Abstract
The possibility of ascribing rational changes of beliefs to collectives is discussed. Limits on what a collective can believe are inferred from the assumption that the collective should change its belief in α if all its members change their belief in α. It is also shown that some very reasonable assumptions about the collective beliefs results in an inconsistency.
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Notes
- 1.
How to get a collective choice function from the choice functions of individuals is studied in the field of social choice (see Sen 1970). The problem studied there is in some ways similar to the subject of this article but there are some noticeable differences. First, in social choice many orderings are combined into one ordering. Here we combine unordered sets into one unordered set. Secondly, the problem discussed in this text have a dynamic aspect, it is the changes that are studied. There is no dynamic element in social choice. That being said, it could be worth studying if there is a connection between some of the results presented here and results from the studies of social choice.
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Westlund, D. (2010). Rational Belief Changes for Collective Agents. In: Olsson, E., Enqvist, S. (eds) Belief Revision meets Philosophy of Science. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol 21. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9609-8_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9609-8_9
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