Von Wright, Georg Henrik (1916–2003)

G.H. von Wright was one of the most influential analytic philosophers of the twentieth century. Born in Helsinki, Finland, von Wright did his early work on logic, probability and induction under the influence of logical empiricism. In 1948–51 he served as Ludwig Wittgenstein’s successor at Cambridge, but returned to his homeland and later became a member of the Academy of Finland. He did pioneering work on the new applications of logic: modal logic, deontic logic, the logic of norms and action, preference logic, tense logic, causality and determinism. In the 1970s his ideas about the explanation and understanding of human action helped to establish new links between the analytic tradition and Continental hermeneutics. Von Wright’s later works, which are eloquent books and essays written originally in his two native languages (Swedish and Finnish), deal with issues of humanism and human welfare, history and future, technology and ecology.

Impossibility theorems in multiple von Wright’s preference logic

By using the standard combining logics technique (D. M. Gabbay 1999) we define a generalization of von Wright?s preference logic (G. H. von Wright 1963) enabling to express, on an almost propositional level, the individual and the social preference relations simultaneously. In this context we present and prove the counterparts of crucial results of the Arrow-Sen social choice theory, including impossibility theorems (K. Arrow 1951 and A. K. Sen 1970b), as well as some logical interdependencies between the dictatorship condition and the Pareto rule, and thus demonstrate the power and applicability of combining logics method in mathematical economics.