Decision Theory

Edited by Rachael Briggs (Australian National University, Stanford University)
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  1. Idle Questions.Jens Kipper, Alexander W. Kocurek & Zeynep Soysal - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.
    In light of the problem of logical omniscience, some scholars have argued that belief is question-sensitive: agents don't simply believe propositions but rather believe answers to questions. Hoek (2022) has recently developed a version of this approach on which a belief state is a "web" of questions and answers. Here, we present several challenges to Hoek's question-sensitive account of belief. First, Hoek's account is prone to very similar logical omniscience problems as those he claims to address. Second, the link between (...)
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  2. The Isaac Levi Prize 2023: Optimization and Beyond.Akshath Jitendranath - 2024 - Journal of Philosophy 121 (3):1-2.
    This paper will be concerned with hard choices—that is, choice situations where an agent cannot make a rationally justified choice. Specifically, this paper asks: if an agent cannot optimize in a given situation, are they facing a hard choice? A pair of claims are defended in light of this question. First, situations where an agent cannot optimize because of incompleteness of the binary preference or value relation constitute a hard choice. Second, situations where agents cannot optimize because the binary preference (...)
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  3. Deference Principles for Imprecise Credences.Giacomo Molinari - manuscript
    This essay gives an account of epistemic deference for agents with imprecise credences. I look at the two main imprecise deference principles in the literature, known as Identity Reflection and Pointwise Reflection (Moss, 2021). I show that Pointwise Reflection is strictly weaker than Identity Reflection, and argue that, if you are certain you will update by conditionalisation, you should defer to your future self according to Identity Reflection. Then I give a more general justification for Pointwise and Identity Reflection from (...)
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  4. The Shutdown Problem: Incomplete Preferences as a Solution.Elliott Thornley - manuscript
    I explain and motivate the shutdown problem: the problem of creating artificial agents that (1) shut down when a shutdown button is pressed, (2) don’t try to prevent or cause the pressing of the shutdown button, and (3) otherwise pursue goals competently. I then propose a solution: train agents to have incomplete preferences. Specifically, I propose that we train agents to lack a preference between every pair of different-length trajectories. I suggest a way to train such agents using reinforcement learning: (...)
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  5. Suppositional Desires and Rational Choice Under Moral Uncertainty.Nicholas Makins - forthcoming - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy.
    This paper presents a unifying diagnosis of a number of important problems facing existing models of rational choice under moral uncertainty and proposes a remedy. I argue that the problems of (i) severely limited scope, (ii) intertheoretic comparisons, and (iii) 'swamping’ all stem from the way in which values are assigned to options in decision rules such as Maximisation of Expected Choiceworthiness. By assigning values to options under a given moral theory by asking something like ‘how much do I desire (...)
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  6. Instrumental Divergence.J. Dmitri Gallow - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies.
    The thesis of instrumental convergence holds that a wide range of ends have common means: for instance, self preservation, desire preservation, self improvement, and resource acquisition. Bostrom contends that instrumental convergence gives us reason to think that "the default outcome of the creation of machine superintelligence is existential catastrophe". I use the tools of decision theory to investigate whether this thesis is true. I find that, even if intrinsic desires are randomly selected, instrumental rationality induces biases towards certain kinds of (...)
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  7. The Self, Emptiness, and Awareness.Claus Janew - 2024 - In Truthfulness. The Consciousness that Creates Reality. KDP.
    In this exploration of self-identity, I argue that the self is not a standalone entity but an integral part of a broader consciousness. Deep meditation reveals the self as a construct beyond egoistic confines, interlinked with the external world and others' experiences. Decisions arise from an awareness that transcends individual ego, suggesting that our sense of self is an inexhaustible center of dynamic consciousness rather than an ultimate emptiness.
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  8. The impossibility of non-manipulable probability aggregation.Franz Dietrich & Christian List - 2023
    A probability aggregation rule assigns to each profile of probability functions across a group of individuals (representing their individual probability assignments to some propositions) a collective probability function (representing the group's probability assignment). The rule is “non-manipulable” if no group member can manipulate the collective probability for any proposition in the direction of his or her own probability by misrepresenting his or her probability function (“strategic voting”). We show that, except in trivial cases, no probability aggregation rule satisfying two mild (...)
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  9. Decision, causality, and predetermination.Boris Kment - 2023 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 107 (3):638-670.
    Evidential decision theory (EDT) says that the choiceworthiness of an option depends on its evidential connections to possible outcomes. Causal decision theory (CDT) holds that it depends on your beliefs about its causal connections. While Newcomb cases support CDT, Arif Ahmed has described examples that support EDT. A new account is needed to get all cases right. I argue that an option A's choiceworthiness is determined by the probability that a good outcome ensues at possible A‐worlds that match actuality in (...)
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  10. Desiderative Lockeanism.Milo Phillips-Brown - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
    According to the Desiderative Lockean Thesis, there are necessary and sufficient conditions, stated in the terms of decision theory, for when one is truly said to want. I advance a new Desiderative Lockean view. My view is distinctive in being doubly context-sensitive. Want ascriptions exhibit a remarkable context-sensitivity: what a person is truly said to want varies by context in a variety of ways, a fact that has not been fully appreciated. Others Desiderative Lockeans attempt to capture the context-sensitivity in (...)
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  11. The Sure-Thing Principle.Jean Baccelli & Lorenz Hartmann - 2023 - Journal of Mathematical Economics 109 (102915).
    The Sure-Thing Principle famously appears in Savage’s axiomatization of Subjective Expected Utility. Yet Savage introduces it only as an informal, overarching dominance condition motivating his separability postulate P2 and his state-independence postulate P3. Once these axioms are introduced, by and large, he does not discuss the principle any more. In this note, we pick up the analysis of the Sure-Thing Principle where Savage left it. In particular, we show that each of P2 and P3 is equivalent to a dominance condition; (...)
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  12. The Philosophy of Dumbness: A Philosophical Romance about Rationality.Tommaso Ostillio - manuscript
    In this work, I investigate the implications of reversing the common assumption of rationality on behalf of human agents typically underlying philosophical research. Instead, I assume that human agents can become rational only if they learn to edge against their dumbness. Specifically, I show that intelligence cannot be considered the opposite of dumbness. To this end, I embrace the difference among System 1, System 2, and System 1.5. On these grounds, I argue that System 2 can be considered the system (...)
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  13. The balance and weight of reasons.Nicholas Makins - 2023 - Theoria 89 (5):592-606.
    The aim of this paper is to provide a detailed characterisation of some ways in which our preferences reflect our reasons. I will argue that practical reasons can be characterised along two dimensions that influence our preferences: their balance and their weight. This is analogous to a similar characterisation of the way in which probabilities reflect the balance and weight of evidence in epistemology. In this paper, I will illustrate the distinction between the balance and weight of reasons, and show (...)
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  14. Hot-cold empathy gaps and the grounds of authenticity.Grace Helton & Christopher Register - 2023 - Synthese 202 (5):1-24.
    Hot-cold empathy gaps are a pervasive phenomena wherein one’s predictions about others tend to skew ‘in the direction’ of one’s own current visceral states. For instance, when one predicts how hungry someone else is, one’s prediction will tend to reflect one’s own current hunger state. These gaps also obtain intrapersonally, when one attempts to predict what one oneself would do at a different time. In this paper, we do three things: We draw on empirical evidence to argue that so-called hot-cold (...)
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  15. Patients, doctors and risk attitudes.Nicholas Makins - 2023 - Journal of Medical Ethics 49 (11):737-741.
    A lively topic of debate in decision theory over recent years concerns our understanding of the different risk attitudes exhibited by decision makers. There is ample evidence that risk-averse and risk-seeking behaviours are widespread, and a growing consensus that such behaviour is rationally permissible. In the context of clinical medicine, this matter is complicated by the fact that healthcare professionals must often make choices for the benefit of their patients, but the norms of rational choice are conventionally grounded in a (...)
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  16. The Shutdown Problem: Three Theorems.Elliott Thornley - manuscript
    I explain the shutdown problem: the problem of designing artificial agents that (1) shut down when a shutdown button is pressed, (2) don’t try to prevent or cause the pressing of the shutdown button, and (3) otherwise pursue goals competently. I prove three theorems that make the difficulty precise. These theorems show that agents satisfying some innocuous-seeming conditions will often try to prevent or cause the pressing of the shutdown button, even in cases where it’s costly to do so. And (...)
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  17. Embracing Self-Defeat in Normative Theory.Samuel Fullhart - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
    Some normative theories are self-defeating. They tell us to respond to our situations in ways that bring about outcomes that are bad, given the aims of the theories, and which could have been avoided. Across a wide range of debates in ethics, decision theory, political philosophy, and formal epistemology, many philosophers treat the fact that a normative theory is self-defeating as sufficient grounds for rejecting it. I argue that this widespread and consequential assumption is false. In particular, I argue that (...)
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  18. Resource Rationality.Thomas F. Icard - manuscript
    Theories of rational decision making often abstract away from computational and other resource limitations faced by real agents. An alternative approach known as resource rationality puts such matters front and center, grounding choice and decision in the rational use of finite resources. Anticipated by earlier work in economics and in computer science, this approach has recently seen rapid development and application in the cognitive sciences. Here, the theory of rationality plays a dual role, both as a framework for normative assessment (...)
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  19. Against the no-difference argument.Adam Elga - forthcoming - Analysis.
    There are 1,000 of us and one victim. We each increase the level at which a "discomfort machine" operates on the victim---leading to great discomfort. Suppose that consecutive levels of the machine are so similar that the victim cannot distinguish them. Have we acted permissibly? According to the "no-difference argument" the answer is "yes" because each of our actions was guaranteed to make the victim no worse off. This argument is of interest because if it is sound, similar arguments threaten (...)
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  20. Ética hedonista en la Carta a Meneceo de Epicuro de Samos. Resignificación del concepto placer.Estiven Valencia Marin - 2015 - Dissertation, Universidad Católica de Pereira
    Los aspectos ético y moral se insertan en los problemas de la filosofía antigua, aspectos que han sido tenidos en cuenta como determinantes en la búsqueda de la vida feliz. Una de tantas propuestas fue desarrollada por el heleno Epicuro oriundo de la isla de Samos quien argumenta que el placer es el fin de la vida feliz. Tal identificación del placer con la felicidad ha sido fundamento para que otros pensadores cataloguen a este filósofo de libertino, promiscuo, antimoral, etc. (...)
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  21. How to do things with sunk costs.Michael Zhao - forthcoming - Noûs.
    It is a commonplace in economics that we should disregard sunk costs. The sunk cost effect might be widespread, goes the conventional wisdom, but we would be better off if we could rid ourselves of it. In this paper, I argue against the orthodoxy by showing that the sunk cost effect is often beneficial. Drawing on discussions of related topics in dynamic choice theory, I show that, in a range of cases, being disposed to honor sunk costs allows an agent (...)
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  22. Prisoners of Prophecy.William Peden - 2022 - In Kevin S. Decker (ed.), Dune and Philosophy. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley. pp. 144–152.
    The deceptive strangeness of prescience in Dune is typical of Herbert's ideas. The ancient Babylonians were able to systematically predict astronomical events, but contemporary astrophysicists can forecast distant events beyond the Babylonians’ wildest dreams. Herbert describes the prescience of characters like Paul as a hyperawareness of possibilities and probabilities given certain choices, rather than being able to examine a fixed future. Common sense suggests that prescience should help us live together better. The Prisoner's Dilemma can be interpreted in different ways, (...)
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  23. Foundations for Knowledge-Based Decision Theories.Zeev Goldschmidt - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
    Several philosophers have proposed Knowledge-Based Decision Theories (KDTs)—theories that require agents to maximize expected utility as yielded by utility and probability functions that depend on the agent’s knowledge. Proponents of KDTs argue that such theories are motivated by Knowledge-Reasons norms that require agents to act only on reasons that they know. However, no formal derivation of KDTs from Knowledge-Reasons norms has been suggested, and it is not clear how such norms justify the particular ways in which KDTs relate knowledge and (...)
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  24. Tensed Facts and the Fittingness of our Attitudes 1.Kristie Miller - 2022 - Philosophical Perspectives 36 (1):216-232.
    We direct different attitudes towards states of affairs depending on where in time those states of affairs are located. Call this the type asymmetry. The type asymmetry appears fitting. For instance, it seems fitting to feel guilt or regret only about states of affairs that are past, and anticipation only of states of affairs that are future. It has been argued that the type asymmetry could only be fitting if there are tensed facts, and hence that since it is fitting, (...)
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  25. Why bounded rationality (in epistemology)?David Thorstad - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
    Bounded rationality gets a bad rap in epistemology. It is argued that theories of bounded rationality are overly context-sensitive; conventionalist; or dependent on ordinary language. In this paper, I have three aims. The first is to set out and motivate an approach to bounded rationality in epistemology inspired by traditional theories of bounded rationality in cognitive science. My second aim is to show how this approach can answer recent challenges raised for theories of bounded rationality. My third aim is to (...)
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  26. Les Ombres aveugles de Narcisse.Roberto Arruda - 2023 - São Paulo: Terra à Vista.
    L'objective principal de cette étude est d'observer comment certains des attributs evolutives essentiels de l'humanité, comme la criativité, l'imagination et la association, peuvent devenir une maladie dangereuse, à labri des ombres brumeuses de l'inteligence.
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  27. Irrationality and Indecision.Jan-Paul Sandmann - 2023 - Synthese 201 (137):1-20.
    On the standard interpretation, if a person holds cyclical preferences, the person is prone to acting irrationally. I provide a different interpretation, tying cyclical preferences not to irrationality, but to indecision. According to this alternative understanding – coined the indecision interpretation – top cycles in a person’s preferences can be associated with a difficulty in justifying one’s choice. If an agent’s justificatory impasse persists despite attempts to resolve the cycle, the agent can be deemed undecided. The indecision interpretation is compatible (...)
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  28. Decisions under Ignorance and the Individuation of States of Nature.Johan E. Gustafsson - 2022 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 11 (2):86-92.
    How do you make decisions under ignorance? That is, how do you decide when you lack subjective probabilities for some of your options’ possible outcomes? One answer is that you follow the Laplace Rule: you assign an equal probability to each state of nature for which you lack a subjective probability (that is, you use the Principle of Indifference) and then you maximize expected utility. The most influential objection to the Laplace Rule is that it is sensitive to the individuation (...)
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  29. Reasoning in attitudes.Franz Dietrich & Antonios Staras - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1–31.
    People reason not only in beliefs, but also in intentions, preferences, and other attitudes. They form preferences from existing preferences, or intentions from existing beliefs and intentions, and so on. This often involves choosing between rival conclusions. Building on Broome (Rationality through reasoning, Hoboken, Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118609088, 2013) and Dietrich et al. (J Philos 116:585–614. https://doi.org/10.5840/jphil20191161138, 2019), we present a philosophical and formal analysis of reasoning in attitudes, with or without facing choices in reasoning. We give different accounts of choosing, in (...)
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  30. Arbitrariness Arguments against Temporal Discounting.Tim Smartt - 2021 - Australasian Philosophical Review 5 (3):302-308.
    Craig Callender [2022] provides a novel challenge to the non-arbitrariness principle. His challenge plays an important role in his argument for the rational permissibility of a non-exponential temporal discounting rate. But the challenge is also of wider interest: it raises significant questions about whether we ought to accept the non-arbitrariness principle as a constraint on rational preferences. In this paper, I present two reasons to resist Callender’s challenge. First, I present a reason to reject his claim that the non-arbitrariness principle (...)
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  31. The Normative Standard for Future Discounting.Craig Callender - 2021 - Australasian Philosophical Review 5 (3):227-253.
    This paper challenges the conventional wisdom dominating the social sciences and philosophy regarding temporal discounting, the practice of discounting the value of future utility when making decisions. Although there are sharp disagreements about temporal discounting, a kind of standard model has arisen, one that begins with a normative standard about how we should make intertemporal comparisons of utility. This standard demands that in so far as one is rational one discounts utilities at future times with an exponential discount function. Tracing (...)
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  32. Risk, Rationality and (Information) Resistance: De-rationalizing Elite-group Ignorance.Xin Hui Yong - 2023 - Erkenntnis:1-17.
    There has been a movement aiming to teach agents about their privilege by making the information about their privilege as costless as possible. However, some argue that in risk-sensitive frameworks, such as Lara Buchak’s (2013), it can be rational for privileged agents to shield themselves from learning about their privilege, even if the information is costless and relevant. This threatens the efficacy of these information-access efforts in alleviating the problem of elite-group ignorance. In response, I show that even within the (...)
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  33. The Buddha's Lucky Throw and Pascal's Wager.Bronwyn Finnigan - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
    The Apaṇṇaka Sutta, one of the early recorded teachings of the Buddha, contains an argument for accepting the doctrines of karma and rebirth that Buddhist scholars claim anticipates Pascal’s wager. I call this argument the Buddha’s wager. Does it anticipate Pascal’s wager and is it a good bet? Contemporary scholars identify at least four versions of Pascal’s wager in his Pensées. This article demonstrates that the Buddha’s wager anticipates two versions of Pascal’s wager, but not its canonical form. Like Pascal’s (...)
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  34. Incomplete Preference and Indeterminate Comparative Probabilities.Yang Liu - 2022 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 73 (3):795-810.
    The notion of comparative probability defined in Bayesian subjectivist theory stems from an intuitive idea that, for a given pair of events, one event may be considered “more probable” than the other. Yet it is conceivable that there are cases where it is indeterminate as to which event is more probable, due to, e.g., lack of robust statistical information. We take that these cases involve indeterminate comparative probabilities. This paper provides a Savage-style decision-theoretic foundation for indeterminate comparative probabilities.
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  35. Integrating Abduction and Inference to the Best Explanation.Michael J. Shaffer - 2022 - European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 14 (2):1-18.
    Tomis Kapitan’s work on Peirce’s conception of abduction was instrumental for our coming to see how Peircean abduction both relates to and is importantly different from inference to the best explanation (IBE). However, he ultimately concluded that Peirce’s conception of abduction was a muddle. Despite the deeply problematic nature of Peirce’s theory of abduction in these respects, Kapitan’s work on Peircean abduction offers insight into the nature of abductive inquiry that is importantly relevant to the task of making sense of (...)
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  36. Two paradoxes of bounded rationality.David Thorstad - 2022 - Philosophers' Imprint 22.
    My aim in this paper is to develop a unified solution to two paradoxes of bounded rationality. The first is the regress problem that incorporating cognitive bounds into models of rational decisionmaking generates a regress of higher-order decision problems. The second is the problem of rational irrationality: it sometimes seems rational for bounded agents to act irrationally on the basis of rational deliberation. I review two strategies which have been brought to bear on these problems: the way of weakening which (...)
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  37. Fragmentation and logical omniscience.Adam Elga & Agustín Rayo - 2022 - Noûs 56 (3):716-741.
    It would be good to have a Bayesian decision theory that assesses our decisions and thinking according to everyday standards of rationality — standards that do not require logical omniscience (Garber 1983, Hacking 1967). To that end we develop a “fragmented” decision theory in which a single state of mind is represented by a family of credence functions, each associated with a distinct choice condition (Lewis 1982, Stalnaker 1984). The theory imposes a local coherence assumption guaranteeing that as an agent's (...)
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  38. Guard against temptation: Intrapersonal team reasoning and the role of intentions in exercising willpower.Natalie Gold - 2022 - Noûs 56 (3):554-569.
    Sometimes we make a decision about an action we will undertake later and form an intention, but our judgment of what it is best to do undergoes a temporary shift when the time for action comes round. What makes it rational not to give in to temptation? Many contemporary solutions privilege diachronic rationality; in some “rational non-reconsideration” (RNR) accounts once the agent forms an intention, it is rational not to reconsider. This leads to other puzzles: how can someone be motivated (...)
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  39. The Propagation of Suspension of judgment. Or, should we confer any weight to crucial objections the truth-value of which we are ignorant?Aldo Filomeno - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-22.
    It is not uncommon in the history of science and philosophy to encounter crucial experiments or crucial objections the truth-value of which we are ignorant, that is, about which we suspend judgment. Should we ignore such objections? Contrary to widespread practice, I show that in and only in some circumstances they should not be ignored, for the epistemically rational doxastic attitude is to suspend judgment also about the hypothesis that the objection targets. In other words, suspension of judgment "propagates" from (...)
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  40. Genericity and Inductive Inference.Henry Ian Schiller - forthcoming - Philosophy of Science:1-18.
    We are often justified in acting on the basis of evidential confirmation. I argue that such evidence supports belief in non-quantificational generic generalizations, rather than universally quantified generalizations. I show how this account supports, rather than undermines, a Bayesian account of confirmation. Induction from confirming instances of a generalization to belief in the corresponding generic is part of a reasoning instinct that is typically (but not always) correct, and allows us to approximate the predictions that formal epistemology would make.
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  41. Questions in Action.Daniel Hoek - 2022 - Journal of Philosophy 119 (3):113-143.
    Choices confront us with questions. How we act depends on our answers to those questions. So the way our beliefs guide our choices is not just a function of their informational content, but also depends systematically on the questions those beliefs address. This paper gives a precise account of the interplay between choices, questions and beliefs, and harnesses this account to obtain a principled approach to the problem of deduction. The result is a novel theory of belief-guided action that explains (...)
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  42. Transformative Experience, Awareness Growth, and the Limits of Rational Planning.Katie Steele & H. Orri Stefánsson - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (5):939-948.
    Laurie Paul argues that, when it comes to many of your most significant life-changing decisions, the principles of rational choice are silent. That is because, in these cases, you anticipate that one of your choice options would yield a transformative experience. We argue that such decisions are best seen as ones in which you anticipate awareness growth. You do not merely lack knowledge about which possible outcome will arise from a transformative option; you lack knowledge about what are the possible (...)
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  43. Risk aversion over finite domains.Jean Baccelli, Georg Schollmeyer & Christoph Jansen - 2021 - Theory and Decision 93 (2):371-397.
    We investigate risk attitudes when the underlying domain of payoffs is finite and the payoffs are, in general, not numerical. In such cases, the traditional notions of absolute risk attitudes, that are designed for convex domains of numerical payoffs, are not applicable. We introduce comparative notions of weak and strong risk attitudes that remain applicable. We examine how they are characterized within the rank-dependent utility model, thus including expected utility as a special case. In particular, we characterize strong comparative risk (...)
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  44. Expected Utility in 3D.Jean Baccelli - 2022 - In Thomas Augustin, Fabio Cozman & Gregory Wheeler (eds.), Reflections on the Foundations of Probability and Statistics: Essays in Honor of Teddy Seidenfeld. pp. 187-206.
    Consider a subjective expected utility preference relation. It is usually held that the representations which this relation admits differ only in one respect, namely, the possible scales for the measurement of utility. In this paper, I discuss the fact that there are, metaphorically speaking, two additional dimensions along which infinitely many more admissible representations can be found. The first additional dimension is that of state-dependence. The second—and, in this context, much lesser-known—additional dimension is that of act-dependence. The simplest implication of (...)
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  45. Book review of Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers by Cheryl Misak. [REVIEW]Jean Baccelli - 2021 - History of Political Economy 53: 949-951.
    A book review of Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers, by Cheryl Misak (OUP, 2020).
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  46. L’analyse axiomatique et l’attitude par rapport au risque.Jean Baccelli - 2016 - Revue Economique 2 (67):355-366.
    Cette note épistémologique porte sur le statut, en théorie de la décision, des concepts d’attitude par rapport au risque. A première vue, l’analyse axiomatique ne les exploite pas, ce qui reflète une certaine neutralité des modèles de décision au sujet de l’attitude par rapport au risque. Mais un examen plus poussé met en valeur la variation conditionnelle et le renforcement de l’attitude par rapport au risque, qui rattachent les concepts d’attitude par rapport au risque à l’analyse axiomatique.
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  47. Weakness of will. The limitations of revealed preference theory.Aleksander Ostapiuk - 2022 - Acta Oeconomica 1 (72):1-23.
    The phenomenon of weakness of will – not doing what we perceive as the best action – is not recognized by neoclassical economics due to the axiomatic assumptions of the revealed preference theory (RPT) that people do what is best for them. However, present bias shows that people have different preferences over time. As they cannot be compared by the utility measurements, economists need to normatively decide between selves (short- versus long-term preferences). A problem is that neoclassical economists perceive RPT (...)
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  48. Pragmatic Arguments for Theism.Elizabeth Jackson - 2023 - In John Greco, Tyler Dalton McNabb & Jonathan Fuqua (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Religious Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 70–82.
    Traditional theistic arguments conclude that God exists. Pragmatic theistic arguments, by contrast, conclude that you ought to believe in God. The two most famous pragmatic theistic arguments are put forth by Blaise Pascal (1662) and William James (1896). Pragmatic arguments for theism can be summarized as follows: believing in God has significant benefits, and these benefits aren’t available for the unbeliever. Thus, you should believe in, or ‘wager on’, God. This article distinguishes between various kinds of theistic wagers, including finite (...)
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  49. Risco: modal ou probablístico?Gustavo Oliva de Oliveira - 2021 - In Valentinne Serpa, Vinícius Felipe Posselt, Bruna Diedrich & Darlan Lorenzetti (eds.), XXI SEMANA ACADÊMICA DO PPG EM FILOSOFIA DA PUCRS VOLUME II – FILOSOFIA MEDIEVAL / FEMINISMO / FILOSOFIA ANALÍTICA. Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil: pp. 125-140.
    The traditional conception of risk is probabilistic, according to which the degree of risk of an event is determined by the probability of its occurence. Recently this view was challenged by Duncan Pritchard (2015, 2016), who suggested a modal theory of risk, centered in the idea that the riskiness of events depends on the modal distance between the actual world and worlds where the event obtains. What is attractive about this theory, according to Pritchard, is that it explains our judgement (...)
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  50. Normative Formal Epistemology as Modelling.Joe Roussos - forthcoming - The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    I argue that normative formal epistemology (NFE) is best understood as modelling, in the sense that this is the reconstruction of its methodology on which NFE is doing best. I focus on Bayesianism and show that it has the characteristics of modelling. But modelling is a scientific enterprise, while NFE is normative. I thus develop an account of normative models on which they are idealised representations put to normative purposes. Normative assumptions, such as the transitivity of comparative credence, are characterised (...)
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