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2Decisions in Dynamic SettingsPSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1986 (1): 438-449. 1986.The expected utility of an option for a decision maker is defined with respect to probability and utility functions that represent the decision maker’s beliefs and desires. Therefore, as the decision maker’s beliefs and desires change, the expected utility of an opinion may change. Some options are such that their realizations change beliefs and desires in ways that change the expected utilities of the options. If a decision is made among options that include one or more of these special options…Read more
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56Exclusion from the social contractPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 10 (2): 148-169. 2011.Does rational bargaining yield a social contract that is efficient and so inclusive? A core allocation, that is, an allocation that gives each coalition at least as much as it can get on its own, is efficient. However, some coalitional games lack a core allocation, so rationality does not require one in those games. Does rationality therefore permit exclusion from the social contract? I replace realization of a core allocation with another type of equilibrium achievable in every coalitional game…Read more
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22Equilibrium and Rationality: Game Theory Revised by Decision RulesPhilosophical Review 110 (3): 425. 2001.Like many theorists before him, Paul Weirich has set out to find the Holy Grail of classical game theory: the solution concept that identifies the uniquely rational solution to every non-cooperative game. In this book, he reports an intermediate stage in his quest. He cannot actually identify the unique solution for every game but, he believes, he has found a new concept of equilibrium that is a necessary property of that solution.
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7The received view of framingBehavioral and Brain Sciences 45. 2022.The received view of framing has multiple interpretations. I flesh out an interpretation that is more open-minded about framing effects than the extensionality principle that Bermúdez formulates. My interpretation attends to the difference between preferences held all things considered and preferences held putting aside some considerations. It also makes room for decision principles that handle cases without a complete all-things-considered preference-ranking of options.
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11AFTERWORDS Criticism and CounterthesesJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 40 (3): 327-328. 1981.
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14Rational Choice Using Imprecise Probabilities and UtilitiesCambridge University Press. 2021.An agent often does not have precise probabilities or utilities to guide resolution of a decision problem. I advance a principle of rationality for making decisions in such cases. To begin, I represent the doxastic and conative state of an agent with a set of pairs of a probability assignment and a utility assignment. Then I support a decision principle that allows any act that maximizes expected utility according to some pair of assignments in the set. Assuming that computation of an option's e…Read more
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40Rational Responses to RisksOxford University Press. 2020.A philosophical account of risk, such as this book provides, states what risk is, which attitudes to it are rational, and which acts affecting risks are rational. Attention to the nature of risk reveals two types of risk, first, a chance of a bad event, and, second, an act’s risk in the sense of the volatility of its possible outcomes. The distinction is normatively significant because different general principles of rationality govern attitudes to these two types of risk. Rationality strictl…Read more
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119Mild Contraction: Evaluating Loss of Information Due to Loss of BeliefMind 114 (455): 753-757. 2005.This book review describes and evaluates Issac Levi's views about belief revision.
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15Review of Jordan Howard Sobel: Taking Chances: Essays on Rational Choice (review)Ethics 106 (1): 191-192. 1995.
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26Coordination and HyperrationalityProtoSociology 35 197-214. 2018.Margaret Gilbert (1990) argues that although the rationality of the agents in a standard coordination problem does not suffice for their coordination, a social convention of coordination, understood as the agents’ joint acceptance of a principle requiring their coordination, does the job. Gilbert’s argument targets agents rational in the game-theoretic sense, which following Sobel (1994: Chap. 14), I call hyperrational agents. I agree that hyperrational agents may fail to coordinate in some case…Read more
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28Change in the Decision SciencesLato Sensu: Revue de la Société de Philosophie des Sciences 5 (1): 13-19. 2018.A common type of change in science occurs as theorists generalize a model of a phenomenon by removing some idealizations of the model. This type of change occurs in the decision sciences and also in the normative branch of the decision sciences that treats rational choice. After presenting a general ac-count of model generalization, the paper illustrates generalization of models in normative decision theory. The principal illustration generalizes a standard model of rational choice by removing t…Read more
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41Risk as a ConsequenceTopoi 39 (2): 293-303. 2020.Expected-utility theory advances representation theorems that do not take the risk an act generates as a consequence of the act. However, a principle of expected-utility maximization that explains the rationality of preferences among acts must, for normative accuracy, take the act’s risk as a consequence of the act if the agent cares about the risk. I defend this conclusion against the charge that taking an act’s consequences to comprehend all the agent cares about trivializes the principle of e…Read more
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1Probability and Utility for Decision TheoryDissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. 1977.
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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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86Decision 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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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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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.
Areas of Specialization
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Probability |
Areas of Interest
Social and Political Philosophy |
General Philosophy of Science |