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Hard Choices

Hard Choices

Hard Choices

Decision Making under Unresolved Conflict
Isaac Levi
August 1990
Paperback
9780521386302

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NZD$77.95
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Paperback

    It is a commonplace that in making decisions agents often have to juggle competing values, and that no choice will maximise satisfaction of them all. However, the prevailing account of these cases assumes that there is always a single ranking of the agent's values, and therefore no unresolvable conflict between them. Isaac Levi denies this assumption, arguing that agents often must choose without having balanced their different values and that to be rational, an act does not have to be optimal, only what Levi terms 'admissible'. This book explores the consequences of denying the assumption and develops a general approach to decision-making under unresolved conflict. Professor Levi discusses conflicts of value in several domains - those arising in moral dilemmas, the drawing of scientific inferences, decisions taken under uncertainty, and in social choice. In each of these he adapts his theoretical framework, showing how conflict may often be reduced though not always altogether eliminated.

    Product details

    August 1990
    Paperback
    9780521386302
    264 pages
    228 × 152 × 18 mm
    0.362kg
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • Preface
    • 1. Moral struggle
    • 2. Dilemmas
    • 3. Values in scientific inquiry
    • 4. Choice and foreknowledge
    • 5. Value structures
    • 6. Values revealed by choices
    • 7. Uncertainty as a source of conflict
    • 8. Conflict and social agency
    • 9. Distributing benefits
    • 10. Utilarianism and conflict
    • 11. Social choice theory
    • 12. Conflict and inquiry
    • Notes
    • Bibliography
    • Name index
    • Subject index.
      Author
    • Isaac Levi