Social Learning and Collective Choice

To be pertinent to democratic practice, collective choice functions need not apply to all possible constellations of individual preference, but only to those that are "humanly possible" in an appropriate sense. The present paper develops a theory of humanly possible preference within the c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Synthese (Dordrecht) Vol. 70; no. 3; pp. 319 - 347
Main Authors:	Osherson, D. N., Stob, M., Weinstein, S.
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Dordrecht D. Reidel Publishing Company 01-03-1987 Springer D. Reidel Pub. Co., etc
Subjects:	Arrow paradox Children Communities Conservatism Heuristics Learning theory Mathematical functions Observational learning Paradoxes Philosophy Philosophy of history. Social and political philosophy. Philosophy of law Social and political philosophy Social environment
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	To be pertinent to democratic practice, collective choice functions need not apply to all possible constellations of individual preference, but only to those that are "humanly possible" in an appropriate sense. The present paper develops a theory of humanly possible preference within the context of the mathematical theory of learning. The theory of preference is then exploited in an attempt to resolve Arrow's voting paradox through restriction of the domain of majoritarian choice functions.
ISSN:	0039-7857 1573-0964
DOI:	10.1007/BF00414154