DOI: 10.1017/s0140525x25101702 ISSN: 0140-525X

Contractarian partiality, contractualist impartiality, and the question of falsifiability

Arthur Le Pargneux

Abstract

The conflict between partiality and impartiality is a fundamental feature of moral cognition. It is also central within the contractualist tradition in moral philosophy. Resource-rational contractualism gives a key role to both partial (e.g., virtual bargaining) and impartial (e.g., universalization) forms of reasoning in its theory. In empirical tests, this makes it flexible, but at the risk of being unfalsifiable.

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