Moral Structures and Axiomatic Theory

Abstract

Axiomatic decision theory has proven to be a valuable analytical tool in many disciplines, and in this paper I discuss its application to moral theory. The first part of the paper discusses the general structure of moral theory, and it argues that morality need not be identified with a particular moral principle. The concept of a moral framework is introduced, and a framework for use in analyzing issues of distributive justice is presented in the second section. The application of this framework is discussed in the paper’s final section, and two different moral situations are analyzed. The utilitarian principle is argued to be appropriate for the first situation in which a scarce good is to be efficiently distributed, while Rawls’ difference principle is claimed to be the correct one for the more abstract issue of basic institutional justice.