No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Some Formal Methods of Grading Principles
... We consider a society comprising ( ) In words, LD 9 The notation of i s ↑ follows Mariotti [7]. 10 Sen [13]. 11 Madden [6] p.250. 12 As is well-known, the notion of Suppes-Sen dominance is based on Suppes [16] and Sen [13]. 13 Dasgupta, Sen, and Starrett [3], Sen [14]. ...
... From the theorem of Birkhoff-von Neumann, Qs represents a convex combination of permutations of s 15 . Therefore, the set of vectors that Lorenz dominate s, ( ) L s , can be expressed as follows 16 : ...
... 15 For the theorem of Birkhoff-von Neumann, see von Neumann [19], Berge [1], pp.182-183, Sen [14], and Dasgupta, Sen, and Starrett [3] (lemma 1). 16 It is possible that ( ) 17 Sen [14]. 18 Madden [6], Ok [11]. ...
... Traducción del autor. En su lengua original: "For instance, the assumption that diff erent individuals have the same susceptibility to satisfaction often expresses only the egalitarian value judgment that all individuals should be treated equally … ". 42 Suppes, Patrick (1966) Sen (1976) 181. 46 Según el cual, quien sostiene una enunciación normativa que asume una regla para la satisfacción de los intereses de otras personas debe aceptar las consecuencias que dicha regla le traerá en el caso eventual que él se encuentre en las situaciones de esas otras personas. ...
... 10. Con todo, otros factores de decisión provenientes desde la teoría moral están afectos a las mismas difi cultades de comparación interpersonal, incluso aquellas fundadas en fundamentos de justicia, equidad e igualdad (Suppes 1966;Dworkin, 2008;Rawls, 2006). 11. ...
In this article, the existing relationship between procedural civil law and interpersonal comparison is examined. By means of the aforementioned examination, a critique of the efficiency criteria (essentially the Kaldor-Hicks criterion) which has been formulated when situations of interpersonal comparison are generated will be discredited. The efficacy of this criticism will be investigated, and starting with the contributions of Amartya Sen, it will be concluded that all of the factors of social decision, whether they originate from considerations of justice or equity, are subject to the same difficulties which this comparison imposes. Nonetheless, reasons will be expressed for which in civil procedural law these difficulties tend to decrease.
... The pair (x, i) stands in this relation to (y, j ) if and only if alternative x is at least as good for person i as y is for person j. Interpersonal comparisons of this form are utilized and defended by Suppes (1966), Sen (1970), Arrow (1977), Harsanyi (1977), Kolm (1998), and Adler (2014). A generalized social welfare function, as defined by Hammond, assigns a social ordering of alternatives to each ordering of alternative-individual pairs. ...
... An interpersonal profile R is an ordering on L. The intended interpretation is that (x, i)R(y, j ) if and only if x is at least as good for i (according to profile R) as y is for j, or, equivalently, that i is at least as well off in x as j is in y. Such comparisons are often understood in terms of the "extended preferences" of a social observer-preferring, for one's own sake, to be one person (or to be in their "position" in some sense, having all of their tastes, values, and so on) in one alternative rather than another person in another alternative (Suppes 1966, Sen 1970, 1997, Arrow 1977, Harsanyi 1977, Suzumura 1996, Kolm 1998, Adler 2014. But I do not insist on this or any other particular way of making interpersonal comparisons. ...
Extensive measurement is the standard measurement‐theoretic approach for constructing a ratio scale. It involves the comparison of objects that can be concatenated in an additively representable way. This paper studies the implications of extensively measurable welfare for social choice theory. We do this in two frameworks: an Arrovian framework with a fixed population and no interpersonal comparisons, and a generalized framework with variable populations and full interpersonal comparability. In each framework we use extensive measurement to introduce novel domain restrictions, independence conditions, and constraints on social evaluation. We prove a welfarism theorem for these domains and characterize the social welfare functions that satisfy the axioms of extensive measurement at both individual and social levels. The main results are simple axiomatizations of strong dictatorship in the Arrovian framework and classical utilitarianism in the generalized framework.
... We introduce another equity axiom named Suppes Indifference for Equals. This axiom is based on the Suppes grading principle (Suppes (1966)) and requires treating agents equally if they have the same time preferences and past consumptions because there is no difference in terms of responsibility among them. Using this axiom, the Strong Pareto principle, and the other axioms in Lemma 3, we axiomatize the leximin criterion. ...
... This axiom is based on the grading principle of justice by Suppes (1966). If agents have the same lifetime utility functions and past consumptions, there is no difference among them in terms of responsibility. ...
In this paper, we study intertemporal social welfare evaluations when agents have heterogeneous preferences that are interpersonally noncomparable. We first show that even if all agents share the same preferences, there is a conflict between the axioms of Pareto principle, time consistency, and equity requiring society to reduce inequality regardless of the past. We argue that responsibility for past choices should be taken into account and, thus, the equity axiom is not compelling. Then we introduce another form of equity that takes the past into consideration and is compatible with time consistency. Using this form of equity and time consistency, we characterize maximin and leximin social welfare criteria that are history‐dependent.
... We introduce another equity axiom named Suppes Indifference for Equals. This axiom is based on the Suppes grading principle (Suppes (1966)) and requires treating agents equally if they have the same time preferences and past consumptions because there is no difference in terms of responsibility among them. Using this axiom, the Strong Pareto principle, and the other axioms in Lemma 3, we axiomatize the leximin criterion. ...
... This axiom is based on the grading principle of justice by Suppes (1966). If agents have the same lifetime utility functions and past consumptions, there is no difference among them in terms of responsibility. ...
In this paper, we study intertemporal social welfare evaluations when agents may have heterogeneous time preferences. We first show that, even if all agents share the time preference, there exists a conflict between efficiency in the sense of Pareto principle, time consistency, and equity requiring to reduce inequalities regardless of the past. We argue that this impossibility result is due to a tension between equity and time consistency concerning how the past should be taken into account when evaluating intertemporal distributions. To avoid the conflict, we introduce another equity axiom taking the past into account and thus compatible with time consistency. Using this equity and time consistency,
we characterize a maximin social welfare ordering that takes the past information into account.
... And chapters 9 and 9* in Sen (1970a) usefully elaborate the key idea of an extended preference ordering over the Cartesian product of ordered pairs (x, i) that combine a social state x with an individual i. The idea of considering such pairs had already been taken up somewhat informally in the second edition of Social Choice and Individual Values (Arrow, 1963) (under the name "extended sympathy"), and more formally by Patrick Suppes (1966). In the case of two pairs (x, i) and (y, j) where individuals i and j differ, any preference between the two involves an ICU. ...
... Given the relevant risks, it is natural to use what Serge Kolm (1971Kolm ( , 1994) might call a "fundamental" VNM utility function defined over this all-encompassing domain. An additional equity axiom inspired by Patrick Suppes' famous paper on grading principles (Suppes 1966) then suggests that, when an impartial benefactor is choosing a world history rather than an original position, it is right to use an unbiased or impartial original position that takes into account the probability of a person coming into existence. ...
Following an initiative of Social Choice and Welfare, this is the result of an interview conducted by email exchange during the period from July 2017 to February 2018, with minor adjustments later in 2018. Apart rom some personal history, topics discussed include: (i) social choice, especially with interpersonal comparisons of utility; (ii) utilitarianism, including Harsanyi's contributions; (iii) consequentialism in decision theory and in ethics; (iv) the independence axiom for decisions under risk; (v) welfare economics under uncertainty; (vi) incentive compatibility and strategy-proof mechanisms, especially in large economies; (vii) Pareto gains from trade, and from migration; (viii) cost-benefit analysis and welfare measurement; (ix) the possible future of normative economics.
... Subsequently, we provide an application of our two axioms: we consider the no-envy approach, which is developed by Suzumura (1981a, b). This approach connects the problem of fairness with the framework of extended sympathy, which is introduced by Suppes (1966) and Sen (1970). A collective choice rule specifies desirable social states for each profile of "extended" preferences. ...
... An efficient and envy-free allocation is said to be fair (see Varian 1974Varian , 1976. Suzumura (1981aSuzumura ( , b, 1983 incorporates the concept of noenvy into social choice theory by employing the framework of extended sympathy of Suppes (1966) and Sen (1970). Suzumura (1981aSuzumura ( , b, 1983 and Sakamoto (2013) clarify the fundamental trade-off between fairness and social rationality. ...
The Nash axiom is a basic property of consistency in choice. This paper proposes weaker versions of the axiom and examines their logical implications. In particular, we demonstrate that weak Nash axioms are useful to understand the relationship between the Nash axiom and the path independence axiom. We provide an application of weak Nash axioms to the no-envy approach. We present a possibility result and an impossibility result.
... Traducción del autor. En su lengua original: "For instance, the assumption that diff erent individuals have the same susceptibility to satisfaction often expresses only the egalitarian value judgment that all individuals should be treated equally … ". 42 Suppes, Patrick (1966) Sen (1976) 181. 46 Según el cual, quien sostiene una enunciación normativa que asume una regla para la satisfacción de los intereses de otras personas debe aceptar las consecuencias que dicha regla le traerá en el caso eventual que él se encuentre en las situaciones de esas otras personas. ...
... 10. Con todo, otros factores de decisión provenientes desde la teoría moral están afectos a las mismas difi cultades de comparación interpersonal, incluso aquellas fundadas en fundamentos de justicia, equidad e igualdad (Suppes 1966;Dworkin, 2008;Rawls, 2006). 11. ...
In this article, the existing relationship between procedural civil law and interpersonal comparison is examined. By means of the aforementioned examination, a critique of the efficiency criteria (essentially the Kaldor-Hicks criterion) which has been formulated when situations of interpersonal comparison are generated will be discredited. The efficacy of this criticism will be investigated, and starting with the contributions of Amartya Sen, it will be concluded that all of the factors of social decision, whether they originate from considerations of justice or equity, are subject to the same difficulties which this comparison imposes. Nonetheless, reasons will be expressed for which in civil procedural law these difficulties tend to decrease.
... 347 y sigu.),Arrow (1963, VII-4),Suppes (1966),Sen (1970, ch. 9 y 9*),Kolm (1972),Ng (1975Ng ( , 1983,Arrow (1977), Harsanyi (1977,Sen (1979),Gevers (1979),Roberts (1980a, b),Rawls (1982), Suzumura (1983, Ch. 6), D'Aspremont(1994). ...
Este trabajo aborda la valoración del bienestar social y su relación con la utilidad individual , con el propósito de que resulte accesible a los no especialistas. Nos centramos en la valoración del bienestar social desde el punto de vista del procedimiento, más que del con-cepto. Los elementos relevantes serán pues las alternativas sociales y las valoraciones de los individuos. Describimos las dificultades que aparecen a la hora de construir una función de bienestar social a partir de las valoraciones individuales y también consideramos las po-sibilidades que se abren cuando definimos una función de evaluación social directamente sobre las alternativas sociales, sin pasar por las valoraciones individuales. El trabajo inclu-ye cuatro aplicaciones a diferentes campos: desigualdad, mercado de trabajo, desarrollo humano y pobreza. Lan honek gizarte-ongizatearen balioespena eta horrek norbanakoaren baliagarritasunarekin duen lotura lantzen ditu, espezialistak ez direnentzat eskuragarri egon dadin. Prozeduraren ikuspegitik gizarte-ongizatea baloratzean zentratzen gara, kontzeptuaren ikuspegitik baino ge-hiago. Elementu garrantzitsuak, beraz, alternatiba sozialak eta gizabanakoen balorazioak izango dira. Banakako balorazioetatik abiatuta gizarte-ongizateko funtzio bat eraikitzeko or-duan agertzen diren zailtasunak deskribatzen ditugu, eta gizarte-alternatiben gainean zuze-nean, banakako balorazioetatik igaro gabe, gizarte-ebaluazioko funtzio bat definitzen dugu-nean irekitzen diren aukerak ere kontuan hartzen ditugu. Lanak lau aplikazio biltzen ditu hainbat arlotan: desberdintasuna, lan-merkatua, giza garapena eta pobrezia. We address here the evaluation of social welfare and how it relates to individual utility, in a non-technical way. We focus on the notion of social welfare as an evaluation procedure rather than discussing its philosophical content. The key elements are, therefore, social alternatives and individual utilities. We analyze the difficulties of transforming individual utilities into group evaluations and discuss the options that appear when we skip utilities and define the evaluation directly on the space of alternatives. We include four applications to different fields: inequality, the labour market, human development, and poverty.
... 13-14) and argue that a generalized Suppes-Sen principle whereby ranked streams are compared plays an important role under such circumstances. When generalizing the finite population Suppes-Sen principle (Suppes, 1966;Sen, 1970) to the case with an infinite population, we utilize the Pareto principle on derived rank-ordered streams. These streams are wellbeing profiles where wellbeing is rank-ordered starting with the worst-off and completed with wellbeings equal to the smallest cluster point if there is only a finite number of wellbeing components that can be rank-ordered in this manner. ...
... Suppes (1966) introdujo estas preferencias que, después, fueron estudiadas porSen (1970Sen ( y 1976 yArrow (1978) bajo el nombre de «preferencias de simpatía extendidas». Aunque ya Smith (1759), siguiendo a Hume (1739), consideró la simpatía en su teoría de los sentimientos morales, es evidente que los filósofos morales posteriores solo apelaron a la simpatía cuando necesitaron de algún apoyo auxiliar para llegar a una conclusión(Hardin, 1988). ...
Este artículo propone una nueva estrategia para la gestión de organizaciones basada en la confianza. En las organizaciones empoderadas es posible realizar mediciones objetivas de la evolución de la confianza y, además, hacerlo automáticamente. La confianza es un proceso dinámico y su crecimiento o disminución es lo que aporta un significado real a las decisiones sociales. Esto inspira la estrategia propuesta: desarrollar procesos participativos mientras se produzcan aumentos de confianza y aplicar la mejor decisión obtenida hasta ese momento.
Los sistemas para medir la confianza se basan en la empatía entre los miembros de la organización, pero para su cálculo es necesaria una representación previa y homogénea de las opiniones de cada persona. La empatía entre todo par de individuos se mide a partir de la separación entre sus opiniones respectivas ante modificaciones sistemáticas en el plan de gestión de la organización. Posteriormente, se calcula la separación media. Los efectos de las interacciones entre personas se incorporan mediante modelos de simulación basados en agentes.
En cada caso de aplicación se debe determinar cuándo las mejoras marginales de confianza dejan de aportar mejoras significativas a la gestión de la organización. Para eso se adopta una regla de parada análoga a la desarrollada en los procesos de la implantación de sistemas de inteligencia artificial (IA).
... 203-209), and in a formalized way in the Chapter 9* (pp. 210-218) of [19], Sen is here referring to a fundamental contribution of Patrick Suppes to SCT, in a paper published in 1966 [38], where he developed formally a "social decision function" based on the revolutionary principle of a grading of different level of justice, on an interpersonal and then equitable basis. Suppes' model is essentially a "2-individuals model", and the "grading justice principle" consists in a set of rules such that a given individual i must judge a given social state x as "more just" than y, either with respect to the consequences for himself, or with respect to the consequences for another individual. ...
In this paper, I present the suggestion that a suitable theory of “justice as fairness” could offer a consistent path for solving many issues related to the actual crisis of the classical liberal model of economy and democracy, by substituting the abstract “equality” principle, with the concrete “equity” one in the notion of justice. After a short discussion of some main characters of the present worldwide crisis of the classical liberal model, I present two main theories of justice as fairness. John Rawls’ theory in political philosophy that emphasizes how really equitable judgements must overcome the equalitarianism of the Classical Liberalism, by considering the real possibilities of individuals and groups of accessing and enjoying commodities and utilities, as well as, the “basic liberties” defining the citizen equal dignity in the Modern State. Rawls propose, therefore, a notion of fairness compliant with the Kantian normativism, and a notion of fair distributive justice based on the ethical principle of the maximin, as a criterion for judging the righteousness of the State Institutions. The other theory of justice as fairness I discuss in this paper is an evolution of Rawls’ in the direction of the development of a “comparative distributive justice”, without any normativism. This theory is developed in the context of the newborn discipline of the “social choice theory”, formalizing social decision processes, with applications in economic, social, and political sciences. What characterizes Sen’s theory is its original synthesis between the Aristotelian notion of fairness, based on the “personal flourishing”, and Adam Smith’s ethical principle of the “extended sympathy”, by which making comparable different approaches to pursue the personal flourishing, i.e., for achieving “valued and valuable ways of being and of doing”, compliant with, and respectful of, different value systems.
... That is, the first axiom can be extended to the identification between different preference rankings J of the same social states, x, y, for any pair of different persons i, j, i.e., = , where reads: "x is more just than y according to person i" [7, p. 210]. What is fundamental for the logic and the computability of Sen's SCF theory, is that, while each J i in P. Suppes' theory of grading justice [29], from which Sen derived its own, is a "strict" partial ordering over the set X of possible social states, if we insert the possibility of making equivalent two or more of them originally different, each J i becomes a "simple" partial ordering 8 O i , which is anyway 7 Effectively, in the handbooks of social choice theory Sen is often recalled essentially for his criticism of the "Paretian liberalism" (see, for instance, [50, pp. 844-847]), synthesized in his famous theorem of "impossibility of the Paretian liberal", presented in the Chapters 6* of [6], since of its 1970 edition, and discussed at length in the expanded edition of 2017, after the fierce debate it ignited during almost fifty years (see [7, pp. ...
A significant chapter of the short history of formal philosophy is related with the notion and the theory of the so-called “Social Welfare Functions (SWFs)”, as a substantial component of the “social choice theory”. One of the main uses of SWFs is aimed, indeed, at representing coherent patterns (effectively, algebraic structures of relations) of individual and collective choices/preferences, with respect to a fixed ranking of alternative social/economical states. Indeed, the SWF theory is originally inspired by Samuelson’s pioneering work on the foundations of mathematical economic analysis. It uses explicitly Gibbs’ thermodynamics of ensembles “at equilibrium” based on statistical mechanics as the physical paradigm for the mathematical theory of economic systems. In both theories, indeed, the differences and the relationships among individuals are systematically considered as irrelevant. On the contrary, in the mathematical theory of “Social Choice Functions” (SCFs) developed by Amartya Sen, the interpersonal comparison and the real-time information exchanges among different social actors and their environments—different—ethical values and constraints, included—play an essential role. This means that the inspiring physical paradigm is no longer “gas” but “fluid thermodynamics” of interacting systems passing through different “phases” of fast “dissolution/aggregation of coherent behaviors”, and then staying persistently in far from equilibrium conditions. These processes are systematically studied by the quantum field theory (QFT) of “dissipative systems”, at the basis of the physics of condensed matter, modeled by the “algebra doubling” of coalgebras. This coalgebraic modeling is highly significant for making computationally effective Sen’s SCF theory, because both based on a dynamic and not statistical weighing of the variables for interacting systems, respectively in the physical and in the social realms.
... the latter -and an axiom of anonymity -independence of permutations in individual positions, inspired by the Suppes-Sen grading principles (Suppes, 1969;Sen, 1970, pp. 153-4). ...
This dissertation proposes to show the interest of considering simultaneously intra and intergenerational equity for environmental resources management issues. More specifically, the dissertation examines the trade-offs between these two dimensions of equity to define an equitable allocation of resources over time and within generations. Inequalities between two heterogeneous regions are considered. The first chapter focuses on sustaining the highest level of welfare over time, through the maximin criterion, when the economy has an intragenerational inequality aversion. Counter-intuitively, the region with the lower resource stock pays a higher price for overall sustainability. The second chapter examines growth toward the maximum sustainable level of welfare, the golden rule. Similarly, the region with the lower resource stock shall contribute more to the growth, by limiting relatively more its consumption. The third chapter examines the transfers that shall be made from the well-off to the worse-off region. The transfer shall either be a lump-sum or proportional to the consumption of the contributing region, depending on whether the objective is to promote or to limit its consumption. In any case, the worst-off region receives a compensatory transfer for the constraint imposed on it.
... This dominance relation, due toSuppes (1966), has been extensively used in normative economics. See, for instance,Gravel et al. (2018) andSaposnik (1983). ...
This paper looks at the issue of selecting candidates when the votes cast in ballots enable voters to approve or disapprove each candidate. More precisely, three options are offered: voters can approve, disapprove or remain neutral in regard to each candidate. We define a large family of rules that satisfy desirable properties and prove that solving a dilemma is sufficient to characterize any rule which belongs to this family. In this context a dilemma appears when candidates with only neutral votes face candidates with both supporters and opponents. On the basis of this result, we provide comparable axiomatizations of four rules including some proposed in the literature.
... This notion of dominance is due toSuppes (1966) andSen (1970). ...
A bargaining solution satisfies egalitarian–utilitarian monotonicity (EUM) if the following holds under feasible-set-expansion: a decrease in the value of the Rawlsian (resp. utilitarian) objective is accompanied by an increase in the value of the utilitarian (resp. Rawlsian) objective. A bargaining solution is welfarist if it maximizes a symmetric and strictly concave social welfare function. Every 2-person welfarist solution satisfies EUM, but for every n-person welfarist solution violates it. In the presence of other standard axioms, EUM characterizes the Nash solution in the 2-person case, but leads to impossibility in the n-person case.
... The first principle we consider is due to Suppes (1966) and, although it does not incorporate any concern for equality, we will occasionally refer to it in subsequent discussion and proofs. ...
What would be the analogue of the Lorenz quasi-ordering when the variable of interest is continuous and of a purely ordinal nature? We argue that it is possible to derive such a criterion by substituting for the Pigou–Dalton transfer used in the standard inequality literature what we refer to as a Hammond progressive transfer. According to this criterion, one distribution of utilities is considered to be less unequal than another if it is judged better by both the lexicographic extensions of the maximin and the minimax, henceforth referred to as the leximin and the antileximax, respectively. If one imposes in addition that an increase in someone’s utility makes the society better off, then one is left with the leximin, while the requirement that society welfare increases as the result of a decrease of one person’s utility gives the antileximax criterion. Incidentally, the paper provides an alternative and simple characterisation of the leximin principle widely used in the social choice and welfare literature.
... At present, the use of computational rules [24] allows aggregation of opinions based on Harsanyi's theory [25,26]. This theory adds the notion of empathetic preferences [27][28][29] to Von Neuman-Morgenster's hypotheses on utility and configures the paradigm of aggregation described in this paper. ...
This paper formulates a new strategy for participatory forest management consisting of encouraging public participation as long as it increases empathy among participants. The strategy requires the homogeneous representation of the opinion of a participant (i.e., to determine how they assess a forest plan and identify the best one). Utility assessments are prepared for participants through pair-comparisons between meaningful points in the territory and from value functions based on forest indicators. The best plan is designed by applying combinatorial optimization algorithms to the utility of a participant. The calculating of empathy—of one participant relative to another—is based on the equivalence of their respective utilities when the current forest plan is modified. This involves calculating the opinions that are due to systematic changes in the collective plan for those participants that each participant supposes will affect the utility of the other participants. Calculating empathy also requires knowing the interactions among participants, which have been incorporated through agent-based simulation models. Application of the above methodology has confirmed the association between increases in empathy and convergence of opinions in different scenarios: well and medium-informed participants and with and without interaction among them, which verifies the proposed strategy. In addition, this strategy is easily integrated into available information systems and its outcomes show advantages over current participatory applications.
... only if there is a one-one correspondence between the people in A and the people in B such that at least one person in A is better off than the corresponding person in B, and every person in A is at least as well off as the corresponding person in B. (Suppes 1966.) Suppes efficiency is defined correspondingly. ...
Standard lessons from economics tell us that an externality creates inefficiency, and that this inefficiency can be removed by internalizing the externality. This papers considers how successfully these lessons can be extended to intergenerational externalities such as emissions of greenhouse gas. For intergenerational externalities, the standard lessons involve comparisons between states whose populations of people differ, either in their identities or their numbers. Common notions of efficiency break down in these comparisons. This paper supplies a new notion of efficiency that allows the lessons to survive, but at the cost of reducing their practical significance.
... I drop that here, too. 6 This condition derives from PatrickSuppes (1966), and is often referred to as "Suppes' Grading Principle". ...
According to the Maximin principle of distributive justice, one outcome is more just than another if the worst off individual in the first outcome is better off than the worst off individual in the second. This is often interpreted as a highly egalitarian principle, and, more specifically, as a highly egalitarian way of balancing a concern with equality against a concern with efficiency. But this interpretation faces a challenge: why should a concern with efficiency and equality lead us to a concern only for the very worst off? Egalitarian proponents of Maximin tend to meet this challenge by showing that it possible to formally derive Maximin from surprisingly weak conditions relating efficiency and equality to justice. But in this paper, I argue that this reply fails. The issue is not that the proofs are invalid, but instead that every existing proof of Maximin transforms into an impossibility result as soon as we realize that any reasonable conception of equality must satisfy a certain formal property. The upshot is that even if it is possible to defend Maximin on other grounds, there is no known way to defend it on the grounds that it balances a concern with equality against a concern for efficiency. Further, more general implications of this result for egalitarian theories of distributive justice are also explored.
In this paper we analyse the conditions for attributing to AI autonomous systems the ontological status of “artificial moral agents”, in the context of the “distributed responsibility” between humans and machines in Machine Ethics (ME). In order to address the fundamental issue in ME of the unavoidable “opacity” of their decisions with ethical/legal relevance, we start from the neuroethical evidence in cognitive science. In humans, the “transparency” and then the “ethical accountability” of their actions as responsible moral agents is not in contradiction with the unavoidable “opacity” (unawareness) of the brain process by which they perform their moral judgements on the right action to execute. In fact, the moral accountability of our actions depends on what is immediately before and after our “moral judgements” on the right action to execute (formally, deontic first order logic (FOL) decisions). I.e., our moral accountability depends on the “ethical constraints” we imposed to our judgement before performing it in an opaque way. Anyway, our moral accountability depends overall on the “ethical assessment” or explicit “moral reasoning” after and over the moral judgement before executing our actions (deontic higher order logic (HOL) assessment). In this way, in the light of the AI “imitation game”, the consistent attribution of the status of ethically accountable artificial moral agents to autonomous AI systems depends on two similar conditions. Firstly, it depends on the presence of “ethical constraints” to be satisfied in their Machine Learning (ML) supervised optimization algorithm during its training phase, to give the system ethical skills (“competences”) in its decisions. Secondly – and definitely—, it depends on the presence in an AI autonomous system of a deontic HOL “ethical reasoner” to perform an automatic, and fully transparent assessment (metalogical deontic valuation) about the decisions taken by the ethically skilled ML algorithm about the right action to execute, before executing it. Finally, we show that the proper deontic FOL and HOL for this class of artificial moral agents is Kripke’s modal relational logic, in its algebraic topological formalization. This is naturally implemented in the dissipative QFT unsupervised deep learning of our brains, based on the “doubling of the degrees of freedom” (DDF), and then in the so-called “deep-belief” artificial neural networks for the statistical data pre-processing. This unsupervised learning procedure is also compliant with the usage of the “maximin fairness principle”, used as a balancing aggregation principle of the statistical variables in Sen’s formal theory of fairness.
According to the person-affecting view, the ethics of welfare should be cashed out in terms of how the individuals are affected. While the narrow version fails to solve the non-identity problem, the wide version is subject to the repugnant conclusion. A middle view promises to do better – the Interpersonal Comparative View of Welfare (ICV). It modifies the narrow view by abstracting away from individuals’ identities to account for interpersonal gains and losses. The paper assesses ICV’s merits and flaws. ICV solves the non-identity problem, avoids the repugnant conclusion, and seems to accommodate the person-affecting intuition. But it cuts too many things along the way: ICV obstructs the advantage of the wide view to account for all future individuals’ welfare, abandons the intuitions that underlie the narrow view, and even violates its own presuppositions by turning out to be merely pseudo person-affecting.
La meta de este artículo es examinar diferentes principios de elección social, con diferentes implicaciones para la justicia social, así como sus invariancias e interrelaciones lógicas. Después de una rápda ojeada a los conceptos de elección social y constitución, así como el clásico Teorema de Imposibilidad, se revisan los otros principios. El artículo concluye con una observación filosófica acerca de las implicaciones de la comparación interpersonal de utilidades.
IThe chapter discusses the connections between the Nash bargaining solution on the one hand, and utilitarianism and egalitarianism on the other. In particular, it is shown how the Nash solution oers a compromise between the two opposing schools of thought, and how it overcomes diculties from which utilitarianism and egalitarianism user.
Following an initiative of Social Choice and Welfare, this is the result of an interview conducted by email exchange during the period from July 2017 to February 2018, with minor adjustments later in 2018. Apart from some personal history, topics discussed include: (i) social choice, especially with interpersonal comparisons of utility; (ii) utilitarianism, including Harsanyi’s contributions; (iii) consequentialism in decision theory and in ethics; (iv) the independence axiom for decisions under risk; (v) welfare economics under uncertainty; (vi) incentive compatibility and strategyproof mechanisms, especially in large economies; (vii) Pareto gains from trade and from migration; (viii) cost–benefit analysis and welfare measurement; (ix) the possible future of normative economics.
John Weymark’s conversation begins with some biographical remarks. The importance of his undergraduate teachers, notably David Donaldson, for his subsequent research interests is discussed. His graduate studies and his thesis under the direction of Karl Shell are recalled. The nature and origins of Weymark’s research on topics such as optimal taxation, inequality measurement, cartel stability, social choice with interpersonal utility comparisons, Harsanyi’s decision-theoretic foundations for utilitarianism, strategy-proof social choice, biological applications of social choice theory, and the political economy of taxation are explored. The conversation concludes with reflections on his teaching and editorial activities.
The central question of this paper is whether a rational agent under uncertainty can exhibit ambiguity aversion (AA). The answer to this question depends on the way the agent forms her probabilistic beliefs: classical Bayesianism (CB) vs modern Bayesianism (MB). We revisit Schmeidler's coin-based example and show that a rational MB agent operating in the context of a "small world", cannot exhibit AA. Hence we argue that the motivation of AA based on Schmeidler's coin-based and Ellsberg's classic urn-based examples, is poor, since they correspond to cases of "small worlds". We also argue that MB, not only avoids AA, but also proves to be normatively superior to CB because an MB agent (i) avoids logical inconsistencies akin to the relation between her subjective probability and objective chance, (ii) resolves the problem of "old evidence" and (iii) allows psychological detachment from actual evidence, hence avoiding the problem of "cognitive dissonance". As far as AA is concerned, we claim that it may be thought of as a (potential) property of large worlds, because in such worlds MB is likely to be infeasible.
A bargaining solution satisfies no individual priorities (NIP) if the following holds: if x is the selected utility allocation and πx is also feasible, where π is some permutation, then x=πx. I characterize the Nash bargaining solution on the basis of this axiom, non-triviality (the disagreement point is never selected), and scale covariance. An additional characterization is presented for the 2-person case, in which NIP is weakened and symmetry is added.
Framing effects are everywhere. An estate tax looks very different to a death tax. Gun safety seems to be one thing and gun control another. Yet, the consensus from decision theorists, finance professionals, psychologists, and economists is that frame-dependence is completely irrational. This book challenges that view. Some of the toughest decisions we face are just clashes between different frames. It is perfectly rational to value the same thing differently in two different frames, even when the decision-maker knows that these are really two sides of the same coin. Frame It Again sheds new light on the structure of moral predicaments, the nature of self-control, and the rationality of co-operation. Framing is a powerful tool for redirecting public discussions about some of the most polarizing contemporary issues, such as gun control, abortion, and climate change. Learn effective problem-solving and decision-making to get the better of difficult dilemmas.
Framing effects are everywhere. An estate tax looks very different to a death tax. Gun safety seems to be one thing and gun control another. Yet, the consensus from decision theorists, finance professionals, psychologists, and economists is that frame-dependence is completely irrational. This book challenges that view. Some of the toughest decisions we face are just clashes between different frames. It is perfectly rational to value the same thing differently in two different frames, even when the decision-maker knows that these are really two sides of the same coin. Frame It Again sheds new light on the structure of moral predicaments, the nature of self-control, and the rationality of co-operation. Framing is a powerful tool for redirecting public discussions about some of the most polarizing contemporary issues, such as gun control, abortion, and climate change. Learn effective problem-solving and decision-making to get the better of difficult dilemmas.
The main features of the just society, as they would be chosen by the unanimous, impartial, and fully informed judgment of its members, present a remarkable and simple meaningful structure. In this society, individuals' freedom is fully respected, and overall redistribution amounts to an equal sharing of individuals' different earnings obtained by the same limited 'equalization labour'. The concept of equalization labour is a measure of the degree of community, solidarity, reciprocity, redistribution, and equalization of the society under consideration. It is determined by a number of methods presented in this 2005 study, which also emphasizes the rationality, meanings, properties, and ways of practical implementation of this optimum distribution. This result is compared with the various distributive principles found in practice and in political, philosophical, and economic thinking, with the conclusion that most have their proper specific scope of application. The analytical presentation of the social ethics of economics is particularly enlightening.
The main features of the just society, as they would be chosen by the unanimous, impartial, and fully informed judgment of its members, present a remarkable and simple meaningful structure. In this society, individuals' freedom is fully respected, and overall redistribution amounts to an equal sharing of individuals' different earnings obtained by the same limited 'equalization labour'. The concept of equalization labour is a measure of the degree of community, solidarity, reciprocity, redistribution, and equalization of the society under consideration. It is determined by a number of methods presented in this 2005 study, which also emphasizes the rationality, meanings, properties, and ways of practical implementation of this optimum distribution. This result is compared with the various distributive principles found in practice and in political, philosophical, and economic thinking, with the conclusion that most have their proper specific scope of application. The analytical presentation of the social ethics of economics is particularly enlightening.
The main features of the just society, as they would be chosen by the unanimous, impartial, and fully informed judgment of its members, present a remarkable and simple meaningful structure. In this society, individuals' freedom is fully respected, and overall redistribution amounts to an equal sharing of individuals' different earnings obtained by the same limited 'equalization labour'. The concept of equalization labour is a measure of the degree of community, solidarity, reciprocity, redistribution, and equalization of the society under consideration. It is determined by a number of methods presented in this 2005 study, which also emphasizes the rationality, meanings, properties, and ways of practical implementation of this optimum distribution. This result is compared with the various distributive principles found in practice and in political, philosophical, and economic thinking, with the conclusion that most have their proper specific scope of application. The analytical presentation of the social ethics of economics is particularly enlightening.
This chapter examines an extended anonymity axiom that is compatible with a strongly Paretian relation for infinite utility streams. It is well-known that the cyclicity of a permutation and the group structure of a set of permutations are both necessary and sufficient for the resulting anonymity axiom to be compatible with a Paretian social welfare quasi-ordering. The set of fixed-step permutations is an example of a group of cyclic permutations. Using the same analytical framework as that used in the previous chapter, we first examine an algebraic structure of a set of permutations that can be used to define a Pareto-compatible anonymity axiom. Then, using anonymity axioms defined by a group of cyclic permutations or the set of fixed-step permutations, we will consider general forms of a social welfare quasi-ordering that satisfy the extended anonymity axioms. Our main results are general characterizations of those general social welfare quasi-orderings. Using the general results, we will present axiomatizations of specific social welfare quasi-orderings that are associated with a sequence of specific finite-horizon social welfare orderings or quasi-orderings.
This chapter examines the axiomatic foundations of social welfare orderings and quasi-orderings for intragenerational utility distributions assuming that the population size is fixed and finite. Utilitarianism, the leximin and maximin principles, and their compromises formulated in the forms of lexicographic composition and convex combination are, respectively, axiomatized using several versions of equity axioms as well as Pareto and anonymity axioms. Diagrammatic proofs are given for some of the results. Important in its own right, this chapter is also intended to serve as preliminary to the analysis of intergenerational welfare evaluation in the subsequent chapters.
This book presents a synthesis of recent developments in axiomatic analyses of social welfare evaluation in social choice theory. It covers three different contexts of social welfare evaluation, namely, social welfare evaluation within a generation, intergenerational social welfare evaluation involving infinitely many generations, and intergenerational social welfare evaluation with variable population sizes of generations. Analyzing these three different but related contexts of social welfare evaluation in a unified manner, the book places the emphasis on the close linkage between them and provides readers with new insight regarding the relationship between them.
Evaluation criteria discussed in the book are firmly rooted in moral philosophy. Besides the axiomatic analyses of utilitarian and egalitarian evaluation criteria, newly developed results on compromised criteria between the utilitarian and egalitarian evaluation criteria are covered as well. The book is recommended to readers who seek an up-to-date integrated overview of a large and broad body of the literature on the axiomatic analysis of social welfare evaluation.
This chapter presents an extended framework for social evaluation with variable population size. We establish the welfarism theorem in the extended framework. Then, using the welfarist framework, we will present and axiomatize infinite-horizon extensions of critical-level generalized utilitarianism. The population ethics property of infinite-horizon extensions of critical-level generalized utilitarianism will be discussed.
This chapter discusses further issues regarding intergenerational social welfare evaluation that are not covered in the previous chapters. First, we review the analysis of representable social welfare orderings and the possibility of strongly anonymous social welfare orderings. Second, we will discusses a choice-theoretic approach to intergenerational resource allocation problems with variable population size.
This paper is a conceptual investigation of whether, and how, action containing judgement can be understood as collective. Using an empirical example from the police profession, the article tries to capture the complexity of a real situation that requires both agency and judgement. The example is analysed in relation to the idea of collective judgement, both regarding ongoing debates in phenomenology concerning the possibility/need for a we-subject, and in social epistemology concerning the idea of judgement based on social evidence. The article claims that a richer account of action is needed in order to describe the collective aspects of judgements. Drawing on an Aristotelian understanding of action, the paper argues that an understanding of certain collective actions requires a notion of judgement that involves both we-subjectivity, and social evidence.
Ramsey famously condemned discounting “future enjoyments” as “ethically indefensible”. Suppes enunciated an equity criterion which, when social choice is utilitarian, implies giving equal weight to all individuals’ utilities. By contrast, Arrow (Contemporary economic issues. International Economic Association Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1999a; Discounting and Intergenerational Effects, Resources for the Future Press, Washington DC, 1999b) accepted, perhaps reluctantly, what he called Koopmans’ (Econometrica 28(2):287–309, 1960) “strong argument” implying that no equitable preference ordering exists for a sufficiently unrestricted domain of infinite utility streams. Here we derive an equitable utilitarian objective for a finite population based on a version of the Vickrey–Harsanyi original position, where there is an equal probability of becoming each person. For a potentially infinite population facing an exogenous stochastic process of extinction, an equitable extinction biased original position requires equal conditional probabilities, given that the individual’s generation survives the extinction process. Such a position is well-defined if and only if survival probabilities decline fast enough for the expected total number of individuals who can ever live to be finite. Then, provided that each individual’s utility is bounded both above and below, maximizing expected “extinction discounted” total utility—as advocated, inter alia, by the Stern Review on climate change—provides a coherent and dynamically consistent equitable objective, even when the population size of each generation can be chosen.
This study examines the welfare and fairness implications of Japan’s current policy on marriage surnames versus the proposed revised family law, which would enable husbands and wives to retain their premarital surnames. The study compares welfare in these two legal states, with a married couple’s welfare dependent on marriage-surname choice. It reviews the external preferences of anti-revisionists by the fairness criteria of impersonality or extended sympathy. Utilizing web-based survey data, the study conducts nonparametric rank analysis and parametric analysis of willingness to pay (WTP) for surname retention and legal support. Moreover, it conducts a structural equation analysis via a multiple indicators multiple causes (MIMIC) model, incorporating surname attachment and fairness as latent variables. The study shows that the revised law can increase welfare and that external disutility of the legal revision is invalid on fairness grounds.
We axiomatize the class of mixed utilitarian–maximin social welfare orderings. These orderings are convex combinations of utilitarianism and the maximin rule. Our first step is to show that the conjunction of the weak Suppes–Sen principle, the Pigou–Dalton transfer principle, continuity and the composite transfer principle is equivalent to the existence of a continuous and monotone ordering of pairs of average and minimum utilities that can be used to rank utility vectors. Using this observation, the main result of the paper establishes that the utilitarian–maximin social welfare orderings are characterized by adding the axiom of cardinal full comparability. In addition, we examine the consequences of replacing cardinal full comparability with ratio-scale full comparability and translation-scale full comparability, respectively. We also discuss the classes of normative inequality measures corresponding to our social welfare orderings.
The principle known as ‘anonymous Pareto’ has it that an alternative A is better than another, B , in case it is (strictly, non-anonymously) Pareto superior to either B or a permutation of it. It is an attractive idea, offering to apply Pareto-based judgments to a broader range of cases while preserving some of the intuitive appeal of the standard, more familiar principle. This essay considers some ways in which anonymous Pareto is defended and argues against each separately, as well as in more general lines. It suggests that the reasons in light of which people find strict Pareto so compelling are the reasons for doubting the anonymous variation of that principle.
This paper formulates a new strategy for participatory forest management consisting of encouraging public participation as long as it increases empathy among participants. The strategy requires the homogeneous representation of the opinion of a participant (i.e. to determine how they assess a forest plan and identify the best one). Utility assessments are prepared for participants through pair-comparisons between meaningful points in the territory and from value functions based on forest indicators. The best plan is designed by applying combinatorial optimization algorithms to the utility of a participant. The calculating of empathy -of one participant relative to another - is based on the equivalence of their respective utilities when the current forest plan is modified. This involves calculating the opinions that are due to systematic changes in the collective plan for those participants that each participant supposes will affect the utility of the other participants. Calculating empathy also requires knowing the interactions among participants, which have been incorporated through agent-based simulation models. Application of the above methodology has confirmed the association between increases in empathy and convergence of opinions in different scenarios: well and medium-informed participants and with and without interaction among them, which verifies the proposed strategy. In addition, this strategy is easily integrated into available information systems and its outcomes show advantages over current participatory applications.
Although many philosophers and statisticians believe that only an objectivistic theory of probability can have serious application in the sciences, there is a growing number of physicists and statisticians, if not philosophers, who advocate a subjective theory of probability. The increasing advocacy of subjective probability is surely due to the increasing awareness that the foundations of statistics are most properly constructed on the basis of a general theory of decision-making. In a given decision situation subjective elements seem to enter in three ways: (i) in the determination of a utility function (or its negative, a loss function) on the set of possible consequences, the actual consequence being determined by the true state of nature and the decision taken; (ii) in the determination of an a priori probability distribution on the states of nature; (iii) in the determination of other probability distributions in the decision situation.
Non-cooperative games are mathematical models of interactive strategic decision situations.In contrast to cooperative models, they build on the assumption that all possibilities for commitment and contract have been incorporated in the rules of the game.This contribution describes the main models (games in normal form, and games in extensive form), as well as the main concepts that have been proposed to solve these games.Solution concepts predict the outcomes that might arise when the game is played by "rational" individuals, or after learning processes have converged.Most of these solution concepts are variations of the equilibrium concept that was proposed by John Nash in the 1950s, a Nash equilibrium being a combination of strategies such that no player can improve his payoff by deviating unilaterally.The paper also discusses the justifications of these concepts and concludes with remarks about the applicability of game theory in contexts where players are less than fully rational.
Games and Decisions: lntrodaction and Critical SurveyThe bargaining problem
- R D Luce
- H And Raiffa
Luce, R. D. and Raiffa, H., Games and Decisions: lntrodaction and Critical Survey, Wiley, New York, 1957. Nash, J. F., 'The bargaining problem', Econometrica 18 (1950) 155-162.
- L J Savage
Savage, L. J., Foundations of Statistics, Wiley, New York, 1954.
Critique of Practical Reason and other Writings in Moral Philosophy
- I Kant
- I. Kant
The Language of Morals
- R M Hare
- R. M. Hare