Isaac Levi

(1930 - 2018)

Newcomb's paradox rests on two arguments one appealing to the principle of maximizing expected utility and one appealing to dominance in order to generate conflicting recommendations in certain kinds of choice situations. In my essay, I argue that the applications of the principle of maximizing expected utility and of the dominance principle are both fallacious and that the specification of the decision problem is too indeterminate to render a verdict between the two options considered. I also show that if Nozick's case for invoking the dominance principle is taken seriously, it leads to contradictions.

Richard Rorty sings in the antifoundationalist chorus. His song equates the rise of foundationalist epistemology with the professionalization of philosophy. The discordant notes he finds in the foundationalist score become, as a consequence, subversive of philosophy as an autonomous discipline.Nonetheless, the most salient feature of Rorty's recent book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, is that it is by a professional philosopher, for professional philosophers and about the future of philosophy as a profession. The early chapters of the book are polished pieces of professional philosophical prose addressed to issues which have provoked interest in recent years among members of academic philosophy departments. They represent efforts to undermine foundationalist epistemology even in some of its currently fashionable guises as philosophy of language.

Hans Herzberger's 1973 essay 'Ordinal Preference and Rational Choice' is a classic milestone in the erosion of the idea that rational agents are maximizers of utility. By the time Herzberger wrote, many authors had replaced this claim with the thesis that rational agents are maximizers of preference. That is to say, it was assumed that at the moment of choice a rational agent has a weak ordering representing his or her preferences among the options available to the agent for choice and that the rational agent restricts choice to one of the optimal options. Such an option is an available option judged at least as good as any other.Herzberger explored the prospects of weakening this ordinalist view of maximizing ..