The Impossibility of Ethics

Resumen

In this paper I analyze the possibility of making ethical judgements in terms of �good� or �bad� individual actions in social situations modelled as welldefined extensive form games. After requiring some �minimal� social desirability properties of ethical codes in this context, we find that impossibility theorems can be easily generated and trade-offs between ethical properties are proved to exist. We argue that this normative approach to Game theory can give useful insights into the study and design of ethical rules, moral maxima and religious codes that are now considered as allocation problems of �moral labels� to individual actions that societies can use to help enforcing the desirable equilibria in different social institutions. Game theory is concerned with self-interested individuals and the likely equilibria that can be predicted when individuals try to maximize their own payoff in a given social situation. Therefore, although it has traditionally been considered as a positive theory of human behavior, moral considerations can also be analyzed within the rich description of extensive form games. Notice, however, that we are not trying to develop a kind of Game theory approach to Ethics, since moral issues clearly demand a normative approach that we consider is far away from the positive perspective of Game theory. We are basically borrowing the tools of describing interactive decision-making situations from Game theory to apply a normative axiomatic analysis to moral issues. Moreover, we follow the Game theory approach on the implicit assumption that every relevant aspect of the situation is embodied in the complete definition of an extensive form game, with a sole important and obvious difference: we no longer consider the moral status of actions included into the final individual payoffs, but we restore the moral considerations as being endogenous to the model. Therefore, the moral status of the individual actions is not considered fixed in the situation, but we will find answers to the questions of the allocation of moral value to actions that respect minimal moral principles.