Suppose that we set out to devise an institution that will produce social policies genuinely deri... more Suppose that we set out to devise an institution that will produce social policies genuinely derived from the preferences of the individuals constituting the society, and not just mimic or replicate the derivation. Such an institution will have certain features. Kenneth Arrow’s General Possibility Theorem shows that, under certain assumptions about preference relations, any institution with a particular set of quite reasonable "democracy-introducing" features will have another, unwelcome feature: it will yield inconsistent social policies. It will produce "voting paradoxes". The usual response by those who accept the validity of Arrow's derivation is to relax one or another either of the assumptions about preference or the democracy-introducing features until the paradox goes away. The argument of this paper is that a certain understanding of human psychology, in particular what it is for an individual mental state to have a certain content, will help to show...
Suppose that we set out to devise an institution that will produce social policies genuinely deri... more Suppose that we set out to devise an institution that will produce social policies genuinely derived from the preferences of the individuals constituting the society, and not just mimic or replicate the derivation. Such an institution will have certain features. Kenneth Arrow’s General Possibility Theorem shows that, under certain assumptions about preference relations, any institution with a particular set of quite reasonable "democracy-introducing" features will have another, unwelcome feature: it will yield inconsistent social policies. It will produce "voting paradoxes". The usual response by those who accept the validity of Arrow's derivation is to relax one or another either of the assumptions about preference or the democracy-introducing features until the paradox goes away. The argument of this paper is that a certain understanding of human psychology, in particular what it is for an individual mental state to have a certain content, will help to show...
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