The Nash bargaining problem provides a framework for analyzing problems where parties have imperfectly aligned interests. This Element reviews the parts of bargaining theory most important in philosophical applications, and to social contract theory in particular. It discusses rational choice analyses of bargaining problems that focus on axiomatic analysis, according to which a solution of a given bargaining problem satisfies certain formal criteria, and strategic bargaining, according to which a solution results from the moves of ideally rational and knowledgeable claimants. Next, it discusses the conventionalist analyses of bargaining problems that focus on how members of a society can settle into bargaining conventions via learning and focal points. In the concluding section this Element discusses how philosophers use bargaining theory to analyze the social contract.

Vanderschraaf develops a new theory of game theory equilibrium selection in this book. The new theory defends general correlated equilibrium concepts and suggests a new analysis of convention.

Vanderschraaf develops a new theory of game theory equilibrium selection in this book. The new theory defends general correlated equilibrium concepts and suggests a new analysis of convention.

In Strategic Justice, Peter Vanderschraaf argues that justice can be properly understood as a body of special social conventions. The idea that justice is at bottom conventional has ancient roots, but has never been central in philosophy because convention itself has historically been so poorly understood. Vanderschraaf gives a new defense of this idea that integrates insights and arguments of past masters of moral and political philosophy together with recent analytical and empirical concepts and results from the social sciences. One of the substantial contributions of this work is a new account of convention that is sufficiently general for summarizing problems of justice, the social interactions where the interests of the agents involved diverge. Conventions are defined as equilibrium solutions to the games that summarize social interactions having a variety of possible stable resolutions and a corresponding plurality of equilibria. The basic idea that justice consists of a system of rules for mutual advantage is explored in depth using this game-theoretic analysis of convention. Justice is analyzed as a system of conventions that are stable with respect to renegotiation in the face of societal changes such as resource depletion, technological innovation and population decline or growth. This new account of justice-as-convention explains in a cogent and natural way what justice is and why individuals have good reason to obey its requirements. Contrary to what many have thought, this new account shows how the justice-as-convention view can give a good account of why justice requires that the most vulnerable members of society receive protections and benefits from the cooperative surplus created by general compliance with justice.