Moral Rules and the Moral Sentiments: Toward a Theory of an Optimal Moral System

Economics and Moral Sentiments: The Case of Moral Hazard

The purpose of this paper is to develop the argument that sentiments (including moral sentiments) are endemic to the building of knowledge about the economy, as well as the functioning of the economy itself. This contrasts with the mainstream treatment of sentiment as separable from rationality, such that it is seen (if at all) as requiring an ex post modification of rational choice theory. The...

Moral dilemmas and moral rules.

Recent work shows an important asymmetry in lay intuitions about moral dilemmas. Most people think it is permissible to divert a train so that it will kill one innocent person instead of five, but most people think that it is not permissible to push a stranger in front of a train to save five innocents. We argue that recent emotion-based explanations of this asymmetry have neglected the contrib...

Moral Realism, Moral Relativism and Moral Rules (A Compatibility Argument)

Relativism and realism are often held to be in conflict. It is not obvious what the exact nature of the conflict is supposed to be, because it is not obvious what the two doctrines amount to. But that there is some kind of conflict between moral realism and moral relativism is evidenced by the fact that some take moral relativism to be the straightforward denial of moral realism. David Brink, f...

Theory of Moral Sentiments 1759 vs Theory of Moral Sentiments 1790: a change of mind or a change of constraints?

Moral sentiments and social choice

We examine the implications, for social choice, of individuals having an intrinsic sense of fairness. Taking the viewpoint that social justice reflects the moral attitudes of the constituent members, we analyze the effect of the intensity of the individual sense of fairness on the solution of Nash bargaining over random allocation procedures. We use a stylized model of university admission poli...