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Which Worlds are Possible? A Judgment Aggregation Problem

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Abstract

Suppose the members of a group (e.g., committee, jury, expert panel) each form a judgment on which worlds in a given set are possible, subject to the constraint that at least one world is possible but not all are. The group seeks to aggregate these individual judgments into a collective judgment, subject to the same constraint. I show that no judgment aggregation rule can solve this problem in accordance with three conditions: “unanimity,” “independence” and “non-dictatorship,” Although the result is a variant of an existing theorem on “group identification” (Kasher and Rubinstein, Logique et Analyse 160:385–395, 1997), the aggregation of judgments on which worlds are possible (or permissible, desirable, etc.) appears not to have been studied yet. The result challenges us to take a stance on which of its conditions to relax.

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Correspondence to Christian List.

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List, C. Which Worlds are Possible? A Judgment Aggregation Problem. J Philos Logic 37, 57–65 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10992-007-9058-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10992-007-9058-y

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