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The veil and the deal: Bargaining between case-specific solutions and unknown rules

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2026

Piotr Bystranowski*
Affiliation:
Interdisciplinary Centre for Ethics, Jagiellonian University, ul. Grodzka 52, Kraków, Poland piotr.bystranowski@uj.edu.pl Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn, Germany
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

Levine et al.’s resource-rational contractualism omits how people decide that a situation demands rule-, not case-based, guidance. I propose that moral cognition first tags contexts as rule-governed, then either uncovers an existing norm or forges a plausible one. Coordination stakes and the private-public divide likely trigger this tag. Distinguishing discovery from invention invites targeted experiments and refines the framework.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press

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