DECISION THEORY AND SOCIAL ETHICS Issues in Social Choice

GOTTINGER, Hans W. & LEINFELLNER, Werner (eds)

ISBN 10: 9027708878 / ISBN 13: 9789027708878

Published by D. Reidel, Dordrecht, Boston & London, 1976

About this Item

'Theory and Decision Library' series t.p. (this being Vol.17), t.p.+xxii+329; clean, tight and unmarked in bright unworn dark brown cloth covers, near pristine; unclipped jacket generally clean, slight edge-rubbing, spine and edges lightly browned, tiny scuff to front outer edge and a few small spots of trivial surface damage, will add protective sleeve when ordered. Scarce.

Seller Inventory # 009977

Bibliographic Details

• Title: DECISION THEORY AND SOCIAL ETHICS Issues in Social Choice
• Publisher: D. Reidel, Dordrecht, Boston & London
• Publication Date: 1976
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9027708878
• ISBN 13: 9789027708878
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: VG-
• Seller catalogs:
  • Politics & Economics (inc. War)
  • Psychology & Human Sciences
  • Philosophy

About this title

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.