Fuzzy social choice theory is useful for modeling the uncertainty and imprecision prevalent in social life yet it has been scarcely applied and studied in the social sciences. Filling this gap, Application of Fuzzy Logic to Social Choice Theory provides a comprehensive study of fuzzy social choice theory.The book explains the concept of a fuzzy max

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the social choice literature and shows, by applying fuzzy sets, how the use of fuzzy preferences, rather than that of strict ones, may affect the social choice theorems. To do this, the book explores the presupposition of rationality within the fuzzy framework and shows that the two conditions for rationality, completeness and transitivity, do exist with fuzzy preferences. Specifically, this book examines: the conditions under which a maximal set exists; the Arrow’s theorem; the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem and the median voter theorem. After showing that a non-empty maximal set does exists for fuzzy preference relations, this book goes on to demonstrating the existence of a fuzzy aggregation rule satisfying all five Arrowian conditions, including non-dictatorship. While the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem only considers individual fuzzy preferences, this work shows that both individuals and groups can choose alternatives to various degrees, resulting in a social choice that can be both strategy-proof and non-dictatorial. Moreover, the median voter theorem is shown to hold under strict fuzzy preferences but not under weak fuzzy preferences. By providing a standard model of fuzzy social choice and by drawing the necessary connections between the major theorems, this book fills an important gap in the current literature and encourages future empirical research in the field.

This book explores the extent to which fuzzy set logic can overcome some of the shortcomings of public choice theory, particularly its inability to provide adequate predictive power in empirical studies. Especially in the case of social preferences, public choice theory has failed to produce the set of alternatives from which collective choices are made. The book presents empirical findings achieved by the authors in their efforts to predict the outcome of government formation processes in European parliamentary and semi-presidential systems. Using data from the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP), the authors propose a new approach that reinterprets error in the coding of CMP data as ambiguity in the actual political positions of parties on the policy dimensions being coded. The range of this error establishes parties’ fuzzy preferences. The set of possible outcomes in the process of government formation is then calculated on the basis of both the fuzzy Pareto set and the fuzzy maximal set, and the predictions are compared with those made by two conventional approaches as well as with the government that was actually formed. The comparison shows that, in most cases, the fuzzy approaches outperform their conventional counterparts.

This book presents the development of a theory of social goal-objective formation and its relationship to national interest and social vision under a democratic decision-choice system with imperfect information structure. It provides a framework for the application of fuzzy logic and its mathematics to the analysis in resolving conflicts in individual preferences in the collective decision-choice space without violence. The book demonstrates how to use fuzzy logic and its mathematics in the study of economics, social sciences and other complex systems. It also presents the use of collaborative tools of opposites, duality, polarity, continuum in fuzzy paradigm with its logic, laws of thought and mathematics in developing a new approach to the theory of political economy in order to enhance the constructs of social decision-choice theory.

The genus of definitions for the theoretical sciences is (the province of) the habitus of the intellective intention, for the practical sciences, however, that of the effective intention; the objects and ends constitute the specific differ ence There is nothing in the intellect that has not already been in the senses, that is, in the sensory organs, that has not already been in sensible things from which are distinguished things not perceptible to the senses. Nothing can be of the mind, sensation and the thing inferred therefrom except the operation itself. Real learning is cognition of things in themselves. It thus has the basis of its certainty in the known thing. This is established in two ways: by demon stration in the case of contemplative things, and by induction in the case of things perceptible to the senses. In contrast with real learning there is pos sible, probable and fictive learning. Antonius Gvilielmus Amo Afer (1827) This research has been long in the making. Its conception began in my last years in the doctoral program at Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa. It was simultaneously conceived with my two books on the Neo Keynesian Theory of Optimal aggregate investment and output dynamics [201] [202] as well as reflections on the methodology of decision-choice rationality and development economics [440] [441]. Economic theories and social policies were viewed to have, among other things, one impor tant thing in common in that they relate to decision making under different.

This introduction to fuzzy set theory and its multitude of applications seeks to balance the character of the book with the dynamic nature of the research. This edition includes new chapters on possibility theory, fuzzy logic and approximate reasoning, expert systems, fuzzy control, fuzzy data analysis, decision making and fuzzy set models in operations research. Existing material has been updated, and extended exercises are included.

This book extends the theory of revealed preference to fuzzy choice functions, providing applications to multicriteria decision making problems. The main topics of revealed preference theory are treated in the framework of fuzzy choice functions. New topics, such as the degree of dominance and similarity of vague choices, are developed. The results are applied to economic problems where partial information and human subjectivity involve vague choices and vague preferences.