Discursive dilemma

However, now consider the situation where the community are asked one question: "Are all three conditions (importance, weather and funds) met?"

This is because contradictory conceptions of a group can emerge depending on the type of questioning that is chosen.

In this example, that means they would vote that the caretaker probably mowed over the roses, and that the contract did indeed forbid that action.

The table above illustrates how majority decisions can contradict (because the judges vote in favor of the premises, and yet reject the conclusion).

Pettit believes that the lesson of this paradox is that there is no simple way to aggregate individual opinions into a single, coherent "group entity".

Collective responsibility is important to sort out, and Petitt insists that groups should have limited rights, and various obligations and checks on their power.

List and Pettit argue that the discursive dilemma can be likewise generalized to a sort of "List–Pettit theorem".

Their theorem states that the inconsistencies remain for any aggregation method which meets a few natural conditions.