Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Academic Blogs -> Legal Theory Blog

Academic

: Legal Theory Blog

Chappell on Regan on Coopertive Utilitarianism

By Larry Solum

<a href="http://www.philosophyetc.net/2010/03/limits-of-moral-theory.html">Richard Chappell has a nice post</a> on Donald Regan's <span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; font-size: 13px; color: #333333; "><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0198246366?ie=UTF8&tag=philosoetcete-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0198246366" style="color: #cc6600; ">Utilitarianism and Cooperation</a> on Philosophy Etc.  A taste:</span><ul> Donald Regan's masterful Utilitarianism and Cooperation raises a problem for traditional consequentialist views, which conceive of agents as choosing between external options like 'push' or 'not-push' (options that are specifiable independently of the motive from which they are performed). He proves that no such traditional theory T is adaptable, in the sense that "the agents who satisfy T, whoever and however numerous they may be, are guaranteed to produce the best consequences possible [from among their options] as a group, given the behaviour of everyone else." (p.6) It's easy to see that various forms of rule or collective consequentialism fail when you're the only agent satisfying the theory -- doing what would be best if everyone played their part is not necessarily to do what's actually best.</ul> <span style="color: #0000bf; "><strong>I read Regan's book as an undergraduate. Anyone interested in the normative foundations of law and economics would be well advised to take a look.</strong></span>

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on April 06, 2010 (boomark / email).