•  86
    Auguste Comte: Trajectoires positivistes 1798–1998 (review)
    Isis 96 470-471. 2005.
    Auguste Comte's version of positivism shares logical positivism's aversion to metaphysics.
  • Frederic Schick, Ambiguity and Logic (review)
    Philosophy in Review 24 222-224. 2004.
  •  70
    The Standard of Living
    Philosophical Books 29 (3): 180-183. 1988.
    This book review evaluate Amartya Sen's views about capabilities and the standard of living.
  •  2
    Models of Decision-Making: Simplifying Choices
    Cambridge University Press. 2014.
    The options in a decision problem generally have outcomes with common features. Putting aside the common features simplifies deliberations, but the simplification requires a philosophical justification that this book provides.
  •  72
    Decision When Desires Are Uncertain
    Bowling 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.
  •  47
    Self-Supporting Strategies and Equilibria in Games
    American Philosophical Quarterly 36 (4). 1999.
    A strategic equilibrium is a profile of strategies that are each self-supporting given the profile. Strategic equilibria exist in games without Nash equilibria.
  •  133
    A 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
  •  190
    Decision theory aims at a general account of rationality covering humans but to begin makes idealizations about decision problems and agents' resources and circumstances. It treats inerrant agents with unlimited cognitive power facing tractable decision problems. This book systematically rolls back idealizations and without loss of precision treats errant agents with limited cognitive abilities facing decision problems without a stable top option. It recommends choices that maximize utility usin…Read more
  •  162
    Conventions and social institutions
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 27 (4): 599-618. 1989.
    This essay examines views of convention advanced by David Lewis and Margaret Gilbert.
  •  67
    Mean-risk decision analysis
    Theory and Decision 23 (1): 89-111. 1987.
    Some decision theorists criticize expected utility decision analysis and propose mean-risk decision analysis as a replacement. They claim that expected utility decision analysis neglects attitudes toward risk whereas mean-risk decision analysis accords these attitudes their proper status. However mean-risk decision analysis and expected utility decision analysis are not incompatible, and it is advantageous for decision theory to develop each in a way that complements the other. Here I present a …Read more
  •  99
  •  187
    Unsharp Sharpness
    with Nils-Eric Sahlin
    Theoria 80 (1): 100-103. 2013.
    In a recent, thought-provoking paper Adam Elga argues against unsharp – e.g., indeterminate, fuzzy and unreliable – probabilities. Rationality demands sharpness, he contends, and this means that decision theories like Levi's, Gärdenfors and Sahlin's, and Kyburg's, though they employ different decision rules, face a common, and serious, problem. This article defends the rule to maximize minimum expected utility against Elga's objection
  •  146
    Economic Rationality
    In Alfred R. Mele & Piers Rawling (eds.), The Oxford handbook of rationality, Oxford University Press. 2004.
    Weirich examines three competing views entertained by economic theory about the instrumental rationality of decisions: the first says to maximize self-interest, the second to maximize utility, and the third to satisfice, that is, to adopt a satisfactory option. Critics argue that the first view is too narrow, that the second overlooks the benefits of teamwork and planning, and that the third, when carefully formulated, reduces to the second. Weirich defends a refined version of the principle to …Read more
  •  87
    Trustee decisions in investment and finance
    Journal 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
  •  59
    Decisions in Dynamic Settings
    PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1986. 1986.
    In a decision problem with a dynamic setting there is at least one option whose realization would change the expected utilities of options by changing the probability or utility function with respect to which the expected utilities of options are computed. A familiar example is Newcomb's problem. William Harper proposes a generalization of causal decision theory intended to cover all decision problems with dynamic settings, not just Newcomb's problem. His generalization uses Richard Jeffrey's id…Read more
  •  191
    Rousseau on proportional majority rule
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (1): 111-126. 1986.
  •  31
    Probabilities in decision rules
    In Ellery Eells & James H. Fetzer (eds.), The Place of Probability in Science: In Honor of Ellery Eells (1953-2006), Springer. pp. 289--319. 2010.
    The theory of direct reference suggests revising probability theory so that a probability attaches to a proposition given a way of understanding the proposition. The revisions make probabilities relative but do not change their structure.
  •  154
    Collective acts
    Synthese 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
  • 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.
  •  118
    A decision maker's options
    Philosophical Studies 44 (2). 1983.
    An agent's options in a decision problem are best understood as the decisions that the agent might make. Taking options this way eliminates the gap between an option's adoption and its execution.
  •  468
    Hierarchical maximization of two kinds of expected utility
    Philosophy of Science 55 (4): 560-582. 1988.
    Causal decision theory produces decision instability in cases such as Death in Damascus where a decision itself provides evidence concerning the utility of options. Several authors have proposed ways of handling this instability. William Harper (1985 and 1986) advances one of the most elegant proposals. He recommends maximizing causal expected utility among the options that are causally ratifiable. Unfortunately, Harper's proposal imposes certain restrictions; for instance, the restriction that …Read more
  •  140
    The St. Petersburg gamble and risk
    Theory and Decision 17 (2): 193-202. 1984.
    One resolution of the St. Petersburg paradox recognizes that a gamble carries a risk sensitive to the gamble's stakes. If aversion to risk increases sufficiently fast as stakes go up, the St. Petersburg gamble has a finite utility.
  •  98
    J. Howard Sobel has long been recognized as an important figure in philosophical discussions of rational decision. He has done much to help formulate the concept of causal decision theory. In this volume of essays Sobel explores the Bayesian idea that rational actions maximize expected values, where an action's expected value is a weighted average of its agent's values for its possible total outcomes. Newcomb's Problem and The Prisoner's Dilemma are discussed, and Allais-type puzzles are viewed …Read more
  •  152
    Decisions without Sharp Probabilities
    Philosophia Scientiae 1 (19-1): 213-225. 2015.
    Adam Elga [Elga 2010] fait valoir qu'aucun principe de rationalité ne mène de probabilités imprécises à des prises de décisions. Il conclut qu'un agent parfaitement rationnel n'a pas de probabilités imprécises. Cet article défend les probabilités imprécises. Il montre comment les probabilités imprécises peuvent justifier des décisions rationnelles.
  •  41
    Theory and Evidence (review)
    Philosophical Topics 12 (2): 294-299. 1981.
  •  410
    Conditional utility and its place in decision theory
    Journal of Philosophy 77 (11): 702-715. 1980.
    Causal decision theory attends to probabilities used to obtain an option's expected utility but for completeness should also attend to utilities of possible outcomes. A suitable formula for an option's expected utility uses a certain type of conditional utility.