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Pareto Optimality II

Image result for blueberry pie filling

Yesterday we discussed the notion of what Pareto optimality means.

To repeat, it represents any situation in which there is no further improvement anywhere without loss somewhere else. A situation is sub-optimal, then, to the extent that improvements are still possible without loss.

The idea has had very broad application in the social sciences and in the attention philosophers pay to same. It is generally controversial only because it seems inadequately demanding. To the extent reform efforts are aimed at finding sub-optimalities, they are NOT aimed at correcting the gross inequalities and injustices that can occur within this notion of "optimality."

But as I said yesterday, Sen's critique of the idea is different. He argues that in a certain hypothetical position (which I won't describe today again) Pareto is too demanding. His notion would require "Lewd" and ""Prude" to enter into a "peculiarly 'other-regarding' social contract" which offends "the good liberal practice of reading what one likes and letting others read what they like." He hopes that live-and-let-live attitude wins out against any Paretian temptation.

His explanation reminds me of the old question, "do you even know what you want?" After all, one of the reasons that the Lewds of this world might give for insisting that the Prudes read a certain book is that "they can't know enough to put assign any value to reading it unless they .. read it!"

But that question works havoc upon the example. Does Prude have to sample a certain number of pages of LCL before his judgment that he doesn't want to read it (and his further judgment that he doesn't want Lewd to read it either) acquire any social significance? Any how does Lewd know what books he wants to read, as opposed to those he wants to re-read, anyway? Because of the cover art?

Is there a significant difference, for discussions of value theory, between reading a controversial book and eating a blueberry pie?  Yes, at some point there was a first time that I ate a blueberry pie. I could not have known whether I 'liked blueberry pie' until then. But at least as adults we regard reading certain books as actually or potentially transformative events in ways that we do not think of  culinary choices. Is that an intellectualist prejudice, or is it an intuition deserving of respect?

If we try to rephrase the paradox in terms of blueberry pies, it just sounds goofy. One character, "Maine," likes blueberry pies. She'd like to eat one but even more than that, she'd like to get her rival, "Georgia," to eat one, although Georgia left to herself only eats peach pie. Georgia doesn't want to eat blueberry pie but, more than that, she doesn't want Maine to eat blueberry pies either. So they agree that Maine will give up these pies and Georgia will take them up, and everybody is happy. Really? That just sounds bizarre.

Beware thought experiments that smell too much of blackboards.


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