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This chapter traces the development of common sense notions of needs, tastes and preferences into the concept of an ordinal preference field, and tries to show that it is extremely unlikely that an ordinal preference field can be both consistent over time and comprehensive and that the concept is likely to be based on a confusion between different logical forms of empirical fact. While preferences are portrayed as ex ante facts in the rational choice model, the actual empirical content are not preferences but are the actual choices made by individuals. What we know about choices are records of past events. Preference fields are inferred from choices, but we can then not use the inferred preferences to explain choice, for that would be explaining what has already been assumed. Preferences, though portrayed as structural facts, are nonetheless nothing other than ex post facts are dressed up as ex ante facts.
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