Mistakes about Preferences in the Social Sciences
Philosophy of the Social Sciences 41 (1):3-25 (2011)
| Abstract | Preferences are the central notion in mainstream economic theory, yet economists say little about what preferences are. This article argues that preferences in mainstream positive economics are comparative evaluations with respect to everything relevant to value or choice, and it argues against three mistaken views of preferences: (1) that they are matters of taste, concerning which rational assessment is inappropriate, (2) that preferences coincide with judgments of expected self-interested benefit, and (3) that preferences can be defined in terms of choices | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,865 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesJonathan Aldred (2007). Intransitivity and Vague Preferences. Journal of Ethics 11 (4):377 - 403.
Margaret P. Gilbert (2001). Collective Preferences, Obligations, and Rational Choice. Economics and Philosophy 17 (1):109-119.
Donald Bruckner (2011). Second-Order Preferences and Instrumental Rationality. Acta Analytica 26 (4):367-385.
Peter Stone (2003). The Impossibility of Rational Politics? Politics, Philosophy and Economics 2 (2):239-263.
Donald W. Bruckner (2007). Rational Responsibility for Preferences and Moral Responsibility for Character Traits. Journal of Philosophical Research 32:191-209.
Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca (2008). A Preference for Selfish Preferences: The Problem of Motivations in Rational Choice Political Science. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 38 (3):361-378.
Jordan Howard Sobel (2004). On Wakker's Critique of Allais-Preferences. Croatian Journal of Philosophy 4 (2):253-272.
Jordan Howard Sobel (1997). Cyclical Preferences and World Bayesianism. Philosophy of Science 64 (1):42-73.
Martin Peterson (2006). Indeterminate Preferences. Philosophical Studies 130 (2):297-320.
Johan E. Gustafsson (2010). A Money-Pump for Acyclic Intransitive Preferences. Dialectica 64 (2):251–257.
Donald W. Bruckner (2009). In Defense of Adaptive Preferences. Philosophical Studies 142 (3):307 - 324.
Jelle de Boer (2012). A Strawson–Lewis Defence of Social Preferences. Economics and Philosophy 28 (3):291-310.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2011-01-06Total downloads37 ( #32,520 of 556,807 )Recent downloads (6 months)3 ( #27,255 of 556,807 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
