Moral Good and Righ Conduct: A General Theory of Welfare under Fundamental Uncertainty

This essay deals with social or moral competitive systems, and aims to reply to the following question: From the point of view of rationality which characteristics a General Theory of Welfare (GTW) must have? Welfare economics is composed by a certain number of theories that we distinguish according to the moral value on which they are based and the right conduct they suggest. As regards moral value, two conceptions exist which justify two different models of welfare economics: the ethics of motives which makes reference to subjective values and the ethics of ends which also admits objective values. As regards right conduct, Bayesian reductionism and rational dualism are two different ways of considering uncertainty about economic phenomena. Bayesian reductionism assumes that agents are always able to establish a numerical probability and only admits the maximisation procedure, while rational dualism also admits non-measurable probabilities and procedures other than the maximisation. Since a rational choice between competitive moral systems cannot be made, this awareness lead us to think in terms of a GTW. From the point of view of moral values, a GTW must admit all the possible values in which a society can believe; while from the point of view of instrumental rationality, it must not only admit situations where decision-makers have all the information and computing capabilities for applying the maximisation procedure, but also situations where they do not have adequate information and behave in condition of true uncertainty.