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39Trustee decisions in investment and financeJournal of Business Ethics 7 (1-2). 1988.When a trustee makes a decision for a client, a standard objective is to decide as the client would if he had the trustee's information. How can this objective be attained when, given the trustee's information, there is still uncertainty about the consequences of alternative courses of action? A promising approach is to apply the rule to maximize expected utility using the client's utilities for consequences and the trustee's probabilities for states. But taking utilities and probabilities from …Read more
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9[Book review] equilibrium and rationality, game theory revised by decision rules (review)Ethics 109 (3): 684-686. 1998.This book represents a major contribution to game theory. It offers this conception of equilibrium in games: strategic equilibrium. This conception arises from a study of expected utility decision principles, which must be revised to take account of the evidence a choice provides concerning its outcome. The argument for these principles distinguishes reasons for action from incentives, and draws on contemporary analyses of counterfactual conditionals. The book also includes a procedure for ident…Read more
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11Regulation of risksBehavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (4): 564-565. 2005.Sunstein argues that heuristics misguide moral judgments. Principles that are normally sound falter in unusual cases. In particular, heuristics generate erroneous judgments about regulation of risks. Sunstein's map of moral reasoning omits some prominent contours. The simple heuristics he suggests neglect a reasoner's attempt to balance the pros and cons of regulating a risk.
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38A game-theoretic comparison of the utilitarian and maximin rules of social choiceErkenntnis 28 (1). 1988.I will characterize the utilitarian and maximin rules of social choice game-theoretically. That is, I will introduce games whose solutions are the utilitarian and maximin distributions respectively. Then I will compare the rules by exploring similarities and differences between these games. This method of comparison has been carried out by others. But I characterize the two rules using games that involve bargaining within power structures. This new characterization better highlights the ethical …Read more
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8Equilibrium and Rationality: Game Theory Revised by Decision RulesCambridge University Press. 1998.This book represents a major contribution to game theory. It offers this conception of equilibrium in games: strategic equilibrium. This conception arises from a study of expected utility decision principles, which must be revised to take account of the evidence a choice provides concerning its outcome. The argument for these principles distinguishes reasons for action from incentives, and draws on contemporary analyses of counterfactual conditionals. The book also includes a procedure for ident…Read more
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Richmond Campbell and Lanning Sowden, eds., Paradoxes of Rationality and Cooperation Reviewed by (review)Philosophy in Review 6 (4): 141-143. 1986.This collection treats classic problems in decision theory such as Newcomb's Problem and the Prisoner's Dilemma. The reviews describes and evaluates the essays.
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23Economic Choice Theory: An Experimental Analysis of Animal Behavior, John H. Kagel, Raymond C. Battalio, and Leonard Green. Cambridge University Press, 1995, xii + 230 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 15 (2): 295. 1999.
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87Decision instabilityAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 63 (4). 1985.In some decision problems adoption of an option furnishes evidence about the option's consequences. Rational decisions take account of that evidence, although it makes an option's adoption changes the option's expected utility.
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60CalibrationIn Henk W. de Regt (ed.), Epsa Philosophy of Science: Amsterdam 2009, Springer. pp. 415--425. 2009.Abner Shimony argues that degrees of belief satisfy the axioms of probability because their epistemic goal is to match estimates of objective probabilities. Because the estimates obey the axioms of probability, degrees of belief must also obey them to reach their epistemic goal. This calibration argument meets some objections, but with a few revisions it can surmount those objections. It offers a good alternative to the Dutch book argument for compliance with the probability axioms. The defense …Read more
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11Intrinsic Utility’s CompositionalityJournal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (3): 545--563. 2015.
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77Thomas Mark on works of virtuosityJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 40 (3): 327-328. 1982.This paper proposes some amendments to Thomas Mark's account of virtuosity.
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21From rationality to coordinationBehavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (2): 179-180. 2003.Game theory's paradoxes stimulate the study of rationality. Sometimes they motivate the revising of standard principles of rationality. Other times they call for revising applications of those principles or introducing supplementary principles of rationality. I maintain that rationality adjusts its demands to circumstances, and in ideal games of coordination it yields a payoff-dominant equilibrium.
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117Belief and acceptanceIn Ilkka Niiniluoto, Matti Sintonen & Jan Wolenski (eds.), Handbook of Epistemology, Kluwer Academic. pp. 499--520. 2004.The attitudes of belief and acceptance are similar but differ in important respects such as their relation to degree of belief.
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15Review of Erik J. Olsson (ed.), Knowledge and Inquiry: Essays on the Pragmatism of Isaac Levi (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (8). 2007.
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35Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, et l'economie politiqueJournal of French and Francophone Philosophy 8 (1): 40-53. 1996.none.
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40Decision When Desires Are UncertainBowling Green Studies in Applied Philosophy 3 69-75. 1981.An agent in a decision problem may not know the goals that should guide selection of an option. Accommodating this ignorance require methods that supplement expected utility theory.
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8PreferenceIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.Decision theory relies on an account of preference. Some accounts are behaviorist and others are mentalistic. The account used affects the explanatory power of decision theory.
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73A computer simulation runs a model generating a phenomenon under investigation. For the simulation to be explanatory, the model has to be explanatory. The model must be isomorphic to the natural system that realizes the phenomenon. This paper elaborates the method of assessing a simulation's explanatory power. Then it illustrates the method by applying it to two simulations in game theory. The first is Brian Skyrms's (1990) simulation of interactive deliberations. It is intended to explain the e…Read more
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Joseph Y. Halpern, Reasoning about Uncertainty (review)Philosophy in Review 24 333-336. 2004.Reviews Joseph Halpern's book with special attention to his points about conditionals.
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80Utility and framingSynthese 176 (1). 2010.Standard principles of rational decision assume that an option's utility is both comprehensive and accessible. These features constrain interpretations of an option's utility. This essay presents a way of understanding utility and laws of utility. It explains the relation between an option's utility and its outcome's utility and argues that an option's utility is relative to a specification of the option. Utility's relativity explains how a decision problem's framing affects an option's utility …Read more
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30IntroductionSynthese 176 (1): 1-3. 2010.This introduction is to a special journal issue on realistic standards for decisions. A realistic standard takes account of human cognitive limits, the circumstances for making a decision, and the features of a decision problem.
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14The General Welfare As A Constitutional GoalSocial Philosophy Today 5 411-432. 1991.This essay examines how attention to the general welfare should influence the formulation of a constitution.
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82Collective actsSynthese 187 (1): 223-241. 2012.Groups of people perform acts. For example, a committee passes a resolution, a team wins a game, and an orchestra performs a symphony. These collective acts may be evaluated for rationality. Take a committee’s passing a resolution. This act may be evaluated not only for fairness but also for rationality. Did it take account of all available information? Is the resolution consistent with the committee’s past resolutions? Standards of collective rationality apply to collective acts, that is, acts …Read more
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Ellery Eells and Tomasz Maruszewski, eds., Probability and Rationality: Studies on L. Jonathan Cohen's Philosophy of Science Reviewed by (review)Philosophy in Review 12 (3): 189-191. 1992.This book review describes and evaluates the essays collected by the editors.
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73Risk's Place in Decision RulesSynthese 126 (3): 427-441. 2001.To handle epistemic and pragmatic risks, Gärdenfors and Sahlin (1982, 1988) design a decision procedure for cases in which probabilities are indeterminate. Their procedure steps outside the traditional expected utility framework. Must it do this? Can the traditional framework handle risk? This paper argues that it can. The key is a comprehensive interpretation of an option's possible outcomes. Taking possible outcomes more broadly than Gärdenfors and Sahlin do, expected utility can give risk its…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Probability |
Areas of Interest
Social and Political Philosophy |
General Philosophy of Science |