Social choice and the indexing dilemma

This paper distinguishes an index ordering and a social ordering function as a simple way to formalize the indexing problem in the social choice framework. Two main conclusions are derived. First, the alleged dilemma between welfarism and perfectionism is shown to involve a third possibility, exemplified by the fairness approach to social choice. Second, the idea that an individual is better off than another whenever he has more (goods, functionings, etc.) in all dimensions, which is known to enter in conflict with the Pareto principle, can be partly salvaged by adopting the fairness approach. This paper has benefited very much from comments by M. Salles and from stimulating interactions with K. Basu, P. Pattanaik, B. Tungodden and the participants at the Philosophical Aspects of Social Choice conference in Caen.