## 1. Judgment Aggregation



The formal work on judgment aggregation stemmed from the
"doctrinal paradox" in the jurisprudence literature
(Kornhauser and Sager 1986, 1993, 2004; Kornhauser 1992). The paradox
shows that judges may face a real danger of falling into collective
irrationality when trying to reach a common and justified verdict.
Despite the recent birth of the discipline, structurally similar
problems seemed to have been first pointed out by Poisson in 1837 (as
pointed out in Elster 2013), and later noted by the Italian legal
theorist Vacca in 1921 (see Spector 2009).



In Kornhauser and Sager's court example (1993), a three-member
court has to reach a verdict in a breach of contract case between a
plaintiff and a defendant. According to the contract law, the
defendant is liable for breach of contract (proposition *r*) if
and only if the contract forbid the defendant to do a certain action
*X* (proposition *p*) and the defendant did action *X*
(proposition *q*). Suppose that the three judges express the
judgments as in
 Table 1.





|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | Obligation (*p*)  | Action (*q*)  | Defendant liable (*r*)  |
| Judge 1  | True  | True  | True  |
| Judge 2  | True  | False  | False  |
| Judge 3  | False  | True  | False  |
| Majority  | True  |  True  | False  |



Table 1: The doctrinal paradox




Proposition *r* is the *conclusion*, whereas *p* and
*q* are the *premises*. The legal doctrine can thus be
logically expressed as \((p\land q)\leftrightarrow r\), stating that
premises *p* and *q* are both necessary and sufficient for
the conclusion *r*.
 Table 1
 shows that each judge respects the given legal doctrine, by declaring
the conclusion to be true if and only if she deems both premises true.
If the judges aggregate their individual opinions using majority rule
on the judgments on each proposition, the resulting judgment set is
{*p*, *q*, not *r*}, which constitutes a violation of
the legal doctrine. This is an instance of the doctrinal paradox:
despite the individuals being logically consistent, the group's
judgment on the propositions is not consistent with the legal
doctrine. In the example above, the judges cannot declare the
defendant not liable and, at the same time, state that both conditions
for her liability apply. Thus, the court faces a dilemma. Either
judges are asked to express judgments on the premises only, and the
court's decision on *r* is logically derived from the
majority on the premises (the *premise-based* or
*issue-by-issue procedure*), or the verdict is decided by the
majority judgment on *r* (the *conclusion-based* or
*case-by-case procedure*) ignoring the opinions on the
premises. Instances such as that in
 Table 1
 illustrate that the two procedures may give opposite results. In the
court example the issues on which the judges have to express a
position are distinguished into premises and conclusion. We should
note, however, that the theory of judgment aggregation does not
require such a distinction. The court decision of declaring the
defendant not liable (despite a majority in favour of the two criteria
to declare her liability) would be inconsistent with the decision rule
\((p \land q) \leftrightarrow r\) even without a distinction between
premises and conclusion.



This was not the first time that the definition of a collective
outcome by majority rule resulted in a paradoxical result. Already in
1785, the Marquis de Condorcet discovered what is now known as the
*Condorcet paradox*. Given a set of individual preferences, if
we compare each of the alternatives in pairs and apply majority
voting, we may obtain an intransitive preference (or cycle) in the
collective outcome, of the type that alternative *x* is preferred
to *y*, *y* is preferred to *z*, and *z* to
*x*, making it impossible to declare an alternative the winner.
The similarities between the Condorcet paradox and the judgment
aggregation paradox were promptly noticed by Kornhauser and Sager
(1986) and List and Pettit (2004). The study of the aggregation of
individual preferences into a social preference ordering is the focus
of social choice theory (List 2013). The Nobel Prize winner Kenneth
Arrow proved the landmark result by showing that the problem which
Condorcet stumbled upon is more general and not limited to majority
rule. Arrow's impossibility theorem (Arrow 1951/1963; Morreau
2014) states that, given a finite set of individual preferences over
three or more alternatives, there exists *no* aggregation
function that satisfies a few plausible axioms. There are a number of
results similar to Arrow's theorem that demonstrate the
"impossibility" of judgment aggregation. The first
impossibility theorem of judgment aggregation (List and Pettit 2002)
was followed by further generalizations (Pauly and van Hees 2006;
Dietrich 2006; Mongin 2008).



Let us restrict attention to the aggregation of judgments formulated
in the language *L* of propositional logic (the problem of
judgment aggregation can be generalized to modal and conditional
logics as well as predicate logic, see Dietrich 2007; for a more
in-depth discussion of non-classical logics and judgment aggregation
see Grossi 2009, Porello 2017 and Xuefeng 2018). The set of formulas
on which the individuals express judgments is called *agenda*
\((A\subseteq L\)). The agenda does not contain double negations
\((\neg \neg \varphi\) is equivalent to \(\varphi\)), is closed with
respect to negation (i.e., if \(\varphi \in A\), then also \(\neg
\varphi \in A\)) and is generally assumed not to contain tautologies
or contradictions. For example, the agenda of the court case is \(A =
\{p, \neg p, q, \neg q, p \wedge q, \neg (p \wedge q)\}\). Dietrich
and List (2007a) showed that, when the agenda is sufficiently rich
(like, for instance, the agenda of the court decision or \(\{p, \neg
p, q, \neg q, p \to q, \neg (p \to q)\}\)), the only judgment
aggregation rules satisfying the *desiderata* below are
dictatorships. An aggregation function is a dictatorship when, for
*any* input, the collective outcome is taken to be the
individual judgment of one (and the same) individual, i.e., the
dictator. In a dictatorial aggregation function all individual inputs
but the dictator's are ignored. A *judgment set* is a
consistent and complete set of formulae \(J \subseteq A\). A judgment
set is complete if, for any element \(\varphi\) of the agenda, either
\(\varphi\in A\) or \(\neg \varphi\in A\) (that is, any item of the
agenda has to be accepted of rejected). Given a group of *n*
individuals, a *profile* is a *n*-tuple of individual
judgment sets \(\langle J\_1, \ldots, J\_n \rangle\). Finally, a
*judgment aggregation rule F* is a function that assigns to
each profile \(\langle J\_1, \ldots, J\_n\rangle\) a collective judgment
set \(F(J\_1, \ldots, J\_{n}) \subseteq A\). The conditions imposed on
*F* are the following:



**Universal Domain:** All profiles of consistent and
complete (with respect to the agenda) judgment sets are accepted as
input of the aggregation function. The profile of the doctrinal
paradox in
 Table 1
 is a legitimate input because the judges expressed acceptance or
rejection on each issue in the agenda and their opinions respected the
rule \((p \wedge q) \leftrightarrow r\).



**Collective Rationality:** Only complete and consistent
collective judgments are acceptable as outputs. The collective
judgment of the example in
 Table 1
 is complete (the group accepts or rejects each agenda's item)
but is not consistent because it violates the rule \((p \wedge q)
\leftrightarrow r\).



**Independence:** The collective judgment on each
proposition depends only on the individual judgments on that
proposition, and not on other (considered to be independent)
propositions in the agenda. (This condition reformulates in the
judgment aggregation framework the *independence of the irrelevant
alternatives* condition in Arrow's theorem for preference
aggregation.) Proposition-wise majority rule (as in the court example
in
 Table 1)
 satisfies the independence condition because the group
acceptance/rejection of each agenda's item depends on whether a
majority of the individuals accepted/rejected that proposition.



**Unanimity Preservation:** If all individuals submit the
same judgment on a proposition *p*\(\in\) *A*, this is in
the collective judgment set.



Despite the undemanding conditions, it can be shown that there exists
no judgment aggregation rule *F* that jointly satisfies the above
conditions that is not a dictatorship. This impossibility result is
particularly meaningful because, when reformulated for a preference
framework, it can be shown that Arrow's theorem (for strict
preference orderings) is obtained as a corollary (Dietrich and List
2007a). This led Dietrich and List to say that judgment aggregation
can be seen as a more general problem than preference aggregation (see
Grossi and Pigozzi 2014 for details on such reformulation).



In addition to formal connections between the two types of aggregation
problems, from a conceptual point of view judgment aggregation extends
the problems of preference aggregation to more general decision
problems. Although the models provided by social choice have improved
our understanding of many familiar collective decision problems such
as elections, referenda and legislative decisions, they focus
primarily on collective choices between alternative outcomes such as
candidates, policies or actions. They do not capture a whole class of
decision problems in which a group has to form collectively endorsed
beliefs or judgments on *logically interconnected*
propositions. Yet, as the examples given in the introduction also
show, such decision problems are common and not limited to court
decisions. Pettit (2001) coined the term of *discursive
dilemma* to highlight the fact that such problem can arise in all
situations in which a group of individuals needs to reach a common
stance on multiple propositions.



Impossibility results often bear a negative flavor. However, they also
indicate possible escape routes. Consistent collective outcomes can be
obtained when the universal domain condition is relaxed (considering,
for example, *unidimensionally aligned* profiles (List 2002), a
conditions similar to Black's single-peakedness in preference
aggregation (Black 1948)) or when the collective rationality condition
is limited to require consistent (but not complete) collective
judgments. Possibility results are also obtained when the independence
condition is relaxed. The premise-based procedure seen in the
court's case is an example of an aggregation rule that violates
independence. There, the collective position on the conclusion is
derived by logical implication from the majority judgments on the
premises. More in general, *sequential priority rules* violate
independence and guarantee consistent group positions: the elements of
the agenda are aggregated following a pre-fixed order, and earlier
decisions constrain later ones. The reader is referred to (List and
Puppe 2009; List 2013; Grossi and Pigozzi 2014; Endriss 2016) for
thorough introductions to judgment aggregation and an overview on more
impossibility theorems as well as on escapes routes from such results.
In the next section we introduce the problem of combining conflicting
information as it has been addressed in computer science. We will see
that some operators introduced in belief merging are instances of
aggregation procedures that violate the independence condition and
that such operators can be applied to hold concrete aggregation
procedures to judgment aggregation problems.


## 2. Belief Merging



Computer scientists have studied the aggregation of several
independent and potentially conflicting sources of information into a
consistent one. As mentioned in the introduction, examples are the
combination of conflicting sensors' information received by an
agent, the aggregation of multiple databases to build an expert
system, and multi-agent systems (Borgida and Imielinski 1984; Baral et
al. 1992; Chawathe et al. 1994; Elmagarmid et al. 1999; Subrahmanian
1994; Kim 1995). Belief merging (or *fusion*) studies the
aggregation of symbolic information (expressed in propositional logic)
into a consistent base. As we shall see, the process of merging
several bases has tight links with *belief change* (or
*belief revision*), an active discipline since the 1980s across
formal philosophy and computer science that models how human and
artificial agents change their beliefs when they encounter new
information. Revision, expansion and contraction are the three main
types of theory change studied by Alchourron, Gardenfors
and Makinson (the so-called AGM theory) who also provided rationality
postulates for each of them (Alchourron et al. 1985;
Gardenfors 1988). In belief revision, the focus is on how one
belief base changes in face of new, completely reliable information
and this new piece may be conflicting with existing beliefs in the
base. When I learn that a new acquaintance Rob has a child, I simply
add the piece of information and eventually derive new consequences
(this is expansion). The most interesting case, though, is when the
new information conflicts with previously held beliefs. Suppose that
from a common friend I understood that Rob had no kids. Now I learn
from Rob himself that he has a child. In order to accommodate the new
information, I need to perform a revision, which consists of removing
the wrong belief that he had no kids (and all the other beliefs that
may depend on that), add the new input that in fact he has a child,
and derive possibly new consequences (see Hansson 2011 for an overview
and Ferme and Hansson 2018 for a comprehensive introduction to
belief change). As for belief revision, in merging the term
"knowledge" is used in a broader sense than in the
epistemological literature, such that "knowledge" refers
to formulas accepted by an agent (i.e., formulas in her knowledge
base), which are not necessarily true. Then, "knowledge
base" and "belief base" are used interchangeably.
For Gregoire and Konieczny (2006) belief merging operators can
be used to aggregate also other types of information than knowledge
and beliefs, such as goals, observations, and norms.



If belief revision focuses on how one base changes following the
addition of a new piece of information, belief fusion studies how to
aggregate several different and potentially conflicting bases (like,
for instance, different experts' opinions, several databases,
information coming from different sources etc.) to obtain a consistent
base. Different approaches have been proposed in the literature. Here
we briefly mention *combination* and *arbitration*
before moving to the merging operators as defined by Konieczny and
Pino Perez, which have been applied to judgment aggregation.
The first approach to the problem of dealing with aggregating
different and possibly inconsistent databases (Baral et al. 1991;
Baral et al. 1992) built on Ginsberg's idea of considering
maximally consistent subsets when facing an inconsistent theory
(Ginsberg 1986), such as the one that may result from the union of the
information coming from several self-consistent (but conflicting with
one another) agents. Combination operators take the union of the
knowledge bases (a finite set of logical formulas) and, if the union
is logically inconsistent, select some maximal consistent subsets. The
logical properties of such *combination* operators have been
investigated in (Konieczny 2000) and compared to *merging*
operators as defined in (Konieczny and Pino Perez 1998, 1999).
There are several differences between combining and merging knowledge
bases. One difference is that the method by Baral et al. (1991, 1992)
is syntax-dependent while merging operators obey the principle of
irrelevance of syntax. According to the principle of irrelevance of
syntax, an operation on two equivalent knowledge bases should return
two equivalent knowledge bases. For instance, \(K\_1 = \{a, b\}\) and
\(K\_{2}= \{a \wedge b\}\) have the same logical consequences. So, if
\(K\_3 = \{\neg b\}\), merging \(K\_1\) with \(K\_3\) or merging \(K\_2\)
with \(K\_3\) will give two equivalent knowledge bases. On the other
hand, the combination of \(K\_1\) and \(K\_3\) may not be logically
equivalent to the combination of \(K\_2\) and \(K\_3\). Let \(E\_1 = K\_1
\bigsqcup K\_3\) (\(\bigsqcup\) is the union on multi-set) and \(E\_2 =
K\_2 \bigsqcup K\_3\). The maximal consistent subsets of \(E\_1\) are
\(\{a, b\}\) and \(\{a, \neg b\}\), and those of \(E\_2\) are \(\{a
\wedge b\}\) and \(\{\neg b\}\). So each maximal consistent subset of
\(E\_1\) implies \(a\), but this is not the case for all maximal
consistent subsets of \(E\_2\) (example from Konieczny 2000). Another
difference is that when combination operators are used, the
information about the source of the knowledge bases is ignored. This
means that, unlike merging, combination operators cannot take into
account cardinality considerations. Suppose, for example, that four
medical experts advise on the effectiveness of four vaccines for
adults over 65 years old. Let the propositions \(a, b, c, d\) stand
for "Vaccine A (respectively, B, C, D) is effective in
over-65s". If two experts agree that vaccines A and B are
effective in over-65s, one expert esteems that vaccine D (but not
vaccine A) is effective and, finally, the last expert agrees with the
first two that vaccine A is effective and that, if B is effective in
over-65s, so is vaccine C too, we can represent the four experts
opinions as four knowledge bases: \(K\_1 = K\_{2}= \{a, b\}\), \(K\_{3}=
\{\neg a, d\}\) and \(K\_4 = \{a, b\rightarrow c\}\). The union of
these four bases is \(\{a,\neg a, b, b\rightarrow c, d\}\), which is
clearly logically inconsistent. Considering maximal consistent subsets
is one way to avoid inconsistency while retaining as much information
as possible. In this example, the two maximal consistent subsets are:
\(\{a, b,b\rightarrow c, d\}\) and \(\{\neg a, b, b\rightarrow c,
d\}\). This means that we cannot decide whether to accept *a* or
\(\neg a\). However, a majority of knowledge bases contained *a*,
and only one base contained \(\neg a\). It seems intuitive that
*a* should be in the resulting knowledge base as long as all
knowledge bases are treated equally. If, for whatever reason,
\(K\_{3}\) is more trustworthy than the other knowledge bases, then we
may prefer a combined base in which \(\neg a\) is accepted.



*Arbitration* is another operator to fuse knowledge bases that
has been introduced in the early Nineties (Revesz 1993, Liberatore and
Schaerf 1995). In belief revision, it is commonly assumed that the new
information is accepted and must be included in the revised base. By
contrast, arbitration addresses situations in which two sources give
contradicting information but are equally reliable (examples are two
equally competent experts, two equally trustworthy witnesses etc.). If
we have no reason to dismiss one of the two sources, the solution is
to fuse the two bases rather than revise one by the other. The
operation is arbitration in the sense that, since both sources are
equally reliable, the resulting base should contain as much as
possible of both sources. Liberatore and Schaerf (1995) proposed
axioms for arbitration between two belief bases, and the operator
proposed by Revesz only satisfied some of them. Their proposal
suffered from the fact of being limited to the arbitration of only two
bases. This limitation is overcome in the belief merging approach,
where a finite number of bases can be merged into a consistent
one.



None of the above methods could take into account the popularity of a
specific information item. This meant that those operators could not
capture the view of the majority. The first to introduce a majority
postulate for the merging of several knowledge bases were Lin and
Mendelzon (1999). The idea was inspired by the majority rule in social
choice theory. However, their majority postulate includes a notion of
*partial support* that captures the specificity of knowledge
merging with respect to voting, and is not limited to count the number
of bases supporting a proposition *a vs.* the number of bases
containing \(\neg a\). A knowledge base was defined to partially
support a literal *l* if there is a proposition *a* that
contains no atoms appearing in *l*, such that the agent believes
either *l* or *a* is true without knowing which one. A
model-theoretic characterization of the postulates and specific
merging operators are given in Lin and Mendelzon (1999). In the belief
merging literature, sources of information are generally assumed to be
equally reliable. One way to help to solve the conflict is to relax
this assumption as, for example, in the extension to merging weighted
knowledge bases given in (Lin 1996) or in prioritized knowledge bases
(Benferhat et al. 1998; Cholvy 1998; Delgrande et al. 2006).



A new set of postulates for merging operators and the distinction (in
terms of axioms they satisfy) between arbitration and majority
operators were introduced by Konieczny and Pino Perez (1998).
In subsequent works (Konieczny and Pino Perez 1999, 2002) they
extended the framework to include merging under *integrity
constraints*, that is, a set of exogenously imposed conditions
that have to be satisfied by the merged base (Kowalski 1978; Reiter
1988). In the next section we present the formal framework introduced
by Konieczny and Pino Perez, which is now the standard
framework for belief merging as it overcomes the limitations of the
previous proposals.



The formal methods developed in belief merging have been exported and
applied in areas of social epistemology, like elections and preference
aggregation (Meyer et al. 2001), group consensus (Gauwin et al. 2005),
and judgment aggregation (Pigozzi 2006) to which we return in
 Section 2.2.


### 2.1 A framework for merging under integrity constraints



Konieczny and Pino Perez consider a propositional language
*L* built up from a finite set *At* of atomic propositions
and the usual connectives \((\neg, \land, \lor , \rightarrow,
\leftrightarrow )\). An interpretation is a total function \(At
\rightarrow \{0, 1\}\) that assigns 0 (false) or 1 (true) to each
atomic proposition. For example, if \(At =\{p, q, r\}\), then \((1, 0,
1)\) is the interpretation that assigns true to *p* and *r*
and false to
 *q*.[1]
 Denote the set of all interpretations by \(W = \{0, 1\}^{At}\). For
any formula \(\varphi \in L\), \(\mymod(\varphi) = \{\omega \in W |
\omega \models \varphi\}\) denotes the set of models of \(\varphi\),
i.e., the set of truth assignments that makes \(\varphi\) true. If we
take the formula that expressed the contractual law in the doctrinal
example, then \(\mymod((p\land q) \leftrightarrow r) = \{(1,1,1), (1,
0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0,0,0)\}.\) As usual, a formula \(\varphi\) is
consistent if it has at least a model, and a formula \(\varphi\)
follows from a set of formulae \(\Phi\) if every interpretation that
makes all formulae in \(\Phi\) true, makes also \(\varphi\) true.



A *belief base* \(K\_i\) is a finite set of propositional
formulas representing the explicit beliefs held by individual
*i*. Each \(K\_{i}\) is assumed to be consistent. \(\mathcal{K}\)
denotes the set of all consistent belief bases. The postulates for
merging consider a *multi-set* of belief bases (*belief
profile*, or *belief set*, the terminology used in early
papers) \(E = \{K\_1, \ldots , K\_{n}\}\). The reason for using
multi-sets is that an element can appear more than once, thus allowing
the representation of the fact that two or more agents can hold the
same beliefs. This is needed to take into account the popularity of a
piece of information, hence to define majority operators. To mark the
distinction with the usual set union \(\cup\), the multi-set union is
denoted by \(\sqcup\) and defined as \(\{\varphi\} \sqcup \{\varphi\}
= \{\varphi, \varphi\}\). Two belief profiles are equivalent
\((E\_1\equiv E\_{2})\) if and only if there exists a bijection *f*
from \(E\_1\) to \(E\_{2}\) such that, for any \(B\in E\_1\), we have
that \(\models\land f(B)\leftrightarrow \land B\).



Integrity constraints represent extra conditions that should follow
from the merged bases. The interest of integrity constraints is to
ensure that the aggregation of individual pieces of information
satisfies some problem-specific requirement. For example, suppose that
members of a city council have to decide what to build in a certain
area. We can have constraints on the available budget (enough to cover
only some of the projects) but also constraints on the coexistence of
different projects (we may not build a parking lot and a playground in
that area, but we may build a playground and a public library). If the
(possibly empty) set of integrity constraints is denoted by the belief
base *IC*, \(\Delta\_{\IC}(E)\) denotes the result of merging
the multi-set *E* of belief bases given *IC*. Intuitively,
the result will be a consistent belief base representing the
collective beliefs and implying *IC*.



Konieczny and Pino Perez (1999, 2002) put forward the following
postulates for *IC* fusion operators between equally reliable
sources. Let \(E\), \(E\_1\), \(E\_{2}\), be belief profiles, \(K\_1\),
\(K\_{2}\) be consistent belief bases, and \(\IC\), \(\IC\_1\),
\(\IC\_{2}\), be integrity constraints. \(\Delta\) is an *IC*
fusion operator if and only if it satisfies the following rationality
postulates:



(IC0)
\(\Delta\_{\IC}(E) \models \IC\)
(IC1)
If \(\IC\) is consistent, then \(\Delta\_{\IC}(E)\) is
consistent.
(IC2)
If \(\land E\) is consistent with *IC*, then
\(\Delta\_{\IC}(E)\equiv \land E\land \IC\)
(IC3)
If \(E\_1\equiv E\_{2}\), and \(\IC\_1\equiv \IC\_{2}\), then
\(\Delta\_{\IC\_1}(E\_1)\equiv \Delta\_{\IC\_2}(E\_{2})\)
(IC4)
If \(K\_1 \models\IC\) and \(K\_{2} \models\IC\), then
\(\Delta\_{\IC}(\{K\_1, K\_{2}\})\land K\_1\) is consistent if and only if
\(\Delta\_{\IC}(\{K\_1, K\_{2}\})\land K\_{2}\) is consistent.
(IC5)
\(\Delta\_{\IC}(E\_1) \land \Delta\_{\IC}(E\_{2})
\models\Delta\_{\IC}(E\_1\sqcup E\_{2})\)
(IC6)
If \(\Delta\_{\IC}(E\_1) \land \Delta\_{\IC}(E\_{2})\) is consistent,
then \(\Delta\_{\IC}(E\_1\sqcup E\_{2}) \models \Delta\_{\IC}(E\_1) \land
\Delta\_{\IC}(E\_{2})\)
(IC7)
\(\Delta\_{\IC\_{1}}(E) \land \IC\_{2} \models\Delta\_{\IC\_{1\land}
\IC\_{2}} (E)\)
(IC8)
If \(\Delta\_{\IC\_1}(E) \land \IC\_{2}\) is consistent, then
\(\Delta\_{\IC\_{1\land}\IC\_{2}} (E) \models\Delta\_{\IC\_1}(E)\)


In order to illustrate these postulates, we consider the following
example, due to (Konieczny and Pino Perez 1999). A group of
flats co-owners wish to improve their condominium. At the meeting, the
chairman proposes to build a tennis court, a swimming pool or a
private parking. He also points out that building two of the three
options will lead to a significant increase of the yearly maintenance
expenses (this corresponds to the *IC*). 



(IC0) ensures that the resulting merged base satisfies the integrity
constraints. This is an obvious condition to impose since these are
postulates for merging under integrity constraints, where the idea is
to ensure that the result of the merging satisfies the integrity
constraints. By employing a merging operator, the chairman knows that
the group will agree on the increase of the expenses, if they decide
to build at least two of the three facilities. (IC1) states that, when
*IC* is consistent, then the result of the fusion operator will
also be consistent. Again, given that the interpretations of the
merged bases are selected among the interpretations of the integrity
constraints, if *IC* is consistent, the result will also be
consistent. (IC2) states that the result of the merging operator is
simply the conjunction of the belief profile and the *IC*,
whenever such conjunction is consistent. In our running example, if
each person wishing to build two or more facilities endorses the rise
of the expenses and the opinions given by the co-owners are
consistent, then the merging will just return the conjunction of the
*IC* and the individual opinions. (IC3) states that if two
belief profiles \(E\_1\) and \(E\_{2}\) are logically equivalent and
\(\IC\_1\) and \(\IC\_{2}\) are also equivalent, then merging the first
belief profile with \(\IC\_1\) will be equivalent as merging the second
belief profile with \(\IC\_{2}\). This postulate expresses a principle
already imposed on belief revision operators (of which, as we shall
see, merging operators are extensions), that is, the *principle of
irrelevance of syntax*, which says that the result of a merging
operator depends only on the semantical content of the merged bases
and not on their syntactical expression. (IC4) is known as the
*fairness postulate* because it states that when merging two
belief bases \(K\_1\) and \(K\_{2}\), no priority should be given to one
of them. The merging is consistent with one of them if and only if it
is consistent with the other. This postulate expresses a symmetric
condition that operators that give priority to one of the two bases
will not satisfy. (IC5) and (IC6) were first introduced in (Revesz
1997) and together they mean that if two groups agree on at least one
item, then the result of the fusion will coincide with those items on
which the two groups agreed on. So, if the group of co-owners can be
split in two parties, such that one wants to build the tennis court
and the swimming pool and the other wants the swimming pool and the
parking, the building of the swimming pool will be selected as the
final group decision. Finally, (IC7) and (IC8) guarantee that if the
conjunction between the merging on \(E\) under \(\IC\_1\) and
\(\IC\_{2}\) is consistent, then \(\IC\_1\) will remain satisfied if
\(E\) is merged under a more restrictive condition, that is, the
conjunction of \(\IC\_1\) and \(\IC\_{2}\). This is a natural
requirement to impose as, less formally, (IC7) and (IC8) together
state that if the swimming pool is chosen among the set of three
alternatives, it will still be selected if we reduce the set of
alternatives to the tennis court and swimming pool. The last two
postulates are a generalization of two postulates for revision (R5 and
R6) in (Katsuno and Mendelzon 1991), who analyzed the revision
operator from a model-theoretic point of view and gave a
characterization of revision operators satisfying the AGM rationality
postulates (Alchourron et al. 1985) in terms of minimal change
with respect to an ordering over interpretations. Like Katsuno and
Mendelzon's postulates, (IC7) and (IC8) ensure that the notion
of closeness is well behaved, in the sense that if an outcome is
selected by the merging operator under \(\IC\_1\), then that outcome
will also be the closest (i.e., it will be selected) to \(\IC\_{2}\)
within the more restrictive constraint \(\IC\_1 \land \IC\_{2}\)
(assuming \(\Delta\_{\IC\_1}(E) \land \IC\_{2}\) to be consistent). In
Katsuno and Mendelzon model-theoretic approach, revision operators
change the initial belief base by choosing the closest interpretation
in the new information. Similarly, *IC* merging operators
select the closest interpretation in the integrity constraints to the
set of belief bases. Hence, belief merging can be interpreted as a
generalization of belief revision to multiple belief bases
(Gregoire and Konieczny 2006). 



Two sub-classes of \(\IC\) fusion operators are defined. An *IC
majority fusion* operator minimizes the level of total
dissatisfaction (as introduced by Lin and Mendelzon 1996), whereas an
*IC arbitration operator* aims at equally distributing the
level of individual dissatisfaction among the agents. The majority
operator is similar in spirit to the utilitarian approach in social
choice theory, whereas the arbitration is inspired to
egalitarianism.



Let, for every integer \(n\), \(E^n\) denote the multi-set containing
*n* times *E*. An *IC majority* operator satisfies
the following additional postulate:



(Maj)
 \(\exists n
\Delta\_{\IC} (E\_1\sqcup E^{n}\_{2})
\models\Delta\_{\IC}(E\_{2})\)


Thus, (Maj) states that enough repetitions of \(E\_{2}\) will make
\(E\_{2}\) the opinion of the group. The number of repetitions needed
depends on the specific instance.



An *IC arbitration* operator is characterized by the following
postulate, in addition to (IC0)-(IC8):



(Arb)
 Let IC1 and IC2
be logically independent. If 
\[\begin{align}
\Delta\_{\IC\_1}(K\_1) &\equiv \Delta\_{\IC\_2}(K\_{2}), \textrm{ and}\\ 
\Delta\_{\IC\_{1} \leftrightarrow \neg \IC\_{2}} (\{K\_1, K\_{2}\}) &\equiv
 (\IC\_1\leftrightarrow \neg \IC\_{2}), \textrm{ then} \\
\Delta\_{\IC\_{1}\lor \IC\_{2}} (\{K\_1, K\_{2}\}) &\equiv \Delta\_{\IC\_1}(K\_1).\end{align}\]


Intuitively, this axiom states that the arbitration operator selects
the median outcomes that are *IC*-consistent. The behavior of
such operator will be clearer when expressed in a model-theoretical
way, as we shall see in the next section.



An example can help to appreciate the different behavior of a majority
and an arbitration operator. Suppose three friends need to decide
whether to buy a birthday present for a common acquaintance. Suppose
now that two of them want to buy her a book and invite her out for
dinner, while the third friend does not want to contribute to either
of those presents. If the group takes its decision by majority, the
three friends would resolve to buy a book and to invite her out for
dinner, making the third friend very unhappy. If, on the other hand,
they use an arbitration operator, they would either buy her a book or
invite her out to a restaurant, making the three members equally
dissatisfied. Everyone has exactly one formula in their belief base
that is not being satisfied, so the "amount" of
dissatisfaction for each friend is the same.



The fusion operators in the literature can be divided into two
classes: *syntax-based* fusion and *model-based* fusion.
The first type takes the propositional formulas as the information
input, and typically considers the maximally consistent subsets of the
belief profile. In a model-based operator, on the other hand, it is
the interpretations of the formulas that are considered as inputs to
the merging process. Hence, each belief base is seen as a set of
models and the syntactic representation of its formulas is irrelevant.
Recall the example we used at the beginning of
 Section 2
 to illustrate that the combination of belief bases is
syntax-dependent. We had \(K\_1 = \{a, b\}\), \(K\_2 = \{a \wedge b\}\)
and \(K\_3 = \{\neg b\}\). A syntax-based fusion would treat \(a, b, a
\wedge b, \neg b\) as inputs, whereas a model-based fusion would take
\(mod(K\_1) = mod(K\_2) = \{(1, 1)\}\) and \(mod(K\_3) = \{(1,0),
(0,0)\}\). Since model-based operators have been applied to the
problem of judgment aggregation, we will focus on that class of
merging operators and refer to (Baral et al. 1992; Konieczny 2000;
Gregoire and Konieczny 2006) for more on syntax-based
fusion.


### 2.2 The distance-based approach



An *IC* model-based fusion operator selects, among the models
of the integrity constraints *IC*, those that are preferred,
where the preference relation depends on the operator that is used.
Thus, the collective belief set \(\Delta\_{\IC}(E)\) is guaranteed to
be a set of formulas that are true in all of the selected models and
to satisfy the *IC*. In the example of the city council seen
earlier, this means that building a playground and a parking lot will
never be selected as a decision outcome. The preference information
usually takes the form of a total pre-order (to recall, a pre-order is
a reflexive and transitive relation) \(\le\) on the interpretations
induced by a notion of distance *d* between an interpretation
\(\omega\) and the profile *E*, denoted by \(d(\omega,E)\).
Intuitively, this is to select a collective outcome that is the
closest (with respect to some notion of distance to be specified) to
all individual belief bases while satisfying the integrity
constraints. It should be noted that a distance-based fusion operator
does not always guarantee a unique result. We will come back to this
point when we look at the application of belief merging to judgment
aggregation.



We have seen that majority operators are characterized by trying to
minimize the total dissatisfaction, whereas the arbitration operators
aim at minimizing the local dissatisfaction. We can thus see the
distance as a way to capture the notion of dissatisfaction. Inspired
by the *economy principle* employed in belief revision, the
outcome in merging should keep as much as information as possible from
*each* individual belief base \(K\_i\). In other words, since
the sources of information are assumed to be equally reliable, the
merge should delete as little as possible from the sources. The idea
then is to select the interpretations that minimize the distance
between the models of *IC* and the models of the belief profile
*E*. Formally, this can be expressed as follows:

 

\[
\mymod(\Delta\_{\IC}(E)) = \mymin (\mymod (\IC), \le\_{d})
\]


A distance *d* between interpretations is a total function \(d: W
\times W \rightarrow R^{+}\) such that for all \(\omega, \omega'\in
W\):


1. \(d(\omega ,\omega') = d(\omega',\omega )\)
2. \(d(\omega ,\omega') = 0 \textrm{ iff } \omega =\omega'\).



The first point states that the distance is symmetric. Suppose there
are three belief bases: \(K\_1 = K\_3 = \{a, b, \neg c, d\}\) and \(K\_2
= \{\neg a, b, c, d\}\). If we denote by \(\omega\_i\) the
interpretation of \(K\_i\), we have \(\omega\_1 = \omega\_3 = (1,1,0,1)\)
and \(\omega\_2 = (0,1,1,1)\). The first point requires that
\(d(\omega\_1 ,\omega\_2) = d(\omega\_2 ,\omega\_1)\). The second point
states that if two interpretations are identical, the distance is 0,
so \(d(\omega\_1 ,\omega\_3) =
 0\).[2]



Two steps are needed to find the models of *IC* that minimize
the distances to the belief profile. In the first step, we calculate
the distance between each interpretation satisfying *IC* (that
is, each candidate merged base) and each individual belief base. The
intuition here is to quantify how far each individual opinion is from
each possible collective outcome (recall that the outcomes will be
selected among the interpretations satisfying *IC*). In the
second step, we need to aggregate all those individual distances to
define the collective distance, that is, the distance of the belief
profile to each model of *IC*. This amounts to quantify how far
the group is from each possible outcome. Finally, the (possibly more
than one) base that minimizes such distance is selected as an
outcome.



For the first step, we need to define the distance between an
interpretation \(\omega\) and a belief base *K*. This is the
minimal distance between \(\omega\) and the models of *K*.
Formally: \(d(\omega, K) = \mymin\_{\omega'\in \mymod(K)} d(\omega,
\omega')\). If *K* has more than one model (e.g., \(K\_i = \{a
\vee b\}\) has three models: \(\{(0,1) (1,0), (1,1)\}\)), \(\omega'\)
will be the closest to \(\omega\).



We can now define the distance between an interpretation \(\omega\)
and a belief profile *E*, which is needed for the second step. We
need an aggregation function \(D: R^{+n} \rightarrow R^{+}\) that
takes the distances between the models of *IC* and the belief
bases \(K\_i\) calculated in the first step, and aggregate them into a
collective distance. This is: \(D(\omega, E) = D(d(\omega, K\_1)\),
\(d(\omega, K\_2)\), \(\ldots\), \(d(\omega, K\_n))\). A total pre-order
over the set *W* of all interpretations is thus obtained. The
merging operator can now select all interpretations that minimize the
distance to the profile *E*.



Technically, an aggregation function \(D: R^{+n} \rightarrow R^{+}\)
assigns a nonnegative real number to every n-ary tuple of nonnegative
real numbers. For any \(x\_1,\ldots, x\_{n}, x, y \in R^{+}, D\)
satisfies the following properties:


1. if \(x\ge y\), then \(D(x\_1,\ldots , x,\ldots , x\_{n})\ge
D(x\_1,\ldots , y,\ldots , x\_{n})\)
2. \(D(x\_1,\ldots , x,\ldots , x\_{n})=0\) if and only if \(x\_1=\ldots
=x\_{n}=0\)
3. \(D(x)=x\)



The outcome of the merging operator clearly depends on the chosen
distance functions *d* and *D*. Among the first proposals
(Lin and Mendelzon 1999; Revesz 1993) it was to adopt the *Hamming
distance* (defined below) for *d* and the *sum* or the
*max* for *D* (denoted respectively \(D\_{\Sigma}\) and
 \(D\_{\mymax}\)).[3]
 When *D* is the sum, the global distance is obtained by summing
the individual ones. The corresponding merging operator is a majority
operator and is called *minisum* as it will select those
interpretations that minimize the sum. The merging operator that uses
\(D\_{\mymax}\) is known as *minimax* and outputs the judgment
set that minimizes the maximal distance to the individual bases (Brams
et al. 2007b). Intuitively, *minimax* aims at minimizing the
disagreement with the most dissatisfied individual. Two opposite
outcomes may be selected when \(D\_{\Sigma}\) or \(D\_{\mymax}\) is used
(Brams et al. 2007b; Eckert and Klamler 2007).



The Hamming distance was a commonly used distance in belief revision.
The idea is simple. The Hamming distance counts the number of
propositional letters on which two interpretations differ. So, for
example, if \(\omega = (1, 0, 0)\) and \(\omega' = (0, 1, 0)\), we
have that \(d(\omega, \omega') = 2\) as the two interpretations differ
on the assignment to the first and the second propositions. Also well
known is the *drastic distance*, which assigns distance 0 if
two interpretations are the same and 1 otherwise. But the choice of
the distance is not restricted to those options. Other distances can
be used, that still satisfy the postulates given above (Konieczny and
Pino Perez 1999, 2002). The minimization of the sum of the
individual distances is an example of an *IC* majority merging
operator. In the next section, we will see this operator applied to
the discursive dilemma.



The distance-based approach can clarify the distinction between
arbitration and majority operators. *Leximax* is an example of
arbitration operator. A *leximax* operator may take *d* as
the Hamming distance and, for each interpretation, the distances
between that interpretation and the *n* bases \(K\_i\) form a
list. A pre-order over interpretations is defined by taking the
lexicographical order between sequences of distances, fixing an order
over the set of agents. Finally, \(D\_{\textit{leximax}}\) selects the
minimum. The intuition is that, unlike a majority operator that
selects the option that minimizes the *total* disagreement (by
minimizing the sum of the individual distances, for example), an
arbitration operator looks at the *distribution* of such
disagreement and selects the option that is fairer to all individuals,
that is, it aims at equally distributing the individual
dissatisfaction with the chosen outcome (recall the birthday gift
example above). This follows from the definition of the Hamming
distance: the larger the Hamming distance, the more disagreement there
is between two interpretations (here disagreement simply means that
the interpretations assign different truth values to the same
formula). Suppose that a belief profile *E* has three bases.
Suppose as well that the distances from the two models of *IC*
(\(\omega\) and \(\omega'\)) are \(D\_{\Sigma} (\omega, E) = D\_{\Sigma}
(\omega', E) = 6\) when we take the sum of the Hamming distances, and
\(D\_{\textit{leximax}}(\omega, E)= (2,2,2)\) and
\(D\_{\textit{leximax}}(\omega', E)= (5,1,0)\) when we take the
lexicographic order on the distances. In this example, the majority
operator cannot distinguish between \(\omega\) and \(\omega'\)
(because in both cases the sum is 6), while the arbitration operator
will prefer \(\omega\) to \(\omega'\) as \(\omega\) distributes the
individual disagreement in a fairer way than \(\omega'\).



As mentioned earlier, Liberatore and Schaerf were among the first to
propose arbitration operators. However, their approach was limited to
only two bases, and the result of the merge was one of the two bases.
Such operator would give questionable results in some situations, like
the one in (Konieczny and Pino Perez 2002). Suppose that two
financial experts give you advice regarding four shares *a, b,
c* and *d*. According to the first expert, all four shares
are going to rise (denoted by \(\varphi\_1= \{(1, 1, 1, 1)\}\), whereas
the second expert deems that all four shares will fall \((\varphi\_{2}=
\{(0, 0, 0, 0)\})\). According to Liberatore and Schaerf's
arbitration operator, the result will be \(\{(1, 1, 1, 1), (0, 0, 0,
0)\},\) which means that either the first or the second expert is
totally right. If, on the other hand, we apply an arbitration operator
*a la* Konieczny and Pino Perez, we obtain
\(\{(0, 0, 1, 1)\), \((0, 1, 0, 1)\), \((0, 1, 1, 0)\), \((1, 0, 0,
1)\), \((1, 0, 1, 0)\), \((1, 1, 0, 0)\}\). This result can be
interpreted as that--if we assume that all sources are equally
reliable--we do not have any reason to prefer one or another and,
so a reasonable position is to conclude that both can be equally
right. Still, Liberatore and Schaerf's operator may be used in
all situations where the result can be only one of the bases submitted
by the individuals. For example, if two doctors meet in order to
decide a patient's therapy, they likely have to decide in favour
of one of the two proposals as mixing therapies may not be a feasible
nor a safe option.



A representation theorem (Konieczny and Pino Perez 1999, 2002)
ensures that to each sub-class of *IC* merging operators
(majority and arbitration operators) corresponds a family of
pre-orders on interpretations (mirroring a similar representation
theorem that Katsuno and Mendelzon (1991) proved for belief revision
 operators).[4]



Let us now illustrate how belief merging can be applied to judgment
aggregation problems.


## 3. Belief merging applied to the discursive dilemma



The merging of individual belief bases into a collective one shares
similarities to the judgment aggregation problem. In both cases, we
wish to aggregate individual inputs into a group outcome, and both
disciplines employ logic to formalize the bases' contents. As we
have seen in
 Section 1,
 no aggregation procedure can ensure a consistent and complete group
judgment. However, the merging operators introduced in computer
science ensure a consistent outcome because such operators do not
satisfy independence. The collective judgment on a proposition is not
only determined by the individual judgments on that proposition but
also by considerations of *all* other agenda's items. It
is natural to apply the results about merging methods to the
aggregation of individual judgments (Pigozzi 2006).



How do impossibility results in judgment aggregation conciliate with
the fact that *IC* merging operators can ensure a consistent
collective outcome? The reason is that merging operators violate the
independence conditions, one of the requirements imposed on
aggregation functions in the impossibility theorems. Independence
turned out to be an instrumentally attractive condition because it
protects an aggregation function from strategic manipulation (Dietrich
2006; Dietrich and List 2007b). This means that an individual has no
interest in submitting an insincere judgment set in order to get a
better outcome for her. However, independence has been criticized in
the literature as a not suitable *desideratum* to aggregate
propositions that are logically interconnected (Chapman 2002; Mongin
2008). Clearly, paradoxical results are avoided by resorting to
*IC*, which blocks unacceptable outcome. However, it is worth
noting that in judgment aggregation the collective rationality
condition (that requires logically consistent outputs) plays an
analogous role as *IC* in belief merging, that is, blocks
unacceptable outcomes like inconsistent majority judgments. Moreover,
judgment aggregation impossibility results persist even if we
explicitly import additional integrity constraints into the judgment
aggregation framework (see Dietrich and List 2008b; Grandi 2012).



It has been observed (Brams et al. 2007a) that majority voting
minimizes the sum of Hamming distances. This means that, whenever
proposition-wise majority voting selects a consistent judgment set,
the same outcome is selected by the *minisum* rule. Majority
voting has credentials for being democratic. Another reason to focus
on majority distance-based procedures is that the aim of the
aggregation of individual judgments should be the right decision
rather than a fair distribution of individual dissatisfactions. The
epistemic link between majority voting and right decisions has been
pointed out in the *Condorcet Jury Theorem*. The theorem shows
that, when the voters are independent and have an equal probability of
being right better than random, then majority rule ensures to select
the right decision and the probability for doing so approaches 1 as
the voters' group size increases (see List 2013 for this and
some more formal arguments for majority rule).



Let us consider the three judges example and see what we obtain when
applying the *minisum* rule. The legal doctrine corresponds to
\(\IC= \{(p\land q) \leftrightarrow r\}\). The court is represented by
the profile \(E=\{K\_1 , K\_{2} , K\_{3}\}\), which is the multi-set
containing the judgment sets \(K\_1 , K\_{2} , K\_3\) of the three
judges. The three judgment sets and their corresponding models
are:

 \begin{align} K\_1 &= \{p, q, r\} \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \
\ \ \ \ \ \mymod(K\_1) &= \{(1, 1, 1)\};\\ K\_{2} &= \{p, \neg
q, \neg r\} \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \mymod(K\_{2}) &= \{(1, 0,
0)\};\\ K\_{3} &= \{\neg p, q, \neg r\} \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \
\mymod(K\_{3}) &= \{(0, 1, 0)\}.\\ \end{align}


Table 2
 shows the result for the majority operator that minimizes the sum of
the Hamming distances. In the first column are all the interpretations
for the propositional variables *p*, *q*, and *r*. The
interpretations that are not models of the *IC* have a shaded
background. So, for example, \((1,0,1)\) cannot be selected as the
collective outcome because it violates the legal doctrine. The numbers
in the \(d\_H (\cdot,K\_1)\), \(d\_H(\cdot,K\_{2})\), and
\(d\_H(\cdot,K\_{3})\) columns are the Hamming distances of each \(K\_i\)
from the corresponding interpretation. In the last column are the sums
of the Hamming distances.





|  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  |  \(d\_{H}(\cdot,K\_{1})\)  |  \(d\_{H}(\cdot,K\_{2})\)  |  \(d\_{H}(\cdot,K\_{3})\)  |  \(\Sigma(d\_{H} (\cdot,E))\)  |
|  \((1,1,1)\)  |  0  |  2  |  2  |  4  |
|  \((1,1,0)\)  |  1  |  1  |  1  |  3  |
|  \((1,0,1)\)  |  1  |  3  |  1  |  5  |
|  \((1,0,0)\)  |  2  |  2  |  0  |  4  |
|  \((0,1,1)\)  |  1  |  1  |  3  |  5  |
|  \((0,1,0)\)  |  2  |  0  |  2  |  4  |
|  \((0,0,1)\)  |  2  |  2  |  2  |  6  |
|  \((0,0,0)\)  |  3  |  1  |  1  |  5  |



Table 2




We see that, without *IC*, the distance-based majority operator
would select the same (inconsistent) outcome as proposition-wise
majority voting, that is, \((1,1,0)\). This is the outcome that is at
the minimum distance from *E*. However, the merging operator
cannot select \((1,1,0)\) as that outcome violates the IC. Neglecting
the shaded rows, only four interpretations are candidates to be
selected as collective judgment sets, that is, \((1,1,1)\),
\((1,0,0)\), \((0,1,0)\), and \((0,0,0)\). Of those, three are the
ones that minimize the distances. Thus, collective inconsistency is
avoided when a distance-based aggregation is used. However, this
method does not always guarantee a unique outcome. In the court
example, this aggregation selects the three models \((1,1,1)\),
\((1,0,0)\) and \((0,1,0)\) as group positions. Technically, this is
said to be an *irresolute* procedure, and a tie-breaking rule
needs to be combined if we wish to ensure a unique result (as common
in social choice theory).



The applicability of merging techniques developed in computer science
to judgment aggregation problems does not mean that the two
disciplines have the same objectives. As we have seen, the original
motivation of belief merging was to define ways to aggregate
information coming from different sources. Since the sources can have
different access to the information, no externally given agenda is
assumed. This is a difference with the judgment aggregation framework,
where individuals are required to submit their opinion on a given set
of items. Belief merging and judgment aggregation do not only differ
in the type of inputs they aggregate. They also output different
results: a collective base satisfying some given integrity constraints
for belief merging, and a collective judgment on the given agenda for
judgment aggregation.



Another difference resides in the fact that judgment aggregation
assumes that all members are rational, and so they all submit
consistent judgment sets. In belief merging, this is not required.
Agents can submit belief bases that are inconsistent with the
*IC* (Gregoire 2004). If an individual submits a
judgment that violates an integrity constraint, that judgment set will
not figure among the candidates to represent the group position.
However, his input will not be disregarded and will be taken into
account in the merging process. The possibility to abstain from
expressing an opinion on a certain item is also easily taken into
account in a belief merging setting. If individuals need to have their
say on *p*, *q* and *r* and one agent believes *q*
and *r* to be true but does not have a clear opinion on *p*,
this will be represented as \(\mymod(K\_1)= \{(1, 1, 1),\) \((0, 1,
1)\}\) and the distances calculated accordingly. The completeness
requirement on judgment sets has also been weakened in the judgment
aggregation framework. List and Pettit (2002) first discussed the
weakening of completeness in the context of supermajority and
unanimity rules. Later, it was shown (Gardenfors 2006; Dokow and
Holzman 2010) that, when judgment sets are not assumed to be complete,
any independent and unanimous aggregation function turns out to be
weakly oligarchic, that is, a subset of the individuals will decide
the collective outcome. Intuitively, this is a less negative result
than dictatorship, though it reduces to dictatorship in the case in
which only one individual belongs to that subset. Dietrich and List
(2008a) independently obtained equivalent results on oligarchic rules
to those in (Dokow and Holzman 2010).



Finally, if model-based merging approach is syntax-dependent, judgment
aggregation explicitly permits syntax-dependence. This can give rise
to decision framing problems (Cariani et al. 2008) or logical agenda
manipulation (Dietrich 2006) when a judgment problem can be presented
using two logically equivalent but syntactically different
agendas.



A formal investigation of the relationships between belief merging and
judgment aggregation can be found in (Everaere et al. 2015, 2017). As
we have seen, belief merging takes a profile of propositional belief
bases as input, where such bases represent the beliefs of a certain
individual, not restraint to a given agenda. Judgment aggregation, on
the other hand, asks people to submit their judgments on a specific
set of issues. The analysis rests on the assumption that an
individual's beliefs allow deriving her opinion on the
agenda's items. Thus, in (Everaere et al. 2015) a *projection
function p* (assumed to be identical for all the individuals) is
defined. The role of such projection function is precisely to
determine the judgments of an agent (input of judgment aggregation
operators) starting from her beliefs (input of belief merging). So,
for example, if an individual only believes \(a\land b\) and one of
the agenda items is *a*, then the projection function can derive
that the person submits a "yes" as judgment on *a*.
However, if she believes only *a* and one of the agenda item is
\(a\land b\), she will probably be not able to submit a judgment on
that item. For this reason, individual judgment sets in (Everaere et
al. 2015) are not necessarily complete (individuals can abstain on
some agenda's issues). Using the projection *p*, two paths
along which a collective judgment can be derived from a profile of
belief bases are considered. Along one path (merge-then-project), the
individual belief bases are first merged using a merging operator and
then the collective judgment is computed by the projection *p*.
Along the other path (project-then-aggregate), starting from the
individual bases, the individual judgment sets are first computed by
*p* and then aggregated using a judgment aggregation procedure to
determine the collective judgment on the given agenda. Thus, the
question addressed is whether the two collective judgments obtained by
following the two paths coincide. Two cases are considered: the
general case (incomplete agendas) and the case in which the agenda is
complete (i.e. it contains all possible interpretations). For example,
the agenda \(A= \{\neg a \land \neg b, \neg a \land b, a \land \neg b,
a \land b\}\) is complete whereas the agenda \(A= \{\neg a \land \neg
b, \neg a \land b, a \land \neg b\}\) is not. Hence, if an individual
believes \(a\land b\), her judgment set will be \((0,0,0,1)\) in the
first agenda and \((0,0,0)\) in the second one, which may lead to
different collective outcomes depending on whether the
merge-then-project or the project-then-merge path is used. The fact
that by properly choosing the agenda one may manipulate the result has
been investigated in the judgment aggregation literature (Dietrich
2016, Lang et al. 2016). In the general case, IC merging methods can
give results that are inconsistent with those obtained by using
judgment aggregation operators satisfying unanimity or majority
 preservation[5].
 On a more positive side, when the agenda is complete, the collective
judgments obtained by following the two paths coincide for some
judgment aggregation operators satisfying properties closed to some IC
merging postulates. 


### 3.1 Extensions and criticisms



The *minisum* rule applied to merge the judgment sets of the
three judges in the previous section is based on the same principles
as the *Kemeny rule*, a well-known preference aggregation rule
(Kemeny 1959). Unlike what happened in social choice, at the beginning
the literature of judgment aggregation focused on the axiomatic method
and only few concrete aggregation rules were proposed and studied.
Arguably, the interest of researchers from computer science and
multi-agent systems for judgment aggregation lead to the definition of
more concrete aggregation rules and to the investigation of their
relations. The same idea of minimization that plays such a crucial
role in belief merging can be found as a principle in the definition
of several voting rules in social choice theory. For instance, the
*minisum* rule turned out to be equivalent to several other
rules recently introduced in the judgment aggregation literature (Lang
et al. 2017).



The interest of computer scientists for aggregation methods is
witnessed by the fact that judgment aggregation is now among the
topics of computational social choice, an interdisciplinary discipline
that promotes exchanges and interactions between computer science and
social choice theory. Computational issues of aggregation rules are
among the interests of computational social choice. The intuition
behind the application of complexity theory to aggregation rules is to
assess the acceptability of an aggregation rule on the basis of
pragmatic considerations, that is, the algorithmic feasibility of
applying that rule. So, an aggregation rule is acceptable when its
outcome is 'easy' to compute, that is, it can be solved by
an algorithm in time which grows - at worst - polynomially with the
size of the input (only in some pathological cases we can imagine
desiring a rule that will not be able to return an outcome in a
foreseeable future). On the other hand, if an aggregation rule is
manipulable, then it is acceptable when it is 'hard' for
an individual to manipulate it. Thus, the study of the computational
complexity of aggregation rules may reveal that, even though a rule is
manipulable, it is actually hard for an individual to act on that. The
computational complexity of the distance-based procedures has been
studied (Endriss et al. 2012; Endriss and de Haan 2015). The high
computational complexity of Hamming rule in judgment aggregation
mirrors a parallel result that the Kemeny rule in preference
aggregation is also highly computational complex, as first shown in
Bartholdi et al. (1989) and Hudry (1989). A new rule has been proposed
to overcome the high computational complexity of distance-based
procedures. The average-voter rule (Grandi 2012) selects the judgment
set submitted by the individuals that minimizes the sum of the
distances. Hence, the outcome has to be one of the submitted judgment
sets. This allows reducing the computational complexity and, at the
same time, selects the most representative individual.



A generalization of distance-based methods for judgment aggregation
has been given in (Miller and Osherson 2009). Besides generalizing (by
taking a general metric) the merging operator we have applied to the
doctrinal paradox, they proposed three other distance-based procedures
for judgment aggregation. In case proposition-wise majority collapses
into an inconsistent collective judgment set, one method
(*Endpoint*) selects as group outcome the closest (according to
some distance metric) consistent collective judgment set. The other
two methods (*Full* and *Output*) look at minimal ways
to change the profile in order to output a consistent proposition-wise
majority collective judgment set. The difference is that
*Output* allows the individual judgment sets in the modified
profile to be inconsistent.



Duddy and Piggins (2012) questioned the use of Hamming distance
between judgment sets. The problem is that, when the agenda contains
propositions that are logically connected, the Hamming distance may be
responsible of double counting because it ignores such
interdependencies. Suppose, for example, that two individuals accept
propositions *q* but disagree on \(p\land q\) (so, one individual
accepts the conjunction, while the other rejects it). This can happen
only if they disagree on *p*. The Hamming distance between the
two judgment sets \(K\_1 = \{\neg p, q, \neg(p\land q)\}\) and \(K\_{2}
= \{p, q, (p\land q)\}\) is 2. It is the disagreement on *p* that
implies the disagreement over \(p\land q\), so the distance should be
just 1. The alternative distance proposed in order to address this
problem is a distance that takes the smallest number of logically
coherent changes needed to convert one judgment set into the
other.


## 4. Other topics



Belief merging is an abstract theory that addresses the problem of
aggregating symbolic inputs, without specifying whether such items are
beliefs, knowledge, desires, norms etc. It is the choice of the
merging operator that should best suit the type of inputs. The
framework of judgment aggregation has also been extended to include
the aggregation of other types of attitudes, as in (Dietrich and List
2010).



The literature on belief merging includes the study of the strategic
manipulation problem (Evaraere et al. 2007). When an aggregation
procedure is not strategy-proof, an individual who has a preference
over the possible outcomes can manipulate the result by lying on her
true beliefs and thus obtain an outcome closer to her true
preferences. In general, merging operators are not strategy-proof when
Hamming distance is used, whereas they are strategy-proof when the
drastic distance is employed. For a recent survey of results on
strategic behaviour in judgment aggregation, see (Baumeister et al.
2017).



In those situations in which we can assume that there is a fact of the
matter (for example, a defendant has--or has not--committed
a murder), which each agent has a (noisy) opinion about, the
truth-tracking properties of belief merging operators can be
investigated (Hartmann et al. 2010; Hartmann and Sprenger 2012;
Cevolani 2014). The question is then whether a certain aggregation
method selects the right decision. Williamson (2009) argues that
aggregating the *evidence* on which the judgments are based is
best for judgment aggregation, as it would yield to the right
decision. The three-step proposal he advocates distinguishes between
three types of propositions: evidence, beliefs and judgments. Evidence
is the support for an agent's beliefs and judgments, and it is
the right candidate for merging techniques. Judgments, on the other
hand, are best dealt with decision theory that maps degrees of beliefs
and utilities to judgments.