Sure, in the end we only really care about what comes top, as that’s the thing we choose. My feeling is that information on (relative) strengths of preferences is often available, and when it is available it seems to make sense to use it (e.g. allowing circumvention of Arrow’s theorem).
In particular, I worry that, when we only have ordinal preferences, the outcome of attempts to combine various preferences will depend heavily on how finely we divide up the world; by using information on strengths of preferences we can mitigate this.
Sure, in the end we only really care about what comes top, as that’s the thing we choose. My feeling is that information on (relative) strengths of preferences is often available, and when it is available it seems to make sense to use it (e.g. allowing circumvention of Arrow’s theorem).
In particular, I worry that, when we only have ordinal preferences, the outcome of attempts to combine various preferences will depend heavily on how finely we divide up the world; by using information on strengths of preferences we can mitigate this.