SBE-UKRI: Resource Rational Contractualism: A foundation for moral judgment and decision making

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Often people need to make moral decisions in cases where no clear rules apply. For instance, during the COVID pandemic people often faced difficult tradeoffs and choices in situations where no clear rules existed. Philosophers have suggested that one promising approach is for a person to act in the way that they believe everybody would agree to, if there were time for everybody to talk things over. This research project asks whether ordinary people imagine a kind of bargain between interested parties and regard the imagined outcome of the bargain as the most morally appropriate solution. The project develops precise computational models of how people do this, and then tests the models by conducting experiments. These experiments ask people to reason about everyday situations, and also puts people in structured economic exchanges with each other to explore whether their choices reflect basic principles of bargaining. Finally, the project embeds bargaining principles within current artificial intelligence (AI) This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.