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Peter Vanderschraaf’s Strategic Justice provides a defense of the egalitarian bargaining solution. Vanderschraaf’s discussion of the egalitarian solution invokes three arguments typically given to support the Nash bargaining solution. Overall, we reinforce Vanderschraaf’s criticism of arguments in favor of the Nash solution and point to potential w...
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... 14 In this context, see Thrasher (2019). 15 See also Bruner (2021). include the negative expectation that, if agents do not follow the demands of this bargaining solution, then they may lose some of the benefits that arise from the restrained conduct of others, as Vanderschraaf (2019: p. 276) stresses, although the egalitarian bargaining solution does not ensure the most beneficial outcome for agents. ...
... 20 In this context, it is important to note that the egalitarian bargaining solution also potentially and counterfactually disrespects individual holdings that arise from the historical development of the composition of society, because the egalitarian bargaining solution is population monotone. For further discussion of this point, seeVanderschraaf (2020) andBruner (2021).Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved. ...
Conventionalism as a distinct approach to the social contract received significant attention in the game-theoretic literature on social contract theory. Peter Vanderschraaf’s (Strategic justice: convention and problems of balancing divergent interests. Oxford University Press, 2019) sophisticated and innovative theory of conventional justice represents the most recent contribution to this tradition and, in many ways, can be viewed as a culmination of this tradition. In this article, I focus primarily on Vanderschraaf’s defense of the egalitarian bargaining solution as a principle of justice. I argue that one particular formal feature of this bargaining solution, the baseline consistency requirement, may stand in tension with other features of conventionalism as an approach to the social contract and limit the scope of Vanderschraaf’s theory to societies in which de facto an egalitarian sense of justice evolves. It limits the scope of Vanderschraaf’s theory in the face of moral diversity. A similar limitation applies to Vanderschraaf’s theory of democratic political authority. Despite these minor limitations, Vanderschraaf’s theory can only be seen as a major success and significant contribution to social contract theory.
Justice as mutual advantage appears to show inadequate concern for those that are insufficiently useful to others (the vulnerable), implying that those that are most in need of the protections of justice fall outside the scope of justice as mutual advantage. Vanderschraaf offers a novel reply to this objection. He presents a game–the Indefinitely Repeated Provider-Recipient Game–which establishes that in some situations justice as mutual advantage can show concern for the vulnerable. This finding, however, does not match the problem raised by the vulnerability objection, for the objection says that in all relevant situations, justice requires equal basic concern for all–vulnerable and non-vulnerable alike.
