Introduction

Abstract

Abstract This collection began as a conference on Modeling Rational and Moral Agents that combined two themes. First is the problematic place of morality within the received theory of rational choice. Decision theory, game theory, and economics are unfriendly to crucial features of morality, such as commitment to promises. But since morally constrained agents seem to do better than rational agents - say by co-operating in social situations like the Prisoner’s Dilemma - it is difficult to dismiss them as simply irrational. The second theme is the use of modeling techniques. We model rational and moral agents because problems of decision and interaction are so complex that there is much to be learned even from idealized models. The two themes come together in the most obvious feature of the papers: the common use of games, like the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD), to model social interactions that are problematic for morality and rationality.’