b. 1932
David Gauthier (born 1932) is a Canadian moral philosopher best known for developing a contractarian foundation for morality grounded in rational choice theory. His landmark work, Morals by Agreement (1986), argues that moral constraints can be derived from the self-interested rationality of agents in a bargaining situation, reviving and formalizing the Hobbesian social contract tradition using game theory.
Developed a rational-choice-based contractarian ethics in Morals by Agreement (1986)
Introduced 'constrained maximization' as a rational strategy superior to straightforward utility maximization in iterated prisoner's dilemmas
Argued that moral norms can be justified to purely self-interested agents through bargaining theory
Extended Hobbesian contract theory using formal tools from game theory and decision theory
Distinguished cooperative rationality from parametric rationality, grounding morality in the former