WEAK COMPARABILITY OF VALUES AS A FOUNDATION FOR ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS

The main argument of this paper is that weak comparability of values s hould be seen as one characteristic feature of ecological economics. T he formal properties of the concepts of strong comparability (implying strong or weak commensurability) and weak comparability (implying inc ommensurability) will be clarified. Multicriteria evaluation offers th e methodological and mathematical tools to operationalize the concept of incommensurability at both macro and micro levels of analysis. The concept of incommensurability of values already has a long tradition i n economics; moreover, we will show that analytic philosophy, theories of complexity, post-normal science and the recent theories of rationa lity lead with different trajectories to a non-algorithmic approach wh ich, in our view, could be implemented by some forms of multicriteria evaluation. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.