مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

 مجله امگا – Omega

When we are dealing with social choice problems, hypothetical conflicts between some ethical principles should not be ignored or covered up, but encouraged. In many general scenarios the principle of majority could be incompatible with the principle of minority, freedom could be incompatible with fairness (fraternity) or with equity, etc. see [7]. The basic question is “is it possible to quantify the degree of conflict between the achievements of these principles in a particular decision making problem”? Or equivalently, “is it possible to compute the degree of sacrifice of some principles in order to reach a final solution”? In short, instead of a prior position being adopted, ethical principles should be brought together until a convergent position is developed. When there are no easy solutions, a very likely situation, then principles must be willing to be sacrificed for the good of the consensus or final solution.

In this paper, we propose an analytical framework for dealing with three basic ethical principles, derived from the universal “Declaration of the Rights of Man”. This declaration is considered a basic pillar of the Western culture. It should be clarified from the beginning that the purpose of this research is merely to put some transparency to the possible ethical conflicts and not to solve them.

The three ethical principles, within a context of social choice, can be defined as follows: a) In social theory the idea of freedom is associated with the Benthamite or utilitarian principle that implies the maximization of the welfare of the society by maximizing the sum of total of the welfare of all the member of the society. Thus, a maximum individual freedom is preserved [1]. b) The idea of fairness is normally associated with the Rawlsian or minimax principle that emanates from the “veil of ignorance”, implying the maximization of the welfare of the worst-off individual. In that way, the idea of fraternity or fairness is optimized (see [14], especially pages 75–۸۳). c) The idea of an even allocation of the total welfare between all the members of society, thus providing a maximum equity is usually associated with partial aspects of the Marxian political perspective.