This post will just be a concrete math question. I am interested in this question because I have recently come tor reject the independence axiom of VNM, and am thus playing with some weaker versions.
Let be a finite set of deterministic outcomes. Let be the space of all lotteries over these outcomes, and let be a relation on . We write if A B and B A. We write if but not .
Here are some axioms we can assume about :
A1. For all , either or (or both).
A2. For all , if , and , then .
A3. For all , if , and , then there exists a such that .
A4. For all , and if , then .
A5. For all , and , if and , then .
Here is one bonus axiom:
B1. For all , and , if and only if .
(Note that B1 is stronger than both A4 and A5)
Finally, here are some conclusions of successively increasing strength:
C1. There exists a function such that if and only if .
C2. Further, we require is quasi-concave.
C3. Further, we require is continuous.
C4. Further, we require is concave.
C5. Further, we require is linear.
The standard VNM utility theorem can be thought of as saying A1, A2, A3, and B1 together imply C5.
Here is the main question I am curious about:
Q1: Do A1, A2, A3, A4, and A5 together imply C4? [ANSWER: NO]
(If no, how can we salvage C4, by adding or changing some axioms?)
Here are some sub-questions that would constitute significant partial progress, and that I think are interesting in their own right:
Q2: Do A1, A2, A3, and A4 together imply C3? [ANSWER: NO]
Q3: Do C3 and A5 together imply C4? [ANSWER: NO]
(Feel free to give answers that are only partial progress, and use this space to think out loud or discuss anything else related to weaker versions of VNM.)
EDIT:
AlexMennen actually resolved the question in the negative as stated, but my curiosity is not resolved, since his argument is violating continuity, and I really care about concavity. My updated main question is now:
Q4: Do A1, A2, A3, A4, and A5 together imply that there exists a concave function such that if and only if ? [ANSWER: NO]
(i.e. We do not require to be continuous.)
This modification also implies interest in the subquestion:
Q5: Do A1, A2, A3, and A4 together imply C2?
EDIT 2:
Here is another bonus axiom:
B2. For all , if , then there exists some such that .
(Really, we don't need to assume is already in . We just need it to be possible to add a , and extend our preferences in a way that satisfies the other axioms, and A3 will imply that such a lottery was already in . We might want to replace this with a cleaner axiom later.)
Q6: Do A1, A2, A3, A5, and B2 together imply C4? [ANSWER: NO]
EDIT 3:
We now have negative answers to everything other than Q5, which I still think is pretty interesting. We could also weaken Q5 to include other axioms, like A5 and B2. Weakening the conclusion doesn't help, since it is easy to get C2 from C1 and A4.
I would still really like some axioms that get us all the way to a concave function, but I doubt there will be any simple ones. Concavity feels like it really needs more structure that does not translate well to a preference relation.
Below is a sketch of an argument that might imply that the answer to Q5 is (clasically) 'yes'. (I thought about a question that's probably the same a little while back, and am reciting from cache, without checking in detail that my axioms lined up with your A1-4).
Pick a lottery Z with the property that forall A,B with A⪯Z and B⪯Z, forall p∈[0,1], we have (1−p)A+pB⪯Z. We will say that Z is "extreme(ly high)".
Pick a lottery X with X⪯Z.
Now, for any Y with X⪯Y⪯Z, define u(Y) to be the p guaranteed by continuity (A3).
Lemma: forall α,β∈[0,1] with α≤β, (1−α)X+αZ⪯(1−β)X+βZ.
Proof:
We can use this lemma to get that u(A)≤u(B) implies A⪯B, because A∼(1−u(A))X+u(A)Z, and B∼(1−u(B))X+u(B)Z, so invoke the above lemma with α=u(A) and β=u(B).
Next we want to show that A⪯B implies u(A)≤u(B). I think this probably works, but it appears to require either the axiom of choice (!) or a strengthening of one of A3 or A4. (Either strengthen A3 to guarantee that if B1∼B2 then it gives the same p in both cases, or strengthen A4 to add that if B≺A then B≺pA+(1−p)B, or define u(A) not from A3 directly, but by using choice to pick out a p for each ∼-equivalence-class of lotteries.) Once you've picked one of those branches, the proof basically proceeds by contradiction. (And so it's not terribly constructive, unless you can do ¬¬(A≺B)→(A≺B) constructively.)
The rough idea is: if A≺B but u(A)≥u(B) then you can use the above lemma to get a contradiction, and so you basically only need to consider the case where A∼B in which case you want u(A)=u(B), which you can get by definition (if you use the axiom of choice), or directly by the strengthening of A3. And... my cache says that you can also get it by the strengthening of A4, albeit less directly, but I haven't reloaded that part of my cache, so \shrug I dunno.
Next we argue that this function u is unique up to postcomposition by... any strictly isotone endofunction on the reals? I think? (Perhaps unique only among quasiconvex functions?) I haven't checked the details.
Now we have a class of utility-function-ish-things, defined only on Y with X⪯Y⪯Z, and we want to extend it to all lotteries.
I'm not sure if this step works, but the handwavy idea is that for any lottery Y that you want to extend u to include, you should be able to find a lower X and an extreme higher Z that bracket it, at which point you can find the corresponding u (using the above machinery), at which point you can (probably?) pick some canonical strictly-isotone real endofunction to compose with it that makes it agree with the parts of the function you've defined so far, and through this process you can extend your definition of u to include any lottery. handwave handwave.
Note that the exact function you get depends on how you find the lower X and higher Z, and which isotone function you use to get all the pieces to line up, but when you're done you can probably argue that the whole result is unique up to postcomposition by a strictly isotone real endofunction, of which your construction is a fine representative.
This gets you C1. My cache says it should be easy to get C2 from there, and the first paragraph of "Edit 3" to the OP suggests the same, so I haven't checked this again.