Preferences and Alternatives

This paper deals with what I identify as a limitation in linear and ordinal modes of analysis for social and moral behavior. Most of the literature on moral and political philosophy produced in the Anglo-Saxon world since the publication of A Theory of Justice has taken the premises of a ordinal account for preferences and values for granted. My hypothesis is that such premises, though methodologically sound, suffer from a practical standpoint as they take as the model of political and social choice a choice “without prejudice”. I will defend that liberal accounts of preference would benefit in taking a more mitigated and ambivalent understanding of preferences, one that admits a) that our thought process regarding the constitution of preferences is linear and somehow passive and b) that the notion of unbiased, unmitigated, position of analysis is ultimately artificial and will not help our understanding of the way actual persons are actually choosing goods

1977

1977

SERIEs, 2011

In this paper we address several issues related to collective dichotomous decision-making by means of quaternary voting rules, i.e., when voters may choose between four actions: voting yes, voting no, abstaining and not turning up-which are aggregated by a voting rule into a dichotomous decision: acceptance or rejection of a proposal. In particular we study the links between the actions and preferences of the actors. We show that quaternary rules (unlike binary rules, where only two actions -yes or no-are possible) leave room for "manipulability" (i.e., strategic behaviour). Thus a preference pro…le does not in general determine an action pro…le. We also deal with the notions of success and decisiveness and their ex ante assessment for quaternary voting rules, and discuss the role of information and coordination in this context.

2002

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The renowned paradox of voting arises when one tries to explain the decision to go out and vote in an exclusively instrumental framework. Instead of postulating that voters always derive utility from the act of voting, I want to search for the reasons that underlie the absence or presence of a preference for voting. In my noninstrumental account of expressive rationality, citizens want to express who they are and what they care about. Whether or not one votes therefore depends on the force of one's commitments to principles, norms, ideologies or particular persons. This has been confirmed by empirical research showing that citizens vote because they feel they have to, not because they like doing so. Complementing instrumental rationality, this concept of expressive rationality gives a fuller, deeper and more adequate view of the way citizens make political decisions, thereby solving the paradox of voting.

Richard Wollheim pointed out a paradox which he claims relates to democracy. We argue that this paradox is not exclusively related to democracy but actually arises whenever there is a conflict between personal preferences and preferences of accepted authorities. Furthermore, we provide a formal explanation of how one can rationally "accept" or "switch to" the preference of the authority she personally accepts and still have different preferences than the authority in question. Our formal solution is based on dynamic epistemic logic, while our philosophical explanation is inspired by Kant's practical philosophy. On the other hand, we point out to what we believe to be the real exclusive restriction in democratic elections and we argue that, unlike Wollheim's paradox, this restriction is a special feature of democracy.

TOP, 2013

A society has to choose within a set X of programs, each defining a decision regqrding a finite number D of yes-no issues. An X-profile associates with every program x in X a finite number of voters who support x. We prove that the outcome of the issue-wise simple majority rule Maj is an element of X at any X-profile where Maj is well-defined if and only if this is true when Maj is applied to any profile involving only 3 elements of X, each being supported by exactly one voter. We call this property triple-consistency. Moreover, we characterize the class of anonymous issue-wise choice functions that are triple-consistent. We discuss three applications of the results. First, interpreting X as a domain of preference relations over a finite set of alternatives, we argue that they generalize a well-known consequence of the value-restriction propery . Second, we can characterize the sets of approval ballots for which the strong version of paradox of multiple elections never occurs. Third,we can provide some new insights to the dynamics of club formation.

Introduction to Formal Philosophy, 2018

Preferences and choices have central roles in moral philosophy, economics, and the decision sciences in general. In a formal language we can express and explore the properties of preferences, choices, and their interrelations in a precise way, and uncover connections that are inaccessible without formal tools. In this chapter, the plausibility of different such properties is discussed, and it is shown how close attention to the logical details can help dissolve some apparent paradoxes in informal and semi-formal treatments.

The Good Society, 2002