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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2011
A consequence cannot make evil an action that was good nor good an action that was evil.
St. Thomas AquinasThat the morality of actions depends on the consequences which they tend to produce, is the doctrine of rational persons of all schools; that the good or evil of these consequences is measured solely by pleasure or pain, is all of the doctrine of the school of utility, which is peculiar to it.
J. S. Mill (from Warnock, 1962, p. 120)It must always be the duty of every agent to do that one, among all the actions which he can do on any given occasion, whose total consequences will have the greatest intrinsic value.
G. E. Moore (1912, p. 121)Motivation and outline
Introduction
Ever since the publication of the first edition of Arrow's Social choice and individual values, controversy has surrounded several of the conditions that he showed would lead inexorably to a dictatorship. Some of the controversy was discussed in the second edition (Arrow 1963). Much has happened since then, largely reflected in Sen (1970, 1982, 1984, 1985) as well as Arrow (1983).
Two conditions in particular were often relaxed in an attempt to escape from dictatorship. One was independence of irrelevant alternatives, and a second was ordinality of the social choice function.
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