•  183
    The meaning of "darn it!"
    with Luc Bovens
    In Iwao Hirose & Andrew Reisner (eds.), Weighing and Reasoning: Themes from the Philosophy of John Broome, Oxford University Press. pp. 129-39. 2015.
    In decision-theory, the notion of regret enters into the minimax decision-rule and has a determinate usage in this context. However, there are many alternative ways of conceiving of regret. The chapter constructs the einmalist- nicht-keinmal ('once is not never') game, in which a single sampling radically changes the expected value of the game in a way that is quite counterintuitive, as the basis for studying regret after a loss following the choice of an uncertain action. Crucially, the very lo…Read more
  •  234
    Free will is widely thought to require (i) the possibility of acting otherwise and (ii) the intentional endorsement of one’s actions (“indeterministic picking is not enough”). According to (i), a necessary condition for free will is agential-level indeterminism: at some points in time, an agent’s prior history admits more than one possible continuation. According to (ii), however, a free action must be intentionally endorsed, and indeterminism may threaten freedom: if several alternative actions…Read more
  •  142
    The Value of Existence
    In Iwao Hirose & Jonas Olson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Value Theory, Oxford University Press Usa. pp. 424-444. 2015.
    Can it be better or worse for a person to exist than not to exist at all? This old and challenging existential question has been raised anew in contemporary moral philosophy, mainly for two reasons. First, traditional “impersonal” ethical theories, such as utilitarianism, have counterintuitive implications in population ethics, for example, the repugnant conclusion. Second, it has seemed evident to many that an outcome can be better than another only if it is better for someone, and that only mo…Read more
  •  16
    Editorial
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 12 (4): 327-328. 2009.
    Special Issue: Value Theory / Guest edited by Kevin Mulligan & Wlodek Rabinowicz.
  •  46
    Betting Interpretation and the Problem of Interference
    Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 17 103-115. 2014.
    It has long been common to identify an agent’s degrees of belief with her betting rates. Here is this betting interpretation in a nutshell: A bet on a proposition A with price C and a non-zero stake S is said to be fair for an agent iff the latter is willing to take each side of the bet, to buy the bet as to sell it. Assuming that such a bet on A exists and that the C/S ratio is constant for different fair bets on A, this ratio is the agent’s betting rate for A
  • Editorial
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 12 (4): 327-328. 2009.
    Special Issue: Value Theory / Guest edited by Kevin Mulligan & Wlodek Rabinowicz.
  •  117
    The paper’s target is the historically influential betting interpretation of subjective probabilities due to Ramsey and de Finetti. While there are several classical and well-known objections to this interpretation, the paper focuses on just one fundamental problem: There is a sense in which degrees of belief cannot be interpreted as betting rates. The reasons differ in different cases, but there’s one crucial feature that all these cases have in common: The agent’s degree of belief in a proposi…Read more
  •  296
    Backwards induction in the centipede game
    Analysis 59 (4): 237-242. 1999.
    The standard backward-induction reasoning in a game like the centipede assumes that the players maintain a common belief in rationality throughout the game. But that is a dubious assumption. Suppose the first player X didn't terminate the game in the first round; what would the second player Y think then? Since the backwards-induction argument says X should terminate the game, and it is supposed to be a sound argument, Y might be entitled to doubt X's rationality. Alternatively, Y might doubt th…Read more
  •  107
    Suppose a committee or a jury confronts a complex question, the answer to which requires attending to several sub-questions. Two different voting procedures can be used. On one, the committee members vote on each sub-question and the voting results are used as premises for the committee’s conclusion on the main issue. This premise-based procedure can be contrasted with the conclusion-based approach, which requires the members to directly vote on the conclusion, with the vote of each member being…Read more
  •  232
    This paper addresses a problem for theories of epistemic democracy. In a decision on a complex issue which can be decomposed into several parts, a collective can use different voting procedures: Either its members vote on each sub-question and the answers that gain majority support are used as premises for the conclusion on the main issue, or the vote is conducted on the main issue itself. The two procedures can lead to different results. We investigate which of these procedures is better as a t…Read more
  •  14
    Democratic answers to complex questions: an epistemic perspective
    with Luc Bovens
    In Matti Sintonen (ed.), The Socratic Tradition: Questioning as Philosophy and as Method. Texts in philosophy, . pp. 223-251. 2006.
    This paper addresses a problem for theories of epistemic democracy. In a decision on a complex issue which can be decomposed into several parts, a collective can use different voting procedures: Either its members vote on each sub-question and the answers that gain majority support are used as premises for the conclusion on the main issue, or the vote is conducted on the main issue itself. The two procedures can lead to different results. We investigate which of these procedures is better as a t…Read more
  •  193
    Value and unacceptable risk
    Economics and Philosophy 21 (2): 177-197. 2005.
    Consider a transitive value ordering of outcomes and lotteries on outcomes, which satisfies substitutivity of equivalents and obeys “continuity for easy cases,” i.e., allows compensating risks of small losses by chances of small improvements. Temkin (2001) has argued that such an ordering must also – rather counter-intuitively – allow chances of small improvements to compensate risks of huge losses. In this paper, we show that Temkin's argument is flawed but that a better proof is possible. Howe…Read more
  •  127
    The spectrum argument purports to show that the better-than relation is not transitive, and consequently that orthodox value theory is built on dubious foundations. The argument works by constructing a sequence of increasingly less painful but more drawn-out experiences, such that each experience in the spectrum is worse than the previous one, yet the final experience is better than the experience with which the spectrum began. Hence the betterness relation admits cycles, threatening either tran…Read more
  • Broome and the intuition of neutrality
    In Ernest Sosa & Enrique Villanueva (eds.), Metaethics, Wiley Periodicals. 2009.
  •  50
    Two objects of valuation are said to be incommensurable if neither is better than the other, nor are they equally good. This negative, coarse-grained characterization fails to capture the nuanced structure of incommensurability. We argue that our evaluative resources are far richer than orthodoxy recognizes. We model value comparisons with the corresponding class of permissible preference orderings. Then, making use of our model, we introduce a potentially infinite set of degrees of approximatio…Read more
  • Finala och intrinsikala värden
    Norsk Filosofisk Tidsskrift 3. 1999.
  •  10
    Sten Lindström in memoriam
    Theoria 88 (3): 487-490. 2022.
    Theoria, Volume 88, Issue 3, Page 487-490, June 2022.
  •  27
    Getting Personal: The Intuition of Neutrality Reinterpreted
    In Paul Bowman & Katharina Berndt Rasmussen (eds.), Studies on Climate Ethics and Future Generations, Vol. 2, Institute For Futures Studies. 2020.
  •  14
    Can Parfit’s Appeal to Incommensurabilities Block the Continuum Argument for the Repugnant Conclusion?
    In Paul Bowman & Katharina Berndt Rasmussen (eds.), Studies on Climate Ethics and Future Generations, Vol. 1, Institute For Futures Studies. 2019.
  •  2
    On millian discontinuities
    In Wlodek Rabinowicz & Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen (eds.), Patterns of Value: Essays on Formal Axiology and Value Analysis, . pp. 1-8. 2003.
    Suppose one sets up a sequence of less-and-less valuable objects such that each object in the sequence is only marginally worse than its immediate predecessor. Could one in this way arrive at something that is dramatically inferior to the point of departure? It has been claimed that if there is a radical value difference between the objects at each end of the sequence, then at some point there must be a corresponding radical difference between the adjacent elements. The underlying picture seems …Read more
  •  7
    My focus is on aggregation of individual value rankings of alternatives to a collective value ranking. This is compared with aggregation o individual prefrences to a collective preference. While in an individual preference ranking the alternatives are ordered in accordance with one’s preferences, the order in a value ranking expresses one’s comparative evaluation of the alternatives, from the best to the worst. I suggest that, despite their formal similarity as rankings, this difference in the n…Read more
  •  4
    The meaning of "darn it!"
    with Luc Bovens
    In Iwao Hirose & Andrew Reisner (eds.), Weighing and Reasoning: Themes From the Philosophy of John Broome, . pp. 129-139. 2015.
  •  8
    This paper addresses a problem for theories of epistemic democracy. In a decision on a complex issue which can be decomposed into several parts, a collective can use different voting procedures: Either its members vote on each sub-question and the answers that gain majority support are used as premises for the conclusion on the main issue, or the vote is conducted on the main issue itself. The two procedures can lead to different results. We investigate which of these procedures is better as a t…Read more
  •  77
    A Simpler, More Compelling Money Pump with Foresight
    Journal of Philosophy 117 (10): 578-589. 2020.
    One might think that money pumps directed at agents with cyclic preferences can be avoided by foresight. This view was challenged two decades ago by the discovery of a money pump with foresight, which works against agents who use backward induction. But backward induction implausibly assumes that the agent would act rationally and retain her trust in her future rationality even at choice nodes that could only be reached if she were to act irrationally. This worry does not apply to BI-terminating…Read more
  •  125
    Value taxonomy
    with Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen
    In Tobias Brosch & David Sander (eds.), Handbook of Value: Perspectives From Economics, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology, Oxfocd University Press. pp. 23-42. 2015.
    The paper presents main conceptual distinctions underlying much of modern philosophical thinking about value. The introductory Section 1 is followed in Section 2 by an outline of the contrast between non-relational value and relational value. In Section 3, the focus is on the distinction between final and non-final value as well as on different kinds of final value. In Section 4, we consider value relations, such as being better/worse/equally good/on a par. Recent discussions suggest that we mig…Read more
  •  3
    When in doubt, equalize: presumption of equality justified
    In Nir Eyal, Samia A. Hurst, Ole F. Norheim & Dan Wikler (eds.), Inequalities in Health: Concepts, Measures, and Ethics, . pp. 164-177. 2013.
  •  3
    A committee has to address a complex question, the answer to which requires answering several sub-questions. Two different voting procedures can be used. On one procedure, the committee members vote on each sub-question and the voting results then are used as premises for the committee’s conclusion on the main issue. This premise-based procedure can be contrasted with the conclusion-based procedure. On that procedure, the members directly vote on the conclusion, with the vote of each member bein…Read more
  •  2
    Presumption of equality
    In Martin L. Jönsson (ed.), Proceedings of the 2008 Lund-Rutgers Conference, . pp. 109-155. 2008.
    Presumption of Equality requires that individuals be treated equally in the absence of relevant information that would discriminate between them. Our objective is to make this principle more precise, if viewed as a principle of fairness, and to determine why and under what conditions it should be obeyed. Presumption norms are procedural constraints, but their justification can be sought in the possible or expected outcomes of the procedures they regulate. This is the avenue pursued here. The sug…Read more
  •  3
    Modeling parity and incomparability
    In Wlodek Rabinowicz & Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen (eds.), Patterns of Value: Essays on Formal Axiology and Value Analysis, . pp. 201-228. 2004.
    is not available.