Rafaela Schinner
Universität Wien
In my paper, I will explore to what extent Christine Korsgaard’s concept of practical identity can provide a rational justification of team reasoning.
Team reasoning constitutes a prominent solution in economics1 to explain cooperation in Prisoner’s Dilemma situations: Prisoners cooperate if they act and reason as members of a team. From a normative perspective, it raises the question of why the agent should engage in team reasoning rather than individual utility maximisation.
One proposal to provide normative underpinnings for team reasoning can be found with Elisabeth Anderson (2001). Borrowing Korsgaard’s (1996, 2008) concept of practical identity, she presents a view
where what reasons we have depends on our social identities: insofar as I identify as an isolated individual, I have reason to engage in utility maximisation. Insofar as I identify as a member of some social group, I have reason to engage in team reasoning. However, this merely shifts the problem: how should I decide between these identities in case of conflict?
Being aware of the problem, Anderson refers to the “identity of the individual self” (2001, 35) that adjudicates between different social identities. However, she cannot satisfactorily show how that process is rational. In a recent paper, Gold and Colman (2020) briefly refer to Korsgaard with regard to possible solutions for the problem of rational justification of team reasoning, but do not develop this
further.
Based on Korsgaard’s account of practical identity and Anderson’s proposal, I will explore to what extent the concept of practical or social identity can provide us with a rational justification of the adjudication between different social identities in choice situations. Thereby, I will focus on Prisoner’s Dilemma situations.
1 Prominent accounts stem from Michael Bacharach (2006) and Robert Sugden (e.g. 2000, 2015)
Bibliography
Anderson, Elizabeth. 2001. “Symposium on Amartya Sen’s philosophy: 2 Unstrapping the straitjacket of ‘preference’: a comment on Amartya Sen’s contributions to philosophy and economics. “Economics and Philosophy 17 (1): 21–38.
Bacharach, Michael. 2006. Beyond Individual Choice: Teams and Frames in Game Theory. Princeton University Press.
Gold, Natalie and Andrew M. Colman. 2020. “Team Reasoning and the Rational Choice of PayoffDominant Outcomes in Games.” Topoi 39 (2): 305–316.
Korsgaard, Christine. 1996. The sources of normativity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Korsgaard, Christine. 2008. The constitution of agency: essays on practical reason and moral psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sugden, Robert. 2000. “Team preferences.” Economics and Philosophy 16 (2): 175–204.
Sugden, Robert. 2015. “Team reasoning and intentional cooperation for mutual benefit.” Journal of Social Ontology (1): 143–166.
Chair: Freya von Kirchbach
Time: September 11th, 17:40 – 18:10
Location: SR 1.003
SOPhiA 2026 