As the market share of Fair Trade food products in countries of the North grows, understanding consumer preferences with regard to this recent label is becoming increasingly important. This article reports on a test of the consistency of consumers' stated preferences, for which a survey was conducted at the place and time of actual purchase decisions. The aim of the survey was to further improve the understanding of consumers' stated motivations for buying 'Fair Trade' and 'organic Fair Trade' (...) bananas in Switzerland. Hypothetical questions with double dichotomous choices were used to compare two types of bananas - conventional and labelled - and to assess the average stated willingness-to-pay (WTP) for Fair Trade-labelled bananas. The results show that Fair Trade is largely accepted in Switzerland and that the premium for purchasing such products is influenced by age, the number of young children and the perception of the Fair Trade label. I then used a comparative test of field observations and stated preferences for bananas to measure inconsistency in choices. This comparison reveals that less than one-fifth of the answers are in principle inconsistent. These results point to the importance of confidence in the Fair Trade labels if consumers' purchases are to increase. (shrink)

This paper provides a real-world test case for how to approach contemporary preference aggregation procedures. We examine the method of using stated preferences to structure social well-being indices. The method has seen increasing popularity and interest, both in economists’ laboratory research and by governments and international institutions. SP offers a sophisticated aggregation of peoples’ preferences regarding social well-being aspects and, in this way, provides elegant and non-paternalistic techniques for deciding how to weigh and prioritize various potential aspects of (...) social well-being. However, this method also poses difficulties and limitations from broader political and philosophical perspectives. This paper comprehensively charts these difficulties and suggests that SP methods should be complemented with appropriate deliberation procedures. The paper bridges the distinct perspectives of economists and political theorists in order to make SP an attractive instrument in determining policy. (shrink)

Contingent valuation surveys generally elicit stated preferences by asking how much a respondent would be willing to pay for an environmental improvement. By drawing on linguistic theory, we propose that the modal phrasing of this question establishes a particular type of commitment towards a hypothetical payment, namely a subjective want or desire. Based on the idea that beyond subjective desires, considerations about what is morally adequate may guide expressed values and that elicitation of these can be linguistically facilitated, we (...) employ an experimental framework to investigate the effects of different modals ( willing, should and appropriate) in the elicitation question on stated preferences. We find that elicited amounts with appropriate are higher than those elicited with willing and should for environmental improvements more associated with use values, while differences are non-significant for environmental improvements more associated with non-use values. We discuss the implications of our findings for stated preference studies, as well as the potential broader theoretical implications that our study entails regarding linguistic representations of the moral entrenchment of environmental values. (shrink)

Abstract:I address an overlooked question about the structure of the cognitive/conative model of the mind that underlies much of the work in economics, psychology and philosophy: namely, whether conative states are fundamentally monistic (desire-like) or comparative (preference-like). I argue that two seemingly promising sets of theoretical considerations – namely, the structure of Rational Choice Theory, and considerations of computational efficiency – are unable to resolve this debate. Given this, I suggest that a consideration that speaks in favour of the (...) preference-based view is the fact that it makes it easier to explain certain empirically observed patterns in decision making. (shrink)

This Article explores several meanings of a regulatory preference for government inaction. It explains the rise to dominance of this inaction preference in the United States and its distorting influence on the perception and understanding of regulation. Specifically, the Article demonstrates how basic terms in regulation, such as “government failure,” “regulatory capture,” and “deregulation,” acquired misleading connotations suggesting that government inaction is always superior to government action. The Article further explains how, through government inaction, the U.S. legal system (...) accommodates rent extraction - the profitable exploitation of market imperfections and favorable laws. Several developments in recent decades have considerably improved the capacity of very small groups in society to collect rents, namely, use talent and positional advantages to gain increasing levels of earnings. The Article argues that the parallel rise of the inaction preference has contributed to this trend, primarily because the availability of rent extraction opportunities draws talent that utilizes them with growing effectiveness. The purpose of the Article is to clarify several aspects of the relationships between regulation and rent extraction or, more precisely, to emphasize that government inaction may entail undesirable income effects. (shrink)

Law and economics scholarship suggests that, in appropriate cases, the law can improve people’s behavior by changing their preferences. For example, the law can curb discriminatory hiring practices by providing employers with information that might change their discriminatory preference. Supposedly, if employers no longer prefer one class of employees to another, they will simply stop discriminating, with no need for further legal intervention. The current Article aims to add some depth to this familiar analysis by introducing the insights of (...) behavioral ethics into the law and economics literature on preference change. Behavioral ethics research shows that wrongdoing often originates from semi-deliberative or non-deliberative cognitive processes. These findings suggest that the process of preference change through the use of the law is markedly more complicated and nuanced than previously appreciated. For instance, even if an employer’s explicit discriminatory stance is changed, and the employer no longer consciously prefers one class of employees over another, discriminatory behavior might persist if it originates from semi-conscious, habitual, or non-deliberative decision-making mechanisms. Therefore, actual change in behavior might necessitate a close engagement with people’s level of moral awareness. We discuss the institutional and normative implications of these insights and evaluate their significance for the attempt to improve preferences through the different functions of the legal system. (shrink)

This study investigated poultry farmers’ perceptions, preferences, and use of commercially compounded and self-compounded feeds in the Oyo Area of Oyo State, Nigeria. Data were collected from 120 poultry farmers through a structured interview schedule. The study concluded that poultry farmers prefer and use self-compounded feeds (SCF) instead of commercially compounded feeds (CCF) because (a) self-compounded feeds are of better quality than commercially compounded feeds, (b) there are no quality control measures in the poultry feed industry in the Oyo Area, (...) (c) commercially compounded feeds cost more than self-compounded feeds, and (d) farmers choose feed based on the perceived quality of the feed, their technical ability to produce feed by themselves, the cost of CCF, the storability of feed, and the cost and availability of transportation. Based on these findings, it is recommended that interested public and private agencies should organize annual extension workshops and training for poultry farmers in the study area on (a) feed formulation; (b) feed ingredient mixing and compounding; (c) selection of ingredients, mixtures, and additives; and (d) the establishment, operation, and maintenance of feed mills. Farmers should be encouraged to form feed mill cooperative societies. The performance of the Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON) should be monitored and evaluated to ensure its effective oversight of quality standards for agricultural products and inputs such as feeds and feed ingredients. (shrink)

I argue that the many worlds explanation of quantum computation is not licensed by, and in fact is conceptually inferior to, the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics from which it is derived. I argue that the many worlds explanation of quantum computation is incompatible with the recently developed cluster state model of quantum computation. Based on these considerations I conclude that we should reject the many worlds explanation of quantum computation.

This paper considers the potentially wrongful discriminatory nature of certain of our dating preferences. It argues that the wrongfulness of such preferences lies primarily in the simple lookism they involve. While it is ultimately permissible for us to date people partly because of how they look, I argue that we have a duty to ‘look behind’ people’s appearance, which I take to mean that we ought not, on the basis of their appearance, to regard them as absolutely out of the (...) question for us to engage with in a romantic setting. Further, constraints similar to those suggested by a duty to look behind people’s appearance gain support from another duty we have, namely, a duty to counteract, also in our daily lives, the fact that people are undeservedly disadvantaged in various ways. (shrink)

Criminal violence is one of the most pressing problems in Latin America and the Caribbean, with profound political consequences. Its effects on social policy preferences, however, remain largely unexplored. This article argues that to understand such effects it is crucial to analyze victimization experiences and perceptions of insecurity as separate phenomena with distinct attitudinal consequences. Heightened perceptions of insecurity are associated with a reduced demand for public welfare provision, as such perceptions reflect a sense of the state’s failure to provide (...) public security. At the same time, acknowledging the mounting costs and needs that direct experience with crime entails, victimization is expected to increase support for social policies, particularly for health services. Survey data from twenty-four Latin American and Caribbean countries for the period 2008–12 show that perceptions of insecurity indeed reduce support for the state’s role in welfare provision, whereas crime victimization strongly increases such preferences. (shrink)

In standard economic models, two basic assumptions are made: the first, that actors are rational, and the second, that actors’ preferences are a given and exogenously determined. Behavioral economics — followed by behavioral law and economics — has questioned the first assumption. This Article challenges the second one, arguing that in many instances, social welfare should be enhanced not by maximizing satisfaction of existing preferences but by changing the preferences themselves. The Article identifies seven categories of cases where the traditional (...) objections to intentional preference change by the state and the law lose force and argues that in these cases, such a change warrants serious consideration. It then proposes four different modes of intervention in people’s preferences, varying in intensity, on the one hand, and in the identity of their addressees, on the other, and explains the relative advantages and disadvantages of each form of intervention. (shrink)

According to Hobbes, individuals care about their relative standing in a way that shapes their social interactions. To model this aspect of Hobbesian psychology, this paper supposes that agents have social preferences, that is, preferences about their comparative resource holdings. Introducing uncertainty regarding the social preferences of others unleashes a process of trust-unravelling, ultimately leading to Hobbes’s ‘state of war’. This Trust-unravelling Model incorporates important features of Hobbes’s argument that past models ignore.

This note is a generalization and improved interpretation of the main result of Karni and Schmeidler. A decision-maker is supposed to possess a preference relation on acts and another preference relation on state-prize lotteries, both of which are assumed to satisfy the von Neumann–Morgenstern axioms. In addition, the two preference relations restricted to a state of nature are assumed to agree. We show that these axioms are necessary and sufficient for the existence of subjective expected utility over (...) acts with state-dependent utility functions and a subjective probability measure. This subjective probability measure is unique when conditioned on the set of states of nature in which not all the prizes are equally desirable. (shrink)

This paper examines relationships between accountants’ personal values and their moral reasoning. In particular, we hypothesize that there is an inverse relationship between accountants’ “Conformity” values and principled moral reasoning. This investigation is important because the literature suggests that conformity with rule-based standards may be one reason for professional accountants’ relatively lower scores on measures of moral reasoning (Abdolmohammadi et al. J Bus Ethics 16 (1997) 1717). We administered the Rokeach Values Survey (RVS) (Rokeach: 1973, The Nature of Human Values (...) (The Free Press, New York)) and the Defining Issues Test (DIT) (Rest: 1979, Development in Judgment Moral Issues (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN)) to164 graduating accounting students enrolled in capstone courses at two universities in the Northeastern United States. As potential entrants into the accounting profession, these subjects bring their values and moral reasoning to bear on attitudes and behaviors in the workplace. We find a highly significant inverse relationship between “Conformity” values and principled moral reasoning (i.e., those who prefer Conformity values have lower levels of moral reasoning). However, we also find that accounting students as a group do not prefer Conformity values above other values such as Self-actualization and Idealism, and we find positive relationships between Self-actualization and Idealism values and moral reasoning. Implications for values and ethics research are discussed. (shrink)

When states cooperate in refugee protection and implement a scheme with fixed rules allocating refugees to host states, should they consider refugees' interests and preferences regarding where they receive protection? This article briefly examines the kinds of preferences and interests that are relevant to both refugees and states before discussing the moral principles determining the respective weight that should be attributed to them. We conclude that states must adhere to some minimal constraints concerning the consideration of refugees' concerns, and should (...) promote some further moral goals that go beyond these constraints. Finally, we suggest a scheme that meets all the moral demands we argued for and seems feasible without posing serious threats to the destination states. (shrink)

In a series of one-shot linear public goods game, we ask subjects to report their contributions, their contribution plans for the next period, and their first-order beliefs about their present and future partner. We estimate subjects’ preferences from plan data by a finite mixture approach and compare the results with those obtained from contribution data. Controlling for beliefs, which incorporate the information about the others’ decisions, we are able to show that plans convey accurate information about subjects’ preferences and, consequently, (...) are good predictors of their future behavior. (shrink)

Imperative sentences like Dance! do not seem to represent the world. Recent modal analyses challenge this idea, but its intuitive and historical appeal remain strong. This paper presents three new challenges for a non-representational analysis, showing that the obstacles facing it are even steeper than previously appreciated. I will argue that the only way for the non-representationalist to meet these three challenges is to adopt a dynamic semantics. Such a dynamic semantics is proposed here: imperatives introduce preferences between alternatives. This (...) characterization of meaning focuses on what function a sentence serves in discourse, rather than what that sentence refers to (e.g., a state of the world). By representing the meaning of imperatives, connectives and declaratives in a common dynamic format, the challenges posed for non-representationalism are met. (shrink)

Most models of rational action assume that all possible states and actions are pre-defined and that preferences change only when beliefs do. But several decision and game problems lack these features, calling for a dynamic model of preferences: preferences can change when unforeseen possibilities come to light or when there is no specifiable or measurable change in belief. We propose a formally precise dynamic model of preferences that extends an existing static model. Our axioms for updating preferences preserve consistency while (...) minimising change, like Hansson’s :1–28, 1995). But unlike prior models of preference change, ours supports default reasoning with partial preference information, which is essential to handle decision problems where the decision tree isn’t surveyable. We also show that our model avoids problems for other models of preference change discussed in Spohn. (shrink)

I argue that taking the Practical Conditionals Thesis seriously demands a new understanding of the semantics of such conditionals. Practical Conditionals Thesis: A practical conditional [if A][ought] expresses B’s conditional preferability given A Paul Weirich has argued that the conditional utility of a state of affairs B on A is to be identified as the degree to which it is desired under indicative supposition that A. Similarly, exploiting the PCT, I will argue that the proper analysis of indicative practical conditionals (...) is in terms of what is planned, desired, or preferred, given suppositional changes to an agent’s information. Implementing such a conception of conditional preference in a semantic analysis of indicative practical conditionals turns out to be incompatible with any approach which treats the indicative conditional as expressing non-vacuous universal quantification over some domain of relevant antecedent-possibilities. Such analyses, I argue, encode a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is to be best, given some condition. The analysis that does the best vis-à-vis the PCT is, instead, one that blends a Context-Shifty account of indicative antecedents with an Expressivistic, or non-propositional, treatment of their practical consequents. (shrink)

In recent decades, developing and middle-income countries around the globe have adopted path-breaking reforms to their social protection systems. Latin America has been a pioneer region, expanding the state’s commitment on behalf of low-income citizens in key policy areas in many countries. This paper undertakes two tasks. First, it documents the surprising extension of noncontributory social protection policies across many Latin American countries, highlighting how tax-financed programs have come to play a central role in a variety of settings. Second, it (...) examines citizen-level preferences that support this trend, arguing that employment vulnerability and threats to income continuity play a decisive role in shaping demand for public, rather than private, social protection. Survey data on labor-market risks and social policy preferences from eighteen countries corroborate these claims. Our findings suggest that other countries undergoing labor-market strains may experience similar demands for a “return of the state” as a guarantor of social protection in the coming years. (shrink)

Recent debates on the nature of preferences in economics have typically assumed that they are to be interpreted either as behavioural regularities or as mental states. In this paper I challenge this dichotomy and argue that neither interpretation is consistent with scientific practice in choice theory and behavioural economics. Preferences are belief-dependent dispositions with a multiply realizable causal basis, which explains why economists are reluctant to make a commitment about their interpretation.

More philosophical effort is spent articulating evolutionary rationales for the development of belief-like capacities than for precursors of desires or preferences. Nobody, though, seriously expects naturally evolved minds to be disinterested epistemologists. We agree that world-representing states won’t pay their way without supporting capacities that prioritise from an organism’s available repertoire of activities in light of stored (and occurrent) information. Some concede that desire-like states would be one way of solving this problem. Taking preferences as my starting point instead of (...) belief-like states, I defend two conclusions. First, psychologically real preference states, which approximately token expected utilities, have a quite general evolutionary rationale. They are a solution to the problem of efficiently allocating capacities with incompatible uses. This argument is a version of the Environmental Complexity Thesis. Second, preferences can plausibly function and naturally evolve without belief-like states, even though the converse claim is incredible. Preferences, that is, can mediate between discriminations of occurrent states (‘internal’ or ‘external’) and the processes selecting activity without mediation by stored indicative representations. By tokening expected utilities of actions conditional on discriminated state, they can increase the rate at which the ‘right thing’ is done at appropriate times, and they can do this without the support of belief-like, world-representing states. Preferences, even incomplete and noisy sets of them, are a fuel for success that will tend to be favoured when environments are complex in ways that matter to an organism, and when the organisms have complex behavioural repertoires with heterogenous returns and costs. (shrink)

The notion of ‘revealed preference’ is unclear and should be abandoned. Defenders of the theory of revealed preference have misinterpreted legitimate concerns about the testability of economics as the demand that economists eschew reference to (unobservable) subjective states. As attempts to apply revealed-preference theory to game theory illustrate with particular vividness, this demand is mistaken.

[A slightly revised version of this paper has been accepted by the BJPS] More attention has been devoted to providing evolutionary scenarios accounting for the development of beliefs, or belief-like states, than for desires or preferences. Here I articulate and defend an evolutionary rationale for the development of psychologically real preference states. Preferences token or represent the expected values of discriminated states, available actions, or action-state pairings. The argument is an application the ‘environmental complexity thesis’ found in Godfrey-Smith and (...) Sterelny, although my conclusions differ from Sterelny’s. I argue that tokening expected utilities can, under specified general conditions, be a powerful design solution to the problem of allocating the capacities of an agent in an efficient way. Preferences are for efficient action selection, and are a ‘fuel for success’ in the sense urged by Godfrey-Smith for true beliefs. They will tend to be favoured by selection when environments are complex in ways that matter to an organism, and when organisms have rich behavioural repertoires with heterogenous returns and costs. The rationale suggested here is conditional, especially on contingencies in what design options are available to selection and on trade-offs associated with the costs of generating and processing representations of value. The unqualified efficiency rationale for preferences suggests that organisms should represent expected utilities in a comprehensive and consistent way, but none of them do. In the final stages of the paper I consider some of the ways in which design trade-offs compromise the implementation of preferences in organisms that have them. (shrink)

This paper defends revealed preference theory against a pervasive line of criticism, according to which revealed preference methodology relies on appealing to some mental states, in particular an agent’s beliefs, rendering the project incoherent or unmotivated. I argue that all that is established by these arguments is that revealed preference theorists must accept a limited mentalism in their account of the options an agent should be modelled as choosing between. This is consistent both with an essentially behavioural (...) interpretation of preference and with standard revealed preference methodology. And it does not undermine the core motivations of revealed preference theory. (shrink)

People who have not experienced diseases and health conditions tend to judge them to be worse than they are reported to be by people who have experienced them. This phenomenon, known as the disability paradox, presents a challenge for health policy, and in particular, healthcare resource distribution. This divergence between patient and public preferences is most plausibly explained as a result of hedonic adaptation, a widespread phenomenon in which people tend to adapt fairly quickly to the state they are in, (...) good or bad, and adjust their baseline utility accordingly.If patient utilities can be shown to be inappropriate for use in public policy decision making, the disability paradox fades away. This paper offers a critique of one such attempt: the idea that adaptation leads to adaptive preferences. I argue that none of the main accounts of adaptive preferences in fact characterise adapted patient preferences as irrational. Adapted preferences should not, therefore, be treated as synonymous with adaptive preferences. I suggest that much patient adaptation should be understood as a form of the ubiquitous human ability to respond to environmental change. Consequently, we ought not to discount patient preferences. (shrink)

Preference, according to many theories of human behaviour, is a very important phenomenon. It is therefore some what surprising that philosophers of mind pay so little attention to it. One question about preference concerns its variety. Is preference always preference for one option or state of affairs rather than another? Or is there also, as ordinary language suggests, object-preference – preferences for one person rather than another, for one country rather than another, for one value (...) rather than another? Another question or rather group of questions concerns the nature of preference. Is it a mental state, disposition, act or episode, a theoretical construct, a purely behavioural phenomenon? If it is a mental state or act, is it an intellectual, affective or a conative phenomenon? If it is an affective phenomenon, does it enjoy a positive or negative “valence”? Is preference to be understood as a relation between a person’s attitudes or is it a primitive phenomenon? (shrink)

Zizek's battle cry to 'do nothing', or what is termed Bartleby politics, has been met with much criticism. At best, it seems, his Bartleby politics simply enables us to see the limits of society, and at worst, it leaves us in a state of impotent passivity. This article takes a position of preferring Bartleby politics. This paper reflects on Žižek’s Bartleby politics. It starts with briefly outlining the basic tenets of Bartleby politic, including concepts of the superego, enjoyment and the (...) Act. Next the paper examines different reactions to Žižek’s Bartleby politics, and how these help us to further think about the concept. The paper concludes with some reflections on the practicalities of Zizek’s Bartleby politics. (shrink)

The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) by US consumers has grown in recent years. CAM therapies often utilize medicinal herbs as part of the treatment process; however, research on US practitioner preferences for medicinal herbs is limited, despite growing concern surrounding the sustainability of wild-harvested medicinal herbs. In order better to understand consumer preferences for this emerging market, a mail survey of US practitioners (licensed acupuncturists) was conducted to examine the importance of five herb attributes in practitioners’ herb (...) selection decisions: (1) country of origin, (2) freshness, (3) production method (organic versus conventional), (4) price, and (5) traceability. The significance of these five traits is investigated using discrete choice analysis, and the implications for US medicinal herb growers are discussed. (shrink)

More attention has been devoted to providing evolutionary accounts of the development of beliefs, or belief-like states, than for desires or preferences. Here I articulate and defend an evolutionary rationale for the development of psychologically real preference states. Preferences token or represent the expected values available actions given discriminated states of world and agent. The argument is an application of the ‘environmental complexity thesis’ found in Godfrey-Smith and Sterelny, although my conclusions differ from Sterelny’s. I argue that tokening expected (...) utilities can, under specified general conditions, be a powerful design solution to the problem of efficiently allocating the capacities of an agent. Preferences are for efficient action selection, and count as a ‘fuel for success’ in the sense urged by Godfrey-Smith for true beliefs. They will tend to be favoured by selection when environments are complex in ways that matter to an organism, and when organisms have large behavioural repertoires with heterogeneous returns and costs.The rationale suggested here is conditional, especially on contingencies in what design options are available to selection and on trade-offs associated with the costs of generating and processing representations of value. The unqualified efficiency rationale for preferences suggests that organisms should represent expected utilities in a comprehensive and consistent way, but none of them do. In the final stages of the paper I consider some of the ways design trade-offs compromise the implementation of preferences in organisms that have them. (shrink)

This paper focuses on a specific challenge for welfarist theories of intergenerational justice. Subjective welfarism permits and even requires that a generation, G1, inculcates cheap preferences in the next generation, G2. This would allow G1 to deplete resources instead of saving them, which seems to contradict the ideal of sustainability. The aim of the paper is to show that, even if subjective welfarism requires the cultivation of cheap preferences among future generations, it can accommodate two major objections to cheap preferences (...) engineering, the Autonomy Objection and the Fairness Objection. The paper argues that teaching autonomy-related abilities is compatible with cheap preferences engineering insofar as autonomy is understood as an end-state and not as a precondition. Furthermore, teaching autonomy-related abilities could even be required in order to improve G2’s prospects for well-being. However, since being autonomous renders G2 able to revise their initially cheap preferences, G1 should also save enough resources to enable members of G2 to do so. Therefore, cultivating cheap preferences among G2 does not allow G1 to deplete the available resources. (shrink)

The sciences of kalam and fiqh, which have a special importance in the history of Islamic thought and science, became prominent with their interactions with other sciences in their formation processes and their contributions to the evolution of religious thought. In the literature, the field representing the linguistic, religious, mental and practical aspects of fiqh has become widespread with the concepts of usūl-i fiqh and fürū-i fiqh, and the part about creed as usūlü'd-dīn or fiqhu'l-akbar. It has drawn our attention (...) that Imam Abū Ḥanīfa and Imam Shāfiʿī's ijtihads, fatwas and thoughts have remained up to date in every century without exception in the vortex of overdoing and understatement in these two disciplines. However, there are some narrations stating that although these imams were interested in kalam, they kept a distance from it. Their, famous students also indicated that they gave them advice in this sense. Therefore, this study has been prepared in order to examine the background of the aforementioned issues. For this purpose, the reasons why two imams preferred the science of fiqh in the main axis of the subject were subjected to a general criticism. Consequently, it has been seen that both imams had similar concerns and their ideas have been overlapping in the face of the creed developments of the period. (shrink)

This article discusses the relationship between the ideal of autonomous preference formation and the danger of paternalism in deliberative democratic theory. It argues that the aim of autonomous preference formation can and should be decoupled from a justification of paternalistic state action aimed at reshaping citizens’ preferences. The problem of non autonomous preference formation is rooted in the communication structure in which each and every one forms her preferences and hence cannot be solved by some paternalistically judging (...) on others’ behalf. The argument is based on a new formulation of the deliberative democratic ideal, which emphasizes and clarifies the multiple dimensions of freedom it incorporates. (shrink)

This article discusses the relationship between the ideal of autonomous preference formation and the danger of paternalism in deliberative democratic theory. It argues that the aim of autonomous preference formation can and should be decoupled from a justification of paternalistic state action aimed at reshaping citizens 'preferences. The problem of nonautonomous preference formation is rooted in the communication structure in which each and every one forms her preferences and hence cannot be solved by some paternalistically judging on (...) others'behalf The argument is based on a new formulation of the deliberative democratic ideal, which emphasizes and clarifies the multiple dimensions of freedom it incorporates. (shrink)

We generalize a previous result about dynamically consistent menu preferences to the case where preferences are not necessarily complete. We show that, as it is the case when preferences are complete, a subjective state space version of dynamic consistency is linked to a comparative theory of preference for flexibility. In words, an objective signal is interpreted as an event in the agent’s subjective state space and the agent acts in a dynamically consistent way after that if and only if (...) we can attribute all the differences between the agent’s preferences before and after the signal to the fact that the agent values flexibility more before the signal than after. (shrink)

Many economists and social theorists hypothesize that most societies could soon face a ‘post-work’ future, one in which employment and productive labor have a dramatically reduced place in human affairs. Given the centrality of employment to individual identity and its pivotal role as the primary provider of economic and other goods, transitioning to a ‘post-work’ future could prove traumatic and disorienting to many. Policymakers are thus likely to face the difficult choice of the extent to which they ought to satisfy (...) individual citizens’ desires to work in a socioeconomic environment in which work is in permanent decline. Here I argue that policymakers confronting a post-work economy should discount, or at least consider problematic, the desire to work because it is very likely that this desire is an adaptive preference. An adaptive preference is a preference for some state of affairs within a limited set of options formed under unjust conditions. The widespread desire for work has been formed under unjust labor conditions to which individuals are compelled to submit in order to meet material and ethical needs. Furthermore, the prevalence of the ‘work dogma’ in contemporary societies precludes nearly all individuals from seeing alternatives to work as live options. (shrink)

Interest in the use of medical data for health research is increasing. Yet, as Elizabeth Ford and colleagues rightly note, there are open questions about the suitability of existing ethical and regulatory oversight frameworks for these research approaches. In their feature article, ‘Should free text data in electronic medical records be shared for research? A citizen’s jury study in the United Kingdom’, Ford et al report the results of a deliberative engagement study in which 18 members of the public were (...) asked whether and under what conditions free text data from medical records should be shared for research purposes. The authors’ explicit aim was to inform national policy on sharing medical text. Public attitudes—stated otherwise, the attitudes of patients whose medical information will ultimately be used under any data sharing policy—are a necessary input into ethical and regulatory decision-making about use of medical data for health research. Though public attitudes will rarely be determinative, they must be weighed in order to uphold the ethical principle of respect for persons.1 Ford et al ’s article is, therefore, an important contribution to …. (shrink)

Crutchfield and Redinger (2024) propose that the use of a chemical restraint that affects only a particular conscious state is ethically permissible if, and only if, (1) it is the least restrictive...

A paramount, yet unresolved issue in personalised medicine is that of automated reasoning with clinical guidelines in multimorbidity settings. This entails enabling machines to use computerised generic clinical guideline recommendations and patient-specific information to yield patient-tailored recommendations where interactions arising due to multimorbidities are resolved. This problem is further complicated by patient management desiderata, in particular the need to account for patient-centric goals as well as preferences of various parties involved. We propose to solve this problem of automated reasoning with (...) interacting guideline recommendations in the context of a given patient by means of computational argumentation. In particular, we advance a structured argumentation formalism ABA+G (short for Assumption-Based Argumentation with Preferences (ABA+) and Goals) for integrating and reasoning with information about recommendations, interactions, patient’s state, preferences and prioritised goals. ABA+G combines assumption-based reasoning with preferences and goal-driven selection among reasoning outcomes. Specifically, we assume defeasible applicability of guideline recommendations with the general goal of patient well-being, resolve interactions (conflicts and otherwise undesirable situations) among recommendations based on the state and preferences of the patient, and employ patient-centered goals to suggest interaction-resolving, goal-importance maximising and preference-adhering recommendations. We use a well-established Transition-based Medical Recommendation model for representing guideline recommendations and identifying interactions thereof, and map the components in question, together with the given patient’s state, prioritised goals, and preferences over actions, to ABA+G for automated reasoning. In this, we follow principles of patient management and establish corresponding theoretical properties as well as illustrate our approach in realistic personalised clinical reasoning scenaria. (shrink)

This essay gives necessary and sufficient conditions for recovering expected utility from choice behavior in several popular models of uncertainty. In particular, these techniques handle a finite state model; a model for which the choice space consists of probability densities and the expected utility representation requires bounded, measurable utility; and a model for which the choice space consists of Borel probability measures and the expected utility representation requires bounded, continuous utility. The key result is the identification of the continuity condition (...) necessary for the revelation of linear utility. (shrink)

Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) have become a household word among health economists. Their use as a means of comparing the value of health programmes and medical interventions has stirred up controversy in the medical profession and the academic community. In this paper, I argue that QALY analysis does not adequately take into account the differentiated nature of the health state values it measures. Specifically, it does not distinguish between needs and preferences with respect to its valuation of health states. (...) I defend the view that needs and preferences are clearly distinguishable, and that the concept of needs cannot be dispensed with, as many health economists suggest. It is argued that the scale along which health states are measured in QALY analysis is not a continuous interval scale, but one which concerns two distinctly different value dimensions. Measuring the values of health state intervals may reveal the weighting attached to the different value dimensions. (shrink)

Despite the amount of theorization on the forms and effects of participation, relatively little research directly examines what the concept of workplace participation entails in the minds of employees, and whether employees across cultures think positively when the concept of participation is activated in their mental representation. Three studies investigated the perceptions and preferences of full-time employees from the United States and China, cultures that might be expected to differ in their societal participation norm. Using a free association test and (...) text analyses, Study 1 demonstrated that Chinese and American employees differed in their construal of workplace participation, yet both culture groups associated positive valence to the concept of participation. Study 2 showed that employees’ preference for workplace participation is positively related to their perceptions of its outcomes on productivity, job satisfaction, and workplace conflict. Study 3 had employees interact with either a prototypically high or low participation work environment and tested whether clear cultural contrasts might occur. American employees expressed unambiguous endorsement and predicted positive outcomes of a high participation workplace, whereas Chinese employees expressed slightly higher endorsement to a low participation work environment and associated it with higher productivity. This research provides insights on how workplace participation is construed by employees from different cultures, especially from cultures where democratic participation is not the normative default. Different perspectives on workplace participation across cultures may inform practitioners of the goals and approaches when shaping a more participatory workplace and a more democratic society. (shrink)

Grant and Quiggin suggest that agents employ heuristics to constrain the set of acts under consideration before applying standard decision theory, based on their restricted model of the world to the remaining acts. The aim of this paper is to provide an axiomatic foundation, and an associated representation theorem, for the preference model proposed by Grant and Quiggin. The unawareness of the agent is encoded both in the specification of the states and in an elaboration of the set of (...) consequences. We illustrate how the representation can be applied to rationalize two notions of the precautionary principle that were proposed and discussed in Grant and Quiggin. (shrink)