Contents
521 found
Order:
1 — 50 / 521
  1. Epistemological status of rationality principles in the social sciences: a structural invariance criterion.Jeremy Attard - manuscript
    In the social sciences, within the explanatory paradigm of structural individualism, a theory of action – like rational choice theory – models how individuals behave and interact at the micro level in order to explain macro observations as the aggregation of these individuals actions. A central epistemological issue is that such theoretical models are stuck in a dilemma between falsity of their basic assumptions and triviality of their explanation. On the one hand, models which have a great empirical success often (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  2. Values, Preferences, Meaningful Choice.Joe Edelman - manuscript
    Many fields (social choice, welfare economics, recommender systems) assume people express what benefits them via their 'revealed preferences'. Revealed preferences have well-documented problems when used this way, but are hard to displace in these fields because, as an information source, they are simple, universally applicable, robust, and high-resolution. In order to compete, other information sources (about participants' values, capabilities and functionings, etc) would need to match this. I present a conception of values as *attention policies resulting from constitutive judgements*, and (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  3. An evolutionary psychology model of ego, risk, and cognitive dissonance.Baruch Feldman - manuscript
    I propose a novel model of the human ego (which I define as the tendency to measure one’s value based on extrinsic success rather than intrinsic aptitude or ability). I further propose the conjecture that ego so defined both is a non-adaptive by-product of evolutionary pressures, and has some evolutionary value as an adaptation (protecting self-interest). I explore ramifications of this model, including how it mediates individuals’ reactions to perceived and actual limits of their power, their ability to cope with (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  4. Entrepreneurship: Alertness, Judgment and Conjecture.Danny Frederick - manuscript
    I criticise, from a critical rationalist perspective, Israel Kirzner's notion of entrepreneurial alertness and Matthew McCaffrey's endorsement of Joseph Salerno's rival account of entrepreneurial judgment.
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  5. Assessing the Kantian Perspective on Valuing.Lantz Fleming Miller - manuscript
    Is the Kantian basis of valuing in humanity sufficient or sound enough to account for all valuing? At least two other such bases have been proposed across the ages, that of the sentiments and the valuing of life itself. This article focuses on the Kantian view, the first of these three possible bases of valuing. The concern is: by which criteria can we assess whether a given theory of or approach to basing a value is in fact usable and optimal, (...)
    Remove from this list  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  6. Three questions for liberals.Richard Pettigrew - manuscript
    In this paper, I ask three questions of the liberal. In each, I fill in philosophical detail around a certain sort of complaint raised in current public debates about their position. In the first, I probe the limits of the liberal's tolerance for civil disobedience; in the second, I ask how the liberal can adjudicate the most divisive moral disputes of the age; and, in the third, I suggest the liberal faces a problem when there is substantial disagreement about the (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  7. When are choices, actions, and consent based on adaptive preferences nonautonomous?Richard Pettigrew - manuscript
    Adaptive preferences give rise to puzzles in ethics, political philosophy, decision theory, and the theory of action. Like our other preferences, adaptive preferences lead us to make choices, take action, and give consent. In 'False Consciousness for Liberals', recently published in The Philosophical Review, David Enoch (2020) proposes a criterion by which to identify when these choices, actions, and acts of consent are less than fully autonomous; that is, when they suffer from what Natalie Stoljar (2014) calls an 'autonomy deficit'. (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  8. What’s a rational self-torturer to do?Douglas W. Portmore - manuscript
    This paper concerns Warren Quinn’s famous “The Puzzle of the Self-Torturer.” I argue that even if we accept his assumption that practical rationality is purely instrumental such that what he ought to do is simply a function of how the relevant options compare to each other in terms of satisfying his actual preferences that doesn’t mean that every explanation as to why he shouldn’t advance to the next level must appeal to the idea that so advancing would be suboptimal in (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  9. Expected comparative utility theory: A new theory of instrumental rationality.David Robert - manuscript
    This paper aims to address the question of how one ought to choose when one is uncertain about what outcomes will result from one’s choices, but when one can nevertheless assign probabilities to the different possible outcomes. These choices are commonly referred to as choices (or decisions) under risk. I assume in this paper that one ought to make instrumentally rational choices—more precisely, one ought to adopt suitable means to one’s morally permissible ends. Expected utility (EU) theory is generally accepted (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10. Smokers and psychos: Egan cases don't work.Arif Ahmed - 2010
    Andy Egan's Smoking Lesion and Psycho Button cases are supposed to be counterexamples to Causal Decision Theory. This paper argues that they are not: more precisely, it argues that if CDT makes the right call in Newcomb's problem then it makes the right call in Egan cases too.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  11. The subjective approach to ambiguity: a critical assessment.Nabil I. Al-Najjar & Jonathan Weinstein - forthcoming - Economics and Philosophy.
  12. In Favor of Mentalism in Economics: A Conversation with Christian List.Christian List & Catherine Herfeld - forthcoming - In Catherine Herfeld (ed.), Conversations on Rational Choice. Cambridge University Press.
    This is an edited transcript of a conversation to be included in the collection "Conversations on Rational Choice". The conversation was conducted in Munich on 7 and 9 February 2016.
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  13. Instrumentalism in the Social and Moral Sciences.Michael Moehler - forthcoming - Philosophy of the Social Sciences.
    This article responds to recent criticism regarding the application of consequentialism and rational choice theory in the social and moral sciences. It clarifies the limited scope of the presented criticism and its overly simplistic view of social scientific inquiry that, together, lead to the presentation of an argument that claims more than it warrants. Moreover, I argue that the criticism overlooks one of the most important uses of instrumentalism in moral theory that may be considered the most challenging case for (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  14. Optimizing Political Influence: A Jury Theorem with Dynamic Competence and Dependence.Thomas Mulligan - forthcoming - Social Choice and Welfare.
    The purpose of this paper is to illustrate, formally, an ambiguity in the exercise of political influence. To wit: A voter might exert influence with an eye toward maximizing the probability that the political system (1) obtains the correct (e.g. just) outcome, or (2) obtains the outcome that he judges to be correct (just). And these are two very different things. A variant of Condorcet's Jury Theorem which incorporates the effect of influence on group competence and interdependence is developed. Analytic (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  15. A Choice-Functional Characterization of Welfarism.Jacob M. Nebel - forthcoming - Journal of Economic Theory.
    Welfarism is the view that individual welfare is the only thing that matters. One important contribution of social choice theory has been to provide a precise formulation and axiomatic characterization of welfarism using Amartya Sen's framework of social welfare functionals. This paper is motivated by the observation that the standard formalization of welfarism is too restrictive, since a welfarist social planner need not be committed to maximizing a preference ordering or any other binary relation over alternatives. We therefore provide a (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  16. Deep Uncertainty and Incommensurability: General Cautions about Precaution.Rush T. Stewart - forthcoming - Philosophy of Science.
    The precautionary principle is invoked in a number of important personal and policy decision contexts. Peterson shows that certain ways of making the principle precise are inconsistent with other criteria of decision-making. Some object that the results do not apply to cases of deep uncertainty or value incommensurability which are alleged to be in the principle’s wheelhouse. First, I show that Peterson’s impossibility results can be generalized considerably to cover cases of both deep uncertainty and incommensurability. Second, I contrast an (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  17. Path Independence and a Persistent Paradox of Population Ethics.Rush T. Stewart - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.
    In the face of an impossibility result, some assumption must be relaxed. The Mere Addition Paradox is an impossibility result in population ethics. Here, I explore substantially weakening the decision-theoretic assumptions involved. The central finding is that the Mere Addition Paradox persists even in the general framework of choice functions when we assume Path Independence as a minimal decision-theoretic constraint. Choice functions can be thought of either as generalizing the standard axiological assumption of a binary “betterness” relation, or as providing (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  18. (1 other version)The methodology of rational choice.Lars Udehn - forthcoming - Philosophy of the Social Sciences.
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  19. Small Amendment Arguments: How They Work and What They Do and Do Not Show.Martin van Hees, Akshath Jitendranath & Roland Luttens - forthcoming - Theory and Decision.
    The small improvement argument has been said to establish that the standard weak preference or value relation can be incomplete. We first show that the argument is one of three possible ‘small amendment arguments’, each of which would yield the same conclusion. Generalizing the analysis thus, we subsequently present a strong and a weak version of small amendment arguments and derive the exact rationality conditions under which they reveal incompleteness. The results show that the arguments (in any of their variants) (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  20. Limits to Peers' Judgements of Ethical Relations with Clients: Incommensurability in Mental Health.Willow Angelette - 2024 - Cambridge: Ethics Press.
    Consideration of the moral and ethical consequences of competing scientific and social theories often proceeds on the assumption that such discourses are or ought to be rational. The concept of incommensurability, however, threatens this assumption. Literature on the Incommensurability thesis consists mostly in explanation of the concept itself and the degree of damage it portends for the rationality of science. Most often this work is done via historical case studies. Exemplary is Thomas Kuhn’s The Copernican Revolution. Historical studies do sometimes (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  21. Rational risk‐aversion: Good things come to those who weight.Christopher Bottomley & Timothy Luke Williamson - 2024 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 108 (3):697-725.
    No existing normative decision theory adequately handles risk. Expected Utility Theory is overly restrictive in prohibiting a range of reasonable preferences. And theories designed to accommodate such preferences (for example, Buchak's (2013) Risk‐Weighted Expected Utility Theory) violate the Betweenness axiom, which requires that you are indifferent to randomizing over two options between which you are already indifferent. Betweenness has been overlooked by philosophers, and we argue that it is a compelling normative constraint. Furthermore, neither Expected nor Risk‐Weighted Expected Utility Theory (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  22. Abstract rationality: the ‘logical’ structure of attitudes.Franz Dietrich, Antonios Staras & Robert Sugden - 2024 - Economics and Philosophy 40 (1):12-41.
    We present an abstract model of rationality that focuses on structural properties of attitudes. Rationality requires coherence between your attitudes, such as your beliefs, values, and intentions. We define three 'logical' conditions on attitudes: consistency, completeness, and closedness. They parallel the familiar logical conditions on beliefs, but contrast with standard rationality conditions like preference transitivity. We establish a formal correspondence between our logical conditions and standard rationality conditions. Addressing John Broome's programme 'rationality through reasoning', we formally characterize how you can (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  23. The Isaac Levi Prize 2023: Optimization and Beyond.Akshath Jitendranath - 2024 - Journal of Philosophy 121 (3):1-2.
    This paper will be concerned with hard choices—that is, choice situations where an agent cannot make a rationally justified choice. Specifically, this paper asks: if an agent cannot optimize in a given situation, are they facing a hard choice? A pair of claims are defended in light of this question. First, situations where an agent cannot optimize because of incompleteness of the binary preference or value relation constitute a hard choice. Second, situations where agents cannot optimize because the binary preference (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  24. Optimization and Beyond.Akshath Jitendranath - 2024 - Journal of Philosophy 121 (3):121-146.
    This paper will be concerned with hard choices—that is, choice situations where an agent cannot make a rationally justified choice. Specifically, this paper asks: if an agent cannot optimize in a given situation, are they facing a hard choice? A pair of claims are defended in light of this question. First, situations where an agent cannot optimize because of incompleteness of the binary preference or value relation constitute a hard choice. Second, situations where agents cannot optimize because the binary preference (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  25. Strategic Justice, Conventions, and Game Theory.Michael Moehler & John Thrasher - 2024 - Synthese 204 (28):1-12.
    Evolutionary, game-theoretic approaches to justice and the social contract have become increasingly popular in contemporary moral and political philosophy. Peter Vanderschraaf’s (2019) theory of strategic justice represents the most recent contribution to this tradition and, in many ways, can be viewed as a culmination of it. This article discusses some of the central features of Vanderschraaf’s theory and relates them to contributions in this collection on strategic justice, conventions, and game theory. Some of the contributions directly address Vanderschraaf’s work, while (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  26. The Sure-Thing Principle.Jean Baccelli & Lorenz Hartmann - 2023 - Journal of Mathematical Economics 109 (102915).
    The Sure-Thing Principle famously appears in Savage’s axiomatization of Subjective Expected Utility. Yet Savage introduces it only as an informal, overarching dominance condition motivating his separability postulate P2 and his state-independence postulate P3. Once these axioms are introduced, by and large, he does not discuss the principle any more. In this note, we pick up the analysis of the Sure-Thing Principle where Savage left it. In particular, we show that each of P2 and P3 is equivalent to a dominance condition; (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  27. Risk aversion and rational choice theory do not adequately capture complexities of medical decision-making.Zeljka Buturovic - 2023 - Journal of Medical Ethics 49 (11):761-762.
    In his paper, ‘Patients, doctors and risk attitudes’, Makins argues that doctors, when choosing a treatment for their patient, need to follow their risk profile.1 He presents a pair of fictitious diseases facing a patient who either has ‘exemplitis’, which requires no treatment or ‘caseopathy’, which is severe and disabling and for which there is a treatment with unpleasant side effects. The doctor needs to decide whether the patient should pursue the unpleasant treatment, just in case he has caseopathy. Makins (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  28. Climate Change and the Circumstances of Justice.Fausto Corvino - 2023 - In Pellegrino Gianfranco & Marcello Di Paola (eds.), Handbook of Philosophy of Climate Change. Springer Nature. pp. 1065-1081.
    This chapter questions whether the objective circumstances of justice, and in particular the assumption of mutual advantage, apply to climate action. The first part of the chapter explains why two asymmetries, of benefits and costs, further exacerbated by intergenerational conflicts, both past and future oriented, make climate change an intricate multiplayer prisoner’s dilemma. The second part of the chapter analyses whether and how the two asymmetries can be scaled down, based on a series of empirical arguments: global vulnerability to local (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  29. Rational Polarization.Kevin Dorst - 2023 - Philosophical Review 132 (3):355-458.
    Predictable polarization is everywhere: we can often predict how people’s opinions, including our own, will shift over time. Extant theories either neglect the fact that we can predict our own polarization, or explain it through irrational mechanisms. They needn’t. Empirical studies suggest that polarization is predictable when evidence is ambiguous, that is, when the rational response is not obvious. I show how Bayesians should model such ambiguity and then prove that—assuming rational updates are those which obey the value of evidence—ambiguity (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  30. Instrumental Rationality in the Social Sciences.Katharina Nieswandt - 2023 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences (1):46-68.
    This paper draws some bold conclusions from modest premises. My topic is an old one, the Neohumean view of practical rationality. First, I show that this view consists of two independent claims, instrumentalism and subjectivism. Most critics run these together. Instrumentalism is entailed by many theories beyond Neohumeanism, viz. by any theory that says rational actions maximize something. Second, I give a new argument against instrumentalism, using simple counterexamples. This argument systematically undermines consequentialism and rational choice theory, I show, using (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  31. Nudging for changing selves.Richard Pettigrew - 2023 - Synthese 201 (1):1-21.
    When is it legitimate for a government to ‘nudge’ its citizens, in the sense described by Thaler and Sunstein (2008)? In their original work on the topic, Thaler and Sunstein developed the _‘as judged by themselves’ (or AJBT) test_ to answer this question (Thaler and Sunstein 2008, p. 5). In a recent paper, Paul and Sunstein (2019) raised a concern about this test: it often seems to give the wrong answer in cases in which we are nudged to make a (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  32. Can It Be Irrational to Knowingly Choose the Best?Jack Spencer - 2023 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (1):128-139.
    Seeking a decision theory that can handle both the Newcomb problems that challenge evidential decision theory and the unstable problems that challenge causal decision theory, some philosophers recently have turned to ‘graded ratifiability’. However, the graded ratifiability approach to decision theory is, despite its virtues, unsatisfactory; for it conflicts with the platitude that it is always rationally permissible for an agent to knowingly choose their best option.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  33. Decision under normative uncertainty.Franz Dietrich & Brian Jabarian - 2022 - Economics and Philosophy 38 (3):372-394.
    While ordinary decision theory focuses on empirical uncertainty, real decision-makers also face normative uncertainty: uncertainty about value itself. From a purely formal perspective, normative uncertainty is comparable to (Harsanyian or Rawlsian) identity uncertainty in the 'original position', where one's future values are unknown. A comprehensive decision theory must address twofold uncertainty -- normative and empirical. We present a simple model of twofold uncertainty, and show that the most popular decision principle -- maximising expected value (`Expectationalism') -- has different formulations, namely (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  34. Reasoning in attitudes.Franz Dietrich & Antonios Staras - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1–31.
    People reason not only in beliefs, but also in intentions, preferences, and other attitudes. They form preferences from existing preferences, or intentions from existing beliefs and intentions, and so on. This often involves choosing between rival conclusions. Building on Broome (Rationality through reasoning, Hoboken, Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118609088, 2013) and Dietrich et al. (J Philos 116:585–614. https://doi.org/10.5840/jphil20191161138, 2019), we present a philosophical and formal analysis of reasoning in attitudes, with or without facing choices in reasoning. We give different accounts of choosing, in (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  35. Strategic injustice, dynamic network formation, and social movements.Sahar Heydari Fard - 2022 - Synthese 200 (5):1-25.
    What I call "strategic injustice" involves a set of formal and informal regulatory rules and conventions that often lead to grossly unfair outcomes for a class of individuals despite their resistance. My goal in this paper is to provide the necessary conditions for such injustices and for eliminating their instances from our social practices. To do so, I follow Peter Vanderschraaf's analysis of circumstances of justice and expand his account by embedding "asymmetric conflictual coordination games" that summarize fair division problems (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  36. Weakness of will. The limitations of revealed preference theory.Aleksander Ostapiuk - 2022 - Acta Oeconomica 1 (72):1-23.
    The phenomenon of weakness of will – not doing what we perceive as the best action – is not recognized by neoclassical economics due to the axiomatic assumptions of the revealed preference theory (RPT) that people do what is best for them. However, present bias shows that people have different preferences over time. As they cannot be compared by the utility measurements, economists need to normatively decide between selves (short- versus long-term preferences). A problem is that neoclassical economists perceive RPT (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  37. Autonomy for Changing Selves.Richard Pettigrew - 2022 - In Ben Colburn (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Autonomy. New York, NY: Routledge.
    Our values change. What we value, want, desire, prefer, and how much; for nearly everyone, these will be different at different times in their life. These changes can be gradual or abrupt; they can be long-lasting or short-lived; and they can be induced by forces outside yourself or they can come from within or they can have no specific catalyst at all. Such preference change raises a number of questions for our theorising about rational choice, and these have been discussed (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  38. The Economics and Philosophy of Risk.H. Orri Stefansson - 2022 - In Conrad Heilmann & Julian Reiss (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Economics. Routledge.
    Neoclassical economists use expected utility theory to explain, predict, and prescribe choices under risk, that is, choices where the decision-maker knows---or at least deems suitable to act as if she knew---the relevant probabilities. Expected utility theory has been subject to both empirical and conceptual criticism. This chapter reviews expected utility theory and the main criticism it has faced. It ends with a brief discussion of subjective expected utility theory, which is the theory neoclassical economists use to explain, predict, and prescribe (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  39. Choosing for Changing Selves, Richard Pettigrew. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019, xiv + 253 pages. [REVIEW]Arif Ahmed - 2021 - Economics and Philosophy 37 (3):484-489.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  40. The option value of life.Susanne Burri - 2021 - Economics and Philosophy 37 (1):118-138.
    This paper argues that under conditions of uncertainty, there is frequently a positive option value to staying alive when compared to the alternative of dying right away. This value can make it prudentially rational for you to stay alive even if it appears highly unlikely that you have a bright future ahead of you. Drawing on the real options approach to investment analysis, the paper explores the conditions under which there is a positive option value to staying alive, and it (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  41. Cooperation, fairness and team reasoning.Hein Duijf - 2021 - Economics and Philosophy 37 (3):413-440.
    This paper examines two strands of literature regarding economic models of cooperation. First, payoff transformation theories assume that people may not be exclusively motivated by self-interest, but also care about equality and fairness. Second, team reasoning theorists assume that people might reason from the perspective of the team, rather than an individualistic perspective. Can these two theories be unified? In contrast to the consensus among team reasoning theorists, I argue that team reasoning can be viewed as a particular type of (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  42. ‘Pure’ Time Preferences Are Irrelevant to the Debate over Time Bias: A Plea for Zero Time Discounting as the Normative Standard.Preston Greene - 2021 - Australasian Philosophical Review 5 (3):254-265.
    I find much to like in Craig Callender's [2022] arguments for the rational permissibility of non-exponential time discounting when these arguments are viewed in a conditional form: viz., if one thinks that time discounting is rationally permissible, as the social scientist does, then one should think that non-exponential time discounting is too. However, time neutralists believe that time discounting is rationally impermissible, and thus they take zero time discounting to be the normative standard. The time neutralist rejects time discounting because (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  43. (1 other version)Measuring Utility: From the Marginal Revolution to Behavioral Economics, Ivan Moscati. Oxford University Press, 2019, vii + 326 pages. [REVIEW]Catherine Herfeld - 2021 - Economics and Philosophy 37 (1):144-150.
  44. A restatement of expected comparative utility theory: A new theory of rational choice under risk.David Robert - 2021 - Philosophical Forum 52 (3):221-243.
    In this paper, I argue for a new normative theory of rational choice under risk, namely expected comparative utility (ECU) theory. I first show that for any choice option, a, and for any state of the world, G, the measure of the choiceworthiness of a in G is the comparative utility (CU) of a in G—that is, the difference in utility, in G, between a and whichever alternative to a carries the greatest utility in G. On the basis of this (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  45. Rationing with time: time-cost ordeals’ burdens and distributive effects.Julie L. Rose - 2021 - Economics and Philosophy 37 (1):50-63.
    Individuals often face administrative hurdles in attempting to access health care, public programmes, and other legal statuses and entitlements. These ordeals are the products, directly or indirectly, of institutional and policy design choices. I argue that evaluating whether such ordeals are justifiable or desirable instruments of social policy depends on assessing, beyond their targeting effects, the process-related burdens they impose on those attempting to navigate them and these burdens’ distributive effects. I here examine specifically how ordeals that levy time costs (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  46. Rationality, uncertainty, and unanimity: an epistemic critique of contractarianism.Alexander Schaefer - 2021 - Economics and Philosophy 37 (1):82-117.
    This paper considers contractarianism as a method of justification. The analysis accepts the key tenets of contractarianism: expected utility maximization, unanimity as the criteria of acceptance, and social-scientific uncertainty of modelled agents. In addition to these three features, however, the analysis introduces a fourth feature: a criteria of rational belief formation, viz. Bayesian belief updating. Using a formal model, this paper identifies a decisive objection to contractarian justification. Insofar as contractarian projects approximate the Agreement Model, therefore, they fail to justify (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  47. An argument against causal decision theory.Jack Spencer - 2021 - Analysis 81 (1):52-61.
    This paper develops an argument against causal decision theory. I formulate a principle of preference, which I call the Guaranteed Principle. I argue that the preferences of rational agents satisfy the Guaranteed Principle, that the preferences of agents who embody causal decision theory do not, and hence that causal decision theory is false.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  48. Reciprocity and the Art of Behavioural Public Policy, Adam Oliver. Cambridge University Press, 2019, xvii + 194 pages. - Escaping Paternalism: Rationality, Behavioural Economics and Public Policy, Mario J. Rizzo and Glen Whitman. Cambridge University Press, 2020, xii + 496 pages. [REVIEW]Robert Sugden - 2021 - Economics and Philosophy 37 (1):139-144.
  49. In Defence of Revealed Preference Theory.Johanna Thoma - 2021 - Economics and Philosophy 37 (2):163-187.
    This paper defends revealed preference theory against a pervasive line of criticism, according to which revealed preference methodology relies on appealing to some mental states, in particular an agent’s beliefs, rendering the project incoherent or unmotivated. I argue that all that is established by these arguments is that revealed preference theorists must accept a limited mentalism in their account of the options an agent should be modelled as choosing between. This is consistent both with an essentially behavioural interpretation of preference (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  50. Choice Functions and Hard Choices.M. Van Hees, A. Jitendranath & R. I. Luttens - 2021 - Journal of Mathematical Economics 95 (0304-4068):102479.
    A hard choice is a situation in which an agent is unable to make a justifiable choice from a given menu of alternatives. Our objective is to present a systematic treatment of the axiomatic structure of such situations. To do so, we draw on and contribute to the study of choice functions that can be indecisive, i.e., that may fail to select a non-empty set for some menus. In this more general framework, we present new characterizations of two well-known choice (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
1 — 50 / 521