Abstract
I reply to commentaries by Justin Bruner, Robert Sugden and Gerald Gaus. My response to Bruner focuses on conventions of bargaining problems and arguments for characterizing the just conventions of these problems as monotone path solutions. My response to Sugden focuses on how the laws of humanity present in Hume’s discussion of vulnerable individuals might be incorporated into my own proposed account of justice as mutual advantage. My response to Gaus focuses on whether or not my account of justice as mutual advantage can incorporate deep differences in values across subgroups of a larger society.
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Notes
Bruner’s example is similar to the example of this phenomenon I give on pp. 312–318 of Strategic Justice.
This property is sometimes referred to as weak stability (Thomson and Lensberg 1989, p. 142).
I discuss subgroup consistency and population monotonicity in more depth in a later essay (2020).
A point \(\varvec{x} = \left( {x_{1} , \ldots ,x_{n} } \right)\) weakly Pareto dominates another point \(\varvec{y} = \left( {y_{1} , \ldots ,y_{n} } \right)\) if \(x_{i} \ge y_{i}\) for each \(i \in \left\{ {1, \ldots ,n} \right\}\) and \(x_{i} > y_{i}\) for at least one \(i \in \left\{ {1, \ldots ,n} \right\}\).
I do not assume that the members of society are necessarily all humans, but I argue that a community regulated by any system of justice is likely to limit membership to humans for reasons of salience (2019, pp. 294–298).
Harrison makes much the same point in his discussion of Hume’s weaker creatures example (1981, p. 277).
If \(\alpha_{i} > 2\), \(i = 1,2\), then \(\left( {T,T} \right)\) and \(\left( {L,L} \right)\) are themselves strict correlated equilibria and hence also characterize conventions.
Brian Skyrms pointed this out in discussion of an earlier version of Gaus’ essay at a workshop hosted by Chapman University in November 2019.
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Vanderschraaf, P. Reply to critics. Philos Stud 178, 1741–1756 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01502-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01502-2