4.0 Article

Deriving Harsanyi's utilitarianism from de Finetti's book-making argument

Journal

THEORY AND DECISION
Volume 61, Issue 4, Pages 363-371

Publisher

SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s11238-006-9019-x

Keywords

book-making argument; policy independence; utilitarianism

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The book-making argument was introduced by de Finetti as a principle to prove the existence and uniqueness of subjective probabilities. It has subsequently been accepted as a principle of rationality for decisions under uncertainty. This note shows that the book-making argument has relevant applications to welfare: it gives a new foundation for utilitarianism that is alternative to Harsanyi's, it generalizes foundations based on the theorem of the alternative, and it avoids arguments based on expected utility.

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