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“Taking Unconsidered Preferences Seriously*”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2017

Robert Sugden
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Extract

In normative economic analysis, it is conventional to treat each person's preferences as that person's own standard of value, and as the standard by which the effects of public policies on that person should be valued. The proposal that preferences should be treated in this way is usually qualified by two apparently natural conditions—that preferences are internally coherent, and that they reflect the considered judgements of the person concerned. However, there is now a great deal of evidence suggesting that, in many economic environments, preferences of the required kind simply do not exist. It seems that the preferences that govern people's actual behaviour are often incoherent and unstable. This prompts the following question: Is there a defensible form of normative economics which respects each individual's actual preferences, whatever form they take? I shall try to show that there is.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 59 , December 2006 , pp. 209 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2006

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