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Pure and Utilitarian Prisoner's Dilemmas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Steven T. Kuhn  and
Serge Moresi
Steven T. Kuhn
Affiliation:
Georgetown University
Serge Moresi
Affiliation:
Georgetown University
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Extract

The prisoner 's dilemma game (henceforth, PD) has acquired large literatures in several disciplines. It is surprising, therefore, that a good definition of the game is hard to find. Typically an author relates a story about captured criminals or military rivals, provides a particular payoff matrix and asserts that the PD is characterized, or illustrated, by that matrix. In the few cases in which characterizing conditions are given, the conditions, and the motivations for them, do not always agree with each other or with the paradigm examples elsewhere. In this paper we describe several varieties of PD's. In particular, we suggest there are two distinctions among PD's with philosophical significance, the pure/impure and the utilitarian/nonutilitarian distinctions. In the first section, we explain and characterize the two distinctions. In the second, we discuss an issue of moral philosophy that illustrates the significance of the former.

Type
Essays
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , October 1995 , pp. 333 - 343
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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