3.2 Social Choice Theory Social Choice Theory is the study of collective decision making processes, most commonly used to analyze voting systems. It has its roots in the 18th century with the mathematical contributions to social sciences of Nicolas de Condorcet and Jean-Charles de Borda. Through the work of a few notable scholars (Sen, 1984; Arrow, 1951; Rawls, 1999), the theory became known as a tool to understand individual utility and one’s ability to function within the same capability set as any other member of society. The theory is most often attributed to Kenneth Arrow and his book, ‘Social Choice and Individual Values’ (1951). In it, he discusses different aggregation methods of individual preferences meant to lead to collective …show more content…
Sen understood Arrow’s Theorem as proof that ordinal analysis of individual preferences was not well suited to the creation of social choices. Instead, Sen argues, what is needed is simply a stronger informational base (Sen, 1986). John Rawls’ ‘Difference Principle’ was a first step in satisfying this requirement and a direct response to Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem. The principle was most concerned with the utility level of those considered worst off in a society by focusing on interpersonal comparisons and non-utility information in analyses of wellbeing (Rawls, 1999). In other words, it is not satisfactory to simply compare utility in its traditional sense; one must compare social states, personal circumstance and all other criteria deemed valuable to a person’s life. Rawls, like Kant, believed humans have the capacity to reason from a universal point of view. Rawls’ called this the ‘original position’ (Rawls, 1999) and argued humans reach their individual moral and political understandings through an impartial analysis of the world around them. In this Rawlsian state of nature, humans are free of the biases that come with knowledge of individual circumstance, which thus leaves them free to consider principles that, Rawls argues, are inherently
Using seemingly sound steps of logic, David Parfit has come to the “Repugnant Conclusion” that a world of very many people with very good lives is worse than a world of vastly more people with lives that are barely worth living. I shall outline his argument and conclusion, and then explain how we may evade such a counter-intuitive notion by reconsidering the way we measure and compare people’s wellbeing. I argue that all people inherently deserve a certain amount of welfare that exceeds that in a life that is just barely worth living, and that cannot be compensated for by an increase in number of people.
A median voter according to the theorem is one whose preferences lie in the middle between all other voters’ preferences within a one-dimensional spectrum of left to right (Dalton et al., 212). On the spectrum a voter will choose the outcome closest to his/her preference, and avoid the one which is furthest (POLI 463, Lecture 13). In a majority system, the candidate who obtains one vote more than 50% takes leadership (POLI 463, Lecture 13), and that vote is thereby determined by...
Cooperation between groups is often thwarted by tribalism and personal bias. One solution for this is utilitarianism. Utilitarianism holds that a combination of happiness and maximization of good consequences would allow tribes make good decisions (153). While the Tragedy of the Commons is mainly concerned with selfishness, the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality is a tragedy of moral inflexibility (172). Groups must be perceptive and impartial in order to overcome their differences and
1. Famously, John Rawls uses the method of reflective equilibrium (RE) to justify his principles of justice. (1) But the point of justification by RE in Rawls's more recent work is not that easy to establish, since he regards his own work still as contractarian. Accordingly, it is peoples', citizens', or rational deciders' acceptance of the basic notions, methods, and results of Rawls's framework at its different stages (2) that is to establish his Justice as Fairness. Since every single one of us supposedly has already accepted a moral view of the world, though not the same one, it is in the end with regard to that moral view of the world, (3) or in Rawls's terms, that comprehensive theory of the good, (4) that the principles of justice have to be justified. (5) From the point of view of every one of us who reads Rawls's work or from the point of vi...
Cook, K., Levi, M., O'Brien, J., & Faye, H. (2008). Introduction: The limits of rationality. In K. Cook & M. Levi (Eds.), The Limits of Rationality (pp. 02-47). Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=7M82yReFf4sC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=social exchange and rational choice theory definition
Most recent theories on motivation conclude that people will start certain behaviors under the belief that this behavior will accomplish desired goals or outcomes. With Lewin (1936) and Tolman (1932) leading the charge, the goal-oriented behavior led researchers to want to understand more on the psychological value people attribute to goals, people’s expectations on reaching these goals, and the structures which keep people striving to achieve these goals. After some recent findings on goal-oriented behavior, researchers were able to differentiate different types of goals, whereas before researchers assumed that goals that were valued the same, with the same expectations of achievement, would need the same amount
One of the sociological theories is conflict theory. The conflict theory deals with people's level on wealth, or class. The conflict theory says that social change is beneficial, contrary to focuses on social order. In the story of the woman and her children, the conflict theory plays a big role on the situation. Police of higher class are threatening the homeless woman. The conflict theory is a constant struggle of people of higher class over powering people of lower class, or the weaker. The police are trying to over power the woman by telling her to leave. Even though the woman and her children were doing nothing wrong, the police used their power to tell her to leave. Also the people of the area showed their conflict theory by telling the police officers to come. They must have felt embarrassed to have a woman of such lower class to be around them. They used their power of class to have the woman removed from their community. The woman wants to be there because she has no home and it is a good community to be in, but the people look at it as an embarrassment to them because it makes their area look bad for someone of such lower class to be around them. The conflict theory is unique to all other theories because it separates people into categories determined by their wealth and standards. Their status is the element that categorizes them, weather it is class, race, or gender. The conflict theory do not always use class, race, and gender all at once. In this situation race and gender is not a main issue, although gender could be a reason, but it would fall under the feminist theory. This story is mainly dealing with class. Through all this conflict the woman feels over powered and domina...
Harsanyi, John C. "Cardinal welfare, individualistic ethics, and interpersonal comparisons of utility." Essays on Ethics, Social Behavior, and Scientific Explanation. Springer Netherlands, 1976. 6-23.
Nineteenth century British philosophers, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill sum up their theory of Utilitarianism, or the “principle of utility,” which is defined as, “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Munson, 2012, p. 863). This theory’s main focus is to observe the consequences of an action(s), rather than the action itself. The utility, or usef...
Kant’s moral philosophy is built around the formal principles of ethics rather than substantive human goods. He begins by outlining the principles of reasoning that can be equally expected of all rational persons regardless of their individual desires or partial interests. It creates an ideal universal community of rational individuals who can collectively agree on the moral principles for guiding equality and autonomy. This is what forms the basis for contemporary human rig...
John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice presents an ideal society based on several simple principles. While the system Rawls suggests is well constructed, it is not without its flaws. I will now attempt to explain Rawls’ idea of Justice as Fairness and explain where the system fails.
The theory of consumer behavior has a few assumptions. First, preferences are assumed to be complete, but, we cannot measure utility quantitatively, for example, if we score A 4 and we score B 2, it means that A is better than B, but it does not mean that having A is two times better than having B, so scoring them with different numbers does not mean anything, the only thing matters is the ranking. Second, preferences are transitive, which means that if A is better than B and B is better than C than A is better than C. Third, more is better, which means that people would like to have more goods than less. Forth, we cannot aggregate utility across individuals since utilities are not observable. Fifth, in the traditional utility theory, economists use indifference curves to represent the utilities of
An interesting question that scientists and philosophers have studied for hundreds of years is how large groups come together to make a common decision. This process is called social choice. The main aspect about social choice that has been addressed is how multiple choices of individuals in a group become one preference for the entire group. The main groups that have been studied in regard to social choice are human groups, and how we have developed a voting system to choose one outcome over many other alternatives. Humans are not the only group that participates in social choice. This also occurs in different animal groups, but has not been studied as long as social choice in human groups. In particular, the way honey bees choose their nest sites is an interesting representation of social choice.
middle of paper ... ... The individual in the original position is unlikely to gamble their human rights for the greater good, particularly if they are mutually disinterested, so it is unreasonable in practicality to assume such altruism on their behalf. To conclude, Rawls’ strengths lie in his focus on the individual, protection of liberty, and equal opportunity, which supports a healthy society. The criticisms of his theory include a question as to what is best for society as a whole, dismissal of beneficial inequalities and the potential for society to develop its own code of ethics as it has in reality.
In Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant argues that human beings inherently have capability to make purely rational decisions that are not based on inclinations and such rational decisions prevent people from interfering with freedom of another. Kant’s view of inherent ability to reason brings different perspective to ways which human beings can pursue morality thus it requires a close analytical examination.