Dietrich, Franz (2006) General representation of epistemically optimal procedures. Social choice and welfare, 26 (2). pp. 263-283. ISSN 1432-217X
Abstract
Assuming that votes are independent, the epistemically optimal procedure in a binary collective choice problem is known to be a weighted supermajority rule with weights given by personal log likelihood ratios. It is shown here that an analogous result holds in a much more general model. Firstly, the result follows from a more basic principle than expected-utility maximisation, namely from an axiom (“Epistemic Monotonicity”) which requires neither utilities nor prior probabilities of the ‘correctness’ of alternatives. Secondly, a person’s input need not be a vote for an alternative; it may be any type of input, for instance a subjective degree of belief or probability of the correctness of one of the alternatives. The case of a profile of subjective degrees of belief is particularly appealing, since no parameters such as competence parameters need to be known here.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://www.springerlink.com/content/0176-1714/ |
| Additional Information: | © 2006 Springer |
| Library of Congress subject classification: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BC Logic |
| Sets: | Departments > Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method Research centres and groups > Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS) |
| Rights: | http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/rights/LSERO.htm |
| URL: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/35826/ |
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