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177Expected utility and riskBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 37 (4): 419-442. 1986.The rule to maximize expected utility is intended for decisions where options involve risk. In those decisions the decision maker's attitude toward risk is important, and the rule ought to take it into account. Allais's and Ellsberg's paradoxes, however, suggest that the rule ignores attitudes toward risk. This suggestion is supported by recent psychological studies of decisions. These studies present a great variety of cases where apparently rational people violate the rule because of aversion …Read more
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Richard Jeffrey, Probability and the Art of Judgment (review)Philosophy in Review 12 333-335. 1992.
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20A bias of rationalityAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 59 (1). 1981.This Article does not have an abstract
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15Decisions to follow a ruleBehavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (2): 280-281. 2002.Rachlin favors following patterns over making decisions case by case. However, his accounts of self-control and altruism do not establish the rationality of making decisions according to patterns. The best arguments for using patterns as a standard of evaluation appeal to savings in cognitive costs and compensation for irrational dispositions. What the arguments show depends on how they are elaborated and refined.
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42Optimization and improvement (review)Philosophical Studies 148 (3). 2010.Agents face serious obstacles to making optimal decisions. For instance, their cognitive limits stand in the way. John Pollock’s book, Thinking about Acting , suggests many ways of revising decision principles to accommodate human limits and to direct limited, artificial agents. The book’s main proposal is to replace optimization, or expected-utility maximization, with locally global planning. This essay describes optimization and locally global planning, and then argues that optimization among …Read more
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36Collective Rationality: Equilibrium in Cooperative GamesOxford University Press USA. 2009.Groups of people perform acts that are subject to standards of rationality. A committee may sensibly award fellowships, or may irrationally award them in violation of its own policies. A theory of collective rationality defines collective acts that are evaluable for rationality and formulates principles for their evaluation. This book argues that a group's act is evaluable for rationality if it is the products of acts its members fully control. It also argues that such an act is collectively rat…Read more
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7When new technologies create risks, government agencies use regulations to control the risks. This paper advances a method of evaluating a democracy’s regulation of risks. It assumes that a regulatory agency should act as the public would act in ideal conditions for negotiation if the public were rational and informed. The method relies on decision theory and game theory to ascertain whether a regulation has the public’s informed support. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s regul…Read more
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1Cristina Bicchieri, Richard Jeffrey, and Brian Skyrms, eds., The Dynamics of Norms Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 17 (6): 388-390. 1997.
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Joseph Y. Halpern, Reasoning about Uncertainty Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 24 (5): 333-336. 2004.This book review describes and evaluates Joseph Halpern's ideas about reasoning, in particular, reasoning involving conditions.
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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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325Hierarchical maximization of two kinds of expected utilityPhilosophy 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
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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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35A 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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19Economic 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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84Decision 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.
Areas of Specialization
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Probability |
Areas of Interest
Social and Political Philosophy |
General Philosophy of Science |