Book reviewed:David A. Jopling, Self‐knowledge and the Self.

"[This book] proposes new foundations for the Bayesian principle of rational action, and goes on to develop a new logic of desirability and probabtility."—Frederic Schick, _Journal of Philosophy_.

After maintaining in that certain cyclical preferences can be reasonable, the following questions were tabled: “in what circumstances and under what assumptions … these … preferences of George's would turn him into a ”money pump,” and in what circumstances and under what assumptions they would not do that.” Two pumps afford answers. George, who is sufficiently reasonable and well-informed to use backward induction, has, for this reason, nothing to fear from the first pump, but the second, of a nonstandard design (...) by Wlodek Rabinowicz, ruins him just because he is subject to the constraints of backward induction. Could he be helped by extending his options from actions in a single round, to courses of actions starting in that round? Possibly not. He would be safe if he were capable of resolute choices of couses of action. Even so, he is in trouble through no fault of his, if, as I think, not having that capacity, though a misfortune, is not a fault. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers interested in value theory appear to be largely concerned with questions of the following sort:What is value?What is the meaning of the word ‘good’?Does the attribution of value to an object have a cognitive, or merely an emotive, significance?The first question is metaphysical; to ask it is analogous to asking in physics:What is matter?What is electricity?The others are generally treated as semantical questions; to ask them is analogous to asking in statistics:What is the meaning of the word ‘probable’?Does (...) an attribution of probability express an objective fact, or merely a subjective attitude? (shrink)

I describe in section 1 how cyclical preferences can arise. In section 2, I relate preference to judgments of choiceworthiness and distinguish between two kinds of preference cycles, vicious and benign. In section 3, I run through the standard money pump in order to show, in section 4, how this pump can be stopped by foresight, using backward induction. A new money pump that *cannot* be stopped by foresight is presented in section 5. This pump works even for agents with (...) benign cyclical preferences. What makes it work is persistency on the part of the would-be exploiter. In section 6, I compare this pump to a diachronic Dutch book that can be set up against someone whose probability assignments violate Reflection. Even in this case, the book only works if the bookie is assumed to be persistent. I use this comparison between preference cyclicity and violations of Reflection in order to question whether exploitability must be seen as a proof of irrationality. Finally, in section 7, I consider resolute choice as an alternative to the backward-induction procedure. While a resolute chooser cannot be exploited, I argue that resoluteness is not required by rationality. The argument is based on a suggestion that rationality, when it comes to actions, is a local rather than a global requirement. (shrink)

My focus is on pragmatic arguments for various rationality constraints on a decision maker’s state of mind: on his beliefs or preferences. An argument of this kind purports to show that a violator of a given constraint can be exposed to a decision problem in which she will act to her guaranteed disadvantage. Dramatically put, she can be exploited by a clever bookie who doesn’t know more than the agent himself. Examples of pragmatic arguments of this kind are synchronic Dutch (...) Books, for the standard probability axioms, diachronic Dutch Books, for the more controversial principles of reflection and conditionalization, and Money Pumps, for the transitivity requirement on preferences. It is suggested that the proposed exploitation set-ups share a common feature. If the violator of a given constraint is logically and mathematically competent, she can be exploited only if she is disunified in his decision-making, i.e., only if she makes decisions on various issues she confronts separately rather than jointly. In other words, exploitation is possible only if the decision problem has been framed in a certain way. Unification in decision making is relatively unproblematic in synchronic contexts, but it may be quite costly and inconvenient diachronically, especially when the issues under consideration are widely spread over time. On my view, therefore, pragmatic arguments should be seen as delivering conditional recommendations: If you want to afford disunification, then you’d better satisfy these constraints. The arguments of this kind fail to establish the inherent rationality of the constraints under consideration. Isaac Levis view of the status of pragmatic arguments is diametrically opposed to mine. According to him, only synchronic pragmatic arguments are valid. The diachronic ones, he argues, lack any validity at all. This line of reasoning is questioned in my paper. (shrink)

I describe in section 1 how cyclical preferences can arise. In section 2, I relate preference to judgments of choiceworthiness and distinguish between two kinds of preference cycles, vicious and benign. In section 3, I run through the standard money pump in order to show, in section 4, how this pump can be stopped by foresight, using backward induction. A new money pump that *cannot* be stopped by foresight is presented in section 5. This pump works even for agents with (...) benign cyclical preferences. What makes it work is persistency on the part of the would-be exploiter. In section 6, I compare this pump to a diachronic Dutch book that can be set up against someone whose probability assignments violate Reflection. Even in this case, the book only works if the bookie is assumed to be persistent. I use this comparison between preference cyclicity and violations of Reflection in order to question whether exploitability must be seen as a proof of irrationality. Finally, in section 7, I consider resolute choice as an alternative to the backward-induction procedure. While a resolute chooser cannot be exploited, I argue that resoluteness is not required by rationality. The argument is based on a suggestion that rationality, when it comes to actions, is a local rather than a global requirement. (shrink)

"The best book available for non-mathematicians." — Contemporary Psychology. Superb nontechnical introduction to game theory and related disciplines, primarily as applied to the social sciences. Clear, comprehensive coverage of utility theory, 2-person zero-sum games, 2-person non-zero-sum games, n-person games, individual and group decision-making, much more. Appendixes. Bibliography. Graphs and figures.

Many economic problems are also ethical problems: should we value economic equality? how much should we care about preserving the environment? how should medical resources be divided between saving life and enhancing life? This book examines some of the practical issues that lie between economics and ethics, and shows how utility theory can contribute to ethics. John Broome's work has, unusually, combined sophisticated economic and philosophical expertise, and Ethics Out of Economics brings together some of his most important essays, augmented (...) with an updated introduction. The first group of essays deals with the relation between preference and value, the second with various questions about the formal structure of good, and the concluding section with the value of life. This work is of interest and importance for both economists and philosophers, and shows powerfully how economic methods can contribute to moral philosophy. (shrink)

This is a major contribution to the theory of rational choice which will be of particular interest to philosophers and economists. The author sets out the foundations of rational choice, and then sketches a dynamic choice framework in which principles of ordering and independence follow from a number of apparently plausible conditions. However, there is potential conflict among these conditions, and when they are weakened to avoid it the usual foundations of rational choice no longer prevail. The thrust of the (...) argument is to suggest that the theory of rational choice is less deterministic than many suppose. (shrink)

This book defends the view that any adequate account of rational decision making must take a decision maker's beliefs about causal relations into account. The early chapters of the book introduce the non-specialist to the rudiments of expected utility theory. The major technical advance offered by the book is a 'representation theorem' that shows that both causal decision theory and its main rival, Richard Jeffrey's logic of decision, are both instances of a more general conditional decision theory. The book solves (...) a long-standing problem for Jeffrey's theory by showing for the first time how to obtain a unique utility and probability representation for preferences and judgements of comparative likelihood. The book also contains a major new discussion of what it means to suppose that some event occurs or that some proposition is true. The most complete and robust defence of causal decision theory available. (shrink)

My focus is on pragmatic arguments for various rationality constraints on a decision maker’s state of mind: on his beliefs or preferences. An argument of this kind purports to show that a violator of a given constraint can be exposed to a decision problem in which she will act to her guaranteed disadvantage. Dramatically put, she can be exploited by a clever bookie who doesn’t know more than the agent himself. Examples of pragmatic arguments of this kind are synchronic Dutch (...) Books, for the standard probability axioms, diachronic Dutch Books, for the more controversial principles of reflection and conditionalization, and Money Pumps, for the transitivity requirement on preferences. It is suggested that the proposed exploitation set-ups share a common feature. If the violator of a given constraint is logically and mathematically competent, she can be exploited only if she is disunified in his decision-making, i.e., only if she makes decisions on various issues she confronts separately rather than jointly. In other words, exploitation is possible only if the decision problem has been framed in a certain way. Unification in decision making is relatively unproblematic in synchronic contexts, but it may be quite costly and inconvenient diachronically, especially when the issues under consideration are widely spread over time. On my view, therefore, pragmatic arguments should be seen as delivering conditional recommendations: If you want to afford disunification, then you’d better satisfy these constraints. The arguments of this kind fail to establish the inherent rationality of the constraints under consideration. Isaac Levis view of the status of pragmatic arguments is diametrically opposed to mine. According to him, only synchronic pragmatic arguments are valid. The diachronic ones, he argues, lack any validity at all. This line of reasoning is questioned in my paper. (shrink)

The small-improvement argument is usually considered the most powerful argument against comparability, viz the view that for any two alternatives an agent is rationally required either to prefer one of the alternatives to the other or to be indifferent between them. We argue that while there might be reasons to believe each of the premises in the small-improvement argument, there is a conflict between these reasons. As a result, the reasons do not provide support for believing the conjunction of the (...) premises. Without support for the conjunction of the premises, the small-improvement argument for incomparability fails. (shrink)

Some philosophers believe that two objects of value can be ‘roughly equal’, or ‘on a par’, or belong to the same ‘clump’ of value in a sense that is fundamentally different from that in which some objects are ‘better than’, ‘worse than’, or ‘equally as good as’ others. This article shows that if two objects are on a par, or belong to the same clump, then an agent accepting a few plausible premises can be exploited in a money-pump. The central (...) premise of the argument is that value is choice-guiding. If one object is more valuable than another, then it is not permitted to choose the less valuable object; and if two objects are equally valuable it is permitted to choose either of them; and if two objects are on a par or belong to the same clump it is also permitted to choose either of them. (shrink)