Measurement Theory and the Foundations of Utilitarianism

Harsanyi used expected utility theory to provide two axiomatizations of weighted utilitarian rules. Sen (and later, Weymark) has argued that Harsanyi has not, in fact, axiomatized utilitarianism because he has misapplied expected utility theory. Specifically, Sen and Weymark have argued that von Neumann-Morgenstern expected utility theory is an ordinal theory and, therefore, any increasing transform of a von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function is a satisfactory representation of a preference relation over lotteries satisfying the expected utility axioms. However, Harsanyi's version of utilitarianism requires a cardinal theory of utility in which only von Neumann-Morgenstern utility functions are acceptable representations of preferences. Broome has argued that von Neumann-Morgenstern expected utility theory is cardinal in the relevant sense needed to support Harsanyi's utilitarian conclusions. His basic point is that a preference binary relation is not a complete description of preferences in the von Neumann-Morgenstern theory. Rather, the preference relation needs to be supplemented by a binary operation, and it is this operation that makes the theory cardinal. Broome does not provide a formal argument in support of this conclusion. In this article, measurement theory is used to critically evaluate Broome's claims. It is shown that the criticisms of Harsanyi's theory by Sen and Weymark can be extended to the more complete description of expected utility theory that is obtained by using the mixture operators that appear in von Neumann and Morgenstern's original description of expected utility theory in addition to a preference relationexpected utility, utilitarianism, von Neumann-Morgenstern, Harsanyi

A Story of Consistency: Bridging the Gap between Bentham and Rawls Foundations

The axiomatic foundations of Bentham and Rawls solutions are discussed within the broader domain of cardinal preferences. It is unveiled that both solution concepts share all four of the following axioms: Nonemptiness, Anonymity, Unanimity, and Continuity. In order to fully characterize the Bentham and Rawls solutions, three variations of a consistency criterion are introduced and their compatibility with the other axioms is assessed. Each expression of consistency can be interpreted as a property of decision-making in uncertain environments

Extended Preferences and Interpersonal Comparisons: A New Account

This paper builds upon, but substantially revises, John Harsanyi's concept of ‘extended preferences’. An individual ‘history’ is a possible life that some person (a subject) might lead. Harsanyi supposes that a given spectator, formulating her ethical preferences, can rank histories by empathetic projection: putting herself ‘in the shoes’ of various subjects. Harsanyi then suggests that interpersonal comparisons be derived from the utility function representing spectators’ (supposedly common) ranking of history lotteries. Unfortunately, Harsanyi's proposal has various flaws, including some that have hitherto escaped scholarly attention. In particular, it ignores the limits of personal identity. If the subject has welfare-relevant attributes that the spectator cannot acquire without changing who she is, full empathetic identification of the latter with the former becomes impossible. This paper proposes instead to use sympathy as the attitude on a spectator's part that allows us to make sense of her extended preferences. Sympathy – an attitude of care and concern – is a psychological state quite different from empathy. We should also allow for hetereogeneity in spectators’ extended preferences. Interpersonal comparisons emerge from a plurality of sympathetic spectators, not (as per Harsanyi) from a common empathetic ranking.</jats:p

The ignorant observer

We propose an extension of Harsanyi's Impartial Observer Theorem based on the representation of ignorance as the set of all possible probability distributions over individuals. We obtain a characterization of the observer's preferences that, under our most restrictive conditions, is a convex combination of Harsanyi's utilitarian and Rawls' egalitarian criteria. This representation is ethically meaningful, in the sense that individuals' utilities are cardinally measurable and fully comparable. This allows us to conclude that the impartiality requirement cannot be used to decide between Rawls' and Harsanyi's positions.Impartiality, Justice, Utilitarianism, Egalitarianism, Decision under ignorance.

Absenteeism as a mechanism of repression of demand in the Brazilian public sector: accounting reflex in federal education public institutions

Absenteeism is seen as a critical problem in public organizations, since the factors that generate it negatively impact the productivity of organizations. In this sense, considering that Federal Institutions of Higher Education represent almost half of the entire workforce existing in the Federal Executive Branch, this article aims to identify absenteeism, as well as its typification, in addition to measuring its accounting reflex. The methodology adopted was panel data analysis, through the analysis of the absenteeism index with time series from 2008 to 2018. The research findings reinforce that absenteeism is more representative when it is due to a stricto sensu graduate program and medical licenses. Furthermore, it was found that the absenteeism rate doubles every 5 years

Extended Preferences and Interpersonal Comparisons of Well‐being

An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of wellbeing is that these theories cannot make sense of interpersonal comparisons of well-being. A tradition dating back to Harsanyi (1953) attempts to respond to this objection by appeal to so-called extended preferences: very roughly, preferences over situations whose description includes agents’ preferences. This paper examines the prospects for defending the preference-satisfaction theory via this extended preferences program. We argue that making conceptual sense of extended preferences is less problematic than others have supposed, but that even so extended preferences do not provide a promising way for the preference satisfaction theorist to make interpersonal well-being comparisons. Our main objection takes the form of a trilemma: depending on how the theory based on extended preferences is developed, either (a) the result will be inconsistent with ordinary preference-satisfaction theory, or (b) it will fail to recover sufficiently rich interpersonal well-being comparisons, or (c) it will take on a number of other arguably odd and undesirable commitments

Welfare and Autonomy under Risk

This paper studies the relationship between promoting people's welfare and respecting their autonomy of choice under risk. I highlight a conflict between these two aims. Given compelling assumptions, welfarists end up disregarding people's unanimous preference, even when everyone involved is entirely rational and only concerned with maximizing their own welfare. Non-welfarist theories of social choice are then considered. They are shown to face difficulties, too: either they fail to respect the value of welfare in at least one important sense, or they end up prioritizing different people's welfare differently in non-risky choices, on the basis of their attitudes to risk, which are intuitively irrelevant in this context

Extensive Measurement in Social Choice

Extensive measurement is the standard measurement-theoretic approach for constructing a ratio scale. It involves the comparison of objects that can be "concatenated" in an additively representable way. This paper studies the implications of extensively measurable welfare for social choice theory. We do this in two frameworks: an Arrovian framework with a fixed population and no interpersonal comparisons, and a generalized framework with variable populations and full interpersonal comparability. In each framework we use extensive measurement to introduce novel domain restrictions, independence conditions, and constraints on social evaluation. We prove a welfarism theorem for the resulting domains and characterize the social welfare functions that satisfy the axioms of extensive measurement at both the individual and social levels. The main results are simple axiomatizations of strong dictatorship in the Arrovian framework and classical utilitarianism in the generalized framework. We conclude by drawing some lessons regarding the utilitarian significance of Harsanyi's aggregation theorem