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Rationality, Morality, and Impossibility Theorems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Fred M. Frohock
Fred M. Frohock*
Affiliation:
Syracuse University
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Abstract

The impossibility theorem developed by Kenneth Arrow has implications for both rationality and morality in political thought. Transitivity in a collective ordering can be assured only with a decisive set, but this outcome is acknowledged as morally undesirable. The alternatives exhibited by the theorem thus seem to require a choice between rationality and morality. But exit routes can be cut out of this dilemma with the idea of a conditional ordering, one where warranting factors attach to a ranking of alternatives. Conditional orderings form two senses of collective rationality. One is represented by compound directives, which avoid the rational problems of the theorem by warranting local orderings. The second is moral fusion, which requires a reasoned dominance in collective outcomes. These two forms of conditional rationality put into relief the restricted scope of the composition rules and individualism of Arrow's theorem, and suggest alternative relationships of individual and social whole.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 74 , Issue 2 , June 1980 , pp. 373 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1980

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