Morals by Agreement
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Morals By Agreement is a book written by David Gauthier and published in in 1986 by Oxford University Press. He develops a conception of practical rationality that he takes to be "the only one capable of withstanding critical examination", and the proposes a moral theory that is "the only one compatible with that conception of rationality."
Contents |
[edit] Overview of a Theory
Gauthier links morality to reason, and reason to practical reason, and practical reason to interest, which he identifies with "individual utility". He means subjective utility rather than objective utility as it figures in, say, David Brink's list of objective requirements for a good human life. And he means expected utility of an act's possible outcomes as exclusive of symbolic utility of the act itself, as in Robert Nozick's decision-value alternative to the standard expected-utility account employed by Gauthier.
Gauthier's procedure is to develop constraints on individuals required by rationality, and to identify these constraints as moral principles. This is rationality "in its full generality" as dealing with the choices of others, that is, strategic rationality as studied by game theory (as opposed to parametric choice, in which the agent's environment is fixed). This will not be a theory like Thomas Nagel's or R.M. Hare's, "deriving from Kant," that already includes the moral dimension of impartiality.
His maximizing conception of rationality takes the interests of the self to be fundamental, but these need not be interests in the self: practical reasons need not be self-interested. However, your interest in your welfare gives me no reason to promote your welfare. This is a basic difference from the universalistic conceptions of rationality such as the Kantian ones.
The moral constraints to be generated are understood as objects of fully voluntary ex ante agreement among rational persons. The agreement is hypothetical and supposes a pre-moral context, the morally free zone of the perfectly competitive market; but the parties to the agreement are real, determinate individuals. Where mutual benefit requires constraint, the bargainers will demand that their greatest concession, measured as a proportion of the stake that they bring to the table, should be as small as possible. This is the principle of minimax relative concession. In order to ensure that people don't bring exploitative holdings to the table, the bargaining is constrained by a proviso that prohibits bettering one's position through interaction that worsens the position of another; no one should be worse off than in a non-social context of no interaction. This is the Lockean proviso.
The dicey step from hypothetical agreement to actual moral constraint must solve the problem of the apparent rationality of being a free rider on the cooperative behavior of others. This problem about compliance, which is essentially the Prisoner's Dilemma, is addressed by the idea of the constrained maximizer, who is disposed to comply with mutually advantageous moral constraints, provided he expects similar compliance from others. Unlike a straightforward maximizer, he has internalized principles that govern his choices, and "under plausible conditions" he will do better than one who aims for exploitative benefits. So each of two constrained maximizers in a Prisoner's Dilemma, knowing that the other has a cooperative disposition, will choose the cooperative option, and so the pair will arrive at the optimal outcome, avoiding the dilemma.
The Hobbist's modern-day successor, Gauthier acknowledges that only beings whose physical and mental capacities are either roughly equal or mutually complementary can expect to find cooperation beneficial to all. Horses will not be protected by moral constraints, which doesn't necessarily mean that moral agents won't protect horses.
[edit] Choice: Reason and Value
Gauthier defends Hume's dictum, "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions." He understands the theory of rational choice to take individual preference as basic, not the idea of an individual's interests, which "hovers uneasily between an individual's own perspective and that of an outsider". That theory seeks to maximize utility, a quantity that is "associated with preference". It identifies rationality with the maximization of utility. Utility is a measure of preference, and more precisely coherent considered preferences about outcomes. The theory of rational choice treats practical reason as "strictly instrumental" to satisfaction of such preferences, not e.g. to 'real' or 'true' preferences related to actual circumstances though concealed by false of incomplete beliefs. These latter seem "psychologically implausible". He defends his preference-based account not only against interest-based views but also against enjoyment-based and prudence-based ones, Under uncertainty the rational agent seeks to maximize expected utility, each action conceived as a lottery with its associated outcomes as its prizes. Value is subjective. To think of value as objective is to conceive of it as existingg independently of the affections of sentient beings and as providing a norm to govern their affections. "The subjectivist view denies the existence of such a norm." Value is also relative to each individual's own affective relationships.
[edit] Strategy: Reason and Equilibrium
The focus here is on strategic rationality or rationality in interaction. Gauthier makes several idealizing assumptions which, though perhaps impractical or costly to implement, create the right arena in which to create a structure for the foundation of moral theory. Whereas in parametric choice under uncertainty each action is correlated with a probability distribution over several sets of circumstances and so may be treated as a lottery with possible outcomes as prizes, in interaction an outcome is the product of several actions, one for each person involved in interaction, so each must choose a lottery with possible actions as prizes. "The two types of lottery [over outcomes, over actions] must not be confused." A lottery over possible actions is a termed a strategy. An expected outcome of such a strategy is the product of the lotteries or strategies chosen by each person. An outcome is in equilibrium if and only if it is the product of mutually utility-maximizing strategies. Gauthier builds on J.F. Nash's proof that there must be at least one expected outcome in equilibrium. Strategically rational choice is always possible in principle. Modifying the principle that preference be revealed in rational choice in order to maintain the principle that each strategy is equally utility-maximizing, Gauthier requires that each person's choice be the rational response to the choices he expects the others to make, "where the rational response is defined as the response determined by a lottery giving equal probability to all responses satisfying other rationality requirements." Given rationality as utility-maximization, each person's choice must be the centroid utility-maximizing response to the expected choices of the others. One implication is that two people could maximize each other's utility at no personal cost, "but it would seem that neither has reason to do so." He accepts that the structure of some interactions leads to "formal selfishness", though as no restriction is placed on the content of preference, "each person's exclusive concern with her own utility does not imply any material selfishness." The problem of grounding expectations given several equilibrium sets of strategies leads Gauthier to explore maximin, maximizing the minimum utility one could receive. He builds from this on Frederik Zeuthen's principle that the person whose ratio between cost of concession and cost of deadlock is less must concede to the other. That person is rationally less unwilling to concede. Such considerations lead away from identification of rationality with utility-maximization. Lingering problems about reconciling equilibrium with optimization are illustrated by reference to the Prisoner's Dilemma.
[edit] The Market: Freedom From Morality
As an ideal type, the perfect market guarantees the coincidence of equilibrium and optimality ("so its structure is the very antithesis of the Prisoner's Dilemma"). Unfortunately the world is not a market, so "morality is a necessary constraint on the interaction of rational persons". The perfectly competitive market presupposes private ownership of all products and factors of production. Furthermore all goods are private in the sense that consumptiuon of a unit by one person precludes its consumption by another. Also utility functions are independent. There is mutual unconcern, or non-tuism. Also there are no externalities. (An externality occurs when the utility of an unwilling party is affected by some act of production or exchange or consumption by others.) Morality constrains the perfectly competitive market only when maximizing one's utility given the actions of others would fail to maximize it given the utility of others. This is a significant constraint, as the assumption of no externalities fails to appreciate their unavoidable presence in almost all contexts, and they will affect utility maximization in such a way as to require morality. "Our concern is to show that there would be a morally free zone in ideal interaction, not to argue for its presence in most of our daily lives." In the perfectly competitive market each person may be defined by his utility function and his factor endowment. The second element becomes problematic when the conditions of the market, including factor endowments, are distinguished from its operation. The operation and its outcomes can't show that the market's initial condition is rationally or morally acceptable.
[edit] Cooperation: Bargaining and Justice
The failures of the market's invisible hand can be remedied by the visible hand of cooperation, which is the domain of justice; justice is "the rational disposition to co-operative behaviour". Reason instructs about scarcity and counsels maximization of one's utility, leading to problems for which Hobbes proposed undivided and unlimited state power as solution, but reason also instructs about externalities in our environment and awareness of self-bias in our character that can be overcome by seeking to cooperate, suggesting a solution less drastic than Hobbes's.
