There are slides here by Greaves on the IB approach, which she describes as a moral parliament approach. Newberry and Ord, 2021, more recently, develop and discuss multiple parliamentary approaches.
Allocating proportionally with credences is in particular very similar to the proportional chances voting parliamentary approach, preferred and defended by Newberry and Ord, 2021, and according to which votes in a fictional parliament are distributed in proportion to our credences in each theory, voters can bargain and trade, and the voter (theory) to decide on a motion is selected randomly in proportion to the votes. Furthermore, if we consider voting on what to do with each unit of resources independently and resources are divisible into a large number of units, proportional chances voting will converge to a proportional allocation of resources.
To prevent minority views from gaining control and causing extreme harm by the lights of the majority, Newberry and Ord propose imagining voters believe they will be selected at random in proportion to their credences and so they act accordingly, compromising and building coalitions, but then the winner is just chosen by plurality, i.e. whichever theory gets the most votes. I wouldn’t endorse this, and would instead recommend looking for alternatives.
Ah, I wasn’t aware of the slides. I actually had a section discussing the distinction between IB and moral parliaments which I cut at the last minute because I wasn’t sure what to say. In the Greaves and Cotton-Barrett paper, they make no reference to moral parliaments. Newberry and Ord (2021) cite Greaves and Cotton-Barrett but don’t explain what they take the distinction between the moral parliament and bargaining theoretic approach to be.
Thinking about it now, both approaches capture the intuition we should imagine what would happen if we distributed resources to representatives of moral views and then some bargaining occurs. The differences appear to be in the specifics: do we allow agents to bargain over time vs only at an instance? Do we allow grand bargains vs restrict the discussion to a limited set of issues? What are the decision-making procedure and the disagreement point? What resources are awarded to the agents (i.e. votes vs money/time)?
One problem with the parliamentary approach, where we have to specify a voting procedure is, is how we could possibly justify one procedure over another. After all, to say it was right on the basis of some first-order moral theory would be question-begging.
Relatedly, as I note in a comment above, is that agents may well prefer to be able to engage in grand, life-long bargains than to be restricted (as Ord and Newberry suggest) to convening parliaments now and then to deal with particular issues. So we can see why agents, starting from something like a ‘veil of ignorance’, would not agree to it.
It’s for these reasons I suspect the internal bargaining version is superior. I suspect there would be more to say about this after further reflection.
There are slides here by Greaves on the IB approach, which she describes as a moral parliament approach. Newberry and Ord, 2021, more recently, develop and discuss multiple parliamentary approaches.
Allocating proportionally with credences is in particular very similar to the proportional chances voting parliamentary approach, preferred and defended by Newberry and Ord, 2021, and according to which votes in a fictional parliament are distributed in proportion to our credences in each theory, voters can bargain and trade, and the voter (theory) to decide on a motion is selected randomly in proportion to the votes. Furthermore, if we consider voting on what to do with each unit of resources independently and resources are divisible into a large number of units, proportional chances voting will converge to a proportional allocation of resources.
To prevent minority views from gaining control and causing extreme harm by the lights of the majority, Newberry and Ord propose imagining voters believe they will be selected at random in proportion to their credences and so they act accordingly, compromising and building coalitions, but then the winner is just chosen by plurality, i.e. whichever theory gets the most votes. I wouldn’t endorse this, and would instead recommend looking for alternatives.
I also hadn’t seen these slides, thanks for posting! (And thanks to Michael for the post, I thought it was interesting/thought-provoking.)
Ah, I wasn’t aware of the slides. I actually had a section discussing the distinction between IB and moral parliaments which I cut at the last minute because I wasn’t sure what to say. In the Greaves and Cotton-Barrett paper, they make no reference to moral parliaments. Newberry and Ord (2021) cite Greaves and Cotton-Barrett but don’t explain what they take the distinction between the moral parliament and bargaining theoretic approach to be.
Thinking about it now, both approaches capture the intuition we should imagine what would happen if we distributed resources to representatives of moral views and then some bargaining occurs. The differences appear to be in the specifics: do we allow agents to bargain over time vs only at an instance? Do we allow grand bargains vs restrict the discussion to a limited set of issues? What are the decision-making procedure and the disagreement point? What resources are awarded to the agents (i.e. votes vs money/time)?
One problem with the parliamentary approach, where we have to specify a voting procedure is, is how we could possibly justify one procedure over another. After all, to say it was right on the basis of some first-order moral theory would be question-begging.
Relatedly, as I note in a comment above, is that agents may well prefer to be able to engage in grand, life-long bargains than to be restricted (as Ord and Newberry suggest) to convening parliaments now and then to deal with particular issues. So we can see why agents, starting from something like a ‘veil of ignorance’, would not agree to it.
It’s for these reasons I suspect the internal bargaining version is superior. I suspect there would be more to say about this after further reflection.