Moral contractarianism, as demonstrated in the work of David Gauthier, is an attempt to derive moral principles from the non-moral premises of rational choice. However, this contractarian enterprise runs aground because it is unable to show that agents would commit to norms in a fairly realistic world where knowledge is limited in space and time, where random shocks are likely, and where agents can be arbitrarily differentiated from one another. In a world like this, agents will find that the most "rational" strategy is to behave "non-rationally," imitating the behavior of others in their vicinity and preserving a limited sort of ignorance.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:OWTU.10012/762 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Watson, Terrence |
| Publisher | University of Waterloo |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
| Rights | Copyright: 2004, Watson, Terrence. All rights reserved. |
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