Divergent mathematical treatments in utility theory

In this paper I study how divergent mathematical treatments affect mathematical modelling, with a special focus on utility theory. In particular I examine recent work on the ranking of information states and the discounting of future utilities, in order to show how, by replacing the standard analytical treatment of the models involved with one based on the framework of Nonstandard Analysis, diametrically opposite results are obtained. In both cases, the choice between the standard and nonstandard treatment amounts to a selection of set-theoretical parameters that cannot be made on purely empirical grounds. The analysis of this phenomenon gives rise to a simple logical account of the relativity of impossibility theorems in economic theory, which concludes the paper

Vop\v{e}nka's Alternative Set Theory in the Mathematical Canon of the 20th Century: Author's Translation from Czech

Vop\v{e}nka's Alternative Set Theory can be viewed both as an evolution and as a revolution: it is based on his previous experience with nonstandard universes, inspired by Skolem's construction of a nonstandard model of arithmetic, and its inception has been explicitly mentioned as an attempt to axiomatize Robinson's Nonstandard Analysis. Vop\v{e}nka preferred working in an axiomatic theory to investigating its individual models; he also viewed other areas of nonclassical mathematics through this prism. This article is a contribution to the mapping of the mathematical neighbourhood of the Alternative Set Theory, and at the same time, it submits a challenge to analyze in more detail the genesis and structure of the philosophical links that eventually influenced the Alternative Set Theory.Comment: This is the author's translation into English of her paper published originally in Czech. 14 page