Academic

White on Kantian Ethics & Prisoners' Dilemmas

By Lawrence Solum

Mark D. White (College of Staten Island) has posted Kantian Ethics and the Prisoners' Dilemma (Eastern Economic Journal, 2009) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

The prisoners' dilemma game stands as a seminal case of the conflict between individual and collective rationality. Some scholars have suggested that Kantian duty-based ethics can prevent the suboptimal outcomes associated with the game. I argue that this claim is too strong, because Kant's moral theory does not entail specific duties requiring cooperation in prisoners' dilemma games. I support this argument in terms of Kant's categorical imperative, and also with reference to his distinction between perfect and imperfect duties.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on October 03, 2008 (boomark / email).