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AGGREGATING MORAL PREFERENCES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2016

Matthew D. Adler
Matthew D. Adler*
Affiliation:
Duke Law School, 210 Science Drive, Durham, NC 27708, USA. Email: adler@law.duke.edu. URL: https://law.duke.edu/fac/adler/
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Abstract:

Preference-aggregation problems arise in various contexts. One such context, little explored by social choice theorists, is metaethical. ‘Ideal-advisor’ accounts, which have played a major role in metaethics, propose that moral facts are constituted by the idealized preferences of a community of advisors. Such accounts give rise to a preference-aggregation problem: namely, aggregating the advisors’ moral preferences. Do we have reason to believe that the advisors, albeit idealized, can still diverge in their rankings of a given set of alternatives? If so, what are the moral facts (in particular, the comparative moral goodness of the alternatives) when the advisors do diverge? These questions are investigated here using the tools of Arrovian social choice theory.

Keywords

metaethicsideal advisorpreference aggregationsocial choicemoral preferences
Type
Symposium on Rational Choice and Philosophy
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , July 2016 , pp. 283 - 321
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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