Richmond’s Professor Sabine Spangenberg attended the biennial International Social Ontology Conference held recently in Tufts University, Massachusetts, US

Richmond’s Professor Sabine Spangenberg attended the biennial International Social Ontology Conference held recently in Tufts University, Massachusetts, US.

This major conference brought together international leaders studying the nature of the social world and how to improve our models of it. Professor Spangenberg presented a paper entitled, ‘The Reframing of Social Choice Theory under Consideration of Conditional Self-Interest’.

The abstract of her paper is below:

This paper considers the implications of alternative definitions of social values and there with the understanding of welfare. The so far ignored conditional self-interest as suggested by Cicero is juxtaposed to Hutcheson’s consideration of human moral sense and affection. This informs further on the limitations of utilitarian assumptions and highlight some fallacies of the otherwise brilliant Arrow-Sen formulation. A kinder approach to human nature that also considers the existence of thought for others generates varied assumptions and an alternative understanding of social phenomena.  A de-individualised redefinition of social states is necessary to arrive at a true set of options.