André Lapidus

Individual utility in a context of asymmetric sensitivity to pleasure and pain: an interpretation of Bentham's felicific calculus

This paper aims at exploring, in a formal way, Benthams statement that ‘the pleasure of gaining is not equal to the evil of losing’, which belongs to those aspects of the principle of utility left aside by Jevons‘ reconstruction. Consequently, the agent’s preference order will be viewed as depending on his initial situation, and on asymmetric sensitivity to gains and losses, relative to this situation. This leads 1) to discuss the coexistence of multiple preference orders, illustrated by Benthams analysis of the optimal labour contract; and 2) to introduce true deliberation as a consequence of the gap between positive choice and rival assessments of utility.

Norm, Virtue and Information: Individual Behaviour and the Just Price in Thomas Aquinas' Summa theologica

Question 77 of the Summa Theologiae (IIa-IIae) contains the crux of the analysis Thomas Aquinas devotes to the just price 1. The expression itself (justum pretium) however appears only rarely in these passages 2, and a cursory reading might lead one to conclude only too readily that the object of these few pages is to be found elsewhere. In some respects, such a spontaneous reading would be a fair one. Although Question 77 bears the heading “On the fraud committed in purchase and sale”, its object, which is much more complex, only deals indirectly with the just price. Alone, however, this heading does make it possible to assess the extent of the investigation Thomas Aquinas carries out. This does not in any respect mean drawing up a price theory that would contain its own principle of intelligibility. The objective here, is more limited, and reveals the subordinate character of economic thought: by way of a group of normative prescriptions, tending to distinguish that which is just in commercial transactions from that which is not, the issue is one of enlightening a confessor vis-à-vis his penitent, or even the judge in an ecclesiastical tribunal. From this perspective, the Thomistic construction brings together two levels of analysis. The first involves establishing a referential norm the just price (section 1), whereas the second deals with the circumstances, which allow the priest to obtain the correct information that had caused the transaction price to reach this norm or, on the contrary, to depart from it (sections 2 and 3).

The Valuation of Decision and Individual Welfare: A Humean Approach

Abstract Drawing on passages in Book II of the Treatise of Human Nature (1739/40), in the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), in the Dissertation on the Passions (1757), and in some of the Essays (1777), this paper is built upon Humes distinction between three alternative valuations of an individual position: desire (which leads to action), interest, and happiness. The difficulty comes from the fact that desire does not depend on pleasure as an impression, but on the force of an idea of pleasure, based upon a belief in the realisation of the correlative impression. Typically, this belief is linked to the underlying emotional state, expressed in the degree of violence of the passions, which governs both the individuals reactivity to pleasure, and his preference for present (compared with future) pleasures. On the contrary, interest and happiness do not depend on the distortion introduced by beliefs, and are directly linked to pleasure. It is shown that the decisional valuation only coincides with interest in the case of what Hume called a ‘calm passion’, which gives birth to the greatest happiness.

A Humean theory of choice of which rationality may be one consequence

For the reader who considers economic theory of choice as a special case of a more general theory of action, Humes discussion of the determinants of action in the Treatise of Human Nature (1739 – 40), in the Enquiry on Human Understanding (1748) and in the Dissertation on Passions (1757) deserves attention. However, according to some modern commentators, Hume does not seem to have given any evidence that would favour what nowadays we would consider as the kind of rationality involved in modern theories of rational choice. On the contrary, this paper arrives at the conclusion that consistency between preferences and choice, like the usual properties of completeness and transitivity, may be considered as outcomes of a mental process, described by means of a decision algorithm that aims to represent Humes theory of choice.

Why rationality may be a consequence of Hume's theory of choice

Facing R. Sugdens criticism of our interpretation, it is shown in this paper that rationality appears as a possible consequence of Humes theory of choice. We first argue that Sugdens dismissal of the preference relation from the type of rationality through which Humes theory is apprehended, is highly disputable, from the point of view of both standard choice theory and Humes theory of passions. Nonetheless, Sugdens criterion of rationality might be restated in Humean terms as a condition of non-revision of preferences in the dynamics of passions. But, since the process of choice that we have described explicitly takes into account the revision of preferences, and shows that, when this last is no longer required, rationality occurs as an outcome of this process, it is not really concerned by Sugdens criticism.

Metal, Money, and the Prince: John Buridan and Nicholas Oresme after Thomas Aquinas

The monetary theories that stem from the works of Thomas Aquinas on the one hand, John Buridan and Nicholas Oresme on the other hand, share common roots: they appear as the result of careful commentaries upon Aristotles moral and political works. Nonetheless, they differ on both the understanding of money as a measure of values, and on the conditions that allow the emergence of money from a stock of metals which could be, like natural wealth, allocated to different uses. Therefore, they illustrate respectively a “conventional” and a “metalist” theory of money. The question raised by Buridans and Oresmes political representations is to make them consistent with monetary theories elaborated separately. In this respect, they supplied a composite picture in which the Prince is an essential character. Acting as the efficient cause of money, he is expected to achieve the adjustments required by the real changes affecting money. But the question of the debasements of money gave rise to different lines of answers. While Buridan concluded with an identification of the Prince and the common good, Oresme drew a Prince whose power is partly controlled through adequate institutions and incentives, partly limited by the consequences of his policy choices.