What happens if my valuation is noncircular, but is incomplete? What if I only have a partial order over states of the world? Suppose I say “I prefer state X to Z, and don’t express a preference between X and Y, or between Y and Z.” I am not saying that X and Y are equivalent; I am merely refusing to judge.
My impression is that real human preference routinely looks like this; there are lots of cases people refuse to evaluate or don’t evaluate consistently.
It seems like even with partial preferences, one can be consequentialist—if you don’t have clear preferences between outcomes, you have a choice that isn’t morally relevant. Or is there a self-contradiction lurking?
Suppose I say “I prefer state X to Z, and don’t express a preference between X and Y, or between Y and Z.” I am not saying that X and Y are equivalent; I am merely refusing to judge.
If the result of that partial preference is that you start with Z and then decline the sequence of trades Z->Y->X, then you got dutch booked.
Otoh, maybe you want to accept the sequence Z->Y->X if you expect both trades to be offered, but decline each in isolation? But then your decision procedure is dynamically inconsistent: Standing at Z and expecting both trade offers, you have to precommit to using a different algorithm to evaluate the Y->X trade than you will want to use once you have Y.
I think I see the point about dynamic inconsistency. It might be that “I got to state Y from Z” will alter my decisionmaking about Y versus X.
I suppose it means that my decision of what to do in state Y no longer depends purely on consequences, but also on history, at which point they revoke my consequentialist party membership.
But why is that so terrible? It’s a little weird, but I’m not sure it’s actually inconsistent or violates any of my moral beliefs. I have all sorts of moral beliefs about ownership and rights that are history-dependent so it’s not like history-dependence is a new strange thing.
You could have undefined value, but it’s not particularly intuitive, and I don’t think anyone actually advocates it as a component of a consequentialist theory.
Whether, in real life, people actually do it is a different story. I mean, it’s quite likely that humans violate the VNM model of rationality, but that could just be because we’re not rational.
What happens if my valuation is noncircular, but is incomplete? What if I only have a partial order over states of the world? Suppose I say “I prefer state X to Z, and don’t express a preference between X and Y, or between Y and Z.” I am not saying that X and Y are equivalent; I am merely refusing to judge.
My impression is that real human preference routinely looks like this; there are lots of cases people refuse to evaluate or don’t evaluate consistently.
It seems like even with partial preferences, one can be consequentialist—if you don’t have clear preferences between outcomes, you have a choice that isn’t morally relevant. Or is there a self-contradiction lurking?
If the result of that partial preference is that you start with Z and then decline the sequence of trades Z->Y->X, then you got dutch booked.
Otoh, maybe you want to accept the sequence Z->Y->X if you expect both trades to be offered, but decline each in isolation? But then your decision procedure is dynamically inconsistent: Standing at Z and expecting both trade offers, you have to precommit to using a different algorithm to evaluate the Y->X trade than you will want to use once you have Y.
I think I see the point about dynamic inconsistency. It might be that “I got to state Y from Z” will alter my decisionmaking about Y versus X.
I suppose it means that my decision of what to do in state Y no longer depends purely on consequences, but also on history, at which point they revoke my consequentialist party membership.
But why is that so terrible? It’s a little weird, but I’m not sure it’s actually inconsistent or violates any of my moral beliefs. I have all sorts of moral beliefs about ownership and rights that are history-dependent so it’s not like history-dependence is a new strange thing.
You could have undefined value, but it’s not particularly intuitive, and I don’t think anyone actually advocates it as a component of a consequentialist theory.
Whether, in real life, people actually do it is a different story. I mean, it’s quite likely that humans violate the VNM model of rationality, but that could just be because we’re not rational.