Why Act Morally? Economic and Philosophical Reasons

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Everybody who ascribes a material steering function to moral norms has to give some reasons why rational individuals actually obey these norms. This is a quite natural question to start with, specially for economists. Recently, the philosophers Stemmer (2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004), Hoerster (2003) and Bayertz (2004) have tackled this not so new problem. Stemmer uses the hypothetical figure of a Rational Sceptic, i.e. an individual with purely selfish preferences who is not interested in the well-being of others except to the extent that this behaviour would restrict his own acts. A moral norm is rationally justified if and only if a Rational Sceptic could be convinced. It has to be shown that norm-abiding is in the self-interest of the Rational Sceptic. In this paper I argue that there are good arguments that the Rational Sceptic or the Amoralist should not be our natural reference point for a rational justification program of moral norms. Philosophers should make use of recent empirical results mainly from experimental economics and game theory because these studies show that a combination of altruistic and selfish concerns motivates human beings (Fehr/Fischbacher 2003). The reference individual who has to be convinced by arguments that obeying moral norms is in his best interest should be an individual characterized in line with current empirical research about the nature of human altruism and egotism. Thereafter, human beings can best be described as conditional co-operators.Philosophers can benefit from empirical evidence about the nature of human altruism or egotism, whereas economists or psychologists stand to benefit from crucial questions arising from the philosophical discourse. For example, where exactly are the boundaries and limits of human norm-abiding behaviour in interactions between different ethnic groups? What are the obstacles for the evolution of a truly universal morality? The paper argues that exactly because human nature is neither truly altruistic nor truly egotistic there is a need for moral norms, otherwise they would be superfluous.