Interactive Decision-Making and Morality

Abstract

Interactive decision-making occurs when three conditions are met: There are at least two decision-makers; the effects of each agent’s decision are co-determined by the decisions of other agents; what each agent does depends on her expectations as to what the other agents will do, and while forming these expectations, she knows that the other agents will form similar expectations regarding her own decision. This type of decision-making—also termed “strategic”—is studied in game theory, a branch of rational choice theory (which in addition to game theory embraces decision theory, concerned with nonstrategic choices, and social choice theory, concerned with the problems of group decision-making). In this essay, we shall try to distinguish and analyze different ways in which game theory—a mathematical theory of interactive decision-making—can contribute to moral philosophy. In our view, one can distinguish eight main ways in which game theory can be gainfully appealed to by a moral philosopher, that is, game theory can be viewed as a tool for better understanding a function of morality; determining the content of moral norms; criticizing certain moral conceptions; analyzing the problem of the validity of moral norms; analyzing the possibility of deriving morality from instrumental rationality; analyzing moral decision-making; analyzing the nature of moral dispositions; analyzing the functions of moral emotions; and analyzing the cultural evolution of moral norms.