The Best World

Interestingly, the Prisoner's Dilemma is not a unique or unusual situation. We find ourselves in effectively the same dilemma whenever the following two conditions are met:

Conditions on Prisoner's-Type Dilemmas

Notice that (A) and (B) are true of virtually anyone who is not stuck alone on a desert island. To see how the Prisoner's Dilemma gets turned into an argument for Social Contract Theory, consider the following hierarchy of worlds. Ask yourself this question:

What is the best world for me?

World 1

The Best World for You (The Free Rider World)

You act egoistically.

Everyone else acts altruistically.

World 2

The Best World for Everyone

You act altruistically.

Everyone else acts altruistically.

World 3

The Worst World for Everyone (The State of Nature)

You act egoistically.

Everyone else acts egoistically.

World 4

The Worst World for You (The Sucker World)

You act altruistically.

Everyone else acts egoistically.

Given this hierarchy of worlds, how should you reason?

Either other people will respect my interests or they won't.

Suppose they do. Then I'm better off if I act egoistically instead of altruistically. It's better for me to be in World 1 than World 2.

Suppose they don't. Then I'm better off if I act egoistically instead of altruistically. It's better for me to be in World 3 than World 4.

So no matter what other people do, I'm better off if I act egoistically. Hence I should act egoistically.

But everyone else is reasoning in exactly the same way. So we all wind up in World 3; the State of Nature. The upshot is that we have good reason for suspending the fourth of Hobbes' facts of the Human Condition--our Limited Altruism=Limited Egoism nature.

*Adapted from James Rachels, "The Elements of Moral Philosophy", 2nd ed. (McGraw Hill, 1993)