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Rationality, comparability and maximization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2002

Mozaffar Qizilbash
Mozaffar Qizilbash
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
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Abstract

James Griffin (1986, 1997, 2000) and Ruth Chang (1997) have argued that alternatives (and values) can be comparable when it is neither true that one is better than the other, nor true that they are exactly equal in value. The relation which holds between them has gone under various names: the alternatives are ‘roughly equal in value’ (Griffin) or ‘on a par’ (Chang). In this paper, I give a formal analysis of this relation. This analysis allows us to distinguish between two slightly different notions of ‘at least as good as’. It is argued that the distinction between these notions is important for discussions of rationality, as is the distinction between ‘rough equality’ or ‘parity’ and incomparability.

Type
Research Article
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , April 2002 , pp. 141 - 156
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

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