Theory Choice, Good Sense and Social Consensus

Pierre Duhem's good sense as a guide to theory choice.

This paper examines Duhem's concept of good sense as an attempt to support a non rule-governed account of rationality in theory choice. Faced with the underdetermination of theory by evidence thesis and the continuity thesis, Duhem tried to account for the ability of scientists to choose theories that continuously grow to a natural classification. I will examine the concept of good sense and th...

Consensus Software: Robustness and Social Good

Level \(r\) consensus and stable social choice

We propose the concept of level r consensus as a useful property of a preference profile which considerably enhances the stability of social choice. This concept involves a weakening of unanimity, the most extreme form of consensus. It is shown that if a preference profile exhibits level r consensus around a given preference relation, there exists a Condorcet winner. In addition, if the number ...

Social Choice Theory

1. revised and extended axiomatic theory and proof development. 2. a new curriculum with extensive questions, intuitive illustrations of key concepts, exercises in formal proofs, and an emphasis on the use of mathematical logic as a formal tool for the analysis of informal concept". 3. parallel languages-a completely new formal language containing concise formulas for use in proofs together wit...

Rational Choice Theory as Formalized Common Sense

Few methodological issues are more stubborn than the status of rational choice theory (henceforth, RCT): the debates surrounding it are approximately five decades old with no end in sight. Fifty years are a long time not only in the life of any human being but also in the progress of a discipline so it is remarkable that the discussion is not closer to a conclusion now than what it was at its i...