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WHY ARROW'S IMPOSSIBILITY THEOREM IS INVALID
Author(s) -
Gendin Sidney
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
journal of social philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.353
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 1467-9833
pISSN - 0047-2786
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9833.1994.tb00311.x
Subject(s) - arrow's impossibility theorem , social choice theory , arrow , social welfare function , presupposition , soundness , mathematical economics , impossibility , preference , epistemology , philosophy , mathematics , social welfare , computer science , law , political science , linguistics , statistics , programming language
In 1951, Kenneth Arrow published his now celebrated book Social Choice and Individual Values. Although not the first book to be written on social choice, Arrow's work ushered in a voluminous literature mostly produced by economists but by philosophers and political scientists as well. Arrow's chief result was a proof of the impossibility of a social welfare function (hereafter “SWF”). He showed that there could be no decision procedure for aggregating individual preference orderings into a grand, overall social preference ordering. The result has been hailed by some as a sort of Godel Theorem of economics. It has seemed to many to have, if not the complexity of the Godel Theorem, at least the same astonishing counter‐intuitiveness. On the other hand, some social choice theorists, while conceding the validity of the Arrow Theorem, have challenged its soundness by quarreling with one or more of its presuppositions.