Why it is a question
THEORY-127 holds, for categorical judgments, a theorem with three parts. Universal domain, robust rationality, proposition-wise supervenience and unanimity together force a dictator. The proof is written out in the promotion audit’s decision file for it (batch 023).
List (2014, LIT-700) uses this to define a third kind of collective attitude. On his account a group agent’s corporate attitudes supervene holistically, across a web of propositions. He names corporate fears and hopes as well as judgments.
The theorem’s proof uses the coherence conditions of binary judgment: completeness, consistency and deductive closure. Credences, preferences, intentions and emotions have other coherence conditions. For example, proposition-wise linear pooling is said to preserve probabilistic coherence. That is a standard result, but the record does not hold it. If it holds, the impossibility fails for credences.
What would answer it
One of the following, for some kind of attitude other than categorical judgment, under conditions comparable to THEORY-127’s:
- a proved impossibility;
- a proved possibility, a non-dictatorial proposition-wise rule that preserves that attitude’s coherence.
Several attitude kinds with different answers would answer it piecewise. More cases of discursive dilemmas in courts or committees cannot answer it.
Related
- THEORY-127 (Active): the judgment case.
- THEORY-725 (Active): the court-agenda possibility results.
- LIT-700: List’s typology of collective attitudes.
- THEORY-125: Huebner’s genuinely collective emotion, the attitude kind where the question bites hardest.