TY - JOUR
T1 - LEARNING BARGAINING CONVENTIONS
AU - Vanderschraaf, Peter
N1 - Funding Information:
Vanderschraaf Peter 1 Peter Vanderschraaf is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Merced. His research focuses on the analysis of convention and the roles of convention in moral and political philosophy. He has held visiting appointments in the Program in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics sponsored by the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Duke University, as the John Findlay Visiting Associate Professor of Philosophy at Boston University, and as a member of the School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study. He is completing a book Strategic Justice: Convention and Problems of Balancing Divergent Interests for Oxford University Press, and is the author of several articles published in journals such as Synthese , Politics, Philosophy, and Economics , and British Journal of the Philosophy of Science . Philosophy, 1 University of California , Merced 04 12 2018 Summer 2018 35 1 237 263 Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2018 2018 Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation.
PY - 2018/6/1
Y1 - 2018/6/1
N2 - I examine from a conventionalist perspective the Nash bargaining problem that philosophers use as a tool for analyzing fair division. From this perspective, the solutions to bargaining problems are conventions that can emerge from inductive learning and focal point effects. I contrast the conventionalist approach to analyzing the bargaining problem with the better-known rational choice approach, which I criticize for having overly demanding epistemic presuppositions and for producing disappointing results. I apply a simple model of inductive learning to specific bargaining problems to show that agents can learn from repeated experience to follow a variety of bargaining conventions in a given problem. I conclude that such agents can come to regard two such conventions as focal for the bargaining problem, one that assigns claimants equal shares of a good and another egalitarian solution of equal payoff gains, and that the egalitarian solution tends to prevail when these two solutions differ. I conclude further that the above analysis lends support for admitting interpersonal utility comparisons into the analysis of fair division problems, and also suggests a focal point explanation of the wide acceptance of the Aristotelian proportionality principle of distributive justice.
AB - I examine from a conventionalist perspective the Nash bargaining problem that philosophers use as a tool for analyzing fair division. From this perspective, the solutions to bargaining problems are conventions that can emerge from inductive learning and focal point effects. I contrast the conventionalist approach to analyzing the bargaining problem with the better-known rational choice approach, which I criticize for having overly demanding epistemic presuppositions and for producing disappointing results. I apply a simple model of inductive learning to specific bargaining problems to show that agents can learn from repeated experience to follow a variety of bargaining conventions in a given problem. I conclude that such agents can come to regard two such conventions as focal for the bargaining problem, one that assigns claimants equal shares of a good and another egalitarian solution of equal payoff gains, and that the egalitarian solution tends to prevail when these two solutions differ. I conclude further that the above analysis lends support for admitting interpersonal utility comparisons into the analysis of fair division problems, and also suggests a focal point explanation of the wide acceptance of the Aristotelian proportionality principle of distributive justice.
KW - Aristotelian proportionality principle
KW - bargaining problem
KW - convention
KW - egalitarian solution
KW - focal point
KW - inductive learning
KW - interpersonal utility comparisons
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85057742899&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85057742899&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S0265052518000110
DO - 10.1017/S0265052518000110
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85057742899
VL - 35
SP - 237
EP - 263
JO - Social Philosophy and Policy
JF - Social Philosophy and Policy
SN - 0265-0525
IS - 1
ER -