This paper will be concerned with hard choices—that is, choice situations where an agent cannot make a rationally justified choice. Specifically, this paper asks: if an agent cannot optimize in a given situation, are they facing a hard choice? A pair of claims are defended in light of this question. First, situations where an agent cannot optimize because of incompleteness of the binary preference or value relation constitute a hard choice. Second, situations where agents cannot optimize because the binary preference (...) or value relation violates acyclicity do not constitute a hard choice. (shrink)

This paper will be concerned with hard choices—that is, choice situations where an agent cannot make a rationally justified choice. Specifically, this paper asks: if an agent cannot optimize in a given situation, are they facing a hard choice? A pair of claims are defended in light of this question. First, situations where an agent cannot optimize because of incompleteness of the binary preference or value relation constitute a hard choice. Second, situations where agents cannot optimize because the binary preference (...) or value relation violates acyclicity do not constitute a hard choice. (shrink)

A hard choice is a situation in which an agent is unable to make a justifiable choice from a given menu of alternatives. Our objective is to present a systematic treatment of the axiomatic structure of such situations. To do so, we draw on and contribute to the study of choice functions that can be indecisive, i.e., that may fail to select a non-empty set for some menus. In this more general framework, we present new characterizations of two well-known choice (...) rules, the maximally dominant choice rule and the top-cycle choice rule. Together with existing results, this yields an understanding of the circumstances in which hard choices arise. (shrink)

This is an interview by the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics with John E. Roemer. The interview covers Roemer’s intellectual biography; his extensive writings on exploitation, egalitarianism, socialism, bargaining, and justice; his latest work on Kantian optimization, his vision for the future of socialism; and, finally, his methodological commitments and the value of interdisciplinarity.

The Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics(EJPE) interviewed Adler about his formative years (section I); his work on the theoretical foundations of public policy, zooming in onwelfare-consequentialism and social welfare functions(section II), welfarism and interpersonal comparisons(section III), the ethical deliberator and the role of the philosopher (section IV); and, finally,his views and visions for interdisciplinary work in law, economics, and philosophy,as well as his advice for graduate students in the field (section V).