Coarse Descriptions and Cautious Preferences

Abstract

We consider a model where an agent is must choose between alternatives that each provide only an imprecise description of the world (e.g. linguistic expressions). The set of alternatives is closed under logical conjunction and disjunction, but not necessarily negation. (Formally: it is a distributive lattice, but not necessarily a Boolean algebra). In our main result, each alternative is identified with a subset of an (endogenously defined) state space, and two axioms characterize maximin decision making. This means: from the agent's preferences over alternatives, we derive a preference order on the endogenous state space, such that alternatives are ranked in terms of their worst outcomes.