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  1. Conditional causal decision theory reduces to evidential decision theory.Mostafa Mohajeri - 2024 - Analytic Philosophy 65 (1):93-106.
    Advocates of Causal Decision Theory (CDT) argue that Evidential Decision Theory (EDT) is inadequate because it gives the wrong result in Newcomb problems. Egan (2007) provides a recipe for converting Newcomb problems to counterexamples to CDT, arguing that CDT is inadequate too. Proposed by Edgington (2011), the Conditional Causal Decision Theory (CCDT) is widely taken uncritically in the recent literature as a version of CDT that conforms to the supposedly correct pre-theoretic judgments about the rationality of acts in Newcomb problems (...)
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  • Uncertainty, Rationality, and Agency.Wiebe van der Hoek - 2006 - Dordrecht, Netherland: Springer.
    This volume concerns Rational Agents - humans, players in a game, software or institutions - which must decide the proper next action in an atmosphere of partial information and uncertainty. The book collects formal accounts of Uncertainty, Rationality and Agency, and also of their interaction. It will benefit researchers in artificial systems which must gather information, reason about it and then make a rational decision on which action to take.
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  • Counterfactual Decision Theory Is Causal Decision Theory.J. Dmitri Gallow - 2024 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 105 (1):115-156.
    The role of causation and counterfactuals in causal decision theory is vexed and disputed. Recently, Brian Hedden (2023) argues that we should abandon causal decision theory in favour of an alternative: counterfactual decision theory. I argue that, pace Hedden, counterfactual decision theory is not a competitor to, but rather a version of, causal decision theory – the most popular version by far. I provide textual evidence that the founding fathers of causal decision theory (Stalnaker, Gibbard, Harper, Lewis, Skyrms, Sobel, and (...)
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  • Utility theory and the Bayesian paradigm.Jordan Howard Sobel - 1989 - Theory and Decision 26 (3):263-293.
    In this paper, a problem for utility theory - that it would have an agent who was compelled to play “Russian Roulette’ with one revolver or another, to pay as much to have a six-shooter with four bullets relieved of one bullet before playing with it, as he would be willing to pay to have a six-shooter with two bullets emptied - is reviewed. A less demanding Bayesian theory is described, that would have an agent maximize expected values of possible (...)
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  • Pascalian Wagers.Jordan Howard Sobel - 1996 - Synthese 108 (1):11 - 61.
    A person who does not have good intellectual reasons for believing in God can, depending on his probabilities and values for consequences of believing, have good practical reasons. Pascalian wagers founded on a variety of possible probability/value profiles are examined from a Bayesian perspective central to which is the idea that states and options are pragmatically reasonable only if they maximize subjective expected value. Attention is paid to problems posed by representations of values by Cantorian infinities. An appendix attends to (...)
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  • Partition-theorems for causal decision theories.Jordan Howard Sobel - 1989 - Philosophy of Science 56 (1):70-93.
    Two partition-theorems are proved for a particular causal decision theory. One is restricted to a certain kind of partition of circumstances, and analyzes the utility of an option in terms of its utilities in conjunction with circumstances in this partition. The other analyzes an option's utility in terms of its utilities conditional on circumstances and is quite unrestricted. While the first form seems more useful for applications, the second form may be of theoretical importance in foundational exercises. Comparisons are made (...)
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  • Newcomblike Problems.Jordan Howard Sobel - 1990 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 15 (1):224-255.
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  • Non-dominance, third person and non-action newcomb problems, and metatickles.Jordan Howard Sobel - 1991 - Synthese 86 (2):143 - 172.
    It is plausible that Newcomb problems in which causal maximizers and evidential maximizers would do different things would not be possible for ideal maximizers who are attentive to metatickles. An objection to Eells's first argument for this makes welcome a second. Against it I argue that even ideal evidential and causal maximizers would do different things in some non-dominance Newcomb problems; and that they would hope for different things in some third-person and non-action problems, which is relevant if a good (...)
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  • Metatickles and Ratificationism.Jordan Howard Sobel - 1986 - PSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1986 (1):342-351.
    Responses to Newcomb-like challenges to evidential decision theories such as Jeffrey’s “logic of decision” range from allegations of incoherence and irrelevance; through stonewalling - “Just one box for me, thank you.“; to arguments that maintain that when properly applied by an ideal agent such theories get the right answers and, for example, prescribe the taking of both boxes, not just one; on to conservative revisions of evidential decision theories that are held to get these supposedly right answers while remaining true (...)
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  • Maximization, stability of decision, and actions in accordance with reason.Jordan Howard Sobel - 1990 - Philosophy of Science 57 (1):60-77.
    Rational actions reflect beliefs and preferences in certain orderly ways. The problem of theory is to explain which beliefs and preferences are relevant to the rationality of particular actions, and exactly how they are relevant. One distinction of interest here is between an agent's beliefs and preferences just before an action's time, and his beliefs and preferences at its time. Theorists do not agree about the times of beliefs and desires that are relevant to the rationality of action. Another distinction (...)
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  • Defenses and conservative revisions of evidential decision theories: Metatickles and ratificationism.Jordan Howard Sobel - 1988 - Synthese 75 (1):107 - 131.
    It is plausible that Newcomb problems in which causal maximizers and evidential maximizers would do different things would not be possible for ideal maximizers who are attentive to metatickles. An objection to Eells’s first argument for this makes welcome a second. Against it I argue that even ideal evidential and causal maximizers would do different things in some non-dominance Newcomb problems; and that they would hope for different things in some third-person and non-action problems, which is relevant if a good (...)
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  • Objects of Choice.Wolfgang Schwarz - forthcoming - Mind.
    Rational agents are supposed to maximize expected utility. But what are the options from which they choose? I outline some constraints on an adequate representation of an agent’s options. The options should, for example, contain no information of which the agent is unsure. But they should be sufficiently rich to distinguish all available acts from one another. These demands often come into conflict, so that there seems to be no adequate representation of the options at all. After reviewing existing proposals (...)
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  • Choice and conditional expected utility.Piers Rawling - 1993 - Synthese 94 (2):303 - 328.
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  • Why scientists gather evidence.Patrick Maher - 1990 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 41 (1):103-119.
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  • Symptomatic acts and the value of evidence in causal decision theory.Patrick Maher - 1990 - Philosophy of Science 57 (3):479-498.
    A "symptomatic act" is an act that is evidence for a state that it has no tendency to cause. In this paper I show that when the evidential value of a symptomatic act might influence subsequent choices, causal decision theory may initially recommend against its own use for those subsequent choices. And if one knows that one will nevertheless use causal decision theory to make those subsequent choices, causal decision theory may favor the one-box solution in Newcomb's problem, and may (...)
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  • The Faulty Signal Problem: counterfactual asymmetries in causal decision theory and rational deliberation.Daniel Listwa - 2018 - Synthese 195 (6):2717-2739.
    A decision theory can be useful not only as a tool for determining which action, given your desires and beliefs, is most preferable, but also as a means for analyzing the nature of rational deliberation. In this paper, I turn to two classic proposals for a causal decision theory, that of Lewis and that of Sobel :407–437, 1986. doi: 10.1080/00048408612342621). As Rabinowicz revealed, Lewis’ proposal is unable to be applied to as broad a set of decision problems as a version (...)
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  • The No Probabilities For Acts-Principle.Marion Ledwig - 2005 - Synthese 144 (2):171-180.
    One can interpret the No Probabilities for Acts-Principle, namely that any adequate quantitative decision model must in no way contain subjective probabilities for actions in two ways: it can either refer to actions that are performable now and extend into the future or it can refer to actions that are not performable now, but will be in the future. In this paper, I will show that the former is the better interpretation of the principle.
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  • Ratifiability, game theory, and the principle of independence of irrelevant alternatives.Ellery Eells & William L. Harper - 1991 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 69 (1):1 – 19.
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  • The popcorn problem: Sobel on evidential decision theory and deliberation-probability dynamics.Ellery Eells - 1989 - Synthese 81 (1):9 - 20.
    I defend evidential decision theory and the theory of deliberation-probability dynamics from a recent criticism advanced by Jordan Howard Sobel. I argue that his alleged counterexample to the theories, called the Popcorn Problem is not a genuine counterexample.
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  • The Equivalence of Bayes and Causal Rationality in Games.Oliver Board - 2006 - Theory and Decision 61 (1):1-19.
    In a seminal paper, Aumann (1987, Econometrica 55, 1–18) showed how the choices of rational players could be analyzed in a unified state space framework. His innovation was to include the choices of the players in the description of the states, thus abolishing Savage’s (1954, The Foundations of Statistics. Wiley, New York) distinction between acts and consequences. But this simplification comes at a price: Aumann’s notion of Bayes rationality does not allow players to evaluate what would happen were they to (...)
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  • Causal Decision Theory: A Counterexample.Arif Ahmed - 2013 - Philosophical Review 122 (2):289-306.
    The essay presents a novel counterexample to Causal Decision Theory (CDT). Its interest is that it generates a case in which CDT violates the very principles that motivated it in the first place. The essay argues that the objection applies to all extant formulations of CDT and that the only way out for that theory is a modification of it that entails incompatibilism. The essay invites the reader to find this consequence of CDT a reason to reject it.
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