Rescher’s Logic of Preference and Linguistic Analysis

Abstract

Professor Rescher ranks along with Henrick von Wright and S. Hallden as one of the pioneers in the attempt to evolve a logicized semantics of preference. Though influenced by von Wrights’s ideas concerning states of affairs and how these are useful in explaining certain formal implications between preferences, it is Rescher who introduces the method of attaching numerical units of merit to possible world state descriptions reflecting preferences. His aim in doing this is to arrive at purely formal distinctions between various expressions of preferring. Thus, preference-principles are found by Rescher to have the same rigor as that of arithmetical truths, since they are considered apart from any particular or synoptic contexts.

Segments of this chapter were first published in Logique et Analyse, and are reproduced here with the kind permission of the publisher. The present chapter constitutes a refinement of issues and arguments presented earlier.