Collective Rationality and Simple Utilitarian Theories

Abstract

Much of recent moral philosophy has been concerned with the relation between individual rationality and individual obligation. Familiar gametheoretic analyses, in particular the Prisoner's Dilemma, at least suggest that unconstrained pursuit of rational self-interest leads to collective ill. The difficulty is nicely illustrated by comparing the preference-orderings of distinct individuals over the possible outcomes of their actions to their collective preference-ordering. Consider the following typical version of the Prisoner's Dilemma, where R2 and C2 represent respectively “R has confessed to the crime” and “C has confessed to the crime,” and Rl and Cl correspond to “It is not the case that R has confessed” and “It is not the case that C has confessed.”