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Preference and Choice

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Introduction to Formal Philosophy

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Abstract

Preferences and choices have central roles in moral philosophy, economics, and the decision sciences in general. In a formal language we can express and explore the properties of preferences, choices, and their interrelations in a precise way, and uncover connections that are inaccessible without formal tools. In this chapter, the plausibility of different such properties is discussed, and it is shown how close attention to the logical details can help dissolve some apparent paradoxes in informal and semi-formal treatments.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    On preference transitivity, see also Chap. 31.

  2. 2.

    Obviously, choice functions can be defined so that picking is not needed: A monoselective choice function [11] is one that selects a single element out of any non-empty set to which it can be applied.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Karin Edvardsson Björnberg and Philippe Mongin for very useful comments on an earlier version of this text.

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Correspondence to Sven Ove Hansson .

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Hansson, S.O. (2018). Preference and Choice. In: Hansson, S., Hendricks, V. (eds) Introduction to Formal Philosophy. Springer Undergraduate Texts in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77434-3_29

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