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Moral Artifice*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

David Gauthier
David Gauthier*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA15260, U.S.A.
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Extract

Towards the ends of their reviews, Annette Baier and Jean Hampton allow, if only momentarily, the real spectres to surface. Baier writes, ‘Gauthier rightly sees the dangers of exploitation and subjection inherent in a kin-based and affection-dependent morality, so purports to try for something totally different. Even if our moral natures cannot recognize themselves in Gauthier’s version of them, the problem that drives the attempt [for an individualist and unsentimental morality] is a real one, and so far, I think, an unsolved one; unsolved for morality as well as for moral theory.’ Hampton writes, ‘Gauthier will point out that anyone who insists that a human being has objective value must develop a theory that will not only justify that claim but also explain what reason one would ever have for respecting this value. I believe this is a challenge one has no choice but to accept, given what the moral facts are.’

Type
Reply
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , June 1988 , pp. 385 - 418
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1988

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Footnotes

*

A comment on reviews of Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1986) by Annette Baier, Peter Danielson, and Jean Hampton

References

1 Nietzsche, Friedrich On the Genealogy of Morals, Kaufman, tr. Walter and Hollingdale, R.J. (New York: Random House 1967), Third Essay, section 27, 161Google Scholar

2 See Mackie, J.L. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1977) 23-4, 30Google Scholar.

3 The principle is stated in Morals by Agreement, 145.

4 Morals by Agreement, 140-1

5 Consider again the original situation. Suppose that interest is paid annually, and that Mabel and Abel each reinvests the interest. Once Mabel’s capital reaches $700, she can earn 10% independently, and so Abel must bargain with her to continue their joint fund. Once both reach $700, cooperation ceases. Under MRC, after seven years Mabel will have approximately $1238 invested to Abel’s $710, at which point cooperation between them ceases. Had they agreed to equal rates of return, so that both gained 10% throughout, after seven years Mabel’s capital would be only $1169, Abel’s would be $779. In this situation MRC initially gives Mabel less than she would obtain under equal rates of return, but in the long run she does better.

6 Of course, if we were to accept this view of how proportionality should be applied, it would support Hampton’s claim that it is more favorable to large investors than MRC - but hardly in the way she supposed.

7 Morals by Agreement, 134

8 But doesn’t Mabel have some power to disrupt this agreement? I ignore this complication here; it might lead to an application of MRC that would be related to the Shapley value for a multi-person game. See Shapley, L.S. ‘A Value for Nperson Games,’ in Kuhn, H.W. and Tucker, A.W. eds., Annals of Mathematical Studies 28 (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1953) 307-17Google Scholar.

9 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London 1651) chapter 10

10 Morals by Agreement, 100

11 Ibid., 205

12 Ibid., 193

13 Ibid., 206-8

14 Ibid., 214-17

15 Ibid., 113

16 Ibid., 261

17 Ibid., 264

18 Rawls, John ‘Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (1985) 225Google Scholar

19 John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (London 1861), ch. III, para. 8