Can It Be Irrational to Knowingly Choose the Best?

Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (1):128-139 (2023)
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Abstract

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.

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Jack Spencer
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Citations of this work

It Can Be Irrational to Knowingly Choose the Best.J. Dmitri Gallow - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

The Dynamics of Rational Deliberation.Brian Skyrms - 1990 - Harvard University Press.
Causal decision theory.David Lewis - 1981 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 59 (1):5 – 30.
Some counterexamples to causal decision theory.Andy Egan - 2007 - Philosophical Review 116 (1):93-114.
Graded Ratifiability.David James Barnett - 2022 - Journal of Philosophy 119 (2):57-88.
Why Take Both Boxes?Jack Spencer & Ian Wells - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (1):27-48.

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