Steffi Dach: Morality as Team Reasoning

Organized by the Department of Analytic Philosophy of the Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences

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Steffi Dach (FF ZČU): Morality as Team Reasoning

Abstract

Team reasoning is an approach in game theory developed to understand coordinating and cooperative behavior as rational. It emphasizes that we can reason from a we-perspective about specific decision problems characterized by social interdependence, like the Prisoner’s Dilemma. At least one 20th-century philosopher, Wilfrid Sellars, has developed a very similar approach to morality. This raises the question of whether the team reasoning framework could also be used to reconstruct moral reasoning and basic moral concepts.

As I argue, using the team reasoning framework to reconstruct moral reasoning can contribute to understanding the emergence of morality in humans. It also offers a potentially attractive intermediate position between act and rule utilitarianism, mitigating some of the problems of these approaches. However, despite these advantages, team reasoning cannot easily reconstruct some morally relevant concepts, e.g., the concept of obligation, while retaining the idea that we can reason from a moral perspective without assuming that others do so as well. I consider an extension of the team-reasoning approach, reasoning “as if we were a team,” and critically discuss some of the problems of this suggestion.