Social choice

By Hamlin, Alan

Social choice theory is the branch of economics concerned with the relationships between individual values, preferences and rights and collective decision making and evaluation. Social choice theory therefore ...

Sen, Amartya (1933–)

By Qizilbash, Mozaffar

Amartya Sen is one of the leading economists of the twentieth century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in 1998. His influence extends well beyond economics ...

Economics and ethics

By Hausman, Daniel; McPherson, Michael S.

Unlike many other sciences, economics is linked both to ethics and to the theory of rationality. Although many economists regard economics as a ‘positive’ science of one sort ...

Social sciences, philosophy of

By Ruben, David-Hillel

Although some of the topics and issues treated in the philosophy of social science are as old as philosophy itself (for example, the contrast between nature and convention ...

General will

By Nicholson, Peter P.

The fundamental claim for general will is that the members of a political community, as members, share a public or general interest or good which is for the ...

Social epistemology

Social epistemology encompasses the study of the social dimensions of knowledge acquisition and transmission (Palermos and Pritchard 2013), the evaluation of beliefs and belief-forming mechanisms in their social ...

Population and ethics

By Heyd, David

Ethical concern with population policies and with the issue of optimal population size is, generally speaking, a modern phenomenon. Although the first divine injunction of the Bible is ...

Rational choice theory

By Hardin, Russell

Rational choice theory is the descendant of earlier philosophical political economy. Its core is the effort to explain and sometimes to justify collective results of individuals acting from ...

Population and ethics

Ethical concern with population policies and with the issue of optimal population size is, generally speaking, a modern phenomenon. Although the first divine injunction of the Bible is ...

Risk assessment

By Shrader-Frechette, Kristin

Probabilistic or quantitative risk assessment (QRA) aims to identify, estimate and evaluate a variety of threats to human health and safety. These threats arise primarily from particular technologies ...

Economics, philosophy of

By Hausman, Daniel

People have thought about economics for as long as they have thought about how to manage their households, indeed Aristotle compared the study of the economic affairs of ...

Democracy

By Harrison, Ross

Democracy means rule by the people, as contrasted with rule by a special person or group. It is a system of decision making in which everyone who belongs ...

Democracy

Democracy means rule by the people, as contrasted with rule by a special person or group. It is a system of decision making in which everyone who belongs ...

Morality and emotions

By Nussbaum, Martha C.

Emotions such as anger, fear, grief, envy, compassion, love and jealousy have a close connection to morality. Philosophers have generally agreed that they can pose problems for morality ...

Welfare

By Weale, Albert

Notions of welfare occur widely in political philosophy and political argument. For example, utilitarianism is a social ethic that may be interpreted as giving a pre-eminent place to ...

Development ethics

By Crocker, David A.

Development ethics is ethical reflection on the ends and means of socioeconomic change in poor countries and regions. It has several sources: criticism of colonialism and post-Second World ...

Self-interest

By Oneill, John

The concept of self-interest is used in two distinct ways. It sometimes refers to what is in a person’s interests, to well-being understood as what makes their life ...

Rationality of belief

By Adler, Jonathan E.

Humans, claimed Aristotle, are rational animals. However, recent psychological studies purport to show that people systematically deviate from canons of logic, probability theory, decision theory and statistics. Interpretations ...