Judgment Aggregation as Maximization of Epistemic and Social Utility

We restate the problem of judgment aggregation and approach it using the decision-theoretic framework applied by I. Levi to modeling acts of rational acceptance in science. We propose a method of aggregation built on the concepts of epistemic and social utility of accepting a collective judgment, which accounts for such parameters as the factual truth of the propositions, reliability of agents, information content (completeness) of possible collective judgments and the level of agreement between the agents. We argue that the expected utility of accepting a judgment depends on the degree to which all those objectives are satisfied and that groups of rational agents aim at maximizing it while solving judgment aggregation problems.