A solution to the discursive dilemma

Philosophical Studies 152 (2):181 - 188 (2011)
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Abstract

An impossibility result pertaining to the aggregation of individual judgements is thought by many to have significant implications for political theory, social epistemology and metaphysics. When members of a group hold a rational set of judgments on some interconnected questions, the theorem shows, it isn't always (logically) possible for them to aggregate their judgements into a collective one in conformity with seemingly very plausible constraints. I reject one of the constraints which engender the dilemma. The analogy with the lottery paradox, I argue, shows that rational belief needn't be consistent. So the alleged implications of the dilemma are dispelled

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References found in this work

Probability and the logic of rational belief.Henry Ely Kyburg - 1961 - Middletown, Conn.,: Wesleyan University Press.
Groups with minds of their own.Philip Pettit - 2011 - In Alvin I. Goldman & Dennis Whitcomb (eds.), Social Epistemology: Essential Readings. New York: Oxford University Press.
The Logic of Conditionals.Ernest Adams, Ernest W. Adams, Jaakko Hintikka & Patrick Suppes - 1965 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 39 (3):609-611.

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