The rationality of complying with rules: Paradox resolved

Ethics

Volumn 116, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 453-470

  Goldman, Alan H ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33745464369     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/500336     Document Type: Review

References (19)

1. See Christopher McMahon, Collective Rationality and Collective Reasoning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 16.
2. In my book I took as my paradigm case the moral rule requiring judges in the legal system to apply the law when they believe that they can produce a morally better outcome by ignoring legal requirements. I also considered many cases in which what is morally permitted (but not required) for individuals produces morally unacceptable collective outcomes. See Practical Rules: When We Need Them and When We Don't (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
3. McMahon, Collective Rationality, 19.
4. McMahon, Collective Rationality, Ibid., 20, 40.
5. For arguments against any form of satisficing that would violate this principle, see Goldman, Practical Rules, 79-83.
6. Larry Alexander and Emily Sherwin, The Rule of Rules (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 53-95.
7. If any IRS agents are reading this, don't look at me. I'm going to argue for a morally overriding obligation to pay all of one's taxes.
8. Alexander and Sherwin, Rule of Rules, 76.
9. For expansion, see Goldman, Practical Rules, 22-32.
10. Edward McClennen, "The Rationality of Being Guided by Rules," in The Oxford Handbook of Rationality, ed. Alfred R. Mele and Piers Rawling (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 222-39.
11. See, e.g., Joseph Raz, Practical Reason and Norms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), chap. 2.
12. David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), chap. 6.
13. Gauthier has an advantage in arguing that constrained maximization is rational according to the standard conception of rationality. His disadvantage is in having to appeal to the probability of sanctions being imposed in order to justify the strategy.
14. McMahon, Collective Rationality, 8.
15. McMahon, Collective Rationality, Ibid., 29-30.
16. Ibid., 103.
17. For elaboration and classification of rules as genuine or not, see Goldman, Practical Rules, 13-22.
18. McMahon, Collective Rationality, 69-70.
19. A similar explanation of why people, in fact, obey norms is found in Philip Pettit, Rules, Reasons, and Norms (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002), pt. 3.