Indeterminacy and society
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Bibliographic Information
Indeterminacy and society
Princeton University Press, c2003
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Note
Bibliography: p. [151]-158
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In simple action theory, when people choose between courses of action, they know what the outcome will be. When an individual is making a choice "against nature," such as switching on a light, that assumption may hold true. But in strategic interaction outcomes, indeterminacy is pervasive and often intractable. Whether one is choosing for oneself or making a choice about a policy matter, it is usually possible only to make a guess about the outcome, one based on anticipating what other actors will do. In this book, Russell Hardin asserts, in his characteristically clear and uncompromising prose, "Indeterminacy in contexts of strategic interaction ...Is an issue that is constantly swept under the rug because it is often disruptive to pristine social theory. But the theory is fake: the indeterminacy is real."
In the course of the book, Hardin thus outlines the various ways in which theorists from Hobbes to Rawls have gone wrong in denying or ignoring indeterminacy, and suggests how social theories would be enhanced - and how certain problems could be resolved effectively or successfully - if they assumed from the beginning that indeterminacy was the normal state of affairs, not the exception. Representing a bold challenge to widely held theoretical assumptions and habits of thought, "Indeterminacy and Society" will be debated across a range of fields including politics, law, philosophy, economics, and business management.
Table of Contents
PREFACE ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi Chapter 1. Indeterminacy 1 Strategic Interaction 3 Ordinalism 9 Mutual Advantage: The Collective Implication of Self-Interest 12 Concluding Remarks 14 Chapter 2. Beyond Basic Rationality 16 Basic Rationality 17 Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma 20 Dominance 25 Equilibrium 28 Contract by Convention 32 Nuclear Arms Control 34 Against Determinacy 36 Concluding Remarks 38 Chapter 3. Mutual Advantage 41 Social Order 42 Ex Ante Mutual Advantage 44 Institutional and Policy Choice 46 Policies 51 Concluding Remarks 53 Chapter 4. The Greatest Sum 55 Subjective Benthamite Utility 58 Labor Theory of Value 60 Wealth Maximization 62 Mutual Advantage and Interpersonal Comparisons 63 Ordinal Utilitarianism 65 Concluding Remarks 68 Chapter 5. Marginal Determinacy 70 Indeterminacy on the Frontier 71 Marginal versus Fundamental Values 74 Transaction Costs 78 Concluding Remarks 79 Chapter 6. Rules for Determinacy 81 Rules 83 A Kantian Principle 87 Institutional Decisions 93 Public Policy 96 Concluding Remarks 98 Chapter 7. Indeterminate Justice 102 Equality versus Productive Efficiency 106 Justice as Fairness 108 Mutual Advantage 109 Justice as Fairness and the Coase Theorem 111 Resources 112 Primary Goods 114 The Difference Principle 116 Concluding Remarks 118 Chapter 8. Mechanical Determinacy 121 Marginalism 123 Two-Stage Theory 125 Institutional Fallibility 127 Institutions as Meliorative 131 Contractarian Arguments 134 Concluding Remarks 135 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 2: DETERMINACY IN ITERATED PRISONER'S DILEMMA 139 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 4: INDIVIDUALLY CARDINAL UTILITY 141 NOTES 143 REFERENCES 151 INDEX 159
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