Social Choice and Public Reason

You will find drafts of the various chapters of my book project Social Choice and Public Reason: On Agreement and Justification in Open Societies.

This project reflects my view that economics can be both seen as a set of tools and models to be used to deal with philosophical issues and an object that can benefit from the import of a philosophical perspective. With this book, my aim is to develop a new perspective on the social nature of morality on the basis of an extended social choice framework. The extension of the standard - at least within economics - social choice approach  follows from the introduction of a set of key concepts coming from philosophy: persons, values, public reason, and consent. I intend to show that though as a formal apparatus social choice is not committed to any specific view about the nature of the 'agents' whose preferences or judgments are aggregated, there is a strong case for introducing a thick concept of persons within a social choice framework. This introduction follows from the claim that, at least when dealing with moral matters, a person should not be merely identified as a coherent set of preferences over social alternatives but rather as an enduring entity whose intentional attitudes (desires, wants, beliefs) and behavior are grounded on values. Values play a twofold role. From the personal point of view, values are constitutive of each person's personal conception of the good and determine what matters; from the public point of view, values ground each person's attitudes about what they take to be requirements for making collective moral choice. Making collective moral choices depends on a (set of) underlying collective choice rule(s) which imposes on everyone outcomes that may not conform with each person's conception of the good. Thus, choosing a collective choice rule is making a claim of legitimate authority over each member of the population. I contend that such a claim is both empirically problematic and normatively unjustified unless each person rationally consent to the endorsement of collective choice rules. Such consent cannot be obtained unless the collective choice rule has properties (corresponding to a set of axioms in a social choice perspective) that are responsive to the persons' values when they take the public point of view. Interestingly, these values may not be the same than those that are constitutive of their personal conception of the good. What are those values is the key philosophical issue that I will tackle. I then plan to show how this social choice perspective can be integrated within a broad social philosophy account emphasizing that morality is ultimately reducible to a set of conventional rules that have evolved to foster coordination and cooperation in the society. Ultimately, the book shows how social choice theory in normative economics and social contract theory in moral and political philosophy can be reconciled.

The book project is currently under submission. Because of editorial and scientific considerations notably related to the planned length of the book, the structure has significantly changed compared to the outline below. Some chapters will finally not figure in the book - if it is ultimately published. I leave it as it is nonetheless for the time being as some visitors might be interested in the chapters and the project as it was initially conceived.

Introduction

Part I - Setting the Stage

Chapter 1 - Normative Economics, Ethics and the Social Choice Model of Normative Analysis

Part II - Persons and Values

Chapter 2 - Identity, Normative Agency, and the Relevance of Persons

Chapter 3 - Value Pluralism, Autonomy, and Welfare

Part III - Public Reason, Paternalism, and Distributive Justice

Chapter 4 - Public Reason and the Social Choice Model

Chapter 5 - Rethinking Paternalism

Chapter 6 - Public Reason and Distributive Justice

Part IV - The Social and Political Morality of Open Societies

Chapter 7 - Following Moral Rules

Chapter 8 - The Many Shades of Moral Disagreement

Chapter 9 - The Political Economy and Philosophy of the Open Society

Conclusion - Normative Economics and Social Philosophy