This paper applies ideas and tools from social choice theory (such as Arrow's theorem and related results) to linguistics. Specifically, the paper investigates the problem of constraint aggregation in optimality theory from a social-choice-theoretic perspective.

In solving judgment aggregation problems, groups often face constraints. Many decision problems can be modelled in terms the acceptance or rejection of certain propositions in a language, and constraints as propositions that the decisions should be consistent with. For example, court judgments in breach-of-contract cases should be consistent with the constraint that action and obligation are necessary and sufficient for liability; judgments on how to rank several options in an order of preference with the constraint of transitivity; (...) and judgments on budget items with budgetary constraints. Often more or less demanding constraints on decisions are imaginable. For instance, in preference ranking problems, the transitivity constraint is often contrasted with the weaker acyclicity constraint. In this paper, we make constraints explicit in judgment aggregation by relativizing the rationality conditions of consistency and deductive closure to a constraint set, whose variation yields more or less strong notions of rationality. We review several general results on judgment aggregation in light of such constraints. (shrink)

Utilitarianism is often criticized because of its reliance on the interpersonal aggregation of harms and benefits. However, since the rejection of all forms of interpersonal aggregation strikes most people as implausible, some critics of utilitarianism have proposed theories of Limited Aggregation. These occupy the middle ground between fully aggregative and non-aggregative views. Recently, Limited Aggregation has been criticized for having counterintuitive implications that seem even worse than the counterintuitive implications of fully aggregative and non-aggregative views it (...) tried to escape. I here propose a new view of Limited Aggregation that does better than existing accounts in this regard. It is more modest than existing accounts of Limited Aggregation, but it retains the view's core idea. This, I claim, is the thought that sometimes very strong individual claims stand in the way of realizing the best outcome. (shrink)

In solving judgment aggregation problems, groups often face constraints. Many decision problems can be modelled in terms the acceptance or rejection of certain propositions in a language, and constraints as propositions that the decisions should be consistent with. For example, court judgments in breach-of-contract cases should be consistent with the constraint that action and obligation are necessary and sufficient for liability; judgments on how to rank several options in an order of preference with the constraint of transitivity; (...) and judgments on budget items with budgetary constraints. Often more or less demanding constraints on decisions are imaginable. For instance, in preference ranking problems, the transitivity constraint is often contrasted with the weaker acyclicity constraint. In this paper, we make constraints explicit in judgment aggregation by relativizing the rationality conditions of consistency and deductive closure to a constraint set, whose variation yields more or less strong notions of rationality. We review several general results on judgment aggregation in light of such constraints. (shrink)

Logical puzzles like the doctrinal paradox raise the problem of how to aggregate individual judgements into a collective judgement, or alternatively, how to merge collectively inconsistent knowledge bases. In this paper, we view judgement aggregation as a function on propositional logic valuations, and we investigate how logic constrains judgement aggregation. In particular, we show that there is no non-dictatorial decision method for aggregating sets of judgements in a logically consistent way if the decision method is local, i.e., only (...) depends on the individual judgements on the proposition under consideration. (shrink)

Logical puzzles like the doctrinal paradox raise the problem of how to aggregate individual judgements into a collective judgement, or alternatively, how to merge collectively inconsistent knowledge bases. In this paper, we view judgement aggregation as a function on propositional logic valuations, and we investigate how logic constrains judgement aggregation. In particular, we show that there is no non-dictatorial decision method for aggregating sets of judgements in a logically consistent way if the decision method is local, i.e., only (...) depends on the individual judgements on the proposition under consideration. (shrink)

As the ongoing literature on the paradoxes of the Lottery and the Preface reminds us, the nature of the relation between probability and rational acceptability remains far from settled. This article provides a novel perspective on the matter by exploiting a recently noted structural parallel with the problem of judgment aggregation. After offering a number of general desiderata on the relation between finite probability models and sets of accepted sentences in a Boolean sentential language, it is noted that a (...) number of these constraints will be satisfied if and only if acceptable sentences are true under all valuations in a distinguished non-empty set W. Drawing inspiration from distance-based aggregation procedures, various scoring rule based membership conditions for W are discussed and a possible point of contact with ranking theory is considered. The paper closes with various suggestions for further research. (shrink)

I present an original model in judgment aggregation theory that demonstrates the general impossibility of consistently describing decision-making purely at the group level. Only a type of unanimity rule can guarantee a group decision is consistent with supporting reasons, and even this possibility is limited to a small class of reasoning methods. The key innovation is that this result holds when individuals can reason in different ways, an allowance not previously considered in the literature. This generalizes judgment aggregation (...) to subjective decision situations, implying that the discursive dilemma persists without individual agreement on the logical constraints. Notably, the model mirrors the typical method of choosing political representatives, and thus suggests that no voting procedure other than unanimity rule can guarantee representation that reflects electorate opinion. Finally, I apply the results to a normative argument for unanimity rule in contract theory and juries, as well as to problems posed for deliberative democratic theory and the concept of representation. (shrink)

��The Coherent Approximation Principle (CAP) is a method for aggregating forecasts of probability from a group of judges by enforcing coherence with minimal adjustment. This paper explores two methods to further improve the forecasting accuracy within the CAP framework and proposes practical algorithms that implement them. These methods allow flexibility to add fixed constraints to the coherentization process and compensate for the psychological bias present in probability estimates from human judges. The algorithms were tested on a data set of nearly (...) half a million probability estimates of events related to the 2008 U.S. presidential election (from about 16000 judges). The results show that both methods improve the stochastic accuracy of the aggregated forecasts compared to using simple CAP. (shrink)

There is a plurality of formal constraints for aggregating probabilities of a group of individuals. Different constraints characterise different families of aggregation rules. In this paper, we focus on the families of linear and geometric opinion pooling rules which consist in linear, respectively, geometric weighted averaging of the individuals’ probabilities. For these families, it is debated which weights exactly are to be chosen. By applying the results of the theory of meta-induction, we want to provide a general rationale, namely, (...) optimality, for choosing the weights in a success-based way by scoring rules. A major argument put forward against weighting by scoring is that these weights heavily depend on the chosen scoring rule. However, as we will show, the main condition for the optimality of meta-inductive weights is so general that it holds under most standard scoring rules, more precisely under all scoring rules that are based on a convex loss function. Therefore, whereas the exact choice of a scoring rule for weighted probability aggregation might depend on the respective purpose of such an aggregation, the epistemic rationale behind such a choice is generally valid. (shrink)

Group decisions must often obey exogenous constraints. While in a preference aggregation problem constraints are modelled by restricting the set of feasible alternatives, this paper discusses the modelling of constraints when aggregating individual yes/no judgments on interconnected propositions. For example, court judgments in breach-of-contract cases should respect the constraint that action and obligation are necessary and sufficient for liability, and judgments on budget items should respect budgetary constraints. In this paper, we make constraints in judgment aggregation explicit (...) by relativizing the rationality conditions of consistency and deductive closure to a constraint set, whose variation yields more or less strong notions of rationality. This approach of modelling constraints explicitly contrasts with that of building constraints as axioms into the logic, which turns compliance with constraints into a matter of logical consistency and thereby conflates requirements of ordinary logical consistency (such as not to affirm both a proposition and its negation) and requirements dictated by the environment (such as budgetary constraints). We present some general impossibility results on constrained judgment aggregation; they are immediate corollaries of known results on (unconstrained) judgment aggregation. (shrink)

The literature on collective action largely ignores the constraints that moral principle places on action-prompting intentions. Here I suggest that neither individualism nor holism can account for the generality of intentional contents demanded by universalizability principles, respect for persons, or proactive altruism. Utilitarian and communitarian ethics are criticized for nominalism with respect to social intentions. The failure of individualism and holism as grounds for moral theory is confirmed by comparing Tuomela's reductivist analysis of we-intentions with Gilbert's analysis of social facts. (...) Tuomela's account founders over intentions to cooperate, and Gilbert's cannot accommodate legitimate authority, vicarious agency, or group structure. (shrink)

Much of revisionist just war theory is individualistic in nature: morality in war is just an extension of morality in interpersonal circumstances, so that killing in war is subject to the same moral principles that govern personal self-defense and defense of others. Recent work in the ethics of self-defense suggests that this individualism leads to a puzzle, which I call the puzzle of aggregation, when many threateners contribute to a single threatened harm. In this paper, I investigate the moral (...) problems posed by the puzzle of aggregation and develop a novel account recently proposed by Jeff McMahan, which he calls “proportionality in the aggregate”. I argue that accepting proportionality in the aggregate as a moral constraint on the use of force has significant implications for the ethics of war and self-defense. (shrink)

The article proceeds upon the assumption that the beliefs and degrees of belief of rational agents satisfy a number of constraints, including: consistency and deductive closure for belief sets, conformity to the axioms of probability for degrees of belief, and the Lockean Thesis concerning the relationship between belief and degree of belief. Assuming that the beliefs and degrees of belief of both individuals and collectives satisfy the preceding three constraints, I discuss what further constraints may be imposed on the (...) class='Hi'>aggregation of beliefs and degrees of belief. Some possibility and impossibility results are presented. The possibility results suggest that the three proposed rationality constraints are compatible with reasonable aggregation procedures for belief and degree of belief. (shrink)

CULTURE MAY BE metaphorically identified as the space proper to persons, artworks, language, history, institutions, civilizations, states, ideologies, myths, and deeds. In saying that, one signifies that the phenomena of these remarkably varied sorts have much in common that distinguishes them from merely physical or natural phenomena. They have in common whatever demarcates the cultural, and they obtain only in contexts formed by related phenomena. Artworks for example are produced by persons; persons are whatever they are, not without some aggregative (...) sharing of language; and the histories of states are projections of some kind that depend on the deeds of ideologically linked individuals. These are the commonplaces of what is common to the phenomena of culture. They are not as such systematically instructive; for although they collect what is relevant, their explicitness does not touch as yet on the principle of cultural space itself. Nevertheless, the indirection is an economy. It permits us to sort, in a naive way, certain salient clues about the testing of any would-be analysis of the cultural, that might easily be lost otherwise in its own complexities. (shrink)

In order to show that freedom is measurable, one must show that the different kinds of constraint on freedom can be aggregated so as to provide overall freedom judgements. This can be done by reducing all of these kinds of constraint to the constraint of physical impossibility. This solution does not involve a “restrictivist” conception of constraints on freedom. Once it is recognized that overall freedom is a function of the physical compossibility of actions, it should also (...) be recognized that agents for whom particular actions are difficult or costly, or who are subjected to coercion, generally suffer reductions in their degrees of overall freedom. Further analysis of the notion of constraints shows that this liberal conception of freedom is not, as is often supposed, ultimately distinguishable either from traditionally socialist conceptions or from the republican conception recently proposed by Philip Pettit. (shrink)

Suppose the members of a group (e.g., committee, jury, expert panel) each form a judgment on which worlds in a given set are possible, subject to the constraint that at least one world is possible but not all are. The group seeks to aggregate these individual judgments into a collective judgment, subject to the same constraint. I show that no judgment aggregation rule can solve this problem in accordance with three conditions: “unanimity,” “independence” and “non-dictatorship,” Although the (...) result is a variant of an existing theorem on “group identification” (Kasher and Rubinstein, Logique et Analyse 160:385–395, 1997), the aggregation of judgments on which worlds are possible (or permissible, desirable, etc.) appears not to have been studied yet. The result challenges us to take a stance on which of its conditions to relax. (shrink)

In the biomedical context, policy makers face a large amount of potentially discordant evidence from different sources. This prompts the question of how this evidence should be aggregated in the interests of best-informed policy recommendations. The starting point of our discussion is Hunter and Williams’ recent work on an automated aggregation method for medical evidence. Our negative claim is that it is far from clear what the relevant criteria for evaluating an evidence aggregator of this sort are. What is (...) the appropriate balance between explicitly coded algorithms and implicit reasoning involved, for instance, in the packaging of input evidence? In short: What is the optimal degree of ‘automation’? On the positive side: We propose the ability to perform an adequate robustness analysis as the focal criterion, primarily because it directs efforts to what is most important, namely, the structure of the algorithm and the appropriate extent of automation. Moreover, where there are resource constraints on the aggregation process, one must also consider what balance between volume of evidence and accuracy in the treatment of individual evidence best facilitates inference. There is no prerogative to aggregate the total evidence available if this would in fact reduce overall accuracy. (shrink)

The biogenesis of RNAs and proteins is a threat to the cell. Indeed, the act of transcription and nascent RNAs challenge DNA stability. Both RNAs and nascent proteins can also initiate the formation of toxic aggregates because of their physicochemical properties. In reviewing the literature, I show that co-transcriptional and co-translational biophysical constraints can trigger DNA instability that in turn increases the likelihood that sequences that alleviate the constraints emerge over evolutionary time. These directed genetic variations rely on the biogenesis (...) of small RNAs that are transcribed directly from challenged DNA regions or processed from the transcripts that directly or indirectly generate constraints or aggregates. These small RNAs can then target the genomic regions from which they initially originate and increase the local mutation rate of the targeted loci. This mechanism is based on molecular pathways involved in anti-parasite genome defence systems, and implies that gene expression-related biophysical constraints represent a driving force of genome evolution. Are randomly generated mutations the only source of genetic variation during evolution? This paper describes the molecular mechanisms by which co-transcriptional and co-translational biophysical constraints trigger genetic variations in targeted-genomic sequences in an RNA-depending manner. This directed-mutational process that drives genome evolution is related to antiparasite genome defence systems. (shrink)

This article’s purpose is to defend the depiction of ordinary-sized physical objects as mereological aggregates (MAs), to clarify what the ontology of an MA is, and to show why mereological essentialism (ME) applies to MAs that seem to be ubiquitous if we are to adopt what Frank Jackson calls “Serious Metaphysics” and refuse to broaden our ontology beyond what is (allegedly) bequeathed to us by physics and chemistry. To accomplish this goal, first, I clarify certain background issues that inform what (...) follows and I identify certain constraints that relate to the contemporary ambivalence towards ME. Second, I present a primer on Husserlian mereology that provides a superior account of parts and wholes than the inadequate approach identified in the previous section. Third, I will offer a defense of ME as the correct approach to providing an ontological account of MAs. Finally, I will evaluate two defeaters against my thesis. (shrink)

Group decisions must often obey exogenous constraints. While in a preference aggregation problem constraints are modelled by restricting the set of feasible alternatives, this paper discusses the modelling of constraints when aggregating individual yes/no judgments on interconnected propositions. For example, court judgments in breach-of-contract cases should respect the constraint that action and obligation are necessary and sufficient for liability, and judgments on budget items should respect budgetary constraints. In this paper, we make constraints in judgment aggregation explicit (...) by relativizing the rationality conditions of consistency and deductive closure to a constraint set, whose variation yields more or less strong notions of rationality. This approach of modelling constraints explicitly contrasts with that of building constraints as axioms into the logic, which turns compliance with constraints into a matter of logical consistency and thereby conflates requirements of ordinary logical consistency (such as not to affirm both a proposition and its negation) and requirements dictated by the environment (such as budgetary constraints). We present some general impossibility results on constrained judgment aggregation; they are immediate corollaries of known results on (unconstrained) judgment aggregation. (shrink)

How should a group with different opinions (but the same values) make decisions? In a Bayesian setting, the natural question is how to aggregate credences: how to use a single credence function to naturally represent a collection of different credence functions. An extension of the standard Dutch-book arguments that apply to individual decision-makers recommends that group credences should be updated by conditionalization. This imposes a constraint on what aggregation rules can be like. Taking conditionalization as a basic (...) class='Hi'>constraint, we gather lessons from the established work on credence aggregation, and extend this work with two new impossibility results. We then explore contrasting features of two kinds of rules that satisfy the constraints we articulate: one kind uses fixed prior credences, and the other uses geometric averaging, as opposed to arithmetic averaging. We also prove a new characterisation result for geometric averaging. Finally we consider applications to neighboring philosophical issues, including the epistemology of disagreement. (shrink)

I analyse Rueger’s application of Kim’s model of functional reduction to the relation between the thermal conductivities of metal bars at macroscopic and atomic scales. 1) I show that it is a misunderstanding to accuse the functional reduction model of not accounting for the fact that there are causal powers at the micro-level which have no equivalent at the macro-level. The model not only allows but requires that the causal powers by virtue of which a functional predicate is defined, are (...) only a subset of the causal powers of the properties filling the functional specification. 2) The fact that the micro-equation does not converge to the macro-equation in general but only under the constraint of a “solvability condition” does not show that reduction is impossible, as Rueger claims, but only that reduction requires inter-level constraints. 3) Rueger tries to analyse inter-level reduction with the conceptual means of intra-level reduction. This threatens the coherence of his analysis, given that it makes no sense to ascribe macroproperties such as thermal conductivity to entities at the atomic level. Ignoring the distinction between theses two senses of “reduction” is especially confusing because they have opposite directions: in intra-level reduction, the more detailed account reduces to the less detailed one, whereas in inter-level reduction, the less detailed theory is reduced to the more detailed one. 4) Finally I criticize Rueger’s way of using Wimsatt’s criteria for emergence in terms of non-aggregativity, to construct a concept of synchronic emergence. It is wrong to require, over and above non-aggregativity, irreducibility as a criterion for emergence. (shrink)

Non-Consequentialist moral theories posit the existence of moral constraints: prohibitions on performing particular kinds of wrongful acts, regardless of the good those acts could produce. Many believe that such theories cannot give satisfactory verdicts about what we morally ought to do when there is some probability that we will violate a moral constraint. In this article, I defend Non-Consequentialist theories from this critique. Using a general choice-theoretic framework, I identify various types of Non-Consequentialism that have otherwise been conflated in (...) the debate. I then prove a number of formal possibility and impossibility results establishing which types of Non-Consequentialism can -- and which cannot -- give us adequate guidance through through a risky world. (shrink)

An impossibility result pertaining to the aggregation of individual judgements is thought by many to have significant implications for political theory, social epistemology and metaphysics. When members of a group hold a rational set of judgments on some interconnected questions, the theorem shows, it isn't always (logically) possible for them to aggregate their judgements into a collective one in conformity with seemingly very plausible constraints. I reject one of the constraints which engender the dilemma. The analogy with the lottery (...) paradox, I argue, shows that rational belief needn't be consistent. So the alleged implications of the dilemma are dispelled. (shrink)

Multidimensional concepts are everywhere, and they are important. Examples include moral value, welfare, scientific confirmation, democracy, and biodiversity. How, if at all, can we aggregate the underlying dimensions of a multidimensional concept F to yield verdicts about which things are Fer than which overall? Social choice theory can be used to model and investigate this aggregation problem. Here, we focus on a particularly thorny problem made salient by this social choice-theoretic framework: the underlying dimensions of a given concept might (...) be measurable on different types of scales—e.g., some ordinal and some cardinal. An underappreciated impossibility theorem due to Anna Khmelnitskaya shows that seemingly plausible constraints on aggregation across scale types are inconsistent. This impossibility threatens to render the notion of overall Fness incoherent. We attempt to defuse this threat, arguing that the impossibility depends on an overly restrictive conception of measurement and of how measurement constrains aggregation. Adopting a more flexible—and, we think, more perspicuous—conception of measurement opens an array of possibilities for aggregation across disparate scale types. (shrink)

Much previous work has suggested that word order preferences across languages can be explained by the dependency distance minimization constraint (Ferrer‐i Cancho, 2008, 2015; Hawkins, 1994). Consistent with this claim, corpus studies have shown that the average distance between a head (e.g., verb) and its dependent (e.g., noun) tends to be short cross‐linguistically (Ferrer‐i Cancho, 2014; Futrell, Mahowald, & Gibson, 2015; Liu, Xu, & Liang, 2017). This implies that on average languages avoid inefficient or complex structures for simpler structures. (...) But a number of studies in psycholinguistics (Konieczny, 2000; Levy & Keller, 2013; Vasishth, Suckow, Lewis, & Kern, 2010) show that the comprehension system can adapt to the typological properties of a language, for example, verb‐final order, leading to more complex structures, for example, having longer linear distance between a head and its dependent. In this paper, we conduct a corpus study for a group of 38 languages, which were either Subject–Verb–Object (SVO) or Subject–Object–Verb (SOV), in order to investigate the role of word order typology in determining syntactic complexity. We present results aggregated across all dependency types, as well as for specific verbal (objects, indirect objects, and adjuncts) and nonverbal (nominal, adjectival, and adverbial) dependencies. The results suggest that dependency distance in a language is determined by the default word order of a language, and crucially, the direction of a dependency (whether the head precedes the dependent or follows it; e.g., whether the noun precedes the verb or follows it). Particularly we show that in SOV languages (e.g., Hindi, Korean) as well as SVO languages (e.g., English, Spanish), longer linear distance (measured as number of words) between head and dependent arises in structures when they mirror the default word order of the language. In addition to showing results on linear distance, we also investigate the influence of word order typology on hierarchical distance (HD; measured as number of heads between head and dependent). The results for HD are similar to that of linear distance. At the same time, in comparison to linear distance, the influence of adaptability on HD seems less strong. In particular, the results show that most languages tend to avoid greater structural depth. Together, these results show evidence for “limited adaptability” to the default word order preferences in a language. Our results support a large body of work in the processing literature that highlights the importance of linguistic exposure and its interaction with working memory constraints in determining sentence complexity. Our results also point to the possible role of other factors such as the morphological richness of a language and a multifactor account of sentence complexity remains a promising area for future investigation. (shrink)

Scanlonian contractualism rejects the consequentialist assumptions about morality, value, and rationality in virtue of which deontological constraints appear paradoxical. And yet, Jeffrey Brand-Ballard and Robert Shaver have claimed that it cannot succeed in defending the said restrictions. That is because they see Scanlon’s tie-breaking argument as threatening to justify aggregation in paradox of deontology cases. I argue that this claim rests upon a failure to appreciate contractualism’s relational character. Once we take this feature of the view into account, it (...) becomes clear that the tie-breaking argument is ruled out in cases where the only way for us to prevent several killings would be to commit one ourselves. To show this, I provide a contractualist explanation of why our duty not to harm persons is stricter than our duty to help them when they are threatened with harm. I conclude by distinguishing two ways in which this defense of deontological restrictions might bring contractualism objectionably close to absolutism. (shrink)

We give two social aggregation theorems under conditions of risk, one for constant population cases, the other an extension to variable populations. Intra and interpersonal welfare comparisons are encoded in a single ‘individual preorder’. The theorems give axioms that uniquely determine a social preorder in terms of this individual preorder. The social preorders described by these theorems have features that may be considered characteristic of Harsanyi-style utilitarianism, such as indifference to ex ante and ex post equality. However, the theorems (...) are also consistent with the rejection of all of the expected utility axioms, completeness, continuity, and independence, at both the individual and social levels. In that sense, expected utility is inessential to Harsanyi-style utilitarianism. In fact, the variable population theorem imposes only a mild constraint on the individual preorder, while the constant population theorem imposes no constraint at all. We then derive further results under the assumption of our basic axioms. First, the individual preorder satisfies the main expected utility axiom of strong independence if and only if the social preorder has a vector-valued expected total utility representation, covering Harsanyi’s utilitarian theorem as a special case. Second, stronger utilitarian-friendly assumptions, like Pareto or strong separability, are essentially equivalent to strong independence. Third, if the individual preorder satisfies a ‘local expected utility’ condition popular in non-expected utility theory, then the social preorder has a ‘local expected total utility’ representation. Fourth, a wide range of non-expected utility theories nevertheless lead to social preorders of outcomes that have been seen as canonically egalitarian, such as rank-dependent social preorders. Although our aggregation theorems are stated under conditions of risk, they are valid in more general frameworks for representing uncertainty or ambiguity. (shrink)

It is widely believed that experimental results of behavioral game theory undermine standard economic and game theory. This paper suggests that experimental results present serious theoretical modeling challenges, but do not undermine two pillars of contemporary economic theory: the rational actor model, which holds that individual choice can be modeled as maximization of an objective function subject to informational and material constraints, and the incentive compatibility requirement, which holds that macroeconomic quantities must be derived from the interaction and aggregation (...) of individual choices. However, we must abandon the notion that rationality implies self-regarding behavior and the assumption that contracts are costlessly enforced by third parties. (shrink)

The Relevance View, exemplified by Alex Voorhoeve's Aggregate Relevant Claims, has considerable appeal. It accommodates our reluctance to aggregate weak claims in canonical cases like Life for Headaches, while permitting aggregation of claims in a range of other cases. But it has been the target of significant criticism. In an important recent paper, Patrick Tomlin argues that the view suffers from failures of internal logic, violating plausible consistency constraints and generating incoherent combinations of verdicts on cases. And in cases (...) resembling real-world healthcare allocation problems, Tomlin argues that the view offers no guidance at all. In response, I argue that the internal logic of the Relevance View is sound, and the view's core principles, suitably clarified, support a significant extension of the view beyond the simple cases to which it is typically applied. (shrink)

List and Pettit have stated an impossibility theorem about the aggregation of individual opinion states. Building on recent work on the lottery paradox, this paper offers a variation on that result. The present result places different constraints on the voting agenda and the domain of profiles, but it covers a larger class of voting rules, which need not satisfy the proposition-wise independence of votes.

In [11] it is shown how propositional dynamic logic (PDL) can be interpreted as a logic of belief revision that extends the logic of communication and change (LCC) given in [7]. This new version of epistemic/doxastic PDL does not impose any constraints on the basic relations and because of this it does not suffer from the drawback of LCC that these constraints may get lost under updates that are admitted by the system. Here, we will impose one constraint, namely (...) that the agent’s plausibility relations are linked. Linkedness is a natural extension of local connectedness to the multi-agent case and it assures that we know the agent’s preferences between all relevant alternatives. Since the belief updates that are used in [11] may not preserve linkedness, we limit ourselves to a particular kind of belief change that does preserve it. Our framework has obvious connections to coalition logic [17] and social choice theory [19]. We show how we can use it to model consensus seeking in plenary Dutch meetings. In Dutch meetings, a belief update is done for all agents in the meeting if a majority beliefs the proposition that is under discussion. A special case of these meetings is judgement aggregation, and we apply our framework to the discursive dilemma in this field [15]. (shrink)

This chapter describes the application of reduction concepts in emergence and self organization of complex dynamical system. Condition-dependent laws compress and dynamical equation sets provide implicit compressed representations even when most of that information is not explicitly available without decompression. And, paradoxically, there is still the determined march of fundamental analytical dynamics expanding its compression reach toward a Theory of Everything—even while the more rapidly expanding domain of complex systems dynamics confronts its assumptions and its monolithicity. Nor does science fall (...) apart into a disunified aggregate of particular cases since, with fundamental dynamics as a backbone, complex matching up of models across theoretical and empirical domains then articulates its model-structured skeleton. Discussion provides the delicately entwined dance of emergence and reduction providing constraints on compression that also permit its expansion. However, while the vision is not dead, it is currently substantially more complexly structured through model similarities and differences than that initially envisaged and individuals are left with deep questions about compression unresolved. (shrink)

This article examines what is wrong with some expressive acts, ‘insults’. Their putative wrongfulness is distinguished from the causing of indirect harms, aggregated harms, contextual harms, and damaging misrepresentations. The article clarifies what insults are, making use of work by Neu and Austin, and argues that their wrongfulness cannot lie in the hurt that is caused to those at whom such acts are directed. Rather it must lie in what they seek to do, namely to denigrate the other. The causing (...) of offence is at most evidence that an insult has been communicated; it is not independent grounds of proscription or constraint. The victim of an insult may know that she has been insulted but not accept or agree with the insult, and thereby submit to the insulter. Hence insults need not, as Waldron argues they do, occasion dignitary harms. They do not of themselves subvert their victims' equal moral status. The claim that hateful speech endorses inequality should not be conflated with a claim that such speech directly subverts equality. Thus, ‘wounding words’ should not unduly trouble the liberal defender of free speech either on the grounds of preventing offence or on those of avoiding dignitary harms. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the mechanical inexplicability of natural ends in the third Critique is best understood against the background of a fairly traditional picture of the metaphysics of living things, one embraced by Kant himself. On this picture, the distinctive unity of a living thing was to be explained by a soul, form, or monad. The constraints placed on the understanding in the first Critique, however, make such an explanation impossible: because the principle of a living thing (...) in virtue of which it constitutes a whole—rather than a mere aggregate of things—is simple, it cannot be met with in space. By ruling out a widely accepted explanans for a well-recognized explanandum, in other words, Kant’s first Critique makes living things inexplicable in precisely those ways suggested by the third. (shrink)

In highly structured organisational fields individual efforts to deal rationally with uncertainty and constraints tend to lead, in the aggregate, to greater homogeneity in structure, culture and output. Drawing on institutional theory, this paper develops research propositions regarding the nature and scope of corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement at trade/industry association level. The cases of the water and sewerage and film industries are used in order to test these propositions. The findings suggest that (a) trade associations in more homogeneous industries (...) are more likely to engage with CSR‐related issues; (b) trade associations in industries that face greater external scrutiny and threats to legitimacy are more likely to engage with CSR‐related issues; and (c) trade associations are more likely to engage with those substantive CSR issues that are of greater concern to the industry's most salient stakeholders. The findings also suggest that trade associations may have a greater tendency to engage in symbolic legitimation efforts through CSR if faced with the task of repairing industry legitimacy. (shrink)

For CVaR portfolio nonsmooth optimization problem, we propose an infeasible incremental bundle method on the basis of the improvement function and the main idea of incremental method for solving convex finite min-max problems. The presented algorithm only employs the information of the objective function and one component function of constraint functions to form the approximate model for improvement function. By introducing the aggregate technique, we keep the information of previous iterate points that may be deleted from bundle to overcome (...) the difficulty of numerical computation and storage. Our algorithm does not enforce the feasibility of iterate points and the monotonicity of objective function, and the global convergence of the algorithm is established under mild conditions. Compared with the available results, our method loosens the requirements of computing the whole constraint function, which makes the algorithm easier to implement. (shrink)

A standard criticism of utilitarianism is that it is only indirectly concerned with the distribution of welfare between individuals and, therefore, does not take adequate account of the separateness between individuals. This has led some to conclude that the utilitarian must either downplay the moral significance of distinct identities (e.g. Parfit) or concede that justice represents a prior and independent constraint on the pursuit of the good (e.g. Rawls). An intriguing alternative presents itself if we accept that intrinsic value (...) for the world is independently generated by the receipt of welfare and the degree to which receipt accords with the demands of justice. Fred Feldman, for example, argues that an action is right if and only if it maximizes the sum of both these sources of intrinsic value. The proposal retains the aggregative structure of utilitarianism and takes into account the morally relevant differences between individuals. In response I argue that justice-adjusted utilitarianism collapses into a deontological theory because (i) the axiology assigns lexical priority to justice and (ii) the alleged intrinsic value of justice is entirely derivative. (shrink)

I model sequential decisions over multiple interconnected propositions and investigate path-dependence in such decisions. The propositions and their interconnections are represented in propositional logic. A sequential decision process is path-dependent if its outcome depends on the order in which the propositions are considered. Assuming that earlier decisions constrain later ones, I prove three main results: First, certain rationality violations by the decision-making agent—individual or group—are necessary and sufficient for path-dependence. Second, under some conditions, path-dependence is unavoidable in decisions made by (...) groups. Third, path-dependence makes decisions vulnerable to strategic agenda setting and strategic voting. I also discuss escape routes from path-dependence. My results are relevant to discussions on collective consistency and reason-based decision-making, focusing not only on outcomes, but also on underlying reasons, beliefs, and constraints. (shrink)

This paper explores some aspects of the relation between different ways of achieving a consensus on the judgemental values of a group of indviduals; in particular, aggregation and deliberation. We argue firstly that the framing of an aggregation problem itself generates information that individuals are rationally obliged to take into account. And secondly that outputs of the deliberative process that this initiates is in tension with constraints on consensual values typically imposed by aggregation theory, at least when (...) deliberation is modelled as process of learning from others compatible with Bayesian updating principles. (shrink)

Calls for incorporating social science into patient care typically have accounted for neither the logistic constraints of medical training nor the methodological fallacies of utilizing aggregate “social facts” in clinical practice. By elucidating the different epistemic approaches of artistic and scientific practices, this paper illustrates an integrative artistic pedagogy that allows clinical practitioners to generate social scientific insights from actual patient encounters. Although there is no shortage of calls to bring social science into medicine, the more fundamental processes of thinking (...) by which art and science proceed have not been addressed to this end. As such, the art of medical practice is conceptualized as an innate gift, and thus little is done to cultivate it. Yet doing so is more important than ever because uncertainty in diagnosing and treating chronic illnesses, the most significant contemporary mortality risks, suggests a re-expanding role for clinical judgment. (shrink)

It has long been recognized that productivity growth and the business cycle are closely interrelated. Yet, until recently, the two phenomena have been investigated separately in the economics literature. This book provides the first consistent attempt to analyze the effects of macroeconomic volatility on productivity growth, and also the reverse causality from growth to business cycles. The authors show that by looking at the economy through the lens of private entrepreneurs, who invest under credit constraints, one can go some way (...) towards explaining persistent macroeconomic volatility and the effects of volatility on growth. Beginning with an analysis of the effects of volatility on growth, the authors argue that the lower the level of financial development in a country the more detrimental the effect of volatility on growth. This prediction is confirmed by cross-country panel regressions. The data also suggests that a fixed exchange rate regime or more countercyclical budgetary policies are growth-enhancing in countries with a lower level of financial development. The former reduce aggregate volatility whereas the latter reduce the negative effects of volatility on long-term productivity-enhancing investment by firms. The book concludes with an investigation into how the interplay between credit constraints and pecuniary externalities is sufficient to generate persistent business cycles and to explain the occurrence of currency crises. (shrink)

Perhaps we should change our focus from constitutionalized practices of democracy to democratized practices of constitutionalism. Dworkin and Perry both seek to respond to democratic objections to judicial review by relying on a theory of the legitimacy constraints of democracy itself. According to this view, on some matters, legitimate democracy requires getting the right moral answers. Thus democratic processes must be constitutionalized to ensure such right outcomes on fundamental moral matters. To the extent that judges are better positioned to engage (...) in principled moral reasoning, the arguments continue, we ought to entrust them with ensuring the constitutionalized legitimacy conditions of democracy. I argued that this latter institutional move, however, threatened to simply revive the paternalist worries forcefully articulated by Learned Hand. Waldron’s rights-based objection to rightsbased judicial review, although not dispositive, provided further warning of the moral costs of treating fellow citizens as incapable of reasoning together about the content and proper scope of the legal rights required for democracy. An alternative strategy for justifying judicial review that this chapter investigates is to understand a constitution itself as a product of true democracy, of real popular sovereignty. It is then up to the people, exercising their constituent power at the level of a constitutional assembly, to decide what particular institutional arrangements will best carry forward their collective ideals and decisions. The specific character and structure of those arrangements—whether they are populist or elitist, deliberative or aggregative, sensitive or insulated, electorally accountable or politically independent, and so on—is then a secondary matter. What is central is that the constitutional arrangements the people decide on are, first and foremost, democratically legitimated by the fact that they are the result of authentic popular sovereignty.. (shrink)

Social dilemmas occur when individuals make choices that are in their own best interest but not in the interest of society as a whole. Intrapersonal dilemmas occur when people make choices that are in the best interest of themselves at the moment of choice, but not in the best interest of themselves in the long run. A number of writers have observed that we can usefully model this self-defeating behavior by treating each individual as an aggregate of selves which have (...) competing interests, like the individual selves in a population. We undertake to synthesize and extend these contributions, applying the theory of intrapersonal dilemmas to addiction and procrastination, and discuss how the concept of multiple selves can explain why people attempt to control their behavior by imposing costs or constraints on themselves in the future, and how it can also help us develop new strategies of (personal) behavior control. (shrink)

In the standard analysis of economic institutions--which include social conventions, the working rules of an economy, and entitlement regimes --economists invoke the same theories they use when analyzing individual behavior. In this profoundly innovative book, Daniel Bromley challenges these theories, arguing instead for "volitional pragmatism" as a plausible way of thinking about the evolution of economic institutions. Economies are always in the process of becoming. Here is a theory of how they become. Bromley argues that standard economic accounts see institutions (...) as mere constraints on otherwise autonomous individual action. Some approaches to institutional economics--particularly the "new" institutional economics--suggest that economic institutions emerge spontaneously from the voluntary interaction of economic agents as they go about pursuing their best advantage. He suggests that this approach misses the central fact that economic institutions are the explicit and intended result of authoritative agents--legislators, judges, administrative officers, heads of states, village leaders--who volitionally decide upon working rules and entitlement regimes whose very purpose is to induce behaviors that constitute the sufficient reasons for the institutional arrangements they create. Bromley's approach avoids the prescriptive consequentialism of contemporary economics and asks, instead, that we see these emergent and evolving institutions as the reasons for the individual and aggregate behavior their very adoption anticipates. These hoped-for outcomes comprise sufficient reasons for new laws, judicial decrees, and administrative rulings, which then become instrumental to the realization of desired individual behaviors and thus aggregate outcomes. (shrink)

The next generation of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is anticipated to automate some of the reasoning required for spatial analysis. An important step in the development of such systems is to gain a better understanding and corresponding modeling practice of when to apply arithmetic operations to quantities. The concept of extensivity plays an essential role in determining when quantities can be aggregated by summing them, and when this is not possible. This is of particular importance to geographic information systems, which (...) serve to quantify phenomena across space and time. However, currently, multiple contrasting definitions of extensivity exist, and none of these suffice for handling the different practical cases occurring in geographic information. As a result, analysts predominantly rely on intuition and ad hoc reasoning to determine whether two quantities are additive. In this paper, we present a novel approach to formalizing the concept of extensivity. Though our notion as such is not restricted to quantifications occurring within geographic information, it is particularly useful for this purpose. Following the idea of spatio-temporal controls by Sinton, we define extensivity as a property of measurements of quantities with respect to a controlling quantity, such that a sum of the latter implies a sum of the former. In our algebraic definition of amounts and other quantities, we do away with some of the constraints that limit the usability of older approaches. By treating extensivity as a relation between amounts and other types of quantities, our definition offers the flexibility to relate a quantity to many domains of interest. We show how this new notion of extensivity can be used to classify the kinds of amounts in various examples of geographic information. (shrink)