This paper uses John Rawls' theory of justice to defend the patent system against charges that it has an unfair effect on access to medications, from the perspective of national and international justice. The paper argues that the patent system is fair in a national context because it respects intellectual property rights and it benefits the least advantaged members of society by providing incentives for inventors, investors, and entrepreneurs. The paper also argues that the patent system is fair in an (...) international context, provided that developed nations take steps to help disease-stricken countries secure internal justice. Fairness in a national or international context also requires that the patent system should include emergency exceptions to deal with short-term inequities. (shrink)

I explore a connection between Robert Nozick's account of decision value/symbolic utility in The Nature of Rationality and F. P. Ramsey's discussion of ethically neutral propositions in his 1926 essay , a discussion that Brian Skyrms in Choice and Chance credits with disclosing deeper foundations for expected utility than the celebrated Theory of Games and Economic Behavior of von Neumann and Morgenstern. Ramsey's recognition of ethically non-neutral propositions is essential to his foundational work, and the similarity of these propositions to (...) symbolic utility helps make the case that the latter belongs to the apparatus that constructs expected utility, rather than being reducible to it or being part of a proposal that can be cheerfully ignored. I conclude that decision value replaces expected utility as the central idea in (normative) decision theory. Expected utility becomes an approximation that is good enough when symbolic utility is not at stake. (shrink)

ON DECEMBER 10, 1991 Charles Shonubi, a Nigerian citizen but a resident of the USA, was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport for the importation of heroin into the United States.1 Shonubi's modus operandi was ``balloon swallowing.'' That is, heroin was mixed with another substance to form a paste and this paste was sealed in balloons which were then swallowed. The idea was that once the illegal substance was safely inside the USA, the smuggler would pass the balloons and (...) recover the heroin. On the date of his arrest, Shonubi was found to have swallowed 103 balloons containing a total of 427.4 grams of heroin. There was little doubt about Shonubi's guilt. In fact, there was considerable evidence that he had made at least seven prior heroin-smuggling trips to the USA (although he was not tried for these). In October 1992 Shonubi was convicted in a United States District Court for possessing and importing heroin. Although the conviction was only for crimes associated with Shonubi's arrest date of December 10, 1991, the sentencing judge, Jack B. Weinstein, also made a ®nding that Shonubi had indeed made seven prior drug-smuggling trips to the USA. The interesting part of this case was in the sentencing. According to the federal sentencing guidelines, the sentence in cases such as this should depend on the total quantity of heroin involved. This instruction was interpreted rather broadly.. (shrink)

We propose a generalization of expected utility that we call generalized EU (GEU), where a decision maker’s beliefs are represented by plausibility measures and the decision maker’s tastes are represented by general (i.e., not necessarily real-valued) utility functions. We show that every agent, “rational” or not, can be modeled as a GEU maximizer. We then show that we can customize GEU by selectively imposing just the constraints we want. In particular, we show how each of Savage’s postulates corresponds to constraints (...) on GEU. (shrink)

This paper aims to make three contributions to decision theory. First there is the hope that it will help to re-establish the legitimacy of the problem, pace various recent analyses provided by Maitzen and Wilson, Slezak and Priest. Second, after pointing out that analyses of the problem have generally relied upon evidence that is conditional on the taking of one particular option, this paper argues that certain assumptions implicit in those analyses are subtly flawed. As a third contribution, the piece (...) aims to draw attention to an important similarity between Newcomb’s problem and the toxin puzzle. In short, both problems illustrate the fact that you can have a reason to intend to φ without having a reason to actually φ. (shrink)

A recurring objection confronting utilitarianism is that its dictates require information that lies beyond the bounds of human epistemic wherewithal. Utilitarians require reliable knowledge of the social consequences of various policies, and of people’s preferences and utilities. Agreeing partway with the sceptics, I concur that the general rules-of-thumb offered by social science do not provide sufficient justification for the utilitarian legislator to rationally recommend a particular political regime, such as liberalism. Actual data about human preference-structures and utilities is required to (...) bridge this evidentiary gap. I offer two arguments to support the availability of such information. First, I contend that ordinary human beings have a clear method of epistemic access to reliable information about commensurable preference-structures. Second, in an attempt to shift the onus of philosophic argument, I show that the utilitarian legislator’s requirements do not differ in kind from those implicitly called upon by the sceptical deontic liberal. (shrink)

Many fine-grained decisions concerning climate change involve significant, even severe, uncertainty. Here, we focus on modelling the decisions of single agents, whether individual persons or groups perceived as corporate entities. We offer a taxonomy of the sources and kinds of uncertainty that arise in framing these decision problems, as well as strategies for making a choice in spite of uncertainty. The aim is to facilitate a more transparent and structured treatment of uncertainty in climate decision making.

Epistemic contrastivism is the view that knowledge is a ternary relation between a person, a proposition and a set of contrast propositions. This view is in tension with widely shared accounts of practical reasoning: be it the claim that knowledge of the premises is necessary for acceptable practical reasoning based on them or sufficient for the acceptability of the use of the premises in practical reasoning, or be it the claim that there is a looser connection between knowledge and practical (...) reasoning. Given plausible assumptions, epistemic contrastivism implies that we should cut all links between knowledge and practical reasoning. However, the denial of any such link requires additional and independent arguments; if such arguments are lacking, then all the worse for epistemic contrastivism. (shrink)

Some environmental ethicists and economists argue that attributing infinite value to the environment is a good way to represent an absolute obligation to protect it. Others argue against modelling the value of the environment in this way: the assignment of infinite value leads to immense technical and philosophical difficulties that undermine the environmentalist project. First, there is a problem of discrimination: saving a large region of habitat is better than saving a small region; yet if both outcomes have infinite value, (...) then decision theory prescribes indifference. Second, there is a problem of swamping probabilities: an act with a small but positive probability of saving an endangered species appears to be on par with an act that has a high probability of achieving this outcome, since both have infinite expected value. Our paper shows that a relative concept of infinite value can be meaningfully defined, and provides a good model for securing the priority of the natural environment while avoiding the failures noted by sceptics about infinite value. Our claim is not that the relative infinity utility model gets every detail correct, but rather that it provides a rigorous philosophical framework for thinking about decisions affecting the environment. (shrink)

We examine a distinctive kind of problem for decision theory, involving what we call discontinuity at infinity. Roughly, it arises when an infinite sequence of choices, each apparently sanctioned by plausible principles, converges to a ‘limit choice’ whose utility is much lower than the limit approached by the utilities of the choices in the sequence. We give examples of this phenomenon, focusing on Arntzenius et al.’s Satan’s apple, and give a general characterization of it. In these examples, repeated dominance reasoning (...) (a paradigm of rationality) apparently gives rise to a situation closely analogous to having intransitive preferences (a paradigm of irrationality). Indeed, the agents in these examples are vulnerable to a money pump set-up despite having preferences that exhibit no obvious defect of rationality. We explore several putative solutions to such problems, particularly those that appeal to binding and to deliberative dynamics. We consider the prospects for these solutions, concluding that if they fail, the examples show that money pump arguments are invalid. (shrink)

Confronted with the possibility of severe environmental harms, such as catastrophic climate change, some researchers have suggested that we should abandon the principle at the heart of standard decision theory—the injunction to maximize expected utility—and embrace a different one: the Precautionary Principle. Arguably, the most sophisticated philosophical treatment of the Precautionary Principle is due to Steel. Steel interprets PP as a qualitative decision rule and appears to conclude that a quantitative decision-theoretic statement of PP is both impossible and unnecessary. In (...) this article, we propose a decision-theoretic formulation of PP in terms of lexical utilities. We show that this lexical model is largely faithful to Steel’s approach, but also that it corrects three problems with Steel’s account and clarifies the relationship between PP and standard decision theory. Using a range of examples, we illustrate how the lexical model can be used to explore a variety of issues related to precautionary reasoning. (shrink)

In this study, the age-old distinction between decision method and criterion of rightness, commonly employed in normative ethics, was used to attain a detailed understanding of inter- and intrapersonal variety in students' moral reasoning. A total of 24 Swedish students, 12–15 years of age, were interviewed. Inter- and intrapersonal varieties in and between the two dimensions of moral reasoning were found, constituting six novel forms of varieties. We describe several explanations proposed within the field of social-cognitive domain theory, and argue (...) that these do not suffice to explain all the found forms of varieties in students' moral reasoning. Some limitations of the present study are discussed, and some suggestions for future research are given. (shrink)

It is intuitively attractive to think that it makes a difference in Newcomb’s problem whether or not the predictor is infallible, in the sense of being certainly actually correct. This paper argues that that view is irrational and manifests a well-documented cognitive illusion.

The paper argues that on three out of eight possible hypotheses about the EPR experiment we can construct novel and realistic decision problems on which (a) Causal Decision Theory and Evidential Decision Theory conflict (b) Causal Decision Theory and the EPR statistics conflict. We infer that anyone who fully accepts any of these three hypotheses has strong reasons to reject Causal Decision Theory. Finally, we extend the original construction to show that anyone who gives any of the three hypotheses any (...) non-zero credence has strong reasons to reject Causal Decision Theory. However, we concede that no version of the Many Worlds Interpretation (Vaidman, in Zalta, E.N. (ed.), Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy 2014) gives rise to the conflicts that we point out. (shrink)

How do we ascribe subjective probability? In decision theory, this question is often addressed by representation theorems, going back to Ramsey (1926), which tell us how to define or measure subjective probability by observable preferences. However, standard representation theorems make strong rationality assumptions, in particular expected utility maximization. How do we ascribe subjective probability to agents which do not satisfy these strong rationality assumptions? I present a representation theorem with weak rationality assumptions which can be used to define or measure (...) subjective probability for partly irrational agents. (shrink)

This paper compares two alternative explanations of pragmatic encroachment on knowledge (i.e., the claim that whether an agent knows that p can depend on pragmatic factors). After reviewing the evidence for such pragmatic encroachment, we ask how it is best explained, assuming it obtains. Several authors have recently argued that the best explanation is provided by a particular account of belief, which we call pragmatic credal reductivism. On this view, what it is for an agent to believe a proposition is (...) for her credence in this proposition to be above a certain threshold, a threshold that varies depending on pragmatic factors. We show that while this account of belief can provide an elegant explanation of pragmatic encroachment on knowledge, it is not alone in doing so, for an alternative account of belief, which we call the reasoning disposition account, can do so as well. And the latter account, we argue, is far more plausible than pragmatic credal reductivism, since it accords far better with a number of claims about belief that are very hard to deny. (shrink)

The article is a plea for ethicists to regard probability as one of their most important concerns. It outlines a series of topics of central importance in ethical theory in which probability is implicated, often in a surprisingly deep way, and lists a number of open problems. Topics covered include: interpretations of probability in ethical contexts; the evaluative and normative significance of risk or uncertainty; uses and abuses of expected utility theory; veils of ignorance; Harsanyi’s aggregation theorem; population size problems; (...) equality; fairness; giving priority to the worse off; continuity; incommensurability; nonexpected utility theory; evaluative measurement; aggregation; causal and evidential decision theory; act consequentialism; rule consequentialism; and deontology. (shrink)

In hard cases of comparison, people are faced with two options neither of which is conceived of as better, worse, or equally good compared to the other. Most philosophers claim that hard cases can indeed be distinguished from cases in which two options are equally good, and can be characterized by a failure of transitive reasoning. It is a much more controversial matter and at the heart of an ongoing debate, whether the options in hard cases of comparison should be (...) interpreted as incomparable, on par, or roughly equal. So far, however, none of these claims and interpretations have been tested. This paper presents the first empirical investigation on hard cases, intransitive reasoning, and incomparability. Our results reveal that hard cases present real-world dilemmas in which a significant majority of people violate transitivity. After suggesting a way of operationalizing the notion of incomparability, we provide empirical evidence that the options in some hard cases are not considered to be incomparable. Theories of rough equality or parity seem to provide better interpretations of our results. (shrink)

This paper disputes the widespread assumption that beliefs and desires may be attributed as theoretical entities in the service of the explanation and predic- tion of human behavior. The literature contains no clear account of how beliefs and desires might generate actions, and there is good reason to deny that principles of rationality generate a choice on the basis of an agent’s beliefs and desires. An alter- native conception of beliefs and desires is here introduced, according to which an attribution (...) of belief is, in a certain sense, an assertion on the believer’s behalf and an attribution of desire is, in a certain sense, a command on the desirer’s behalf. In terms of this conception of the attribution of beliefs and desires, we can begin to understand how attributions of beliefs and desires can be explanatory, although we still cannot expect the attribution of beliefs and desires to generate predictions based on an assumption of rationality. Finally, the reality of beliefs and desires is likened to the reality of money; it is the reality of things governed by objective norms. (shrink)

Knowledge-first evidentialism combines the view that it is rational to believe what is supported by one's evidence with the view that one's evidence is what one knows. While there is much to be said for the view, it is widely perceived to fail in the face of cases of reasonable error—particularly extreme ones like new Evil Demon scenarios (Wedgwood, 2002). One reply has been to say that even in such cases what one knows supports the target rational belief (Lord, 201x, (...) this volume). I spell out two versions of the strategy. The direct one uses what one knows as the input to principles of rationality such as conditionalization, dominance avoidance, etc. I argue that it fails in hybrid cases that are Good with respect to one belief and Bad with respect to another. The indirect strategy uses what one knows to determine a body of supported propositions that is in turn the input to principles of rationality. I sketch a simple formal implementation of the indirect strategy and show that it avoids the difficulty. I conclude that the indirect strategy offers the most promising way for knowledge-first evidentialists to deal with the New Evil Demon problem. (shrink)

This volume concerns Rational Agents - humans, players in a game, software or institutions - which must decide the proper next action in an atmosphere of partial information and uncertainty. The book collects formal accounts of Uncertainty, Rationality and Agency, and also of their interaction. It will benefit researchers in artificial systems which must gather information, reason about it and then make a rational decision on which action to take.

The ontology of decision theory has been subject to considerable debate in the past, and discussion of just how we ought to view decision problems has revealed more than one interesting problem, as well as suggested some novel modifications of classical decision theory. In this paper it will be argued that Bayesian, or evidential, decision-theoretic characterizations of decision situations fail to adequately account for knowledge concerning the causal connections between acts, states, and outcomes in decision situations, and so they are (...) incomplete. Second, it will be argues that when we attempt to incorporate the knowledge of such causal connections into Bayesian decision theory, a substantial technical problem arises for which there is no currently available solution that does not suffer from some damning objection or other. From a broader perspective, this then throws into question the use of decision theory as a model of human or machine planning. (shrink)

Mark Rowlands argues that, contrary to the dominant view, a Rawlsian theory of justice can legitimately be applied to animals. One of the implications of doing so, Rowlands argues, is an end to animal experimentation. I will argue, contrary to Rowlands, that under a Rawlsian theory there may be some circumstances where it is justifiable to use animals as experimental test subjects (where the individual animals are benefited by the experiments).

Several philosophers have argued that natural selection will favor reliable belief formation; others have been more skeptical. These traditional approaches to the evolution of rationality have been either too sketchy or else have assumed that phenotypic plasticity can be equated with having a mind. Here I develop a new model to explore the functional utility of belief and desire formation mechanisms, and defend the claim that natural selection favors reliable inference methods in a broad, but not universal, range of circumstances.

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 (...) preference axioms, but go on to formulate a related diachronic-Dutch-book-style’ argument that better achieves Hammond’s aims. Some deny the importance of Dutch-book sure losses, however, in which case, Seidenfeld’s (Econ Philos 4:267–290, 1988a) argument that distinguishes between theories that relax independence and those that relax ordering is relevant. I unravel Seidenfeld’s argument in light of the various criticisms of it and show that the crux of the argument is somewhat different and much more persuasive than what others have taken it to be; the critical issue is the modelling of future choices between ‘indifferent’ decision-tree branches in the sequential setting. Finally, I consider how Seidenfeld’s conclusions might nonetheless be resisted. (shrink)

In this response, we clarify several misunderstandings of the understanding/acceptance principle and defend our specific operationalization of that principle. We reiterate the importance of addressing the problem of rational task construal and we elaborate the notion of computational limitations contained in our target article. Our concept of thinking dispositions as variable intentional-level styles of epistemic and behavioral regulation is explained, as is its relation to the rationality debate. Many of the suggestions of the commentators for elaborating two-process models are easily (...) integrated into our generic dual-process account. We further explicate how we view the relation between System 1 and System 2 and evolutionary and normative rationality. We clarify our attempt to fuse the contributions of the cognitive ecologists with the insights of the original heuristics and biases researchers. (shrink)

Precaution is a relevant and much-invoked value in environmental risk analysis, as witnessed by the ongoing vivid discussion about the precautionary principle (PP). This article argues (i) against purely decision-theoretic explications of PP; (ii) that the construction, evaluation, and use of scientific models falls under the scope of PP; and (iii) that epistemic and decision-theoretic robustness are essential for precautionary policy making. These claims are elaborated and defended by means of case studies from climate science and conservation biology.

This paper presents a new solution to the problems for orthodox decision theory posed by the Pasadena game and its relatives. I argue that a key question raised by consideration of these gambles is whether evaluative compositionality (as I term it) is a requirement of rationality: is the value that an ideally rational agent places on a gamble determined by the values that she places on its possible outcomes, together with their mode of composition into the gamble (i.e. the probabilities (...) assigned to them)? The paper first outlines a certain simple response to the Pasadena game and identifies two problems with this response, the second of which is that it leads to a wholesale violation of evaluative compositionality. I then argue that rationality does not require decision makers to factor in outcomes of arbitrarily low probability. A method for making decisions which flows from this basic idea is then developed, and it is shown that this decision method (Truncation) leads to a limited — as opposed to wholesale — violation of evaluative compositionality. The paper then argues that the truncation method yields solutions to the problems posed by the Pasadena game and its relatives that are both attractive in themselves and superior to those yielded by alternative proposals in the literature. (shrink)

A fully adequate solution to Newcomb’s Problem (Nozick 1969) should reveal the source of its extraordinary elusiveness and persistent intractability. Recently, a few accounts have independently sought to meet this criterion of adequacy by exposing the underlying source of the problem’s profound puzzlement. Thus, Sorensen (1987), Slezak (1998), Priest (2002) and Maitzen and Wilson (2003) share the ‘no box’ view according to which the very idea that there is a right choice is misconceived since the problem is ill-formed or incoherent (...) in some way. Among proponents of this view, Richard Jeffrey (2004) recently declared that he renounces his earlier position that accepted Newcomb problems as genuine decision problems. Significantly, Jeffrey suggests that “Newcomb problems are like Escher’s famous staircase on which an unbroken ascent takes you back where you started” (Jeffrey (2004; 113)). Jeffrey’s analogy is apt for a puzzle whose specific logical features can be precisely articulated. Along the lines of these related approaches, I propose to improve and clarify them by providing such a deeper analysis that elucidates their essential, related insights. (shrink)

According to the Dutch Book Argument (DBA), if an agent's subjective probabilities fail to satisfy the axioms of the probability calculus and so make the agent vulnerable to a Dutch Book, the agent's subjective probabilities are incoherent and the agent is therefore irrational. Critics of DBA have argued, however, that probabilistic incoherence is compatible with various kinds of rationality – logico-semantic, epistemic, instrumental and prudential. In this paper, I provide an interpretation of DBA on which it is true that probabilistic (...) incoherence entails agent irrationality. Articulating this interpretation requires the specification of some of the connections among the varieties of rationality. Once this is done, it becomes possible to vindicate a modest version of DBA. (shrink)

With the growing focus on prevention in medicine, studies of how to describe risk have become increasing important. Recently, some researchers have argued against giving patients “comparative risk information,” such as data about whether their baseline risk of developing a particular disease is above or below average. The concern is that giving patients this information will interfere with their consideration of more relevant data, such as the specific chance of getting the disease (the “personal risk”), the risk reduction the treatment (...) provides, and any possible side effects. I explore this view and the theories of rationality that ground it, and I argue instead that comparative risk information can play a positive role in decision-making. The criticism of disclosing this sort of information to patients, I conclude, rests on a mistakenly narrow account of the goals of prevention and the nature of rational choice in medicine. (shrink)

The debates between Bayesian, frequentist, and other methodologies of statistics have tended to focus on conceptual justifications, sociological arguments, or mathematical proofs of their long run properties. Both Bayesian statistics and frequentist (“classical”) statistics have strong cases on these grounds. In this article, we instead approach the debates in the “Statistics Wars” from a largely unexplored angle: simulations of different methodologies’ performance in the short to medium run. We conducted a large number of simulations using a straightforward decision problem based (...) around tossing a coin with unknown bias and then placing bets. In this simulation, we programmed four players, inspired by Bayesian statistics, frequentist statistics, Jon Williamson’s version of Objective Bayesianism, and a player who simply extrapolates from observed frequencies to general frequencies. The last player functions as a benchmark: a statistical methodology should at least outperform a crude form of induction. We focused on the performance of these methodologies in guiding the players towards good decisions. Unlike an earlier simulation study of this type, we found no systematic difference in performance between the Bayesian and frequentist players, provided the Bayesian used a flat prior and the frequentist used a low confidence level. Unlike that study, we were able to use Big Data methods to mitigate problems of random error in the simulation results. The Williamsonian player, who is a novel element of our study, also had no systematic differences in their performance, provided that they use a low confidence level. These players performed similarly even in the very short run, when players were making different decisions. Our study indicates that all three methodologies should be taken seriously by philosophers and practitioners of statistics. However, the frequentist and Williamsonian performed poorly when their confidence levels were high, and the Bayesian was surprisingly harmed by biased priors, providing some unexpected lessons for these methodologies when facing this type of decision problem. (shrink)

Traditional procedures for rational updating fail when it comes to self-locating opinions, such as your credences about where you are and what time it is. This paper develops an updating procedure for rational agents with self-locating beliefs. In short, I argue that rational updating can be factored into two steps. The first step uses information you recall from your previous self to form a hypothetical credence distribution, and the second step changes this hypothetical distribution to reflect information you have genuinely (...) learned as time has passed. While the second step resembles traditional procedures of updating by conditionalization, the first is best understood by analogy to traditional models of how agents transmit self-locating opinions through ordinary interpersonal communication. (shrink)

I investigate whether degreed beliefs are able to play the predictive, explanatory, and modeling roles that they are frequently taken to play. The investigation focuses on evidence—both from sources familiar in epistemology as well as recent work in behavioral economics and cognitive psychology—of variability in agents' apparent degrees of belief. Although such variability has been noticed before, there has been little philosophical discussion of its breadth or of the psychological mechanisms underlying it. Once these are appreciated, the inadequacy of degrees (...) of belief becomes clear. I offer a theoretical alternative to degrees of belief, what I call the filter theory. (shrink)

A central point of debate over environmental policies concerns how future costs and benefits should be assessed. The most commonly used method for assessing the value of future costs and benefits is economic discounting. One often-cited justification for discounting is uncertainty. More specifically, it is risk aversion coupled with the expectation that future prospects are more risky. In this paper I argue that there are at least two reasons for disputing the use of risk aversion as a justification for discounting (...) when dealing with longterm decisions, one technical and one ethical. Firstly, I argue that technically, it implies an inconsistency between theory and practice. And secondly, I argue that discounting for uncertainty relies on a form of individualism which, while reasonable in standard microeconomic theory where an agent chooses how to spread her own consumption over her own lifetime, is inappropriate in the context of intergenerational social decisions. (shrink)

Parfit advertised the priority view as a new and fundamental theory in the ethics of distribution. He never discusses risk, and many writers follow suit when discussing the priority view. This article formalizes two popular arguments for a commonly accepted risk-free definition of the priority view. One is based on a direct attempt to define the priority view, the other is based on a contrast with utilitarianism and egalitarianism. But neither argument succeeds, and more generally, it is not possible to (...) make sense of the priority view in a risk-free framework. The article pays particular attention to the proper role of evaluative measurements in theorizing about the ethics of distribution. Despite appearances, approaching the priority view in terms of risk from the outset is argued to be quite natural. (shrink)

Egalitarians think that equality in the distribution of goods somehow matters. But what exactly is egalitarianism? This article argues for a characterization based on novel principles essentially involving risk. The characterization is then used to resolve disputed questions about egalitarianism. These include: the way egalitarianism is concerned with patterns, in particular its relationship to strong separability; the relationship between egalitarianism and other distributive views, such as concerns with fairness and with giving priority to the worse off; and the relationship between (...) egalitarianism and evaluative measurement. But egalitarianism is subject to a particularly severe form of the levelling-down objection, and is claimed to be false. (shrink)

Any decision is made in some way or another. Which way? (Have I worked out enough alternatives to choose from? Which decision rule to apply?) That is a higher-order decision problem, to be dealt with in some way or other. Which way? That is an even higher-order decision problem. There seems to be a regress of decision problems toward higher and higher orders. But in daily life we stop moving to higher-order decision problems—stop the regress—at some finite point. The regress (...) problem of deciding how to decide is the problem of explaining what would make it rational to stop the regress. I will give a new solution in the present paper. The result suggests a new way of looking at standard Bayesian theory and the more recent theory of adaptive rationality. (shrink)

This paper presents a new puzzle for limited aggregation. Unlike other recent puzzles, this one arises independently of the issue of rational aversion to risk. Some possible responses are laid out and explored.

– 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 (...) way for them to receive imprecise probabilities. The mathematics of non-measurable sets is arcane, but its epistemological import is far-reaching; even apparently mundane propositions are liable to be affected by non-measurability. The phenomenon of non-measurability dramatically reshapes the dialectic between critics and proponents of imprecise credence. Non-measurability offers natural rejoinders to prominent critics of imprecise credence. Non-measurability even reverses some of the critics’ arguments—by the very lights that have been used to argue against imprecise credences, imprecise credences are better than precise credences. (shrink)

Science-based methods for assessing the practical rationality of a proposed public policy typically represent assumed future outcomes of policies and values attributed to these outcomes in an idealized, that is, intentionally distorted way and abstracted from aspects that are deemed irrelevant. Different types of methods do so in different ways. As a consequence, they instantiate the properties that result from abstraction and idealization such as conceptual simplicity versus complexity, or comprehensiveness versus selectivity of the values under consideration to different degrees. (...) I hold that none of these methods is best in general. Instead, I opt for the valuation method that is useful for the policy issue in question both in terms of its relevance and in terms of its practicability. Relevance requires that the method can represent and account for what is at stake in the policy issue. Practicability refers to aspects such as easy versus difficult handling of the method. To argue for the claim, I evaluate three types of valuation methods: cost–benefit analysis that rests on unidimensional measurement and ranking, multi-criteria decision analysis that applies multi-dimensional measurement but unidimensional ranking, and non-aggregate indicator systems that operate with multi-dimensional measurement and sometimes also multi-dimensional ranking. Second-order justification indicating whether and how the valuation method chosen is capable of accounting for the substantive value considerations that constitute the real-world policy issue in question renders the conditions on which the results of a proposed policy evaluation rest transparent. (shrink)

Many authors in ethics, economics, and political science endorse the Lottery Requirement, that is, the following thesis: where different parties have equal moral claims to one indivisible good, it is morally obligatory to let a fair lottery decide which party is to receive the good. This article defends skepticism about the Lottery Requirement. It distinguishes three broad strategies of defending such a requirement: the surrogate satisfaction account, the procedural account, and the ideal consent account, and argues that none of these (...) strategies succeed. The article then discusses and discharges some remaining grounds for resistance to these skeptical conclusions, as well as the possibility of defending a weaker version of a normative lottery principle. The conclusion is that we have no reason to believe that where equal claims conflict, we are morally required to hold a lottery, as opposed to simply picking one of the parties on more subjective grounds or out of pure whim. In addition to the practical consequences of this skeptical view, the article sketches some theoretical implications for debates about saving the greater number and about axiomatic utilitarianism. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that for various reasons there must be psychological laws governing beliefs and desires. One of the few serious examples that they offer is the _belief-desire law_, which states, roughly, that _ceteris paribus_ people do what they believe will satisfy their desires. This paper argues that, in fact, there is no such law. In particular, decision theory does not support the contention that there is such a law.

Modern society makes extensive use of automated algorithmic decisions, fueled by advances in artificial intelligence. However, since these systems are not perfect, questions about fairness are increasingly investigated in the literature. In particular, many authors take a Rawlsian approach to algorithmic fairness. This article aims to identify some complications with this approach: Under which circumstances can Rawls’s original position reasonably be applied to algorithmic fairness decisions? First, it is argued that there are important differences between Rawls’s original position and a (...) parallel algorithmic fairness original position with respect to risk attitudes. Second, it is argued that the application of Rawls’s original position to algorithmic fairness faces a boundary problem in defining relevant stakeholders. Third, it is observed that the definition of the least advantaged, necessary for applying the difference principle, requires some attention in the context of algorithmic fairness. Finally, it is argued that appropriate deliberation in algorithmic fairness contexts often require more knowledge about probabilities than the Rawlsian original position allows. Provided that these complications are duly considered, the thought-experiment of the Rawlsian original position can be useful in algorithmic fairness decisions. (shrink)

It is central to standard economic theory that people act on their interests. People are interested in a variety of things, so a range of values should influence market behavior. When engaged in commerce, however, people generally act for personal gain; the influence of other values usually just disappears in the marketplace. What is missing from the standard account is that people often act on proper subsets of their interests. Economics can, however, be extended to capture this insight. Key Words: (...) economic theory • attention • self-interest • social responsibility • discrimination. (shrink)

The options that people face are rarely ideal: they are good in some ways and poor in others. People have problems choosing among such options because they don’t know which ends to favor. Multiple objectives pose a problem not only for decision makers, but also for our account of decision making. People act to achieve their ends given their beliefs. In order to handle decisions with multiple objectives, however, this story must be supplemented by an account of which ends are (...) implicated in which decisions (e.g., do individual goals guide particular choices? do different ends jointly pick out courses of action?). Unfortunately, such an account is lacking. As a result, there is a gap (at least) in our most basic account of human behavior. In this paper I explore that gap and examine some proposals for closing it. (shrink)

We defend three controversial claims about preference, credence, and choice. First, all agents (not just rational ones) have complete preferences. Second, all agents (again, not just rational ones) have real-valued credences in every proposition in which they are confident to any degree. Third, there is almost always some unique thing we ought to do, want, or believe.