Collective Attitude Formation

该项目旨在弥合形式哲学和经济学中关于集体态度形成的两种主要范式之间的差距：审议观点和综合观点。偏好和信念通常被归因于群体。陪审团可以相信被告有罪，专业委员会可以正式表达对其成员某些做法的反对。在协商的观点中，群体态度源于有组织的意见交换后达成的共识。在聚合观点中，群体态度是通过将个体可能存在分歧的观点放在一起形成的，例如通过正式的投票程序。深思熟虑和聚集是集体态度形成过程中的两个阶段。我们不能无休止地深思熟虑。当分歧持续存在时，聚集起来，例如通过投票，可能是达成集体意见的唯一途径。所以深思熟虑和聚合不是相互竞争的，而是互补的。然而，到目前为止，它们大多是分开研究的。这是一个重要的限制，因为许多作者都认为深思熟虑和聚合可以相互促进：例如，通过防止偏好循环，深思熟虑可以帮助聚合。聚合可以注意到这样一个事实，例如，一个意见集群可以通过深思熟虑形成。该项目的目标是了解如何，以及何时，审议和聚集可以结合起来，以达到更好的集体态度形成过程。研究审议如何更好地适应聚合，如何丰富现有的信仰和偏好聚合模型，使其更适应审议结果。目前，在法国和德国，从事聚合和审议研究的顶尖学者数量非常多。通过将他们聚集在一起，该项目将抓住这个独特的机会，连接两个研究社区。这将涉及三个主要任务，将两国的研究人员联合起来。前两项任务将分别致力于审议和汇总，第三项任务将从哲学角度和应用方面综合前两项的发现。

The project aims at bridging the gap between the two main paradigms in formal philosophy and economics on the formation of collective attitudes: the deliberative and the aggregative views. Preferences and beliefs are routinely attributed to groups. A jury can believe the accused to be guilty, and a professional board can officially voice its disapproval of certain practices by its members. On the deliberative view, group attitudes stem from a consensus reached after a structured exchange of opinions. On the aggregative view, group attitudes are formed by putting together the possibly diverging views of individuals, through a formal voting procedure for instance.Deliberation and aggregation are two stages in the process of collective attitude formation. We cannot deliberate endlessly. When disagreements persist, aggregating, e.g. by voting, might be the only way to arrive at a group opinion. So deliberation and aggregation are not competing, but complementary approaches. Up to now, however, they have mostly been studied separately. This is an important limitation, at many authors have defended the view that deliberation and aggregation can enhance each other: Deliberation can help aggregation, for instance by preventing preference cycles. And aggregation can take heed of the fact that, for instance, an opinion cluster can form through deliberation.The goal of the project is to understand how, and when, deliberation and aggregation can be conjoined in order to arrive at better processes of collective attitude formation. We will study how deliberation can be better geared towards aggregation, and how to enrich current models of belief and preference aggregation to make them more amenable to the results of deliberation.There is currently an extraordinarily high concentration of leading scholars working in France and Germany on aggregation and deliberation. By bringing them together, the project will seize this unique opportunity of bridging the two research communities. This will involve three main tasks combining researchers from both countries. The first two tasks will be devoted to deliberation and aggregation respectively, and the third task will be to synthesize the findings of the first two, from a philosophical perspective and with respect to applications.