Pablo Zendejas Medina

I argue that not all belief-relative normative principles can be represented as requiring the maximization of expected utility. The argument imposes no limits on the distinctions that utility functions can draw, but relies instead on a connection between decision-theoretic representability and uncertainty about one’s own beliefs. By contrast, I argue that evidence-relative normative principles, which say what to do given what would be rational to believe, always admit of such a representation, so long as uncertainty about epistemic rationality is limited in independently plausible ways.

Dieses Kapitel befasst sich mit den Auswirkungen von COVID-19 auf unsere nächste Interessengruppe: die Älteren. Wie oben ausgeführt, litten die älteren Bürger in besonderer Weise, da ihre sozialen Interaktionen aufgrund der höheren Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass das Virus sie anstelle von jüngeren Kindern betrifft, stark eingeschränkt wurden. Die Autoren identifizieren eine weitere mit COVID-19 verbundene Krise: Sie überprüfen kritisch eine Medienkrise und verknüpfen gleichzeitig ihre Überlegungen mit einem tiefgreifenden Verständnis der nationalen Kultur in China. Die Autoren argumentieren, dass es unerlässlich ist, sich nicht mit COVID-19 zu befassen, ohne ein angemessenes Verständnis des kulturellen Kontexts, der Lösungen ermöglicht und behindert, abhängig davon, ob man den kulturellen Kontext vollständig anerkannt und wirklich verstanden hat.

Two of the most influential arguments for Bayesian updating ("Conditionalization") -- Hilary Greaves' and David Wallace's Accuracy Argument and David Lewis' Diachronic Dutch Book Argument-- turn out to impose a strong and surprising limitation on rational uncertainty: that one can never be rationally uncertain of what one's evidence is. Many philosophers ("externalists") reject that claim, and now seem to face a difficult choice: either to endorse the arguments and give up Externalism, or to reject the arguments and lose some of the best justifications of Bayesianism. The author argues that the key to resolving this conflict lies in recognizing that both arguments are plan-based, in that they argue for Conditionalization by first arguing that one should planto conditionalize. With this in view, we can identify the culprit common to both arguments: for an externalist, they misconceive the requirement to carry out a plan made at an earlier time. They should therefore not persuade us to reject Externalism. Furthermore, rethinking the nature of this requirement allows us to give two new arguments for Conditionalization that do not rule out rational uncertainty about one's evidence and that can thus serve as common ground in the debate between externalists and their opponents.