Abstract

Jon Elster contrasts preference acquisition through sour grapes with preference acquisition through character planning. He claims that what distinguishes these psychological phenomena is that only the latter is autonomous and intentional. I argue against this view and propose an alternative account which runs parallel to Donald Davidson's analysis of weakness of the will. On my account, preference acquisition through character planning secures the coherence between preferences and the reasons for holding these preferences, while preference acquisition through sour grapes does not. I then suggest that this account as well as moral theories that acknowledge conflicting moral concerns are threatened by alternative interpretations of Arrow's voting paradox in social choice theory. I discuss how appeals to various forms of moral supervenience , and, analogues to Amartya Sen's objections to a reading of Arrow's theorem in terms of social welfare judgments, affect these paradoxical interpretations. I argue that analogues to Sen's appeal to non-welfare information can dissolve these interpretations, though open the door for new threats from alternative interpretations of Sen's libertarian paradox