Pub Date : 2022-01-20DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192842992.003.0014
David Gauthier
This essay, previously unpublished, develops a kind of “Kantian naturalism” in a conversation with some of the work of the late Jean Hampton. It begins with a quotation from Kant expressing admiration and awe for the moral law within us. Kant’s conception of reason is captured in the felicitous phrasing of Jean Hampton, who claims that the deliverances of reason possess “objective normative authority”, and “motivational force” in virtue of their authority. The author seeks to find a place for both assertoric and categorical imperatives within an account of practical or deliberative rationality that assumes throughout the first-person stance. Each person achieves a dignity through her capacity to act on the assertoric imperatives of fulfilment, constructing for herself a conception of good, so each achieves a further dignity through her capacity to govern herself by the categorical imperatives of agreement, committing herself to cooperate with others whom she respects as she respects herself. These are the gifts of reason. Hampton wanted to explain “what it means to say that reason is the hallmark of our humanity”. The meaning is in the gifts.
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Pub Date : 2022-01-20DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192842992.003.0006
D. Gauthier
This essay argues that rationality should not be identified with expected utility maximization. It focuses on the Prisoner’s Dilemma and claims that it exhibits the clash between two rival accounts of practical rationality. The orthodox theory is dubbed a best-reply theory, as it counsels that agents choose the utility-maximizing act (or strategy). By contrast, a P-optimal theory would have agents seek to bring about an outcome which is Pareto-optimal. It is evident that in the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the P-optimal outcome is P-superior to the best-reply outcome. The former requires that agents cooperate; this requires that agents realize their objectives (as measured by utility maximization) by acting to bring about some agreed outcome rather than by choosing for oneself on the basis of one’s expectations of others’ choices. The orthodox, best-reply theories insist that any cooperation must be grounded in a deeper level of non-cooperation, a view which seems to verge on incoherence. Persons are concerned to realize their aims; practical reason must surely be understood as conducive to this realization. The essay concludes with the thought that we must P-optimize; there is no going it alone. That may be a practical problem, but only a practical problem. Rightly understood, the Prisoner’s Dilemma shows the way to achieve beneficial interaction—and the way not to achieve it. We should relabel it “the Cooperator’s Opportunity”.
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