When
Where
Date and Time: Friday October 11th, 3-5pm in Social Sciences 224
Join Virtually: https://arizona.zoom.us/j/82156464500
Title: The Philosophical Foundations of Virtue, Justice, and Economic Rationality
Abstract: The paper sketches the philosophical foundations of economic rationality, of social decision making leading to good and just societies, and of the process of enlarging our moral universe by extending our biologically-based morality. The paper begins by taking Ramsey style agent-relative utilities and subjective probability as the basis for a limited normative theory aimed at increasing individual and aggregate basic welfare (as opposed to total happiness or ultimate welfare). I then turn to morality, which I view through the lens of the social scientist John Q Wilson who, along with Aristotle, Hume, and Adam Smith, took morality to be grounded in a moral sense consisting of biological dispositions relating us to others. My key point is that our initially biologically based morality grows by participation in mutually beneficial social, economic, and political practices. I conclude by relating this foundational picture to the views of the two great political philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century – Friedrich Hayek and John Rawls.