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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Opponents of Bergson and Samuelson misunderstood their po... — Carmelics
    Home/Skepticism
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Opponents of Bergson and Samuelson misunderstood their position rather than successfully refuting it.

    Skepticism
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Bergson and Samuelson held that individual utility functions are to be constructed from preference orderings via fairness principles, not assumed to carry cardinal or interpersonally comparable information.
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    • 2.The logical possibility of constructing such utility functions from ordinal non-comparable preferences is indisputable.
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    • 3.Critics treated the W(U1,…,Un) formula as requiring richer utility information than Bergson and Samuelson actually claimed.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Arrow's impossibility theorem demonstrates that no social welfare function can satisfy minimal rationality conditions while deriving from ordinal non-comparable preferences.
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    • 2.If W(U1,…,Un) cannot be coherently constructed from ordinal inputs alone, the Bergson-Samuelson framework presupposes interpersonal comparability whether or not they acknowledged it.
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    • 3.Critics like Little and Sen were therefore exposing a structural dependency, not merely misreading the framework's stated commitments.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Robbins argued influentially that interpersonal utility comparisons are empirically meaningless, removing the scientific basis for any cardinal weighting within W(U1,…,Un).
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    • 2.Samuelson's response that the social welfare function merely reflects an ethical observer's value judgments concedes that the framework imports normative content that ordinal preferences alone cannot supply.
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    • 3.This concession vindicates critics who charged that the framework obscures rather than resolves the foundational problem of aggregating distinct persons' welfare.
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    Topics

    SkepticismTruth & Knowledge

    Connections

    3 topics

    Consequentialism3 linkedSocial Contract1 linkedModality & Possibility1 linked

    Related

    Arrow's impossibility theorem demonstrates that no social welfare function can s...Bergson and Samuelson held that individual utility functions are to be construct...Critics like Little and Sen were therefore exposing a structural dependency, not...Critics treated the W(U1,…,Un) formula as requiring richer utility information t...
    +5 moreShow less
    If W(U1,…,Un) cannot be coherently constructed from ordinal inputs alone, the Be...Robbins argued influentially that interpersonal utility comparisons are empirica...

    Similar

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    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: economic-justice
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    Bergson (1938) and Samuelson (1947, 1981) occupy a special position, which may be described as a third way between old and new welfare economics. From the former, they retain the goal of making complete and consistent social welfare judgments with the help of well-defined social welfare functions. The formula W(U1(x),…,Un(x)) is often named a “Bergson-Samuelson social welfare function” (x is the social state; Ui(x), for i=1,…,n, is individual i’s utility in this state). With the latter, however,
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Samuelson's response that the social welfare function merely reflects an ethical...
    The logical possibility of constructing such utility functions from ordinal non-...
    This concession vindicates critics who charged that the framework obscures rathe...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit