Stephan Hartmann

A federal assembly consists of a number of representatives for each of the nations (states, Länder, cantons,...) that make up the federation. How many representatives should each nation receive? What makes this issue worth quibbling about is that the model of representation that is instituted will have an impact on the welfare distribution over the nations in the federation that will ensue over due course. We will investigate what models of representation yield welfare distributions that score higher on a utilitarian measure. First, we construct a continuum of models of representation ranging from equal to proportional representation. In between these extremes are models of degressive proportionality. We run a Monte-Carlo simulation in which a large number of motions are voted up or down within different contexts of evaluation and investigate how well the resulting welfare distributions score on the utilitarian measure. Subsequently, we will provide matching analytical results for a slightly idealized case. We conclude with a discussion of the significance of our results and of the role of simulations and analytical results and point to further work.

Bonjour (1985: 101 and 1999: 124) and other coherence theorists of justification before him (e.g. Ewing, 1934: 246) have complained that we do not have a satisfactory analysis of the notion of coherence. The problem with existing accounts of coherence is that they try to bring precision to our intuitive notion of coherence independently of the particular role that it is meant to play within the coherence theory of justification (e.g Lewis, 1946: 338). This is a mistake: it does not make any sense to ask what precisely makes for a more coherent information set independently of the particular role that coherence is supposed to play within the context in question. What is this context and what is this role? The coherence theory of justification rides on a particular common sense intuition: when we gather information from less than fully reliable sources, then the more coherent the story that materializes is, the more confident we may be, ceteris paribus. Within the context of information gathering from certain types of sources, coherence is a property of stories which plays a confidence boosting role. But what features should the information sources have, so that the coherence of the information set is indeed a determinant of our degree of confidence in question? And what goes into the ceteris paribus clause? In other words, what other factors affect our confidence in the information set in question?