Decision Theory and Social Ethics: Issues in Social Choice (Theory and Decision Library, 17) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9027709378 ISBN 13: 9789027709370

Publisher: Springer, 1978

Synopsis

Ethics, as one of the most respectable disciplines of philosophy, has undergone a drastic and revolutionary change in recent time. There are three main trends of this development. The first trend can be described as a tendency towards a rigorous formal and analytical language. This means simply that ethics has created beside its own formalized set­ theoretical language a variety of new formalized, logical and mathemati­ cal methods and concepts. Thus ethics has become a formalized meta­ or epidiscipline which is going to replace the traditional concepts, principles and ethical methods in the realm of social sciences. It is clear that a formalized form of ethics can be used more easily in social, economic and political theories if there are ethical conflicts to be solved. This first trend can be regarded as a conditio sine qua non for application in, and imposing ethical solutions on, social scientific theories. The second trend may be characterized as an association- or unification-tendency of a formalized and analytical ethics with decision theory. Decision theory as a new interdiscipline of social sciences is actually an assemblage of a variety of subtheories such as value-utility theory, game theory, collective decision theory, etc. Harsanyi has called this complex of subtheories a general theory of human behavior. Analytical or formal ethics is actually using this general theory of human behavior as a vehicle simply because this theory deals from the beginning with conflict solution, i. e.

About this edition

• Publisher: Springer
• Publication date: 1978
• ISBN 10: 9027709378
• ISBN 13: 9789027709370
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 351
• Editor: Gottinger H.W., Leinfellner W.