The study of social dilemmas is the study of the tension between individual and collective rationality. In a social dilemma, individually reasonable behavior leads to a situation in which everyone is worse off. The first part of this review is a discussion of categories of social dilemmas and how they are modeled. The key two-person social dilemmas (Prisoner's Dilemma, Assurance, Chicken) and multiple-person social dilemmas (public goods dilemmas and commons dilemmas) are examined. The second part is an extended treatment of possible solutions for social dilemmas. These solutions are organized into three broad categories based on whether the solutions assume egoistic actors and whether the structure of the situation can be changed: Motivational solutions assume actors are not completely egoistic and so give some weight to the outcomes of their partners. Strategic solutions assume egoistic actors, and neither of these categories of solutions involve changing the fundamental structure of the situation. Solu...

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SOCIAL DILEMMAS: The Anatomy of Cooperation

1. Clarification: The 2013 Guidelines make a distinction between euthanasia, humane killing, and slaughter, and state that neither slaughter nor humane killing is covered in the document P.68, S6.1.1. Not included among the definitions of these terms are ending the lives of healthy animals or scientific collection of animals. For clarification, whatever the term used, classification of the method, or reason given for killing animals: euthanasia, humane killing, slaughter, harvest, depopulation, scientific collection, or research-related, the Council on Accreditation’s foremost concern, in all situations, is with humane technique. The goal of humane technique is to minimize pain, distress, and the negative effect to the animal. The technique employed should result in rapid loss of consciousness followed by cardiac or respiratory arrest and, ultimately, a loss of brain function. Although complete absence of pain and distress is preferred, it is understood that it cannot always be achieved P7.13.2.

https://works.bepress.com/cheryl_greenacre/14/download/

AVMA Guidelines for the Euthanasia of Animals: 2013 Edition

Although empirical studies of deliberative democracy have proliferated in the past decade, too few have addressed the questions that are most significant in the normative theories. At the same time, many theorists have tended too easily to dismiss the empirical findings. More recently, some theorists and empiricists have been paying more attention to each other's work. Nevertheless, neither is likely to produce the more comprehensive understanding of deliberative democracy we need unless both develop a clearer conception of the elements of deliberation, the conflicts among those elements, and the structural relationships in deliberative systems.

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.081306.070555

Deliberative Democratic Theory and Empirical Political Science

This paper argues that the notion of value has been overly simplified and narrowed to focus on economic returns. Stakeholder theory provides an appropriate lens for considering a more complex perspective of the value that stakeholders seek as well as new ways to measure it. We develop a four-factor perspective for defining value that includes, but extends beyond, the economic value stakeholders seek. To highlight its distinctiveness, we compare this perspective to three other popular performance perspectives. Recommendations are made regarding performance measurement for both academic researchers and practitioners. The stakeholder perspective on value offered in this paper draws attention to those factors that are most closely associated with building more value for stakeholders, and in so doing, allows academics to better measure it and enhances managerial ability to create it.

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Stakeholder Theory, Value, and Firm Performance

This collection of essays, based on the Locke Lectures that Nagel delivered at Oxford University in 1990, addresses the conflict between the claims of the group and those of the individual. Nagel attempts to clarify the nature of the conflict - one of the most fundamental problems in moral and political theory - and concludes that its reconciliation is the essential task of any legitimate political system.

Equality and Partiality.

In the most general terms, a public good exhibits the characteristic of nonexcludability; its benefits are available both to those who help to provide it and those who do not. Two other important features of the public goods provision problem are (i) the mechanism or institution for providing the good and (ii) the incentive structure for potential providers. Among the most familiar institutions is the voluntary contributions mechanism (VCM) combined with an incentive structure such that, for a single period, low levels of contribution are a dominant strategy equilibrium, while some higher level of provision is Pareto-superior. There has been a considerable amount of experimental research on such an environment (see Isaac and Walker, 1987a, for a survey). The existence of such a dominant strategy equilibrium, however, is not the only potential source of problems for the VCM. In particular, under alternative environments a potential provider can have an incentive to contribute if, and only if, he or she has a credible guarantee that others will also contribute. Absent such a guarantee, the provider may withhold. An environment exhibiting these incentives but without such a guarantee is sometimes said to exhibit the assurance problem (see Schmidtz, 1987).

The assurance problem in a laboratory market

People sometimes say, “Ideally, this is what we would do...” Often, someone who says this is making a throwaway remark as a preliminary to getting down to serious problem-solving. Needless to say, none of us wants to wake up some day only to realize that we spent a career elaborating what amounts to a throwaway remark. What would theorizing have to be like in order to matter? Amartya Sen has an answer. Theorizing about justice would have to be about real problems here and now. It would have to be about real steps that real people can take here and now to make the world a better place. Sen built his reputation by writing elegantly concise essays that got right to the point, made the point, then stopped. By contrast The Idea of Justice is a vast book, sprawling across the major landmarks of a long career. 1 There comes a time for reflecting on where one has been and what one has accomplished. This is Sen’s time. It is also time, Sen believes, for our theorizing about justice to part ways with Rawlsian ideal theory (xi). Rawls assumes that various idealizing assumptions facilitate progress in theorizing about justice. Rawls also treats justice as concerned more with perfecting institutions than perfecting relationships. 2 In Sen’s parlance, Rawls is thus a transcendental institutionalist, as are most political theorists (6, 8, 67). Sen tries to distance himself from this. Although Sen does not radically depart from Rawls, he does provide a glimpse of what a radical departure would be like. The contrast between ideal and nonideal theory is elusive. It expresses a concern about the point of theorizing, but the concern is actually a constellation of concerns related by family resemblance rather than shared essence. We worry about supposing that every question has an answer, or that every question has the same answer, or that everyone must agree on what that answer is, on pain of being irrational or evil. We worry about trying to discern what to do by asking what would be reasonable under ideal conditions. Critics with one of these concerns tend to have the others, too, but they are distinct. 3

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Nonideal Theory: What It Is and What It Needs to Be*

What is justice? Questions of justice are questions about what people are due. However, what that means in practice depends on the context in which the question is raised. Depending on context, the formal question of what people are due is answered by principles of desert, reciprocity, equality, or need. Justice, therefore, is a constellation of elements that exhibit a degree of integration and unity. Nonetheless, the integrity of justice is limited, in a way that is akin to the integrity of a neighborhood rather than that of a building. A theory of justice offers individuals a map of that neighborhood, within which they can explore just what elements amount to justice.

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The elements of justice

Justifying the state property rights the right to punish the prisoner's dilemma from prisoner's dilemma to public goods experimental philosophy the morality of a co-operative society.

The Limits of Government: An Essay on the Public Goods Argument

Preface and AcknowledgmentsPt. IRational Choice1Ch. 1Why Be Rational?6Ch. 2Choosing Strategies28Ch. 3Choosing Ends58Ch. 4Comparing Ends80Ch. 5Reasons for Altruism98Pt. IIMoral Agency121Ch. 6Because It's Right126Ch. 7Social Structure and Moral Constraint155Ch. 8Moral Dualism186Ch. 9Objections and Replies213Pt. IIIReconciliation241Ch. 10Why Be Moral?243References265Index273

David Schmidtz

Papers

The assurance problem in a laboratory market

Nonideal Theory: What It Is and What It Needs to Be*

The elements of justice

The Limits of Government: An Essay on the Public Goods Argument

Rational choice and moral agency