6 November 2009
Logic and Games Seminar at CUNY : Nash vs. Arrow and Sen: How the Nash Program Unifies the Social Sciences by Recourse to Objective Needs
Posted by Olivier Roy under: Activities; Computational Social Choice; Conference and workshop announcements; Game Theory; Preferences, Intentions, Emotions; Social Choice Theory .
| Friday, November 13, 2009 | ||
| 4:45 pm | to | 6:45 pm |
| 4:45 pm | to | 6:45 pm |
Friday, November 13, 2009 4:15 pm Room 4419, GC
Professor Sonja Amadae (Ohio State University)
Nash vs. Arrow and Sen: How the Nash Program Unifies the Social
Sciences by Recourse to Objective Needs
Abstract. In this paper I explore the implication of the basic insight that the Nash bargaining solution resolves the Arrow and Sen impossibility theorems through the introduction of von Neuman Morgenstern utilities and a disagreement point. I argue that John Nash, as he has been interpreted by Ken Binmore and Partha Dasgupta, addresses social choices given a shared source of value whereas Kenneth Arrow and Amartya Sen focus on agents’ preferences over divergent sources of value. Thus, it is normal to present Nash’s bargain as a problem of how to divide $100, and a social choice problem as one addressing policies over same sex marriage, reproductive choice, and capital punishment. Another obvious distinction between the Nash program and social choice theory is that the former is unabashedly positive whereas the latter is constructively normative. My central point is that insofar as the Nash program succeeds, its success rests on a tacit recourse to accepting that biological agents have objective needs, and that they must compete for the command of scarce resources as a condition of
survival. Essentially, whereas the condition of universal domain standard in social choice theory permits no external censor to pass judgment on or filter individuals’ preferences according to a standard of correctness, the Nash program suggests that agents compete over the same source of fitness value. In the works of Binmore and Dasgupta, von Neumann Morgenstern utilities reflect an agent’s biological level of need. Moreover, the otherwise arbitrary disagreement point reflects de facto considerations such as whether an agent’s access to food calories and ability to work for food calories is better served by
exiting a relationship, or by contributing and sharing its spoils.
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