Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how people make decisions where a number of their objectives are at stake. The options that people face are rarely ideal: they are relatively good on some measures and relatively bad on others. People can have problems choosing among such options because they don't know which goals to favor. Multiple objectives pose a problem not only for decision-makers, but also for our account of decision making. Our state-of-the-art theory of human behavior holds that people act to best satisfy their activated desires according to their activated beliefs. This account can't handle decisions with multiple objectives, however, unless it is supplemented by a story about how desires that favor different options can jointly pick out some best course of action. Unfortunately, this story is lacking. As a result, there is a gap in our most basic account of human behavior. ;In order to fill the hole in our otherwise attractive view, I must first refute an argument that it can't be filled. This argument starts with the claim that values are incommensurable. Value incommensurability is supposed to imply that people can't compare options with respect to a number of objectives taken together. Without such comparisons, however, a set of activated desires can't jointly pick out any best course of action for an agent to choose. In order to evaluate this argument, I examine the view about objectives that underwrites incommensurability claims. That account turns out to be completely untenable. This fact clears the way for a positive account of decisions with multiple objectives within the framework of our basic account of human behavior. ;In order to close the gap in our theory of human action, I take a close look at some actual examples of decisions with multiple objectives. After isolating some crucial features of such choices, I argue that people appeal to their experiences to develop priorities over their objectives. Each person calibrates the rankings of options provided by different ends. The priorities that result make decisions with multiple objectives tractable. We get a glimpse of this calibration process when we attend to the way that a person's character develops