Multidimensionality and Disparate Scale Types

null, Brian Hedden (University of Sydney, Oxford University)

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Title: Multidimensionality and Disparate Scale Types

Abstract: Multidimensionality is everywhere: in ethics, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind, as well as a host of domains outside philosophy. Many ethicists are pluralists about value, holding that whether one state of affairs is better than another depends on how the two compare in terms of well-being, equality, autonomy, and various other values. Many epistemologists are pluralists about theoretical virtues, holding that your confidence in a theory should depend on how it fares with respect to simplicity, strength, and fruitfulness. And so on. We need a way to aggregate these various dimensions to yield all-things-considered judgments. Things get worse when we notice that underlying dimensions may often be measured on different types of scale: some ordinal and some cardinal (including various types of cardinal scales). How, if at all, can this be done? We are in uncharted territory as far as social choice theory goes. 

Bio: Brian Hedden is Associate Professor of Philosophy at ANU. Before joining ANU, he was a PhD student at MIT, a postdoc at Oxford, and a faculty member at the University of Sydney. He works in epistemology and decision theory, as well as related areas of ethics and political philosophy. He is the author of Reasons without Persons (OUP 2015) and articles in Mind, Journal of Philosophy, Nous, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Ethics, and Philosophy and Public Affairs, among others. Most recently, he has published on legal standards of proof, collective action problems, and algorithmic fairness.