IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/ecnphi/v13y1997i01p79-86_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Expected Utility, Ordering, and Context Freedom

Author

Listed:
  • Rawling, Piers

Abstract

The context-free weak ordering principle (that rational preferences are weakly ordered, and that subtracting members from the domain of alternatives does not alter the ordering of the original domain, see, for example, Savage, 1972, pp. 205–6; McClennen, 1990, pp. 29–30) is viewed by many as a cornerstone of rational choice theory. McClennen, for example, claims (1990, p. 1) that this principle is one of a pair on which '[t]he theory of rational choice and preference, as it has been developed in the past few decades by economists and decision theorists, rests', and Sen (1970, p. 17) characterizes a version of context freedom (the ‘independence of irrelevant alternatives’, or ‘property α’) as ‘a very basic requirement of rational choice’. But this principle is certainly not uncontroversial: there are examples of (putative) principle is certainly not apper irrational.

Suggested Citation

  • Rawling, Piers, 1997. "Expected Utility, Ordering, and Context Freedom," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 79-86, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:ecnphi:v:13:y:1997:i:01:p:79-86_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0266267100004314/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:ecnphi:v:13:y:1997:i:01:p:79-86_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/eap .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.