Absolution of a Causal Decision Theorist

Noûs (forthcoming)
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Abstract

I respond to a dilemma for Causal Decision Theory (CDT) under determinism, posed in Adam Elga's paper “Confessions of a Causal Decision Theorist”. The treatment I present highlights (i) the status of laws as predictors, and (ii) the consequences of decision dependence, which arises natively out of Jeffrey Conditioning and CDT's characteristic equation.My argument leverages decision dependence to work around a key assumption of Elga's proof: to wit, that in the two problems he presents, the CDTer must employ subjunctive-suppositional (rather than evidential) transformations of a shared prior.

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Melissa Fusco
Columbia University

Citations of this work

Causal Decision Theory, Context, and Determinism.Calum McNamara - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

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References found in this work

Knowledge and practical interests.Jason Stanley - 2005 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference.Judea Pearl - 2000 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 64 (1):201-202.
Time and Chance.David Z. Albert - 2000 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Causal decision theory.David Lewis - 1981 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 59 (1):5 – 30.

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