Coherent Welfarism from Inconsistent Preferences

时间：2011年4月1日（星期五） 下午 3:30 – 5:30
地点：清华大学 新斋238房间
主办：清华大学哲学系
报告人：Till Grune-Yanoff 博士（University of Helsinki）

报告摘要: Critics of preference-centered welfarism have argued that because people often hold inconsistent and conicting preferences, they lack `true preferences’ that could serve as the basis for welfare judgments. This lack, they suggest, legitimizes the imposition of paternalistically motivated values. In contrast to this claim, I present a model of preference state consolidation that restores the minimal consistency necessary to make preference informed welfare judgments, while at the same time respecting as much as possible of an agent’s actual preference state, as well as her most integrated preferences. This model reconstructs a consistent evaluation from the agent’s inconsistent preferences, and hence does not impose values paternalistically. Formal properties of the preference consolidation models are proven, its function illustrated at the hand of a concrete case, and its advantages shown in comparison with two related accounts.