A defining characteristic of a liberal democratic society is the assignment of basic rights and liberties that protect each person's private sphere. Hence, social choice made in a liberal democratic society must at the very least be consistent with the exercise of each person's basic rights. However, even when everybody agrees to this basic principle, there could still remain irreconcilable social conflict and disagreement when it comes to the specific assignment of basic rights. This is especially so in a pluralistic society where there is a clash among radically different and incompatible world views. Philosophers have now started to focus on this issue, which now goes by the name 'perspectival diversity'. This paper extends the basic social choice theoretic framework of liberal rights by enlarging the domain to include individual perspectives alongside individual preferences. In this new framework, different individuals are able to see or perceive the same social alternative differently based on their own unique perspectives. The formal results of the paper imply that generating a viable social choice that is consistent with the assignment of basic rights can quickly break down once we start to increase the level of perspectival diversity in society.

How should consumers exercise their basic economic powers? Recently, several authors have argued that consumption to bring about social change must be democratic. Others maintain that we may consume in ways that we believe promote positive change. This paper rejects both accounts and provides a new alternative. It argues that, under just institutions, people may consume as they like as long as they respect the institutions’ rules. Absent just institutions, significant moral constraints on consumption exist. Still, it is permissible, if not obligatory, for people to pursue non-democratic, genuinely positive, change within whatever moral constraints exist.

Proponents of evidence-based policy (EBP) call for public policy to be informed by high-quality evidence from randomized controlled trials. This methodological preference aims to promote several epistemic values, e.g. rigour, unbiasedness, precision, and the ability to obtain causal conclusions. I argue that there is a trade-off between these epistemic values and several non-epistemic, moral and political values. This is because the evidence afforded by standard EBP methods is differentially useful for pursuing different moral and political values. I expand on how this challenges ideals of value-freedom and -neutrality in EBP, and offer suggestions for how EBP methodology might be revised.

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (T/S) have defended ‘nudges’ aimed at smoking, overeating, etc. as a ‘means’ paternalism that leaves its targets ‘better off as judged by themselves’. Their libertarian critics have charged that these behaviours are often perfectly rational and that the nudges would ‘impose’ on their targets ‘ends’ that they reject. This paper argues that whether or not the behaviours are rational is difficult to say, but the critics are right in claiming that T/S fail to take seriously their targets’ true preferences. This is evident, in particular, in Sunstein's recent reply to an ‘autonomy objection’ to nudging. The upshot is that the nudging paternalism T/S support cannot be defended as a means paternalism that is deferential to its targets’ own ends or values. The only way to defend it is via a ‘prudential’ paternalism that, given the preferences of many of its targets, will often be ‘ends’ paternalism.

One view of practical reasoning is that it involves the weighing of reasons. It is not clear, however, how the weights of reasons combine, especially given the logical and substantive relations among different reasons. Nor is it clear how the weighing of reasons relates to decision theoretic maximization of expected value. This paper constructs a formal model of reasons and their weight in order to shed light on these issues. The model informs philosophical debates about reasons, such as the question of whether reasons or values are more fundamental and the opposing doctrines of atomism and holism about reasons.

Decision theorists have suggested that it is sometimes appropriate to represent the value of certain options as intervals of real numbers. In this note I show that doing so is incompatible with some deeply held intuitions about rational choice.