Ms = 12.74, 16.05 years) were individually interviewed about two hypothetical situations involving opposite‐sex interactions (commenting on appearance, initiating a date), presented in four conditions that varied the salience of personal vs. moral concerns. Overall, participants viewed opposite‐sex interactions as harmless and acceptable in personal conditions, but as moral concerns became more salient, they were viewed more negatively, as less contingent on the target's response, and as entailing humiliation, coercion, and victimization. Age differences occurred primarily in reasoning about conditions entailing mixed‐personal and moral concerns. Implications for adolescents' understanding of harassment and victimization are discussed.     

美德伦理学和正确的行动

最近一些著名的美德伦理学家试图对正确的行动提出种种美德伦理学所独有的解释。文章打算证明这些解释并不成功。如果它们能够回答岛民诘难 (根据这一诘难 ,评价行动要求注意行动者之外的外部世界的效果 ,然而美德伦理学只关心评价行动者的内在状态 ) ,它们依赖的是某些普遍接受的美德伦理学的理由 ,而这些理由本身又取决于没有任何解释的关于正确性的判断。因此这样的解释导致了循环论证的诘难。简言之 ,美德伦理学的这些避免岛民诘难的解释只是以请进循环论证的诘难为代价的。它们直觉上的合理性大致上只达到这样的程度 :它们失去了有别于其他理论的美德伦理学的特征     

The Moral Dilemmas of Positive Discrimination

Positive discrimination is a contentious topic both politically and in social policy terms. Reasoned debate about it has been hampered by a fundamental misunderstanding about what it is and what makes it peculiar, that took hold in the immediate post-Plowden era. This paper argues that what distinguishes positive discrimination from other practices with which it has been confused, such as selectivity and positive action, can only be understood in terms of basic canons of social or distributive justice. Having established the moral standing of positive discrimination, the paper goes on to examine arguments that attempt to “justify” it either in terms of justice itself or of utility, and to identify the circumstances in which its use might be “justified” in Britain. The questions that surround its proper use are identified as being in large measure moral dilemmas.     

The value of perfect information in nonlinear utility theory

Wakker (1988) has recently shown that, in contrast to an expected utility maximizer, the value of information will sometimes be negative for an agent who violates the independence axiom of expected utility theory. We demonstrate, however, that the value ofperfect information will always be nonnegative if the agent satisfies a weak dominance axiom. This result thus mitigates to some degree the normative objection to nonlinear utility theory implicit in Wakker's finding.     

Reasonable beliefs

The theory of inductive inference developed by I. Levi in Gambling with Truth has two important limitations. In the first place, it makes acceptability of hypotheses question-dependent: any statement of the form It is reasonable to believe a hypothesis h on evidence e has to be expanded so as to include a reference to some specific question which h is supposed to answer, or, alternatively, to a set of possible answers which is associated with that question. Secondly, Levi's account is insensitive to modal distinctions: no difference is made between what is merely reasonable to believe and what is unreasonable not to believe. The aim of this paper is to construct a theory which utilizes Levi's main proposals and, at the same time, avoids the above-mentioned limitations.     

Religion in School

It has become a banal statement (one that does not elicit objections) that we are living in "troubled" times. This is not the place to talk about the causes of such a situation; what we have to deal with here are the consequences. The breakdown of dogmas in the social consciousness in a period of instability is primarily a threat to young people. We are faced with the danger of producing a generation of "children of perestroika," who have lost their faith in everything and everyone, who are filled with negativism, total denial, and quiet desperation, who carry in themselves, at best, moral deafness and fierce egotism. The crisis of worldview in society may produce a generation of "lukewarm" people who are not capable of any personal or social creativity and service. At the same time, however, the crisis opens possibilities for a genuine rebirth of culture, for reactivation of the quest for "self" on the part of every person and of society as a whole. This active striving on the part of the healthy portion of young people must be met by today's intellectual elite with full knowledge and understanding of the situation, with a readiness and ability to satisfy the needs for a worldview of their fellow citizens, drawing upon all the values of our native and world culture. These needs must be truly satisfied, not by pumping out the latest current "lies" or by manufacturing the "most progressive doctrines of modern times" atthe request of this or that social body, because our society cannot stand to be deceived one more time.     

Optimal inequality behind the veil of ignorance

In Rawls’ (A theory of justice. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1971) influential social contract approach to distributive justice, the fair income distribution is the one that an individual would choose behind a veil of ignorance. Harsanyi (J Polit Econ 61:434–435, 1953, J Polit Econ 63:309–332, 1955, Am Polit Sci Rev 69:594–606, 1975) treated this situation as a decision under risk and arrived at utilitarianism using expected utility theory. This paper investigates the implications of applying cumulative prospect theory instead, which better describes behavior under risk. I find that the specific type of inequality in bottom-heavy right-skewed income distributions, which includes the log-normal income distribution, could be perceived as desirable. This optimal inequality result contrasts the implications of other social welfare criteria.     

Implementation without rationality assumptions

Hurwicz (Social Choice and public decision making. Essays in honor of Kenneth J. Arrow, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986) was the first to study an approach to implementation theory based on choice functions instead of preference relations. We argue that the solution concept used by him, the generalized Nash equilibrium, is not really compatible with the idea that individual behavior is describable by a choice function. A new solution concept that better fits the choice function framework is then introduced. Using this, we investigate what behavioral assumptions are needed for the full characterizations of Nash implementable social choice correspondences to still hold. We will show that a condition known as Property α is central.