Question

Explain how the "game-theoretic" account of the State of Nature in terms of the celebrated "Prisoners' Dilemma" model helps to illustrate the contractarian argument (employ the essential notion of the model called Pareto-optimality).

Answer 1

• Prisoner’s Dilemma helps to illustrate the Contractarianism in a way how people react to one another in nature.
• In Prisoner’s Dilemma we discuss of the fact what would happen if the prisoners do not talk to each other.
• Here the output we get will be less beneficial as they do not mingle with each other and as no cooperation there is no beneficial output recorded.
• Pareto-optimality deals with the discrepancy between the individual rationality and collective rationality.
• This collective rationality can be obtained only if cooperation exists between the prisoners.
• The game theory hence suggests that humanity needs to find morality through mutual agreements where everyone should be benefited.