Taking unconsidered preferences seriously

Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 59:209-232 (2006)
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Abstract

In normative economic analysis, it is conventional to treat each person’s preferences as that person’s own standard of value, and as the standard by which the effects of public policies on that person should be valued. The proposal that preferences should be treated in this way is usually qualified by two apparently natural conditions—that preferences are internally coherent, and that they reflect the considered judgements of the person concerned. However, there is now a great deal of evidence suggesting that, in many economic environments, preferences of the required kind simply do not exist. It seems that the preferences that govern people’s actual behaviour are often incoherent and unstable. This prompts the following question: Is there a defensible form of normative economics which respects each individual’s actual preferences, whatever form they take? I shall try to show that there is.

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Robert Sugden
University of East Anglia

References found in this work

The Ring of Gyges.David Gauthier - 1986 - In David P. Gauthier (ed.), Morals by agreement. New York: Oxford University Press.
The Metric of Opportunity.Robert Sudgen - 1998 - Economics and Philosophy 14 (2):307.
Positive affect.Alice M. Isen - 1999 - In Tim Dalgleish & Mick Power (eds.), Handbook of Cognition and Emotion. Wiley. pp. 25--521.

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