Natural Justice
By Ken Binmore

Publisher:   Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Pages:   224
Publication Date:   2005-03-17
ISBN-10 / ASIN:   0195178114
ISBN-13 / EAN:   9780195178111

Product Description:
This book lays out foundations for a "science of morals." Binmore uses game theory as a systematic tool for investigating ethical matters. He reinterprets classical social sontract ideas within a game-theory framework and generates new insights into the fundamental questions of social philosophy. In contrast to the previous writing in moral philosophy that relied on vague notion such as " societal well-being" and "moral duty," Binmore begins with individuals; rational decision-makers with the ability to emphasize with one another. Any social arrangement that prescribes them to act against their interests will become unstable and eventually will be replaced by another, until one is found that includes worthwhile actions for all individuals involved.


Summary: Groundbreaking
Rating: 5
Even though it is not always a s clear as it should have been, this is a brilliant book. To moral philosophy, Binmore applies Marx' famous dictum reversed: We have tried to change the world, now it is time to understand it. According to Binmore, prevailing theories have taught us little about how justice actually works. Instead of relying on evidence on the nature of ourselves and our societies, they have invoked various utopian "Gods", such as rationality or the impartial spectator, when talking about morality. In Binmore's trademark fluent and militant style he scorns especially Kantian philosophy, that is referred to as the `dark age of moral reasoning', and has led to `absurdly implausible rules'. (In another passage we are told that the self-proclaimed pundits of moral philosophy `have no more access to some noumenal world of moral absolutes than the boy who delivers our newspapers'.)
Instead, says Binmore, we need to study the actual rules that people use and see where they come from: How did they evolve and why do they survive?
Moral relativism indeed, but of a very persuasive sort. According to Binmore, fairness rules have evolved to help societies select between equilibria in various coordination games that arise in life. Societies that selected the more efficient equilibria have survived, resulting in our current and constantly evolving social contract. Or in the more eloquent words of Binmore: "Fairness is the social tool washed up on the human beach by the tide of evolution for solving [...] coordination problems [...]".
Although this summarizes the basic philosophy underlying the whole book, the full theory exposited in it is great deal more complicated. It offers a Rawlsian argument in which people bargain in the original position about the outcome of a coordination game, a process made possible by the existence of "empathic preferences". In this process, people use certain fairness rules and social indices for interpersonal utility comparison. According to Binmore, the latter indices evolve, to eventually be such that the fairness rules lead to an efficient (Nash) bargaining outcome. The result is a theory of the coevolution of a genetically determined possibility to emphatize with each other and a culturally determined set of social indices.
Even though the book is a non-technical summery of Binmore's "Game theory and the social contract", it is far from an easy read. There is a fair deal of bargaining and game theory to be swallowed and the exposition is not always as clear as one would hope. Also, it will carry many readers into uncharted terrain, since the book brims with concepts from decision theory, game theory, political philosophy, biology, and evolutionary theory.
But in the end, this is what makes the book so immensely rewarding. Here is a first stab at a whole new theory of morality, and it is so full of ideas that it can keep an army of scholars busy for a long time to follow up on all of them. Most of the ideas may be crude, controversial, incomplete and some even wrong, but they are invariably exciting. 10 Years of thinking by one of the finest minds in economics have yielded a treasure pot for a naturalistic approach to morality.

Summary: Games & Morality
Rating: 4
This is a deeply important, but flawed, book. The important aspects are
the ideas behind it, and the flaws are in their exposition.
The book describes the application of evolutionary game theory to the
development of human morality. It shows how some moral positions are
stable, and so are likely to have been selected both by Darwin's Law
of Evolution and by cultural selection in successful societies. It
also shows how forces can influence those stable configurations, so,
for example, in a society with an uncorrupt disinterested and powerful
police force, one would expect utilitarianism to prevail, whereas in
an anarchy one would expect egalitarianism to do so.
The book also offers a cogent, finely-argued and completely successful
rebuttal of Kantian deontology, "right for right's sake", and the
categorical imperative. This rebuttal is long overdue.
However, from the literary standpoint, Binmore is no Dawkins. He
writes well enough from sentence to sentence, and his use of anecdote
and example is good. But he does not have a feel for overall
structure, and does not give the impression of having in mind the
possible ways in which the reader might mis-understand what he is
writing.
Binmore's ideas are both correct and very significant. It is a shame
that he has not written about them more clearly. But on balance this book is well worth reading.