Skip to main content
Log in

Von Wright’s “The Logic of Preference” revisited

  • Published:
Synthese Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Preference is a key area where analytic philosophy meets philosophical logic. I start with two related issues: reasons for preference, and changes in preference, first mentioned in von Wright’s book The Logic of Preference but not thoroughly explored there. I show how these two issues can be handled together in one dynamic logical framework, working with structured two-level models, and I investigate the resulting dynamics of reason-based preference in some detail. Next, I study the foundational issue of entanglement between preference and beliefs, and relate the resulting richer logics to belief revision theory and decision theory.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Alchourrón C., Gärdenfors P., Makinson D. (1985) On the logic of theory change: Partial meet contraction and revision functions. Journal of Symbolic Logic 50: 510–530

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Andréka H., Ryan M., Schobbens P-Y. (2002) Operators and laws for combining preferential relations. Journal of Logic and Computation 12: 12–53

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baltag A., Moss L.S., Solecki S. (1998) The logic of common knowledge, public announcements, and private suspicions. In: Gilboa I. (eds) Proceedings of the 7th conference on theoretical aspects of rationality and knowledge (TARK 98). San Francisco, CA, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., pp 43–56

    Google Scholar 

  • Baltag, A., & Smets, S. (2006). Dynamic belief revision over multi-agent plausibility models. In Proceedings of the 7th conference on logic and the foundations of game and decision theory (LOFT 06), Liverpool.

  • Baltag A., & Smets, S. (2008). A qualitative theory of dynamic interactive belief revision. In G. Bonanno, W. van der Hoek, & M. Wooldridge (Eds.), Texts in logic and games. (to appear).

  • Benferhat, S., Cayol, C., Dubois, D., Lang, J., & Prade, H. (1993). Inconsistency management and prioritized syntax-based entailment. In Proceedings of IJCAI’93 (pp. 640–645).

  • Blackburn P., de Rijke M., Venema Y. (2001) Modal logic. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Boutilier C. (1994) Conditional logics of normality: A modal approach. Artificial Intelligence 68: 87–154

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coste-Marquis, S., Lang, J., Liberatore, P., & Marquis, P. (2004). Expressive power and succinctness of propositional languages for preference representation. In Proceedings of KR 2004. Barcelona, Spain: AAAI Press.

  • de Jongh D., & Liu, F. (2008). Preference, priorities and belief. In T. Grune-Yanoff & S. O. Hansson (Eds.), Preference change: Approaches from philosophy, economics and psychology. (to appear).

  • Gerbrandy, J. (1999). Bisimulation on Planet Kripke. PhD thesis, ILLC, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam.

  • Girard, P. (2008). Modal logics for belief and preference change. PhD thesis, Stanford University (to appear).

  • Halldén S. (1957) On the logic of “Better”. Lund, Library of Theoria

    Google Scholar 

  • Halpern J.Y. (1997) Defining relative likelihood in partially-ordered preferential structure. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 7: 1–24

    Google Scholar 

  • Hansson S.O. (1995) Changes in preference. Theory and Decision 38: 1–28

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hansson S.O. (2001) Preference logic. In: Gabbay D., Guenthner F. (eds) Handbook of philosophical logic (Vol. 4, Chap. 4). Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp 319–393

    Google Scholar 

  • Hansson, S. O., & Grüne-Yanoff, T. (2006). Preferences. In Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Stanford. http://plato.stanford.edu//entries/preferences/.

  • Jeffrey R.C. (1965) The logic of decision. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Lang, J., van der Torre, L., & Weydert, E. (2003). Hidden uncertainty in the logical representation of desires. In Proceedings of the 18th international joint conference on artificial intelligence (IJCAI’03), Acapulco, Mexico.

  • Lewis D. (1973) Counterfactuals. Blackwell, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Liu, F. (2004) Dynamic variations: Update and revision for diverse agents. Master’s thesis, MoL-2004-05, ILLC, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam.

  • Liu. F. (2008a). Changing for the better: Preference dynamics and agent diversity. PhD thesis, ILLC, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam.

  • Liu, F. (2008b). Logics for interaction between preference and belief. Manuscript, Department of Philosophy, Tsinghua University, Beijing.

  • Liu, F. (2008c). A two-level perspective on preference. Manuscript, Department of Philosophy, Tsinghua University, Beijing.

  • Plaza, J. A. (1989). Logics of public communication. In Proceedings of the 4th international symposium on methodologies for intelligent systems, Charlotte, North Carolina.

  • Savage L.J. (1954) The foundations of statistics. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Shoham Y., Leyton-Brown K. (2008) Multiagent systems: Algorithmic, game theoretic and logical foundations. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • van Benthem J. (1996) Exploring logical dynamics. CSLI Publication, Stanford

    Google Scholar 

  • van Benthem J. (2000) Information transfer across Chu spaces. Logic Journal of the IGPL 8: 719–731

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Benthem, J. (2007). Dynamic logic for belief revision. Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logic, 17, 129–156. Technical Report, PP-2006-11, ILLC, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

  • van Benthem, J. (2008). For better or for worse: Dynamic logic of preference. In T. Grune-Yanoff & S. O. Hansson (Eds.), Preference change: Approaches from philosophy, economics and psychology, Theory and Decision Library. (to appear).

  • van Benthem, J. & Liu, F. (2007). Dynamic logic of preference upgrade. Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logic, 17, 157–182. Technical Report, PP-2005-29, ILLC, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

  • van Benthem, J., Roy, O., & Girard, P. (2007). Everything else being equal: A modal logic approach to ceteris paribus preferences. Technical Report, PP-2007-09, ILLC, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

  • van Benthem, J., van Eijck, J., & Frolova, A. (1993). Changing preferences. Technical Report, CS-93-10. Amsterdam: Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science.

  • van Benthem, J., van Otterloo, S., & Roy, O. (2006). Preference logic, conditionals and solution concepts in games. In H. Lagerlund, S. Lindström, & R. Sliwinski (Eds.), Modality matters: Twenty-five essays in honour of Krister Segerberg (pp. 61–77). Uppsala Philosophical Studies, 53.

  • van Ditmarsch H., van der Hoek W., Kooi B. (2007) Dynamic epistemic logic. Springer, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  • Veltman F. (1996) Defaults in update semantics. Journal of Philosophical Logic 25: 221–261

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • von Wright G.H. (1963) The logic of preference. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh

    Google Scholar 

  • Yamada, T. (2006). Acts of commands and changing obligations. In K. Inoue, K. Satoh, & F. Toni (Eds.),Proceedings of the 7th workshop on computational logic in multi-agent systems (CLIMA VII). Revised version appeared in LNAI 4371 (pp. 1–19, 2007). Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

  • Yamada, T. (2007). Logical dynamics of some speech acts that affect obligations and preferences. In J. van Benthem, S. Ju, & F. Veltman (Eds.), A meeting of the minds—Proceedings of the workshop on logic, rationality and interaction (pp. 275–289). London: King’s College Publications.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fenrong Liu.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Liu, F. Von Wright’s “The Logic of Preference” revisited. Synthese 175, 69–88 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-009-9530-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-009-9530-z

Keywords

Navigation