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Rationality and Dynamic Choice: Foundational Explorations

Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press (1990)

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  1. Non-Ideal Decision Theory.Sven Neth - 2023 - Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley
    My dissertation is about Bayesian rationality for non-ideal agents. I show how to derive subjective probabilities from preferences using much weaker rationality assumptions than other standard representation theorems. I argue that non-ideal agents might be uncertain about how they will update on new information and consider two consequences of this uncertainty: such agents should sometimes reject free information and make choices which, taken together, yield sure loss. The upshot is that Bayesian rationality for non-ideal agents makes very different normative demands (...)
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  • A Non-Identity Dilemma for Person-Affecting Views.Elliott Thornley - manuscript
    Person-affecting views in population ethics state that (in cases where all else is equal) we’re permitted but not required to create people who would enjoy good lives. In this paper, I present an argument against every possible variety of person-affecting view. The argument takes the form of a dilemma. Narrow person-affecting views must embrace at least one of three implausible verdicts in a case that I call ‘Expanded Non-Identity.’ Wide person-affecting views run into trouble in a case that I call (...)
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  • Normative uncertainty and information value.Riley Harris - 2021 - Dissertation, University of Adelaide
    This thesis is about making decisions when we are uncertain about what will happen, how valuable it will be, and even how to make decisions. Even the most sure-footed amongst us are sometimes uncertain about all three, but surprisingly little attention has been given to the latter two. The three essays that constitute my thesis hope to do a small part in rectifying this problem. The first essay is about the value of finding out how to make decisions. Society spends (...)
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  • Embracing self‐defeat in normative theory.Samuel Fullhart - 2024 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 109 (1):204-225.
    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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  • 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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  • Risk-taking and tie-breaking.Ryan Doody - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (7):2079-2104.
    When you are indifferent between two options, it’s rationally permissible to take either. One way to decide between two such options is to flip a fair coin, taking one option if it lands heads and the other if it lands tails. Is it rationally permissible to employ such a tie-breaking procedure? Intuitively, yes. However, if you are genuinely risk-averse—in particular, if you adhere to risk-weighted expected utility theory (Buchak in Risk and rationality, Oxford University Press, 2013) and have a strictly (...)
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  • Second Thoughts about My Favourite Theory.Johan E. Gustafsson - 2022 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 103 (3):448-470.
    A straightforward way to handle moral uncertainty is simply to follow the moral theory in which you have most credence. This approach is known as My Favourite Theory. In this paper, I argue that, in some cases, My Favourite Theory prescribes choices that are, sequentially, worse in expected moral value than the opposite choices according to each moral theory you have any credence in. In addition this, problem generalizes to other approaches that avoid intertheoretic comparisons of value, such as My (...)
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  • Pick the Sugar.Seamus Bradley - manuscript
    This paper presents a decision problem called the holiday puzzle. The decision problem is one that involves incommensurable goods and sequences of choices. This puzzle points to a tension between three prima facie plausible, but jointly incompatible claims. I present a way out of the trilemma which demonstrates that it is possible for agents to have incomplete preferences and to be dynamically rational. The solution also suggests that the relationship between preference and rational permission is more subtle than standardly assumed.
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  • Credal imprecision and the value of evidence.Nilanjan Das - 2023 - Noûs 57 (3):684-721.
    This paper is about a tension between two theses. The first is Value of Evidence: roughly, the thesis that it is always rational for an agent to gather and use cost‐free evidence for making decisions. The second is Rationality of Imprecision: the thesis that an agent can be rationally required to adopt doxastic states that are imprecise, i.e., not representable by a single credence function. While others have noticed this tension, I offer a new diagnosis of it. I show that (...)
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  • A plan-based causal decision theory.Gerard J. Rothfus - 2022 - Analysis 82 (2):264-272.
    In ‘An argument against causal decision theory’, Jack Spencer shows that standard formulations of causal decision theory run afoul of his Guaranteed Principle. In the sequential choice problem he employs to make this case, the transgression stems from an awkward discrepancy between how causalists typically value present vs future acts. This note suggests a version of causal decision theory that avoids this incongruity and so respects the Guaranteed Principle in Spencer’s problem. However, this formulation, and hence symmetric appraisal of present (...)
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  • On a Causal Principle in an Argument for a Necessary Being.Noël Blas Saenz - 2022 - Analysis 82 (2):272-277.
    In Necessary Existence, Pruss and Rasmussen give an argument for a necessary being employing a modest causal principle. Here I note that, when applied to highly general and fundamental matters, the principle may well be false (or at least not so obvious).
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  • Aggregation and Reductio.Patrick Wu - 2021 - Ethics 132 (2):508-525.
    Joe Horton argues that partial aggregation yields unacceptable verdicts in cases with risk and multiple decisions. I begin by showing that Horton’s challenge does not depend on risk, since exactly similar arguments apply to riskless cases. The underlying conflict Horton exposes is between partial aggregation and certain principles of diachronic choice. I then provide two arguments against these diachronic principles: they conflict with intuitions about parity, prerogatives, and cyclical preferences, and they rely on an odd assumption about diachronic choice. Finally, (...)
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  • Non-Measurability, Imprecise Credences, and Imprecise Chances.Yoaav Isaacs, Alan Hájek & John Hawthorne - 2021 - Mind 131 (523):892-916.
    – We offer a new motivation for imprecise probabilities. We argue that there are propositions to which precise probability cannot be assigned, but to which imprecise probability can be assigned. In such cases the alternative to imprecise probability is not precise probability, but no probability at all. And an imprecise probability is substantially better than no probability at all. Our argument is based on the mathematical phenomenon of non-measurable sets. Non-measurable propositions cannot receive precise probabilities, but there is a natural (...)
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  • Climate Change and Individual Obligations: A Dilemma for the Expected Utility Approach, and the Need for an Imperfect View.Julia Nefsky - 2021 - In Budolfson Mark, McPherson Tristram & Plunkett David (eds.), Philosophy and Climate Change. Oxford University Press. pp. 201-221.
    This chapter concerns the nature of our obligations as individuals when it comes to our emissions-producing activities and climate change. The first half of the chapter argues that the popular ‘expected utility’ approach to this question faces a problematic dilemma: either it gives skeptical verdicts, saying that there are no such obligations, or it yields implausibly strong verdicts. The second half of the chapter diagnoses the problem. It is argued that the dilemma arises from a very general feature of the (...)
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  • The consequentialist problem with prepunishment.Preston Greene - 2021 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 10 (3):199-208.
    This paper targets a nearly universal assumption in the philosophical literature: that prepunishment is unproblematic for consequentialists. Prepunishment threats do not deter, as deterrence is traditionally conceived. In fact, a pure prepunishment legal system would tend to increase the criminal disposition of the grudgingly compliant. This is a serious problem since, from many perspectives, but especially from a consequentialist one, a primary purpose of punishment is deterrence. I analyze the decision theory behind pre and postpunishments, which helps clarify both what (...)
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  • Beyond Uncertainty: Reasoning with Unknown Possibilities.Katie Steele & H. Orri Stefánsson - 2020 - Cambridge University Press.
    The main aim of this book is to introduce the topic of limited awareness, and changes in awareness, to those interested in the philosophy of decision-making and uncertain reasoning.
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  • Autonomy for Changing Selves.Richard Pettigrew - 2022 - In Ben Colburn (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Autonomy. New York, NY: Routledge.
    Our values change. What we value, want, desire, prefer, and how much; for nearly everyone, these will be different at different times in their life. These changes can be gradual or abrupt; they can be long-lasting or short-lived; and they can be induced by forces outside yourself or they can come from within or they can have no specific catalyst at all. Such preference change raises a number of questions for our theorising about rational choice, and these have been discussed (...)
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  • Transfinitely Transitive Value.Kacper Kowalczyk - 2021 - Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1):108-134.
    This paper develops transfinite extensions of transitivity and acyclicity in the context of population ethics. They are used to argue that it is better to add good lives, worse to add bad lives, and equally good to add neutral lives, where a life's value is understood as personal value. These conclusions rule out a number of theories of population ethics, feed into an argument for the repugnant conclusion, and allow us to reduce different-number comparisons to same-number ones. Challenges to these (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Tragedy of the Risk Averse.H. Orri Stefánsson - 2020 - Erkenntnis 88 (1):351-364.
    Those who are risk averse with respect to money, and thus turn down some gambles with positive monetary expectations, are nevertheless often willing to accept bundles involving multiple such gambles. Therefore, it might seem that such people should become more willing to accept a risky but favourable gamble if they put it in context with the collection of gambles that they predict they will be faced with in the future. However, it turns out that when a risk averse person adopts (...)
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  • Dynamic consistency in the logic of decision.Gerard J. Rothfus - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (12):3923-3934.
    Arif Ahmed has recently argued that causal decision theory is dynamically inconsistent and that we should therefore prefer evidential decision theory. However, the principal formulation of the evidential theory, Richard Jeffrey’s Logic of Decision, has a mixed record of its own when it comes to evaluating plans consistently across time. This note probes that neglected record, establishing the dynamic consistency of evidential decision theory within a restricted class of problems but then illustrating how evidentialists can fall into sequential incoherence outside (...)
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  • An argument against causal decision theory.Jack Spencer - 2021 - Analysis 81 (1):52-61.
    This paper develops an argument against causal decision theory. I formulate a principle of preference, which I call the Guaranteed Principle. I argue that the preferences of rational agents satisfy the Guaranteed Principle, that the preferences of agents who embody causal decision theory do not, and hence that causal decision theory is false.
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  • Escaping the Cycle.J. Dmitri Gallow - 2022 - Mind 131 (521):99-127.
    I present a decision problem in which causal decision theory appears to violate the independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) and normal-form extensive-form equivalence (NEE). I show that these violations lead to exploitable behavior and long-run poverty. These consequences appear damning, but I urge caution. This decision should lead causalists to a better understanding of what it takes for a decision between some collection of options to count as a subdecision of a decision between a larger collection of options. And with (...)
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  • Democracy & Analogy: The Practical Reality of Deliberative Politics.Michael Seifried - 2015 - Dissertation, Columbia University
    According to the deliberative view of democracy, the legitimacy of democratic politics is closely tied to whether the use of political power is accompanied by a process of rational deliberation among the citizenry and their representatives. Critics have questioned whether this level of deliberative capacity is even possible among modern citizenries--due to limitations of time, energy, and differential backgrounds--which therefore calls into question the very possibility of this type of democracy. In my dissertation, I counter this line of criticism, arguing (...)
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  • The Sequential Dominance Argument for the Independence Axiom of Expected Utility Theory.Johan E. Gustafsson - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (1):21-39.
    Independence is the condition that, if X is preferred to Y, then a lottery between X and Z is preferred to a lottery between Y and Z given the same probability of Z. Is it rationally required that one’s preferences conform to Independence? The main objection to this requirement is that it would rule out the alleged rationality of Allais and Ellsberg Preferences. In this paper, I put forward a sequential dominance argument with fairly weak assumptions for a variant of (...)
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  • Avoiding Risk and Avoiding Evidence.Catrin Campbell-Moore & Bernhard Salow - 2020 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98 (3):495-515.
    It is natural to think that there is something epistemically objectionable about avoiding evidence, at least in ideal cases. We argue that this thought is inconsistent with a kind of risk-avoidance...
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  • So why can’t you intend to drink the toxin?Fernando Rudy-Hiller - 2019 - Philosophical Explorations 22 (3):294-311.
    In this paper I revisit Gregory Kavka’s Toxin Puzzle and propose a novel solution to it. Like some previous accounts, mine postulates a tight link between intentions and reasons but, unlike them, in my account these are motivating rather than normative reasons, i.e. reasons that explain (rather than justify) the intended action. I argue that sensitivity to the absence of possible motivational explanations for the intended action is constitutive of deliberation-based intentions. Since ordinary rational agents display this sensitivity, when placed (...)
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  • Rational Choice and the Transitivity of Betterness.Toby Handfield - 2014 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (3):584-604.
    If A is better than B and B is better than C, then A is better than C, right? Larry Temkin and Stuart Rachels say: No! Betterness is nontransitive, they claim. In this paper, I discuss the central type of argument advanced by Temkin and Rachels for this radical idea, and argue that, given this view very likely has sceptical implications for practical reason, we would do well to identify alternative responses. I propose one such response, which employs the idea (...)
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  • Actualism and Possibilism in Ethics.Travis Timmerman & Yishai Cohen - 2019 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • If There Are No Diachronic Norms of Rationality, Why Does It Seem Like There Are?Ryan Doody - 2019 - Res Philosophica 96 (2):141-173.
    I offer an explanation for why certain sequences of decisions strike us as irrational while others do not. I argue that we have a standing desire to tell flattering yet plausible narratives about ourselves, and that cases of diachronic behavior that strike us as irrational are those in which you had the opportunity to hide something unflattering and failed to do so.
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  • Is risk aversion irrational? Examining the “fallacy” of large numbers.H. Orri Stefánsson - 2020 - Synthese 197 (10):4425-4437.
    A moderately risk averse person may turn down a 50/50 gamble that either results in her winning $200 or losing $100. Such behaviour seems rational if, for instance, the pain of losing $100 is felt more strongly than the joy of winning $200. The aim of this paper is to examine an influential argument that some have interpreted as showing that such moderate risk aversion is irrational. After presenting an axiomatic argument that I take to be the strongest case for (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Ethics of Nudge.Luc Bovens - 2008 - In Mats J. Hansson & Till Grüne-Yanoff (eds.), Preference Change: Approaches from Philosophy, Economics and Psychology. Springer, Theory and Decision Library A. pp. 207-20.
    In their recently published book Nudge (2008) Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (T&S) defend a position labelled as ‘libertarian paternalism’. Their thinking appeals to both the right and the left of the political spectrum, as evidenced by the bedfellows they keep on either side of the Atlantic. In the US, they have advised Barack Obama, while, in the UK, they were welcomed with open arms by the David Cameron's camp (Chakrabortty 2008). I will consider the following questions. What (...)
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  • Time, hope, and independence: an argument for more structure in decision theory.Goreti Faria - unknown
    My thesis explores alternatives to the orthodox model of decision theory. I criticise it by focusing on motivations that, for different reasons, I believe should not be labelled as a consequence. I start by describing what I call the orthodox theory of choice. I describe both the theories proposed by Von Neumann and Morgenstern, and Savage. This is followed by a discussion of the individuation strategy, and, in particular, John Broome’s proposal of an individuation by justifiers ). I then focus (...)
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  • Risk writ large.Johanna Thoma & Jonathan Weisberg - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (9):2369-2384.
    Risk-weighted expected utility theory is motivated by small-world problems like the Allais paradox, but it is a grand-world theory by nature. And, at the grand-world level, its ability to handle the Allais paradox is dubious. The REU model described in Risk and Rationality turns out to be risk-seeking rather than risk-averse on one natural way of formulating the Allais gambles in the grand-world context. This result illustrates a general problem with the case for REU theory, we argue. There is a (...)
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  • Reconsidering Resolutions.Alida Liberman - 2016 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (2):1-27.
    In Willing, Wanting, Waiting, Richard Holton lays out a detailed account of resolutions, arguing that they enable agents to resist temptation. Holton claims that temptation often leads to inappropriate shifts in judgment, and that resolutions are a special kind of first- and second-order intention pair that blocks such judgment shift. In this paper, I elaborate upon an intuitive but underdeveloped objection to Holton’s view – namely, that his view does not enable agents to successfully block the transmission of temptation in (...)
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  • Reasoning the fast and frugal way: Models of bounded rationality.Gerd Gigerenzer & Daniel Goldstein - 1996 - Psychological Review 103 (4):650-669.
    Humans and animals make inferences about the world under limited time and knowledge. In contrast, many models of rational inference treat the mind as a Laplacean Demon, equipped with unlimited time, knowledge, and computational might. Following H. Simon's notion of satisficing, the authors have proposed a family of algorithms based on a simple psychological mechanism: one-reason decision making. These fast and frugal algorithms violate fundamental tenets of classical rationality: They neither look up nor integrate all information. By computer simulation, the (...)
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  • Ordering and Independence.Edward F. McClennen - 1988 - Economics and Philosophy 4 (2):298-308.
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  • Exploiting Cyclic Preference.Arif Ahmed - 2017 - Mind 126 (504):975-1022.
    Probably many people have cyclic preferences: they prefer A to B, B to C and C to A for some objects of choice A, B and C. Recent work has resurrected the objection to cyclic preference that agents possessing them are open to exploitation by means of ‘money pumps’. The paper briefly reviews this work and proposes a general approach to problems of sequential choice that makes cyclic preference immune to exploitation by means of these new mechanisms.
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  • Evil and God's Toxin Puzzle.John Pittard - 2016 - Noûs 50 (2):88-108.
    I show that Kavka's toxin puzzle raises a problem for the “Responsibility Theodicy,” which holds that the reason God typically does not intervene to stop the evil effects of our actions is that such intervention would undermine the possibility of our being significantly responsible for overcoming and averting evil. This prominent theodicy seems to require that God be able to do what the agent in Kavka's toxin story cannot do: stick by a plan to do some action at a future (...)
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  • What good is a diachronic will?Luca Ferrero - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 144 (3):403-430.
    There are two standard conceptions of the functioning of and rationale for the diachronic will, i.e., for an agent's capacity to settle on her future conduct in advance. According to the pragmatic-instrumentalist view, the diachronic will benefits us by increasing the long-term satisfaction of our rational preferences. According to the cognitive view, it benefits us by satisfying our standing desire for self-knowledge and self-understanding. Contrary to these views, I argue for a constitutive view of the diachronic will: the rationale for (...)
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  • Costs of abandoning the Sure-Thing Principle.Rachael Briggs - 2015 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 45 (5):827-840.
    Risk-weighted expected utility theory permits preferences which violate the Sure-Thing Principle. But preferences that violate the STP can lead to bad decisions in sequential choice problems. In particular, they can lead decision-makers to adopt a strategy that is dominated – i.e. a strategy such that some available alternative leads to a better outcome in every possible state of the world.
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  • Decision Theory.Katie Steele & H. Orri Stefánsson - 2012 - In Ed Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • 'Along an imperfectly-lighted path': practical rationality and normative uncertainty.Andrew Sepielli - unknown
    Nobody's going to object to the advice "Do the right thing", but that doesn't mean everyone's always going to follow it. Sometimes this is because of our volitional limitations; we cannot always bring ourselves to make the sacrifices that right action requires. But sometimes this is because of our cognitive limitations; we cannot always be sure of what is right. Sometimes we can't be sure of what's right because we don't know the non-normative facts. But sometimes, even if we were (...)
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  • Credal Dilemmas.Sarah Moss - 2014 - Noûs 48 (3):665-683.
    Recently many have argued that agents must sometimes have credences that are imprecise, represented by a set of probability measures. But opponents claim that fans of imprecise credences cannot provide a decision theory that protects agents who follow it from foregoing sure money. In particular, agents with imprecise credences appear doomed to act irrationally in diachronic cases, where they are called to make decisions at earlier and later times. I respond to this claim on behalf of imprecise credence fans. Once (...)
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  • 1. Ulysses and the Sirens.Bruno Verbeek - 2007 - In Fabienne Peter (ed.), rationality and commitment. Oxford University Press USA. pp. 150.
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  • Gigerenzer's normative critique of Kahneman and Tversky.Peter B. M. Vranas - 2000 - Cognition 76 (3):179-193.
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  • What are the minimal requirements of rational choice? Arguments from the sequential-decision setting.Katie Siobhan Steele - 2010 - Theory and Decision 68 (4):463-487.
    There are at least two plausible generalisations of subjective expected utility (SEU) theory: cumulative prospect theory (which relaxes the independence axiom) and Levi’s decision theory (which relaxes at least ordering). These theories call for a re-assessment of the minimal requirements of rational choice. Here, I consider how an analysis of sequential decision making contributes to this assessment. I criticise Hammond’s (Economica 44(176):337–350, 1977; Econ Philos 4:292–297, 1988a; Risk, decision and rationality, 1988b; Theory Decis 25:25–78, 1988c) ‘consequentialist’ argument for the SEU (...)
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  • The Common Structure of Kantianism and Act-Utilitarianism.Christopher Woodard - 2013 - Utilitas 25 (2):246-265.
    This article proposes a way of understanding Kantianism, act-utilitarianism and some other important ethical theories according to which they are all versions of the same kind of theory, sharing a common structure. I argue that this is a profitable way to understand the theories discussed. It is charitable to the theories concerned; it emphasizes the common ground between them; it gives us insights into the differences between them; and it provides a method for generating new ethical theories worth studying. The (...)
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  • Decision theory for agents with incomplete preferences.Adam Bales, Daniel Cohen & Toby Handfield - 2014 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (3):453-70.
    Orthodox decision theory gives no advice to agents who hold two goods to be incommensurate in value because such agents will have incomplete preferences. According to standard treatments, rationality requires complete preferences, so such agents are irrational. Experience shows, however, that incomplete preferences are ubiquitous in ordinary life. In this paper, we aim to do two things: (1) show that there is a good case for revising decision theory so as to allow it to apply non-vacuously to agents with incomplete (...)
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  • Objective Consequentialism and Avoidable Imperfections.Rob van Someren Greve - 2013 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16 (3):481-492.
    There are two distinct views on how to formulate an objective consequentialist account of the deontic status of actions, actualism and possibilism. On an actualist account, what matters to the deontic status of actions is only the value of the outcome an action would have, if performed. By contrast, a possibilist account also takes into account the value of the outcomes that an action could have. These two views come apart in their deontic verdicts when an agent is imperfect in (...)
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  • Reversing 30 years of discussion: why causal decision theorists should one-box.Wolfgang Spohn - 2012 - Synthese 187 (1):95-122.
    The paper will show how one may rationalize one-boxing in Newcomb's problem and drinking the toxin in the Toxin puzzle within the confines of causal decision theory by ascending to so-called reflexive decision models which reflect how actions are caused by decision situations (beliefs, desires, and intentions) represented by ordinary unreflexive decision models.
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