Aggregated criteria for and against making the decision according to an option
represent the total benefits and total costs in making the decision in that way.
When total costs are subtracted from total benefits for a particular option, the
result constitutes the net benefit of making the decision according to that
option. Conveniently these net benefits for Options 1-n are labelled Net
Benefits 1-n.
This said, there may be a problem in practice in aggregating criteria because
they cannot be measured or cannot be measured by the same standard. All that
can be said in reply is that a decision maker has to do their best because the
logical basis of decision making rests on net benefit.
To illustrate aggregating the criteria, let us take as an example a provision that
allows an official to take any of three options when the holder of a licence has
misbehaved in some way:
(1)
Option 1: They can receive a caution and keep the licence.
(2)
Option 2: Their licence can be suspended for a time.
(3)
Option 3: Their licence can be cancelled.
Let us now consider how two criteria might be deployed which, for the sake
of the illustration, we assume are legally relevant criteria.
One consists of the person’s good character. To the extent that the person has
a good character it weighs towards Option 2 (their licence being suspended in
preference to Option 3 (their licence being cancelled) and towards Option 1
(receiving a caution and keeping the licence) in preference to Option 2.
A second criterion consists of their capacity to learn from their mistakes. A
high capacity in this regard weighs towards Option 1 in preference to Option 2
and Option 2 in preference to Option 3.
These illustrations demonstrate that criteria bring a different weight for each
option. If one wanted to represent this process symbolically, one could tag
each criterion with each option. Thus Criterion 1 would have three versions in
this example which could be designated Criterion 1.O1, Criterion 1.O2 and
Criterion 1.O3. Assuming that there were n criteria, then for Option 1 the
criteria would consists of Criteria 1.O1 – Criteria n.O1.
Now the full process entails aggregating all the criteria as they apply to each
option to ascertain the net benefit of the option. Symbolically this process can
be represented in the following way:
Net Benefit of Option 1 = Criterion 1.O1 + Criterion 2.O1 + Criterion n.O1
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