Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T16:08:56.373Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

SPURIOUS UNANIMITY AND THE PARETO PRINCIPLE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 November 2015

Philippe Mongin
Philippe Mongin*
Affiliation:
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique & HEC Paris, 1 rue de la Libération, F-78350 Jouy-en-Josas, Paris, France. Email: [email protected]. URL: https://studies2.hec.fr/jahia/Jahia/mongin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Pareto principle states that if the members of society express the same preference judgement between two options, this judgement is compelling for society. A building block of normative economics and social choice theory, and often borrowed by contemporary political philosophy, the principle has rarely been subjected to philosophical criticism. The paper objects to it on the ground that it applies indifferently to those cases in which the individuals agree both on their expressed preferences and on their reasons for entertaining them, and those cases in which they agree on their expressed preferences while differing on their reasons. The latter are cases of ‘spurious unanimity’, and it is normatively inappropriate, or so the paper argues, to defend unanimity preservation at the social level for such cases: thus the Pareto principle is formulated much too broadly. The objection seems especially powerful when the principle is applied in an ex ante context of uncertainty, in which individuals can disagree on both their probabilities and utilities, and nonetheless agree on their preferences over prospects.

Keywords

Pareto principleunanimity preservationspurious unanimityaggregation of ex ante preferences
Type
Articles
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , November 2016 , pp. 511 - 532
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Arrow, K. J. 1951. Social Choice and Individual Values. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. [2nd revised edition, 1963.]Google Scholar
Aumann, R. J. 1976. Agreeing to disagree. Annals of Statistics 4: 1236–1239.Google Scholar
Broome, J. 1990. Bolker-Jeffrey expected utility and axiomatic utilitarianism. Review of Economic Studies 57: 477–502.Google Scholar
Broome, J. 1991. Weighing Goods. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Genest, C. and Zidek, J. V.. 1986. Combining probability distributions: a critique and an annotated bibliography. Statistical Science 1: 114–148.Google Scholar
Graaff, J. de, V. 1957. Theoretical Welfare Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hammond, P. J. 1982. Utilitarianism, uncertainty and information. In Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed. Sen, A. and Williams, B., 85–102. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hausman, D. and McPherson, M.. 1996. Economic Analysis and Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [2nd edition 2006]Google Scholar
Hild, M., Jeffrey, R. and Risse, M.. 1996. What it takes to be a group: Pareto vs. diversity. Mimeo, Department of Philosophy, Princeton University. [Final version: Preference aggregation under uncertainty. In Justice, Political Liberalism, and Utilitarianism, ed. Fleurbaey, M., Salles, M. and Weymark, J. A., 198–217. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.]Google Scholar
Kadare, I. 1978. Ura Me Tri Harqe. English Translation: The Three Arched Bridge. New York, NY: Arcade Publishing.Google Scholar
Lancaster, K. J. 1966. A new approach to consumer theory. Journal of Political Economy 74: 132–157.Google Scholar
Levi, I. 1990. Pareto unanimity and consensus. Journal of Philosophy 87: 481–492.Google Scholar
Mongin, P. 1995. Consistent Bayesian aggregation. Journal of Economic Theory 66: 313–351.Google Scholar
Mongin, P. and d'Aspremont, C.. 1996. Utility theory and ethics. CORE Discussion Papers 1996063. Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE). [Final version: Utility theory and ethics. In Handbook of Utility Theory, vol. 1, ed. Barberà, S., Hammond, P., and Seidl, C., 371–481. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998.]Google Scholar
Pareto, V. 1906. Manuel d’économie politique . In Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 7. Genève: Droz [1966].Google Scholar
Roemer, J. 1996. Theories of Distributive Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Samuelson, P. A. 1947. The Foundations of Economic Analysis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [New edition, 1983.]Google Scholar
Savage, L.J. 1954. The Foundations of Statistics. New York: Dover. [2nd revised edition, 1972.]Google Scholar
Seidenfeld, T., Kadane, J. B. and Schervish, M. J.. 1989. On the shared preferences of two Bayesian decision makers. Journal of Philosophy 86: 225–244.Google Scholar
Sen, A. 1973. Behaviour and the concept of preference. Economica 40: 241–259.Google Scholar
Sen, A. 1979. Utilitarianism and welfarism. Journal of Philosophy 76: 463–489.Google Scholar
Sen, A. 1985. Commodities and Capabilities. Amsterdam: North Holland.Google Scholar