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Chapter 10 Conclusion I have argued that integrity exists, and that it is economically meaningful. In this concluding chapter I will brie›y summarize some of the main points, suggest future research avenues, and discuss how integrity might be placed in or compared with other virtues. The last point means to address those who value different ethical systems, like the feminist notion of an ethic of care or Aristotelian virtue ethics. Throughout the book I have tried to address potential criticisms from mainstream economists. I conclude by addressing the possible concerns of an audience predisposed to be more sympathetic. Two different kinds of integrity have been offered. First, preference-integrity exists when one has a strong preference for honesty. That preference overrides other material preferences or contingent interests so that the person of preference-integrity has reason to behave honestly, even at material cost. This kind of person uses what philosophers call externalist reasons. The preference for honesty is the motivating reason; there is no provision for the individual of preference-integrity to evaluate her preference, and thus no link between such an evaluation and her motivation to act. So it is for all instrumentally rational behavior. Apart from explaining a lot of real-life behavior, perhaps the best thing about preference-integrity is that it ‹ts nicely into the usual utility-maximizing framework of economics. No new techniques are needed, just a new preference . In particular, chapter 4 illustrates in a simple game-theoretic framework how individuals of varying intensities of honesty could be expected to behave in a generic economic agreement with the possibility of exit. Under reasonable assumptions, all agents make a promise in stage 1 and then either lie with certainty in stage 2, keep their promise with certainty, or, if their preference for honesty is in the middle range, behave contingently. For those who keep their word, it is their preference for honesty rather than anticipated reciprocity that primarily drives their behavior. Thus, the analysis differs from virtually all of those in the literature. Nevertheless, nothing about preference142 integrity is inconsistent with the literature, and in particular, it seems that preference-integrity could easily become the focus of evolutionary game-theoretic analyses. The biggest problem with preference-integrity is that it does not and cannot include coherence, a notion so central to both common understandings of integrity and philosophers’ accounts. Coherence requires consistency among chosen principles, motivation and principle, and principle and action. As I have said throughout, there is nothing in preference-integrity that would eliminate the possibility of lying to a left-handed person, but not to a righthanded person, because there is no mechanism to assure consistent principles . Instead, preferences are assumed to be exogenously given to the individual . Other problems with preference-integrity are that it is reductionist, self-referential, instrumental, and deterministic. Like any utility-based framework , that means all dispositions, like honesty, can be thought of as preferences , that individuals only take actions to ful‹ll their own preferences, and since those preferences are exogenous to the individual, there is no provision for conscious re›ection or a free will. Commitment-integrity, the second kind of integrity, overcomes those problems. Commitment-integrity exists when an individual consciously chooses principles, commits to those principles, and wills acts accordingly. There must be coherence as described above. If all of these conditions hold, we can say that the person has an internalist reason to act. That is, the perceived truth of her principles provides the reason to act, quite independent of any competing (or complementary) preferences. Thus commitment-integrity is not reductionist, self-referential, instrumental, or deterministic. The person of commitment-integrity freely chooses to act according to those principles she has freely committed to. Many causes could conspire to explain why one might not act with commitment-integrity. Chief among them are a failure to choose principles, judgment errors, self-deception, moral exclusion, and weakness of will. The ‹rst four are especially problematic if the relevant contexts for action are not framed in a moral way (e.g., “everyone lies in this department ”); the last is especially problematic when there are strong competing desires (“I know I shouldn’t lie, but I really want the time off that lying will get me”). Even if commitment-integrity is more descriptively accurate for many individuals in many types of agreements, its biggest problem is the dif‹culty of modeling it. I sketched a framework in chapter 3, but that only highlighted the problem...

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