Freedom of choice : John Stuart Mill and the tree of life
Alcalde-Unzu, Jorge (Universidad Pública de Navarra)
Ballester Oyarzun, Miguel Angel (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Nieto, Jorge (Universidad Pública de Navarra)

Date:	2012
Abstract:	This essay deals with the notion and content of freedom of choice proposing a new set up and a new family of measures for this concept which is, indeed, an ethical value of paramount importance in a well ordered and open society. Following some ideas of John StuartMill, we propose that freedom of choice has to be understood not in a single stage of choice, but in the ordered collection of choices that a person can make in her life. We then suggest to represent a life in a tree structure, where each node represents a state of life and the edges between nodes will represent possible decisions in life. In this new framework, we propose a set of axioms that imply the following family of measures of lifetime's freedom of choice: the lifetime's freedom of choice has to be evaluated by a weighted sum of all possible states of life an individual might visit, with weights representing the number of decisions the individual took to reach that state.
Grants:	Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia ECO2008-04756 Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia ECO2009-11213 Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia ECO2009-12836
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Freedom of choice ; Tree of life ; Autonomy
Published in:	Series, Núm. 3 (2012) , p. 209-226, ISSN 1869-4195

DOI: 10.1007/s13209-011-0053-8

18 p, 401.0 KB

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