page_title: Discursive dilemma
hierarchical_section_title: Discursive dilemma
caption_attribution_description: Jury International, Defne Gürsoy, Xie Fei, Houdra Ibrahim, Dilip Varma
context_page_description: Discursive dilemma or doctrinal paradox is a paradox in social choice theory. The paradox is that aggregating judgments with majority voting can result in self-contradictory judgments.
  Consider a community voting on road repairs asked three questions; the repairs go ahead if all three answers are 'Yes'. The questions are: "Are the roads important?", "Is the weather right for road repair?" and "Are there available funds for repairs?" Imagine that three groups of 20% of people vote 'No' for each question, and everyone else votes 'Yes'. Then each question has an 80% agreement of 'Yes', so the repairs go ahead. However, now consider the situation where the community are asked one question: "Are all three conditions met?" Now 60% of people disagree with one of these conditions, so only 40% agree on a 'Yes' vote. In this case, the repairs do not go ahead. Thus the road repair team gets different feedback depending on how they poll their community.
  Philosopher Philip Pettit believes the discursive dilemma makes it impossible to make simple statements about the beliefs of a collective.
context_section_description: Discursive dilemma or doctrinal paradox is a paradox in social choice theory. The paradox is that aggregating judgments with majority voting can result in self-contradictory judgments.
  Consider a community voting on road repairs asked three questions; the repairs go ahead if all three answers are 'Yes'. The questions are: "Are the roads important?", "Is the weather right for road repair?" and "Are there available funds for repairs?" Imagine that three (non-overlapping) groups of 20% of people vote 'No' for each question, and everyone else votes 'Yes'. Then each question has an 80% agreement of 'Yes', so the repairs go ahead. However, now consider the situation where the community are asked one question: "Are all three conditions (importance, weather and funds) met?" Now 60% of people disagree with one of these conditions, so only 40% agree on a 'Yes' vote. In this case, the repairs do not go ahead. Thus the road repair team gets different feedback depending on how they poll their community.
  Philosopher Philip Pettit believes the discursive dilemma makes it impossible to make simple statements about the beliefs of a collective.
caption: The same group will offer a majority vote for, as well as against, a plan depending on how the group is polled.
exif: {}