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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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6The 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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36Rational 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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118Mild 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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13Review of Jordan Howard Sobel: Taking Chances: Essays on Rational Choice (review)Ethics 106 (1): 191-192. 1995.
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25Coordination 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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27Change 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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40Risk 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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8Contractiarianism and Bargaining TheoryJournal of Philosophical Research 16 369-385. 1991.Classical bargaining theory attempts to solve a bargaining problem using only the information about the problem contained in the representation of its possible outcomes in utility space. However, this information usually underdetermines the solution. I use additional information about interpersonal comparisons of utility and bargaining power. The solution is then the outcome that maximizes the sum of power-weighted utilities. I use these results to advance a contractarian argument for a utilitar…Read more
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22The Hypothesis of Nash Equilibrium and Its Bayesian JustificationIn Dag Prawitz & Dag Westerståhl (eds.), Logic and Philosophy of Science in Uppsala, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 245--264. 1994.How does Bayesian reasoning support participation in a game's Nash equilibrium? This paper provides an answer.
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16A Study of Concepts (review)Review of Metaphysics 48 (1): 159-160. 1994.Peacocke presents a theory of concepts that builds upon his earlier articles. He takes concepts as abstract objects that are components of thoughts, that are individuated by the test of informativeness, and whose possession affects a thinker's capacity for thought. His view is Fregean, but he individuates concepts more finely than Frege. For instance, he takes a first-level predicative concept as a mode of presentation of a property rather than as a function from objects to truth values.
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181Expected 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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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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Richard Jeffrey, Probability and the Art of Judgment (review)Philosophy in Review 12 333-335. 1992.
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21A bias of rationalityAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 59 (1). 1981.This Article does not have an abstract
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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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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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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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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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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
Areas of Specialization
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Probability |
Areas of Interest
Social and Political Philosophy |
General Philosophy of Science |