Results for 'constructive decision theory'

963 found
Order:
  1. What decision theory provides the best procedure for identifying the best action available to a given artificially intelligent system?Samuel A. Barnett - 2018 - Dissertation, University of Oxford
    Decision theory has had a long-standing history in the behavioural and social sciences as a tool for constructing good approximations of human behaviour. Yet as artificially intelligent systems (AIs) grow in intellectual capacity and eventually outpace humans, decision theory becomes evermore important as a model of AI behaviour. What sort of decision procedure might an AI employ? In this work, I propose that policy-based causal decision theory (PCDT), which places a primacy on the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  2. Causal Decision Theory and EPR correlations.Arif Ahmed & Adam Caulton - 2014 - Synthese 191 (18):4315-4352.
    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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  3. The construction of Electromagnetism.Mario Natiello & H. G. Solari - manuscript
    Abstract We examine the construction of electromagnetism in its current form, and in an alternative form, from a point of view that combines a minimal realism with strict rational demands. We begin by discussing the requests of reason when constructing a theory and next, we follow the historical development as presented in the record of original publications, the underlying epistemology (often explained by the authors) and the mathematical constructions. The historical construction develops along socio-political disputes (mainly, the reunification of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  4. Embodied Decisions and the Predictive Brain.Christopher Burr - 2016 - Dissertation, University of Bristol
    Decision-making has traditionally been modelled as a serial process, consisting of a number of distinct stages. The traditional account assumes that an agent first acquires the necessary perceptual evidence, by constructing a detailed inner repre- sentation of the environment, in order to deliberate over a set of possible options. Next, the agent considers her goals and beliefs, and subsequently commits to the best possible course of action. This process then repeats once the agent has learned from the consequences of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  5. (1 other version)A comprehensive theory of induction and abstraction, part I.Cael L. Hasse -
    I present a solution to the epistemological or characterisation problem of induction. In part I, Bayesian Confirmation Theory (BCT) is discussed as a good contender for such a solution but with a fundamental explanatory gap (along with other well discussed problems); useful assigned probabilities like priors require substantive degrees of belief about the world. I assert that one does not have such substantive information about the world. Consequently, an explanation is needed for how one can be licensed to act (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  6. Worst-Case Planning: Political Decision Making in the West.S. M. Amadae - 2020 - In Thomas Grossboelting & Stefan Lehr (eds.), Politisches Entscheiden im Kalten Krieg. pp. 249-271.
    The goal of this essay is to explore "the highly contested nature of [decision-making through adopting] a historically comparative and interdisciplinary approach." Internalist history of game theory treats decision theory as a science of making choices to maximize expected gain. Game theory is applied to nuclear deterrence and military strategy, building markets and designing institutions, analyzing collective action, developing jurisprudence, and addressing crime and punishment. This essay draws on recent historiography of Cold War decision-making (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  7. The Shutdown Problem: An AI Engineering Puzzle for Decision Theorists.Elliott Thornley - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies:1-28.
    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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  8. Sequential Choice and the Agent's Perspective.Arif Ahmed - manuscript
    Causal Decision Theory reckons the choice-worthiness of an option to be completely independent of its evidential bearing on its non-effects. But after one has made a choice this bearing is relevant to future decisions. Therefore it is possible to construct problems of sequential choice in which Causal Decision Theory makes a guaranteed loss. So Causal Decision Theory is wrong. The source of the problem is the idea that agents have a special perspective on their (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  9. (1 other version)The meaning of "darn it!".Luc Bovens & Wlodek Rabinowicz - 2015 - In Iwao Hirose & Andrew Evan Reisner (eds.), Weighing and Reasoning: Themes From the Philosophy of John Broome. New York, NY: Oxford University Press UK. pp. 129-39.
    In decision-theory, the notion of regret enters into the minimax decision-rule and has a determinate usage in this context. However, there are many alternative ways of conceiving of regret. The chapter constructs the einmalist- nicht-keinmal ('once is not never') game, in which a single sampling radically changes the expected value of the game in a way that is quite counterintuitive, as the basis for studying regret after a loss following the choice of an uncertain action. Crucially, the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  10. ‘Risk in a Simple Temporal Framework for Expected Utility Theory and for SKAT, the Stages of Knowledge Ahead Theory’, Risk and Decision Analysis, 2(1), 5-32. selten co-author.Robin Pope & Reinhard Selten - 2010/2011 - Risk and Decision Analysis 2 (1).
    The paper re-expresses arguments against the normative validity of expected utility theory in Robin Pope (1983, 1991a, 1991b, 1985, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2006, 2007). These concern the neglect of the evolving stages of knowledge ahead (stages of what the future will bring). Such evolution is fundamental to an experience of risk, yet not consistently incorporated even in axiomatised temporal versions of expected utility. Its neglect entails a disregard of emotional and financial effects on well-being before a particular risk (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  11. On the Possibility of a Problem-Free Environmental Ethical Theory.Songul Kose - 2015 - In Hasan Arslan, Mehmet Ali Icbay & Sorin Mihai Stanciu (eds.), VI. European Conference on Social and Behavioral Sciences. pp. 324-337.
    The main subject of this paper is the two significant problems of environmental ethics which are ecofascism and speciesism. This scrutiny offers an evaluative perspective on the main problems of environmental ethics and is conducted with this aim. Most of the environmental philosophers, all the difficulties notwithstanding, try to find a middle way in the ecofascism-speciesism continuum and their theories get closer to one or the other edge of this continuum. John Baird Callicott is one of the environmental philosophers who (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12. Neutral Theory, Biased World.William Bausman - 2016 - Dissertation, University of Minnesota
    The ecologist today finds scarce ground safe from controversy. Decisions must be made about what combination of data, goals, methods, and theories offers them the foundations and tools they need to construct and defend their research. When push comes to shove, ecologists often turn to philosophy to justify why it is their approach that is scientific. Karl Popper’s image of science as bold conjectures and heroic refutations is routinely enlisted to justify testing hypotheses over merely confirming them. One of the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  13. Constructive Verification, Empirical Induction, and Falibilist Deduction: A Threefold Contrast.Julio Michael Stern - 2011 - Information 2 (4):635-650.
    This article explores some open questions related to the problem of verification of theories in the context of empirical sciences by contrasting three epistemological frameworks. Each of these epistemological frameworks is based on a corresponding central metaphor, namely: (a) Neo-empiricism and the gambling metaphor; (b) Popperian falsificationism and the scientific tribunal metaphor; (c) Cognitive constructivism and the object as eigen-solution metaphor. Each of one of these epistemological frameworks has also historically co-evolved with a certain statistical theory and method for (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  14. The Argument from Small Improvement is a Red Herring.Thomas Raleigh - 2023 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    The much-discussed ‘Argument from Small Improvement’ has been advanced both as a reason to reject (tripartite) Completeness, one of the standard axioms of decision theory, and to accept the possibility of rationally incomparable choices. But this form of argument cannot be an effective basis for either of these conclusions, unless one already has some prior, independent reason to prefer Transitivity to Completeness as a constraint on rational preferences (or rational values). In particular, I show how a reverse argument (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  15. Energy Decisions within an Applied Ethics Framework: An Analysis of Five Recent Controversies.Jacob Bethem, Giovanni Frigo, Saurabh Biswas, C. Tyler DesRoches & Martin Pasqualetti - 2020 - Energy, Sustainability and Society 10 (10):29.
    Everywhere in the world, and in every period of human history, it has been common for energy decisions to be made in an ethically haphazard manner. With growing population pressure and increasing demand for energy, this approach is no longer viable. We believe that decision makers must include ethical considerations in energy decisions more routinely and systematically. To this end, we propose an applied ethics framework that accommodates principles from three classical ethical theories—virtue ethics, deontology, consequentialism, and two Native (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  16. The Locality and Globality of Instrumental Rationality: The normative significance of preference reversals.Brian Kim - 2014 - Synthese 191 (18):4353-4376.
    When we ask a decision maker to express her preferences, it is typically assumed that we are eliciting a pre-existing set of preferences. However, empirical research has suggested that our preferences are often constructed on the fly for the decision problem at hand. This paper explores the ramifications of this empirical research for our understanding of instrumental rationality. First, I argue that these results pose serious challenges for the traditional decision-theoretic view of instrumental rationality, which demands global (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  17. Aspects of compatibility and the construction of preference.Marcus Selart - 1997 - In Rob Ranyard, Ray Crozier & Ola Svenson (eds.), Decision making: Cognitive models and explanations. Routledge. pp. 58-72.
    This chapter focuses on the psychological mechanisms behind the construction of preference, especially the actual processes used by humans when they make decisions in their everyday lives or in business situations. The chapter uses cognitive psychological techniques to break down these processes and set them in their social context. When attributes are compatible with the response scale, they are assigned greater weight because they are most easily mapped onto the response. For instance, when subjects are asked to set a price (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  18. A Formal Theory of Democratic Deliberation.Hun Chung & John Duggan - 2020 - American Political Science Review 114 (1):14-35.
    Inspired by impossibility theorems of social choice theory, many democratic theorists have argued that aggregative forms of democracy cannot lend full democratic justification for the collective decisions reached. Hence, democratic theorists have turned their attention to deliberative democracy, according to which “outcomes are democratically legitimate if and only if they could be the object of a free and reasoned agreement among equals” (Cohen 1997a, 73). However, relatively little work has been done to offer a formal theory of democratic (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  19. Predictive Minds Can Be Humean Minds.Frederik T. Junker, Jelle Bruineberg & Thor Grünbaum - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    The predictive processing literature contains at least two different versions of the framework with different theoretical resources at their disposal. One version appeals to so-called optimistic priors to explain agents’ motivation to act (call this optimistic predictive processing). A more recent version appeals to expected free energy minimization to explain how agents can decide between different action policies (call this preference predictive processing). The difference between the two versions has not been properly appreciated, and they are not sufficiently separated in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  20. Demographic statistics in defensive decisions.Renée Jorgensen Bolinger - 2019 - Synthese 198 (5):4833-4850.
    A popular informal argument suggests that statistics about the preponderance of criminal involvement among particular demographic groups partially justify others in making defensive mistakes against members of the group. One could worry that evidence-relative accounts of moral rights vindicate this argument. After constructing the strongest form of this objection, I offer several replies: most demographic statistics face an unmet challenge from reference class problems, even those that meet it fail to ground non-negligible conditional probabilities, even if they did, they introduce (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  21. Towards Shutdownable Agents via Stochastic Choice.Elliott Thornley, Alexander Roman, Christos Ziakas, Leyton Ho & Louis Thomson - 2024 - Global Priorities Institute Working Paper.
    Some worry that advanced artificial agents may resist being shut down. The Incomplete Preferences Proposal (IPP) is an idea for ensuring that doesn't happen. A key part of the IPP is using a novel 'Discounted REward for Same-Length Trajectories (DREST)' reward function to train agents to (1) pursue goals effectively conditional on each trajectory-length (be 'USEFUL'), and (2) choose stochastically between different trajectory-lengths (be 'NEUTRAL' about trajectory-lengths). In this paper, we propose evaluation metrics for USEFULNESS and NEUTRALITY. We use a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  22.  33
    From Cognition to Consciousness: A Discussion About Learning, Reality Representation, and Decision Making.David Guez - 2010 - Biological Theory 5 (2):136-141.
    The scientific understanding of cognition and consciousness is currently hampered by the lack of rigorous and universally accepted definitions that permit comparative studies. This article proposes new functional and unambiguous definitions for cognition and consciousness in order to provide clearly defined boundaries within which general theories of cognition and consciousness may be developed. The proposed definitions are built upon the construction and manipulation of reality representation, decision making, and learning and are scoped in terms of an underlyinglogical structure. It (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  23. Thick Concepts as Social Factors of Oppression on Moral Decisions and Injustice.Ozan A. Altinok - 2022 - Chinese Journal of Contemporary Values 9 (No. 4): pp. 116–128. Translated by Yue QI.
    Social dimension of moral responsibility has started to gain more attention in moral philosophy, be it within the network of action theory, or any other meta-ethical domain. Although there are many social acts and therefore social dimensions of responsibility, I aim to indicate one aspect of sociality in our thinking and practice, particularly in our moral thinking, that is the thick concepts. In this work, I consider Vargas’s concept moral ecology (2015, 2018) as a tool to understand certain social (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  24. 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: (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  25. Evidential Decision Theory and the Ostrich.Yoaav Isaacs & Ben Levinstein - 2024 - Philosophers' Imprint 24 (1).
    Evidential Decision Theory is flawed, but its flaws are not fully understood. David Lewis (1981) famously charged that EDT recommends an irrational policy of managing the news and “commends the ostrich as rational”. Lewis was right, but the case he appealed to—Newcomb’s Problem—does not demonstrate his conclusion. Indeed, decision theories other than EDT, such as Committal Decision Theory and Functional Decision Theory, agree with EDT's verdicts in Newcomb’s Problem, but their flaws, whatever they (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  26. Decision Theory: Yes! Truth Conditions: No!Nate Charlow - 2016 - In Nate Charlow & Matthew Chrisman (eds.), Deontic Modality. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    This essay makes the case for, in the phrase of Angelika Kratzer, packing the fruits of the study of rational decision-making into our semantics for deontic modals—specifically, for parametrizing the truth-condition of a deontic modal to things like decision problems and decision theories. Then it knocks it down. While the fundamental relation of the semantic theory must relate deontic modals to things like decision problems and theories, this semantic relation cannot be intelligibly understood as representing (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   20 citations  
  27. Counterfactual Decision Theory.Brian Hedden - 2023 - Mind 132 (527):730-761.
    I defend counterfactual decision theory, which says that you should evaluate an action in terms of which outcomes would likely obtain were you to perform it. Counterfactual decision theory has traditionally been subsumed under causal decision theory as a particular formulation of the latter. This is a mistake. Counterfactual decision theory is importantly different from, and superior to, causal decision theory, properly so called. Causation and counterfactuals come apart in three (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  28. Tournament decision theory.Abelard Podgorski - 2020 - Noûs 56 (1):176-203.
    The dispute in philosophical decision theory between causalists and evidentialists remains unsettled. Many are attracted to the causal view’s endorsement of a species of dominance reasoning, and to the intuitive verdicts it gets on a range of cases with the structure of the infamous Newcomb’s Problem. But it also faces a rising wave of purported counterexamples and theoretical challenges. In this paper I will describe a novel decision theory which saves what is appealing about the causal (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  29. (1 other version)Ethics and the Brains of Psychopaths: The Significance of Psychopathy for our Ethical and Legal Theories.William Hirstein & Katrina Sifferd - 2014 - In Charles T. Wolfe (ed.), Brain theory : essays in critical neurophilosophy. Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 149-170.
    The emerging neuroscience of psychopathy will have several important implications for our attempts to construct an ethical society. In this article we begin by describing the list of criteria by which psychopaths are diagnosed. We then review four competing neuropsychological theories of psychopathic cognition. The first of these models, Newman’s attentional model, locates the problem in a special type of attentional narrowing that psychopaths have shown in experiments. The second and third, Blair’s amygdala model and Kiehl’s paralimbic model represent the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  30. 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   26 citations  
  31. Decision Theory.Lara Buchak - 2016 - In Alan Hájek & Christopher Hitchcock (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Probability and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Decision theory has at its core a set of mathematical theorems that connect rational preferences to functions with certain structural properties. The components of these theorems, as well as their bearing on questions surrounding rationality, can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Philosophy’s current interest in decision theory represents a convergence of two very different lines of thought, one concerned with the question of how one ought to act, and the other concerned with the question (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  32. Causal Decision Theory and Decision Instability.Brad Armendt - 2019 - Journal of Philosophy 116 (5):263-277.
    The problem of the man who met death in Damascus appeared in the infancy of the theory of rational choice known as causal decision theory. A straightforward, unadorned version of causal decision theory is presented here and applied, along with Brian Skyrms’ deliberation dynamics, to Death in Damascus and similar problems. Decision instability is a fascinating topic, but not a source of difficulty for causal decision theory. Andy Egan’s purported counterexample to causal (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  33. Decision theory and de minimis risk.Martin Smith - 2024 - Erkenntnis 89 (6):2169-2192.
    A de minimis risk is defined as a risk that is so small that it may be legitimately ignored when making a decision. While ignoring small risks is common in our day-to-day decision making, attempts to introduce the notion of a de minimis risk into the framework of decision theory have run up against a series of well-known difficulties. In this paper, I will develop an enriched decision theoretic framework that is capable of overcoming two (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  34. Causal decision theory, context, and determinism.Calum McNamara - 2024 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 109 (1):226-260.
    The classic formulation of causal decision theory (CDT) appeals to counterfactuals. It says that you should aim to choose an option that would have a good outcome, were you to choose it. However, this version of CDT faces trouble if the laws of nature are deterministic. After all, the standard theory of counterfactuals says that, if the laws are deterministic, then if anything—including the choice you make—were different in the present, either the laws would be violated or (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  35. Normative Decision Theory.Edward Elliott - 2019 - Analysis 79 (4):755-772.
    A review of some major topics of debate in normative decision theory from circa 2007 to 2019. Topics discussed include the ongoing debate between causal and evidential decision theory, decision instability, risk-weighted expected utility theory, decision-making with incomplete preferences, and decision-making with imprecise credences.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  36. Counterfactual Decision Theory Is Causal Decision Theory.J. Dmitri Gallow - 2024 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 105 (1):115-156.
    The role of causation and counterfactuals in causal decision theory is vexed and disputed. Recently, Brian Hedden (2023) argues that we should abandon causal decision theory in favour of an alternative: counterfactual decision theory. I argue that, pace Hedden, counterfactual decision theory is not a competitor to, but rather a version of, causal decision theory – the most popular version by far. I provide textual evidence that the founding fathers of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  37. Causal Decision Theory: A Counterexample.Arif Ahmed - 2013 - Philosophical Review 122 (2):289-306.
    The essay presents a novel counterexample to Causal Decision Theory (CDT). Its interest is that it generates a case in which CDT violates the very principles that motivated it in the first place. The essay argues that the objection applies to all extant formulations of CDT and that the only way out for that theory is a modification of it that entails incompatibilism. The essay invites the reader to find this consequence of CDT a reason to reject (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  38. What does decision theory have to do with wanting?Milo Phillips-Brown - 2021 - Mind 130 (518):413-437.
    Decision theory and folk psychology both purport to represent the same phenomena: our belief-like and desire- and preference-like states. They also purport to do the same work with these representations: explain and predict our actions. But they do so with different sets of concepts. There's much at stake in whether one of these two sets of concepts can be accounted for with the other. Without such an account, we'd have two competing representations and systems of prediction and explanation, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  39. Wishing, Decision Theory, and Two-Dimensional Content.Kyle Blumberg - 2023 - Journal of Philosophy 120 (2):61-93.
    This paper is about two requirements on wish reports whose interaction motivates a novel semantics for these ascriptions. The first requirement concerns the ambiguities that arise when determiner phrases, such as definite descriptions, interact with ‘wish’. More specifically, several theorists have recently argued that attitude ascriptions featuring counterfactual attitude verbs license interpretations on which the determiner phrase is interpreted relative to the subject’s beliefs. The second requirement involves the fact that desire reports in general require decision-theoretic notions for their (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  40. Law-Abiding Causal Decision Theory.Timothy Luke Williamson & Alexander Sandgren - 2023 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 74 (4):899-920.
    In this paper we discuss how Causal Decision Theory should be modified to handle a class of problematic cases involving deterministic laws. Causal Decision Theory, as it stands, is problematically biased against your endorsing deterministic propositions (for example it tells you to deny Newtonian physics, regardless of how confident you are of its truth). Our response is that this is not a problem for Causal Decision Theory per se, but arises because of the standard (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  41. Epistemic Decision Theory's Reckoning.Conor Mayo-Wilson & Gregory Wheeler - manuscript
    Epistemic decision theory (EDT) employs the mathematical tools of rational choice theory to justify epistemic norms, including probabilism, conditionalization, and the Principal Principle, among others. Practitioners of EDT endorse two theses: (1) epistemic value is distinct from subjective preference, and (2) belief and epistemic value can be numerically quantified. We argue the first thesis, which we call epistemic puritanism, undermines the second.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  42. Decision Theory, Philosophical Perspectives.Darren Bradley - 2009 - In Hal Pashler (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Mind. Sage Publications.
    Decision theory is concerned with how agents should act when the consequences of their actions are uncertain. The central principle of contemporary decision theory is that the rational choice is the choice that maximizes subjective expected utility. This entry explains what this means, and discusses the philosophical motivations and consequences of the theory. The entry will consider some of the main problems and paradoxes that decision theory faces, and some of responses that can (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  43. (1 other version)Bayesian Decision Theory and Stochastic Independence.Philippe Mongin - 2017 - TARK 2017.
    Stochastic independence has a complex status in probability theory. It is not part of the definition of a probability measure, but it is nonetheless an essential property for the mathematical development of this theory. Bayesian decision theorists such as Savage can be criticized for being silent about stochastic independence. From their current preference axioms, they can derive no more than the definitional properties of a probability measure. In a new framework of twofold uncertainty, we introduce preference axioms (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  44. 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.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  45. Decision theory, intelligent planning and counterfactuals.Michael John Shaffer - 2008 - Minds and Machines 19 (1):61-92.
    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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  46. Decision theory presupposes free will.Christian List - manuscript
    This paper argues that decision theory presupposes free will. Although decision theorists seldom acknowledge this, the way decision theory represents, explains, or rationalizes choice behaviour acquires its intended interpretation only under the assumption that decision-makers are agents capable of making free choices between alternative possibilities. Without that assumption, both normative and descriptive decision theory, including the revealed-preference paradigm, would have to be reinterpreted in implausible ways. The hypothesis that decision-makers have free (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  47. 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  48. Constructive Type Theory, an appetizer.Laura Crosilla - 2024 - In Peter Fritz & Nicholas K. Jones (eds.), Higher-Order Metaphysics. Oxford University Press.
    Recent debates in metaphysics have highlighted the significance of type theories, such as Simple Type Theory (STT), for our philosophical analysis. In this chapter, I present the salient features of a constructive type theory in the style of Martin-Löf, termed CTT. My principal aim is to convey the flavour of this rich, flexible and sophisticated theory and compare it with STT. I especially focus on the forms of quantification which are available in CTT. A further aim (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  49. The Aims and Structures of Ecological Research Programs.William Bausman - 2019 - Philosophical Topics 47 (1):1-20.
    Neutral Theory is controversial in ecology. Ecologists and philosophers have diagnosed the source of the controversy as: its false assumption that individuals in different species within the same trophic level are ecologically equivalent, its conflict with Competition Theory and the adaptation of species, its role as a null hypothesis, and as a Lakatosian research programme. In this paper, I show why we should instead understand the conflict at the level of research programs which involve more than theory. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  50. The End of Decision Theory.Brian Weatherson - manuscript
    What question are decision theorists trying to answer, and why is it worth trying to answer it? A lot of philosophers talk as if the aim of decision theory is to describe how we should make decisions, and the reason to do this is to help us make better decisions. I disagree on both fronts. The aim of the decision theory is to describe how a certain kind of idealised decider does in fact decide. And (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
1 — 50 / 963