I have now completed the task of exploring just what sort of case can be made, from a pragmatic perspective, for the various axioms that form the cornerstones of the modern theory of individual rationality. Although my conclusion has been essentially negative, the route I have taken to that conclusion, involving as it has an appeal to the strategy of resolute choice, turns out to have some constructive implications with regard to at least two other areas in which more traditional models of rational choice have generally been perceived to generate rather problematic results: the theory of games, on the one hand, and the theory of moral choice, on the other. I cannot hope to do any more than sketch, in the very briefest terms, what the issues are, but I hope that my remarks will give the reader a sense of how one could proceed, with the concept of resolute choice in hand, to make some constructive advances in each of these two areas.

Resolute choice and game theory

There is an obvious and important analogy between the single decision maker faced with making a sequence of decisions over time and a group of persons faced with coordinating their actions. The situation analyzed in Section 12.6 is the intrapersonal counterpart to one that is the focus of the theory of interpersonal interaction, that is, game theory.