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Infinite Prospects

Jeffrey Sanford Russell & Yoaav Isaacs

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (1):178-198 (2021)

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Expected Choiceworthiness and Fanaticism.Calvin Baker - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies.details Maximize Expected Choiceworthiness (MEC) is a theory of decision-making under moral uncertainty. It says that we ought to handle moral uncertainty in the way that Expected Value Theory (EVT) handles descriptive uncertainty. MEC inherits from EVT the problem of fanaticism. Roughly, a decision theory is fanatical when it requires our decision-making to be dominated by low-probability, high-payoff options. Proponents of MEC have offered two main lines of response. The first is that MEC should simply import whatever are the best solutions (...) Download Export citation Bookmark
Probability discounting and money pumps.Petra Kosonen - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.details In response to cases that involve tiny probabilities of huge payoffs, some argue that we ought to discount small probabilities down to zero. However, this paper shows that doing so violates Independence and Continuity, and as a result of these violations, those who discount small probabilities can be exploited by money pumps. Various possible ways of avoiding exploitation will be discussed. This paper concludes that the money pump for Independence undermines the plausibility of discounting small probabilities. Much of the discussion (...) Download Export citation Bookmark
Absolutism and its Limits.John Hawthorne, Yoaav Isaacs & Clayton Littlejohn - 2023 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 21 (1-2):170-189.details Many philosophers think that given the choice between saving the life of an innocent person and averting any number of minor ailments or inconveniences, it would be better to save the life. How, then, should one compare the risk of an innocent person’s life to such minor ailments and inconveniences? If lives are infinitely more important than insignificant factors then any risk cannot be outweighed, and that is untenable. An alternative approach seems more promising: let the values of such insignificant (...) Download Export citation Bookmark
Decision Theory Unbound.Zachary Goodsell - forthcoming - Noûs.details Countenancing unbounded utility in ethics gives rise to deep puzzles in formal decision theory. Here, these puzzles are taken as an invitation to assess the most fundamental principles relating probability and value, with the aim of demonstrating that unbounded utility in ethics is compatible with a desirable decision theory. The resulting theory frames further discussion of Expected Utility Theory and of principles concerning symmetries of utility. Download Export citation Bookmark 1 citation
The Sooner the Better: An Argument for Bias Toward the Earlier.Bradford Saad - forthcoming - Journal of the American Philosophical Association:1-16.details This article argues that we should be prudentially and morally biased toward earlier events: other things equal, we should prefer for good events to occur earlier and disprefer for bad events to occur earlier. The argument contends that we should accord at least some credence—if only a small one—to a theoretical package featuring the growing block theory of time and that that package generates a presumptive bias toward earlier events. Rival theoretical packages are considered. Under reasonable allocations of credence to (...) Download Export citation Bookmark
On Two Arguments for Fanaticism.Jeffrey Sanford Russell - 2023 - Noûs.details Should we make significant sacrifices to ever-so-slightly lower the chance of extremely bad outcomes, or to ever-so-slightly raise the chance of extremely good outcomes? Fanaticism says yes: for every bad outcome, there is a tiny chance of extreme disaster that is even worse, and for every good outcome, there is a tiny chance of an enormous good that is even better. I consider two related recent arguments for Fanaticism: Beckstead and Thomas's argument from strange dependence on space and time, and (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 5 citations
Know Your Way Out of St. Petersburg: An Exploration of "Knowledge-First" Decision Theory.Frank Hong - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-20.details This paper explores the consequences of applying two natural ideas from epistemology to decision theory: (1) that knowledge should guide our actions, and (2) that we know a lot of non-trivial things. In particular, we explore the consequences of these ideas as they are applied to standard decision theoretic puzzles such as the St. Petersburg Paradox. In doing so, we develop a “knowledge-first” decision theory and we will see how it can help us avoid fanaticism with regard to the St. (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 1 citation
A St Petersburg Paradox for risky welfare aggregation.Zachary Goodsell - 2021 - Analysis 81 (3):420-426.details The principle of Anteriority says that prospects that are identical from the perspective of every possible person’s welfare are equally good overall. The principle enjoys prima facie plausibility, and has been employed for various theoretical purposes. Here it is shown using an analogue of the St Petersburg Paradox that Anteriority is inconsistent with central principles of axiology. Download Export citation Bookmark 5 citations
Unbounded Utility.Zachary Goodsell - 2023 - Dissertation, University of Southern Californiadetails Download Export citation Bookmark 1 citation

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