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131The Benefits of CooperationPhilosophy and Public Affairs 34 (4): 313-351. 2006.There is an idea, extremely common among social contract theorists, that the primary function of social institutions is to secure some form of cooperative benefit. If individuals simply seek to satisfy their own preferences in a narrowly instrumental fashion, they will find themselves embroiled in collective action problems â interactions with an outcome that is worse for everyone involved than some other possible outcome. Thus they have reason to accept some form of constraint over their cond…Read more
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47The transcendental necessity of moralityPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2). 2003.David Gauthier tries to defend morality by showing that rational agents would choose to adopt a fundamental choice disposition that permits them to cooperate in prisoner's dilemmas. In this paper, I argue that Gauthier, rather than trying to work out a prudential justification for his favored choice disposition, should opt for a transcendental justification. I argue that the disposition in question is the product of socialization, not rational choice. However, only agents who are socialized in s…Read more
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74The structure of hip consumerismPhilosophy and Social Criticism 27 (6): 1-17. 2001.Critics of mass culture often identify 1950s-style status competition as one of the central forces driving consumerism. Thomas Frank has challenged this view, arguing that countercultural rebellion now provides the primary source of consumerism in our society, and that ‘cool’ has become its central ideological expression. This paper provides a rearticulation and defense of Frank's thesis, first identifying consumerism as a type of collective action problem, then showing how the ‘hip consumer’ is…Read more
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15The Transcendental Necessity of MoralityPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2): 378-395. 2003.David Gauthier tries to defend morality by showing that rational agents would choose to adopt a fundamental choice disposition that permits them to cooperate in prisoner's dilemmas. In this paper, I argue that Gauthier, rather than trying to work out a prudential justification for his favored choice disposition, should opt for a transcendental justification. I argue that the disposition in question is the product of socialization, not rational choice. However, only agents who are socialized in s…Read more
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3VSerge-Christophe Kolm, Justice and Equity Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 19 (2): 113-115. 1999.
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55Yet this is precisely what I intend to do. As a way of conferring some initial legitimacy Perhaps the most fundamental axiom of upon this enterprise, I would like to start out modern economic science is that there simply by appealing to the “no free lunch” is no such thing as a free lunch. It is principle. To adopt productivity growth as a this axiom that gives us the concept of opporsocial priority is to set aside other objectives tunity cost, an idea that has led to enormous that we might like…Read more
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8Response to NarvesonDialogue 42 (2): 373-378. 2003.I would like to start by thanking Jan Narveson for his time and for the attention that he has shown to my book, The Efficient Society. As someone with broadly left-wing sympathies, I am acutely aware of the lamentable tendency that leftists have of spending their time arguing exclusively with the people who are closest to them on the political spectrum. I have always hoped to avoid that trap. Thus it has been extremely gratifying to see my book provoke unsolicited critical response from, among o…Read more
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77Market Failure or Government Failure? A Response to JaworskiBusiness Ethics Journal Review 50-56. forthcoming.
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10Rational Choice with Deontic ConstraintsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 31 (3): 361-388. 2001.Anyone who has ever lived with roommates understands the Hobbesian state of nature implicitly. People sharing accommodations quickly discover that buying groceries, doing the dishes, sweeping the floor, and a thousand other household tasks, are all prisoner's dilemmas waiting to happen. For instance, if food is purchased communally, it gives everyone an incentive to overconsume. Individuals also have an incentive to buy expensive items that the others are unlikely to want. As a result, everyone'…Read more
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48This paper raises a challenge for those who assume that corporate social responsibility and good corporate governance naturally go hand-in-hand. The recent spate of corporate scandals in the United States and elsewhere has dramatized, once again, the severity of the agency problems that may arise between managers and shareholders. These scandals remind us that even if we adopt an extremely narrow concept of managerial responsibility – such that we recognize no social responsibility beyond the ob…Read more
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84Following the rules: practical reasoning and deontic constraintOxford University Press. 2008.Introduction -- Instrumental rationality -- Social order -- Deontic constraint -- Intentional states -- Preference noncognitivism -- A naturalistic perspective -- Transcendental necessity -- Weakness of will -- Normative ethics.
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50Is Language a Game?Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26 (1). 1996.Recent developments in game theory have shown that the mathematical models of action so widely admired in the study of economics are in fact only particular instantiations of a more general theoretical framework. In the same way that Aristotelian logic was ‘translated’ into the more general and expressive language of predicate logic, the basic action theoretic underpinnings of modern economics have now been articulated within the more comprehensive language of game theory. But precisely because …Read more
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132One of the most unsatisfactory sections of Robert Brandom's very complex and difficult book, Making it Explicit, is, unfortunately, the very first chapter.1 Brandom's general objective in this work is to displace the concept of representation from its position as the central explanatory concept in the philosophy of language and epistemology, and replace it with some set of explanatory concepts derived from the analysis of social action or practice. In particular, he wants to argue that the conce…Read more
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150The problem of foundationalism in Habermas's discourse ethicsPhilosophy and Social Criticism 21 (1): 77-100. 1995.
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104The robustness of altruism as an evolutionary strategyBiology and Philosophy 17 (4): 567-590. 2002.Kin selection, reciprocity and group selection are widely regarded as evolutionary mechanisms capable of sustaining altruism among humans andother cooperative species. Our research indicates, however, that these mechanisms are only particular examples of a broader set of evolutionary possibilities.In this paper we present the results of a series of simple replicator simulations, run on variations of the 2–player prisoner's dilemma, designed to illustrate the wide range of scenarios under which a…Read more
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46Three Evolutionary Precursors to MoralityDialogue 48 (4): 717. 2009.One of the unspoken assumptions quite widely shared among moral philosophers is the belief that human beings have a unified moral pyschology. Roughly speaking, morality involves action that is, at least prima facie, contrary to self-interest. This generates two immediate problems. The first involves determining whether moral action, under this description, is possible, and if it is, explaining how such action might come about. The second involves the normative task of justifying a moral course o…Read more
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13Review essay : Habermas and speech-act theory: Maeve Cooke, Language and Reason: A Study of Habermas's Pragmatics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994) (review)Philosophy and Social Criticism 21 (4): 141-147. 1995.
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27Rules and Choice in Economics, Viktor J. Vanberg. Routledge, 1994, viii + 310 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 12 (2): 243. 1996.
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19Response to CriticsDialogue 44 (2): 391-398. 2005.Like most books in philosophy, Communicative Action and Rational Choice contains a large number of arguments. Each of these arguments I adhere to with a greater or lesser degree of conviction. Some of them I think are pretty decisive. In other cases, I was doing the philosophical equivalent of throwing things against the wall just to see what sticks. Of course, I did not present things that way in the book, choosing instead to dress up my scruffier arguments in the hope that they might appear to…Read more
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103Review essay : Habermas and speech-act theory Maeve Cooke, Language and Reason: A Study of Habermas's Pragmatics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994)Philosophy and Social Criticism 21 (4): 141-147. 1995.
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23Rational Choice with Deontic ConstraintsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 31 (3): 361-388. 2001.Anyone who has ever lived with roommates understands the Hobbesian state of nature implicitly. People sharing accommodations quickly discover that buying groceries, doing the dishes, sweeping the floor, and a thousand other household tasks, are all prisoner's dilemmas waiting to happen. For instance, if food is purchased communally, it gives everyone an incentive to overconsume. Individuals also have an incentive to buy expensive items that the others are unlikely to want. As a result, everyone'…Read more
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145Most political theorists became acquainted with the work of Jürgen Habermas through his 1973 publication of Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus (which became available in English two years later as Legitimation Crisis). In this work, Habermas argued that the traditional Marxist analysis of crisis tendencies in the capitalist system was outdated, given the relative success of the welfare-state compromise. He claimed instead that crisis tendencies generated in the economic sphere would be di…Read more
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3John Roemer, Theories of Distributive Justice Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 17 (2): 124-126. 1997.
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241Foundationalism and practical reasonMind 106 (423): 451-474. 1997.In this paper, I argue that Humean theories of moral motivation appear preferable to Kantian approaches only if one assumes a broadly foundationalist conception of rational justification. Like foundationalist approaches to justification generally, Humean psychology aims to counter the regress-of-justification argument by positing a set of ultimate regress-stoppers-in this case, unmotivated desires. If the need for regress-stoppers of this type in the realm of practical deliberation is accepted, …Read more
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3Christopher McMahon, Collective Rationality and Collective Reasoning Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 23 (1): 53-56. 2003.
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19Ethical Issues in Physician Billing Under Fee-For-Service PlansJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 45 (1): 86-104. 2020.Medical ethics has become an important and recognized component of physician training. There is one area, however, in which medical students receive little guidance. There is practically no discussion of the financial aspects of medical practice. My objective in this paper is to initiate a discussion about the moral dimension of physician billing practices. I argue that physicians should expand their conception of professional responsibility in order to recognize that their moral obligations tow…Read more
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6Christopher Morris and Arthur Ripstein, eds., Practical Rationality and Preference: Essays for David Gauthier Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 22 (3): 206-208. 2002.
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89Brandom et les sources de la normativitéPhilosophiques 28 (1): 27-46. 2001.RÉSUMÉ. — Robert Brandom a tenté de déplacer le concept de représentation de sa position de concept explicatif central en philosophie du langage et de le remplacer par un ensemble de concepts explicatifs dérivés de l’analyse de l’action sociale. Il soutient que le concept de norme sociale peut servir de concept primitif dans le développement d’une théorie générale de la signification. Selon Brandom, le problème central lié au fait de considérer la représentation comme un primitif explicatif est …Read more
Areas of Specialization
Political Ethics |
Business Ethics and Public Policy |
Value Theory |
Areas of Interest
Political Ethics |
Business Ethics and Public Policy |
Value Theory |