A long tradition suggests a fundamental distinction between situations of risk, where true objective probabilities are known, and unmeasurable uncertainties where no such probabilities are given. This distinction can be captured in a Bayesian model where uncertainty is represented by the agent’s subjective belief over the parameter governing future income streams. Whether uncertainty reduces to ordinary risk depends on the agent’s ability to smooth consumption. Uncertainty can have a major behavioral and economic impact, including precautionary behavior that (...) may appear overly conservative to an outside observer. We argue that one of the main characteristics of uncertain beliefs is that they are not empirical, in the sense that they cannot be objectively tested to determine whether they are right or wrong. This can confound empirical methods that assume rational expectations. (shrink)

At the centenary of Frank H. Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit (1921), we explore the continuing relevance of Knightian uncertainty to the theory and practice of entrepreneurship. There are three challenges facing such assessment. First, RUP is complex and difficult to interpret. The key but neglected element of RUP is that Knight’s account is not solely about risk and uncertainty as states of nature, but about how an agent’s beliefs about uncertain outcomes and confidence in those (...) beliefs guide their choices. Second, RUP is Knight’s only effort in this area. His subsequent career led elsewhere, so he did not engage with subsequent interpretations of this work. Third, much of the current literature emphasizes that decisions must be different under the two states of nature with a consequent misunderstanding of entrepreneurial agency. This paper addresses each challenge in sequence. First, we explicate Knight’s (1921) approach and explain why that approach is murky. Second, as a complement to Knight’s interpretation, we examine Frank P. Ramsey’s approach to subjective probabilities to help clarify Knight’s murky approach. What links Knight and Ramsey is a shared pragmatism about entrepreneurial agency under uncertainty that depends upon the beliefs about, and confidence in, their judgments of possible outcomes. This Knight-Ramsey approach does not require actor’s behaviors to be determined by the class of uncertain environment (whether risk, uncertainty, or ambiguity) they face. We focus on the response by the entrepreneur to the existence of uncertainty in all its forms. We argue that this reductive account provides a foundation to examine common problems in management, including managerial hubris, the interaction between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and the need for experimentation (such as prototyping and market research) in advance of new product and venture launches. Third, we critique current literature that favors epistemic purism about the ontology of risk and uncertainty and ignores Knight-Ramsey pragmatism in meeting uncertainty, such as using formal and informal institutions for uncertainty mitigation. Our account locates Frank Knight’s subtleties in entrepreneurial behavior firmly in the literature on entrepreneurial agency a century later. (shrink)

At the centenary of Frank H. Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit, we explore the continuing relevance of Knightian uncertainty to the theory and practice of entrepreneurship. There are three challenges facing such assessment. First, RUP is complex and difficult to interpret. The key but neglected element of RUP is that Knight’s account is not solely about risk and uncertainty as states of nature, but about how an agent’s beliefs about uncertain outcomes and confidence in those beliefs (...) guide their choices. Second, RUP is Knight’s only effort in this area. His subsequent career led elsewhere, so he did not engage with subsequent interpretations of this work. Third, much of the current literature emphasizes that decisions must be different under the two states of nature with a consequent misunderstanding of entrepreneurial agency. This paper addresses each challenge in sequence. First, we explicate Knight’s approach and explain why that approach is murky. Second, as a complement to Knight’s interpretation, we examine Frank P. Ramsey’s approach to subjective probabilities to help clarify Knight’s murky approach. What links Knight and Ramsey is a shared pragmatism about entrepreneurial agency under uncertainty that depends upon the beliefs about, and confidence in, their judgments of possible outcomes. This Knight-Ramsey approach does not require actor’s behaviors to be determined by the class of uncertain environment they face. We focus on the response by the entrepreneur to the existence of uncertainty in all its forms. We argue that this reductive account provides a foundation to examine common problems in management, including managerial hubris, the interaction between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and the need for experimentation in advance of new product and venture launches. Third, we critique current literature that favors epistemic purism about the ontology of risk and uncertainty and ignores Knight-Ramsey pragmatism in meeting uncertainty, such as using formal and informal institutions for uncertainty mitigation. Our account locates Frank Knight’s subtleties in entrepreneurial behavior firmly in the literature on entrepreneurial agency a century later. (shrink)

This paper derives a no-trade theorem under Knightian uncertainty, which generalizes the theorem of Milgrom and Stokey by allowing general preference relations. It is shown that the no-trade theorem holds true as long as agents' preferences are dynamically consistent in the sense of Machina and Schmeidler, and satisfies the so-called piece-wise monotonicity axiom. A preference satisfying the piece-wise monotonicity axiom does not necessarily imply the additive utility representation, nor is necessarily based on beliefs.

This paper interprets Knight’s views of the firm from the standpoint of his theory of human agency. Focusing on the coordination perspective, this paper argues that Knightian firms are institutions which deal with intersubjective uncertainty. The fundamental principle underlying an organized activity is the reduction of the uncertainty inherent in judgements and decisions by grouping the decisions of a particular individual and estimating the proportion of successes and failures. Coordinating activities by the use of the firm, shift (...) focus and interest from errors in human agents’ opinions of things to errors in their opinions of other people. By routinizing some judgements in the form of wage payments, firms allow the coordination of the interests of various parties and thus reduce uncertainty. Furthermore, entrepreneurs conduct economic calculation and bet their judgements on the value of the factors of production they employ. Correct entrepreneurial judgement is the ultimate source of profit. This paper calls for a research agenda on the theory of the firm to incorporate Knight’s insights.Cet article interprète la vision knightienne de la firme du point de vue de sa théorie de l’agent humain. En s’intéressant principalement à l’enjeu de la coordination, cet article soutient que les entreprises sont, selon Knight, des institutions qui “agissent” en incertitude intersubjective. Le principe fondamental qui sous-tend une activité organisée est la réduction de l’incertitude inhérent aux jugements et décisions par le regroupement des décisions d’un individu et l’estimation des proportions de succès et d’échecs. Les activités de coordination par le biais de l’entreprise, déplacent le sujet d’étude et l’intérêt des erreurs dans les opinions qu’ont les agents humains à propos des choses vers leurs erreurs d’opinion sur les autres personnes. En rendant routiniers les jugements par la pratique de paiements de salaires, les firmes permettent la coordination des intérêts de parties variées et réduisent ainsi l’incertitude. De plus, les entrepreneurs procèdent à des calculs économiques et fondent leurs jugements sur la valeur des facteurs de production qu’ils emploient. Le jugement entrepreneurial correct est l’ultime source de profit. Cet article plaide en faveur d’un programme de recherche en théorie de l’entreprise qui incorpore les perspectives ouvertes par Knight. (shrink)

Underscoring the economic significance of the Knightian distinction between risk and uncertainty, Don Katzner forcefully challenges the continued dominance of the expected utility model based on subjective probability in macroeconomic analysis and offers in its place a simple yet elegant model of decision making inspired by the pioneering work of G.L.S. Shackle. In doing so, Katzner lends support to a research program to identify a more coherent and empirically grounded theory of decision making under uncertainty. Our paper (...) makes three contributions to this program. First, we argue that the appropriate choice of a model of individual behavior under uncertainty cannot be adjudicated merely on logical, a priori grounds, but must ultimately be based on consistency with observed behavior. There are many internally consistent models and their external conditions of validity hardly ever rely on inconceivable scenarios. Second, while Katzner’s model certainly provides a plausible foundation for understanding choice under uncertainty, we suggest that it is somewhat underdetermined. It requires further theoretical articulation to yield testable predictions which differentiate it from competing approaches. Third, we discuss recent experimental findings that may need to be addressed by any satisfactory theoretical account of decision making under uncertainty. (shrink)

Second-order uncertainty, also known as model uncertainty and Knightian uncertainty, arises when decision-makers can (partly) model the parameters of their decision problems. It is widely believed that subjective probability, and more generally Bayesian theory, are ill-suited to represent a number of interesting second-order uncertainty features, especially “ignorance” and “ambiguity”. This failure is sometimes taken as an argument for the rejection of the whole Bayesian approach, triggering a Bayes vs anti-Bayes debate which is in many ways (...) analogous to what the classical vs non-classical debate used to be in logic. This paper attempts to unfold this analogy and suggests that the development of non-standard logics offers very useful lessons on the contextualisation of justified norms of rationality. By putting those lessons to work I will flesh out an epistemological framework suitable for extending the expressive power of standard Bayesian norms of rationality to second- order uncertainty in a way which is both formally and foundationally conservative. Contents. (shrink)

This paper argues that history of economics has a fruitful, underappreciated role to play in the development of economics, especially when understood as a policy science. This goes against the grain of the last half century during which economics, which has undergone a formal revolution, has distanced itself from its `literary' past and practices precisely with the aim to be a more successful policy science. The paper motivates the thesis by identifying and distinguishing four kinds of reflexivity in economics. The (...) main thesis of this paper is that because these forms of reflexivity are not eliminable, the history of economics must play a constitutive role in economics. An assumption that I clarify in this paper is that the history of economics ought to be part of the subject matter studied by economics when they are interested in policy science. Even if one does not accept the conclusion, the fourfold classification of reflexivity might hold independent interest. The paper is divided in two parts. First, by reflecting on the writings of George Stigler, Paul Samuelson, George and Milton Friedman, I offer a stylized historical introduction to and conceptualization of the themes of this paper. In particular, I identify various historically influential arguments and strategies that reduced the role of history of economics within the economics discipline. In it I also canvass six arguments that try to capture the cost to economics for sidelining the history of economics from within the discipline. A sub-text of the introduction is that for contingent reasons, post World War II economics evolved into a policy science. Second, by drawing on the work of Kenneth Boulding, in particular, George Soros, Thomas Merton, Gordon Tullock, I distinguish between four species of reflexivity. These are used to then strengthen the argument for the constitutive role of the history of economics within the economics profession. In particular, I argue that so-called Kuhn-losses are especially pernicious when faced with policy choices under so-called Knightian uncertainty. (shrink)

A shift in the cultural conception of the firm as productionsystem to that as investment-system entrenches the institutional logic of agency theory in governance reform. Reform initiatives emphasize the separation between management and the board, forensic reporting requirements, and the primacy of shareholders' entitlement to control and residual gains. Problems associated with this agency logic render reform unable to deliver a broad-based ethical operating environment. The introduction of a version of stakeholder theory, augmented by Knightian uncertainty, places the (...) development of an alternative conception of the firm into discourse. Implications for governance reform are considered. (shrink)

This article analyzes investors’ portfolio selection problems in a two-period dynamic model of Knightian uncertainty. We account for the existence of portfolio inertia in this two-period framework. Furthermore, by incorporating investors’ updating behavior, we analyze how observing new information in the first period will affect investors’ behavior. By this analysis, we show that observing new information in the first period will expand portfolio inertia in the second period compared with the case in which observing new information has not (...) been gained in the first period if the degree of Knightian uncertainty is sufficiently large. (shrink)

The paper points out that in dynamic games a player may be better-off if other players do not know his choice of strategy. That is, a player may benefit by not revealing (or not pre-determining) the choice of his action in an information set he (thereby) hopes will not be reached. He would be better-off by exercising his ``right to remain silent'' if he believes –- as the empirical evidence shows –- that players display aversion to ``Knightian uncertainty''. (...) In this case, a player who behaves strategically, may wish to avoid revealing his strategy. This is true under various interpretations of the notion of ``strategy profiles''. (shrink)

In the standard formulation of game theory, agents use mixed strategies in the form of objective and probabilistically precise devices to conceal their actions. We introduce the larger set of probabilistically imprecise devices and study the consequences for the basic results on normal form games. While Nash equilibria remain equilibria in the extended game, there arise new Ellsberg equilibria with distinct outcomes, as we illustrate by negotiation games with three players. We characterize Ellsberg equilibria in two-person conflict and coordination games. (...) These equilibria turn out to be related to experimental deviations from Nash equilibrium play. (shrink)

We generalize the concept of Nash equilibrium in mixed strategies for strategic form games to allow for ambiguity in the players' expectations. In contrast to other contributions, we model ambiguity by means of so-called lower probability measures or belief functions, which makes it possible to distinguish between a player's assessment of ambiguity and his attitude towards ambiguity. We also generalize the concept of trembling hand perfect equilibrium. Finally, we demonstrate that for certain attitudes towards ambiguity it is possible to explain (...) cooperation in the one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma in a way that is in accordance with some recent experimental findings. (shrink)

Prospect theory emerged as one of the leading descriptive decision theories that can rationalize a large body of behavioral regularities. The methods for eliciting prospect theory parameters, such as its value function and probability weighting, are invaluable tools in decision analysis. This paper presents a new simple method for eliciting prospect theory’s value function without any auxiliary/simplifying parametric assumptions. The method is applicable both to choice under ambiguity (Knightian uncertainty) and risk (when events are characterized by objective probabilities). (...) Our new elicitation method is implemented in a simple paper-and-pencil experiment (via an iterative multiple price list format). This is one of the first experiments that elicits non-parametric prospect theory’s value function with salient rewards. The collected data generally confirm findings in the existing literature: the value function is S-shaped (concave in the gain domain and convex in the loss domain) though there is a weaker loss aversion on the aggregate level and a substantial heterogeneity in loss aversion on the individual level (41% loss averse, 6% loss neutral and 53% gain seeking). (shrink)

This dissertation will use neopragmatist philosophy to examine three important concepts in entrepreneurship theorizing: entrepreneurial uncertainty, venture ideas, and entrepreneurial opportunities. Neopragmatist philosophers typically understand meaning, objectivity, correct reasoning, and knowledge in terms of social-linguistic interpretive practices. Each of these concepts are perspectival in the sense that different people will interpret others as having a different view than themselves on what is actually objective etc.. According to neopragmatists we should analyse these concepts not by trying to identify any sort (...) of criteria which distinguishes which perspectives are actually correct, but instead identify how these concepts are used when people try to interpret the perspectives of others in relation to their own. This dissolves many difficult ontological problems. I will argue that the concepts ‘entrepreneurial uncertainty’, ‘venture ideas’, and ‘entrepreneurial opportunities’ are similarly perspectival and that a neopragmatist lens allows us to fruitfully understand them in terms of how we scholars use them when interpreting the perspectives of the entrepreneurs we are studying—who are in turn interpreting the perspectives of their stakeholders. In chapter two I will argue that Knightian uncertainty seems largely irrelevant to practicing entrepreneurs, and that we should reconceptualize and study entrepreneurial uncertainty as a lack of social justificatory resources. In chapter three I argue that instead of conceptualizing venture ideas as mental representations we should instead conceptualize them in terms of their role in social justificatory practices whereby entrepreneurs have to navigate how their perspectives diverge from their stakeholders. In Chapter four I argue that when an entrepreneurship scholars says that an entrepreneur pursues an opportunity they are not only claiming that the entrepreneur perceives the course of action as favourable, but are themselves taking a stand on its favourability relative to whatever theoretical lens they are using. The question “what are entrepreneurial opportunities” ceases to be an ontological debate and becomes instead a more fruitful debate about how we scholars can bring relevant theoretical insights to the perspectives of practicing entrepreneurs. (shrink)

We seek an evolutionary explanation for why in some situations humans maintain either optimistic or pessimistic attitudes toward uncertainty and are ignorant to relevant aspects of their environment. Players in strategic games face Knightian uncertainty about opponents’ actions and maximize individually their Choquet expected utility with respect to neo-additive capacities allowing for both an optimistic or pessimistic attitude toward uncertainty as well as ignorance to strategic dependencies. An optimist overweighs good outcomes. A complete ignorant never reacts (...) to opponents’ changes of actions. We focus on sub- and supermodular aggregative games and provide monotone comparative statics w.r.t. optimism/pessimism. With qualifications, we show that in finite populations, optimistic complete ignorance is evolutionary stable and yields a strategic advantage in submodular games with aggregate externalities. Moreover, this evolutionary stable preference leads to Walrasian behavior in these classes of games. (shrink)

For non-additive set functions, the independent product, in general, is not unique and the Fubini theorem is restricted to slice-comonotonic functions. In this paper, we use the representation theorem of Gilboa and Schmeidler (Math Oper Res 20:197–212, 1995) to extend the Möbius product for non-additive set functions to non-finite spaces. We extend the uniqueness result of Ghirardato (J Econ Theory 73:261–291, 1997) for products of two belief functions and weaken the requirements on the marginals necessary to obtain the Fubini property (...) in the product. More importantly, we show that for the Möbius product one side of the Fubini theorem holds for all integrable functions if one of the marginals either is a probability or a convex combination of a chain of unanimity games, i.e., we relax the requirement of slice-comonotonicity and enrich the set of possible applications. (shrink)

We report on an experiment in which subjects choose actions in strategic games with either strategic complements or substitutes against a granny, a game theorist or other subjects. The games are selected in order to test predictions on the comparative statics of equilibrium with respect to changes in strategic ambiguity. We find that subjects face higher ambiguity while playing against the granny than playing against the game theorist if we assume that subjects are ambiguity averse. Moreover, under the same assumption, (...) subjects choose more secure actions in games more prone to ambiguity which is in line with the predictions. (shrink)

Several philosophers have recently argued that decision-theoretic frameworks for rational choice under risk fail to provide prescriptions for choice in cases of moral uncertainty. They conclude that there are no rational norms that are “sensitive” to a decision-maker's moral uncertainty. But in this paper, I argue that one sometimes has a rational obligation to take one's moral uncertainty into account in the course of moral deliberation. I first provide positive motivation for the view that one's moral beliefs (...) can affect what it's rational for one to choose. I then address the problem of value comparison, according to which one cannot determine the expected moral value of one's actions. I argue that we should not infer from the problem of value comparison that there are no rational norms governing choice under moral uncertainty. (shrink)

In this paper we introduce the nascent literature on Moral Uncertainty Theory and explore its application to the criminal law. Moral Uncertainty Theory seeks to address the question of what we ought to do when we are uncertain about what to do because we are torn between rival moral theories. For instance, we may have some credence in one theory that tells us to do A but also in another that tells us to do B. We examine how (...) we might decide whether or not to criminalize some conduct when we are unsure as to whether or not the conduct is morally permitted, and whether or not it is permissible to criminalize the conduct. We also look at how we might make sentencing decisions under moral uncertainty. We argue that Moral Uncertainty Theory can be an illuminating way to address these questions, but find that doing so is a lot more complicated than applying Moral Uncertainty Theory to individual conduct. (shrink)

Moral latitude is only ever a matter of coincidence on the most popular decision procedure in the literature on moral uncertainty. In all possible choice situations other than those in which two or more options happen to be tied for maximal expected choiceworthiness, Maximize Expected Choiceworthiness implies that only one possible option is uniquely appropriate. A better theory of appropriateness would be more sensitive to the decision maker’s credence in theories that endorse agent-centred prerogatives. In this paper, we will (...) develop and defend a modified version of this view that allows for agent-centred prerogatives and supererogation as part of its verdicts about appropriateness. (shrink)

In this paper, I enter the debate between those who hold that our normative uncertainty matters for what we ought to do, and those who hold that only our descriptive uncertainty matters. I argue that existing views in both camps have unacceptable implications in cases where our descriptive beliefs depend on our normative beliefs. I go on to propose a fix which is available only to those who hold that normative uncertainty matters, ultimately leaving the challenge as (...) a threat to recent skepticism about such views. (shrink)

Uncertainty is interwoven into human existence. It is a powerful incentive in the search for knowledge and an inherent component of scientific research. We have developed many ways of coping with uncertainty. We make promises, manage risks and make predictions to try to clear the mists and predict ahead. But the future is inherently uncertain - and the mist that shrouds our path an inherent part of our journey. The burning question is whether our societies can face up (...) to uncertainty, learn to embrace it and whether we can open up to a constantly evolving future. In this new book, Helga Nowotny shows how research can thrive at the cusp of uncertainty. Science, she argues, can eventually transform uncertainty into certainty, but into certainty which remains always provisional. Uncertainty is never completely static. It is constantly evolving. It encompasses geological time scales and, at the level of human experience, split-second changes as cells divide. Life and death decisions are taken in the blink of the eye, while human interactions with the natural environment may reveal their impact over millennia. Uncertainty is cunning. It appears at unexpected moments, it shuns the straight line, takes the oblique route and sometimes the unexpected short-cut. As we acknowledge the cunning of uncertainty, its threats retreat. We accept that any scientific inquiry must produce results that are provisional and uncertain. This message is vital for politicians and policy-makers: do not be tempted by small, short-term, controllable gains to the exclusion of uncertain, high-gain opportunities. Wide-ranging in its use of examples and enriched by the author’s experience as President of the European Research Council, one of the world’s leading funding organisations for fundamental research. The Cunning of Uncertainty is a must-read for students and scholars of all disciplines, politicians, policy-makers and anyone concerned with the fundamental role of knowledge and science in our societies today. (shrink)

An award-winning historian revisits Marcel Proust's masterpiece in this essay on literature and memory, exploring the question of identity-that of the novel's narrator and Proust's own. In this engaging reexamination of In Search of Lost Time, Saul Friedländer considers how the narrator defines himself, how this compares to what we know of Proust himself, and what the significance is of these various points of commonality and divergence. We know, for example, that the author did not hide his homosexuality, but the (...) narrator did. Why the difference? We know that the narrator tried to marginalize his part-Jewish background. Does this reflect the author's position, and how does the narrator handle what he tries, but does not manage, to dismiss? These are major questions raised by the text and reflected in the text, to which the author's life doesn't give obvious answers. The narrator's reflections on time, on death, on memory, and on love are as many paths leading to the image of self that he projects. In Proustian Uncertainties, Friedländer draws on his personal experience from a life spent investigating the ties between history and memory to offer a fresh perspective on the seminal work. (shrink)

As well as disagreeing about how much one should donate to charity, moral theories also disagree about where one should donate. In light of this disagreement, how should the morally uncertain philanthropist allocate her donations? In many cases, one intuitively attractive option is for the philanthropist to split her donations across all of the charities that are recommended by moral views in which she has positive credence, with each charity’s share being proportional to her credence in the moral theories that (...) recommend that particular charity. Despite the fact that something like this approach is already being used by real-world philanthropists to distribute billions of dollars of donations, it is not supported by any of the approaches to moral uncertainty that have been proposed thus-far in the philosophical literature. In this paper, we will develop a bargaining-based approach to moral uncertainty that honors the proportionality intuition in favor of splitting one’s donations. We also show how this bargaining-based approach has several further advantages over the best alternative proposals. (shrink)

introduces the topic of medical uncertainty and discusses its importance in human life. It argues that medical uncertainty is a critically important but historically neglected experience of both clinicians and patients, and that COVID-19 pandemic and other recent events have raised the need to better understand and manage it. The chapter makes the case for the value of a conceptual framework in helping clinicians and patients to better understand, manage, and ultimately tolerate the uncertainties they experience, and provides (...) an overview of the book. (shrink)

How should we make decisions when we're uncertain about what we ought, morally, to do? Decision-making in the face of fundamental moral uncertainty is underexplored terrain: MacAskill, Bykvist, and Ord argue that there are distinctive norms by which it is governed, and which depend on the nature of one's moral beliefs.

Defenders of deontological constraints in normative ethics face a challenge: how should an agent decide what to do when she is uncertain whether some course of action would violate a constraint? The most common response to this challenge has been to defend a threshold principle on which it is subjectively permissible to act iff the agent's credence that her action would be constraint-violating is below some threshold t. But the threshold approach seems arbitrary and unmotivated: what would possibly determine where (...) the threshold should be set, and why should there be any precise threshold at all? Threshold views also seem to violate ought agglomeration, since a pair of actions each of which is below the threshold for acceptable moral risk can, in combination, exceed that threshold. In this paper, I argue that stochastic dominance reasoning can vindicate and lend rigor to the threshold approach: given characteristically deontological assumptions about the moral value of acts, it turns out that morally safe options will stochastically dominate morally risky alternatives when and only when the likelihood that the risky option violates a moral constraint is greater than some precisely definable threshold (in the simplest case, .5). I also show how, in combination with the observation that deontological moral evaluation is relativized to particular choice situations, this approach can overcome the agglomeration problem. This allows the deontologist to give a precise and well-motivated response to the problem of uncertainty. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of moral uncertainty in explaining the morally disruptive character of new technologies. We argue that existing accounts of technomoral change do not fully explain its disruptiveness. This explanatory gap can be bridged by examining the epistemic dimensions of technomoral change, focusing on moral uncertainty and inquiry. To develop this account, we examine three historical cases: the introduction of the early pregnancy test, the contraception pill, and brain death. The resulting account highlights what we (...) call “differential disruption” and provides a resource for fields such as technology assessment, ethics of technology, and responsible innovation. (shrink)

How is it that thoroughly physical material beings such as ourselves can think, dream, feel, create and understand ideas, theories and concepts? How does mere matter give rise to all these non-material mental states, including consciousness itself? An answer to this central question of our existence is emerging at the busy intersection of neuroscience, psychology, artificial intelligence, and robotics.In this groundbreaking work, philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark explores exciting new theories from these fields that reveal minds like ours to (...) be prediction machines - devices that have evolved to anticipate the incoming streams of sensory stimulation before they arrive. These predictions then initiate actions that structure our worlds and alter the very things we need to engage and predict. Clark takes us on a journey in discovering the circular causal flows and the self-structuring of the environment that define "the predictive brain." What emerges is a bold, new, cutting-edge vision that reveals the brain as our driving force in the daily surf through the waves of sensory stimulation. (shrink)

In this chapter I show how challenges to our ability to tame the uncertainty of a pandemic leaves us vulnerable to uncertainty phobia. This is because not all the uncertainty that matters can be tamed by our knowledge of the relevant probabilities, contrary to what many believe. We are vulnerable because unrelievable wild uncertainty is a hard burden to bear, especially so when we must act in the face of it. -/- The source of unrelievable wild (...) uncertainty is that the nature of probability distributions matters for whether knowledge of them tames uncertainty. It matters because a warrant for the taming is provided by two theorems, but this warrant applies only to some kinds of probability distribution. Essentially, this is because the theorems are about what happens at a mathematical limit but real life never reaches the limit. Consequently, the warrant depends on how quickly the random processes producing the uncertainty converge towards their limit. If they are governed by one class of probability distributions, they converge quickly enough to possess the warrant. If they are governed by another class of probability distributions, they converge towards their limit too slowly and so do not possess that warrant. The random processes of pandemics involve the slow kind . -/- Faced with such a burden, as we are in a pandemic, we are tempted to retreat into uncertainty phobia, leading to fixed definite opinions, precisely when the exercise of sound judgement to determine our responses requires our opinions to be hedged and mobile. Coping with a pandemic requires us to bear the burden of unrelievable wild uncertainty rather than give in to the temptation of uncertainty phobia. Pandemics require the virtue of epistemic forbearance. (shrink)

In this essay, we explore an issue of moral uncertainty: what we are permitted to do when we are unsure about which moral principles are correct. We develop a novel approach to this issue that incorporates important insights from previous work on moral uncertainty, while avoiding some of the difficulties that beset existing alternative approaches. Our approach is based on evaluating and choosing between option sets rather than particular conduct options. We show how our approach is particularly well-suited (...) to address this issue of moral uncertainty with respect to agents that have credence in moral theories that are not fully consequentialist. (shrink)

Jennifer Rose Carr’s (2020) article “Normative Uncertainty Without Theories” proposes a method to maximize expected value under normative uncertainty without Intertheoretic Value Comparison (hereafter IVC). Carr argues that this method avoids IVC because it avoids theories: the agent’s credence is distributed among normative hypotheses of a particular type, which don’t constitute theories. However, I argue that Carr’s method doesn’t avoid or help to solve what I consider as the justificatory problem of IVC, which isn’t specific to comparing theories (...) as such. This threatens the implementability of Carr’s method. Fortunately, I also show how Carr’s method can nevertheless be implemented. I identify a type of epistemic states where the justificatory problem of IVC is not a necessary obstacle to maximizing expected value. In such states, the uncertainty stems from indecisive normative intuitions, and the agent justifiably constructs each normative hypothesis on the basis of a consistent subset of her intuitions by reference to the same unit of value. This part of my argument complements not only Carr’s (2020) argument, but also some moderate defenses of IVC. The combination of Carr’s paper and mine helps to illuminate the conditions for maximizing expected value under normative uncertainty without unjustified value comparison. (shrink)

Phenomenology, Uncertainty and Care in the Therapeutic Encounter is the latest in a series of books where Mark Leffert explores the therapeutic encounter as both process and situation; looking for evidence of therapeutic effectiveness rather than accepting existing psychoanalytic concepts of theory or cure without question. Phenomenology, Uncertainty and Care in the Therapeutic Encounter contributes a new understanding of familiar material and brings a new focus to the care-giving and healing aspects of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy leading to a (...) shift in the analyst's identity from that of one who analyses to one who cares for and heals. This book will be of interest to Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, neuroscientists and academics in the fields of psychiatry, comparative literature and literature and the mind. (shrink)

Uncertainty in Post-Reformation Catholicism provides a historical account of early modern probabilism and its theological, intellectual, and cultural implications. First developed in the second half of the sixteenth century, probabilism represented a significant and controversial novelty in Catholic moral theology. By the second half of the seventeenth century, probabilism became and has since been associated with moral, intellectual, and cultural decadence. Stefania Tutino challenges this understanding and claims that probabilism played a central role in addressing the challenges that geographical (...) and cultural expansions posed to traditional Catholic theology. Tutino argues that early modern theologians used probabilism to integrate major changes within the post-Reformation Catholic theological and intellectual system. Probabilist theologians realized that their time was characterized by many changes that traditional theology was not equipped to deal with, which consequently provoked an exponential growth of uncertainties, doubts, and dilemmas of conscience. Probabilism represented the result of their efforts to appreciate, come to terms with, and manage that uncertainty. Uncertainty in Post-Reformation Catholicism reinterprets probabilism as a way of dealing with moral and epistemological doubts in quickly changing times, a way that still may be useful today. Uncertainty in Post-Reformation Catholicism argues that probabilism played a central role in addressing the challenges that a geographically and intellectually expanding world posed to traditional Catholic theology. Early modern probabilist theologians realized that their time was characterized by many changes and novelties that traditional theology was not equipped to deal with, and that consequently provoked an exponential growth of uncertainties, doubts, and dilemmas of conscience. These theologians used probabilism as a means to integrate changes and novelties within the post-Reformation Catholic theological and intellectual system. Seen in this light, probabilism represented the result of their attempts to appreciate, come to terms with, and manage uncertainty. The problem of uncertainty was not only crucial then, but remains central even today. Despite the unprecedented amount of information available to us, we are becoming less able to formulate arguments based on facts, and more dependent on a cacophony of opinions that often simply reproduce our own implicit or explicit biases, prejudices, and preconceived preferences. (shrink)

We are often unsure about what we ought to do. This can be because we lack empirical knowledge, such as the extent to which future generations will be harmed by climate change. It can also be because we lack normative knowledge, such as the relative moral importance of the interests of present people and the interests of future people. However, though the question of how one ought to act under empirical uncertainty has been addressed extensively by both economists and (...) philosophers---with expected utility theory providing the standard formal framework---the question of how one ought to act under normative uncertainty is comparatively neglected. My thesis attempts to address this gap. -/- In my thesis I develop a view that I call metanormativism: that there are second-order norms that govern action that are relative to a decision-maker's uncertainty about first-order norms. -/- In the first part of the thesis, I defend one specific metanormative view: that under normative uncertainty decision-makers should maximise expected choice-worthiness, treating normative uncertainty analogously with empirical uncertainty. Drawing on the analogy between decision-making under normative uncertainty and social choice theory, I defend this view at length in response to the problem of merely ordinal theories and the problem of intertheoretic value comparisons. -/- In the second part of the thesis, I explore the implications of metanormativism for other philosophical issues. I argue that it has important consequences regarding the theory of rational action in the face of incomparable values, the causal/evidential debate in decision-theory, and our assessment of the value of moral philosophy. (shrink)

We sometimes seem to face fundamental moral uncertainty, i.e., uncertainty about what is morally good or morally right that cannot be reduced to ordinary descriptive uncertainty. This phenomenon raises a puzzle for noncognitivism, according to which moral judgments are desire-like attitudes as opposed to belief-like attitudes. Can a state of moral uncertainty really be a noncognitive state? So far, noncognitivists have not been able to offer a completely satisfactory account. Here, we argue that noncognitivists should exploit (...) the formal analogy between moral uncertainty and moral multi-objective decision problems. Our ‘multi-objective story’ enables noncognitivists to save our moral uncertainty thought and talk by explaining how the underlying phenomenon could be noncognitive. (shrink)

Scientific knowledge is the most solid and robust kind of knowledge that humans have because of its inherent self-correcting character. Nevertheless, anti-evolutionists, climate denialists, and anti-vaxxers, among others, question some of the best-established scientific findings, making claims unsupported by empirical evidence. A common aspect of these claims is reference to the uncertainties of science concerning evolution, climate change, vaccination, and so on. This is inaccurate: whereas the broad picture is clear, there will always exist uncertainties about the details of the (...) respective phenomena. This book shows that uncertainty is an inherent feature of science that does not devalue it. In contrast, uncertainty advances science because it motivates further research. This is the first book on this topic that draws on philosophy of science to explain what uncertainty in science is and how it makes science advance. It contrasts evolution, climate change, and vaccination, where the uncertainties are exaggerated, and genetic testing and forensic science, where the uncertainties are usually overlooked. The goal is to discuss the scientific, psychological, and philosophical aspects of uncertainty in order to explain what it really is, what kinds of problems it actually poses, and why in the end it makes science advance. Contrary to public representations of scientific findings and conclusions that produce an intuitive but distorted view of science as certain, people need to understand and learn to live with uncertainty in science. This book is intended for anyone who wants to get a clear view of the nature of science. (shrink)

Some philosophers have recently argued that decision-makers ought to take normative uncertainty into account in their decisionmaking. These philosophers argue that, just as it is plausible that we should maximize expected value under empirical uncertainty, it is plausible that we should maximize expected choice-worthiness under normative uncertainty. However, such an approach faces two serious problems: how to deal with merely ordinal theories, which do not give sense to the idea of magnitudes of choice-worthiness; and how, even when (...) theories do give sense to magnitudes of choice-worthiness, to compare magnitudes of choice-worthiness across different theories. Some critics have suggested that these problems are fatal to the project of developing a normative account of decision-making under normative uncertainty. The primary purpose of this article is to show that this is not the case. To this end, I develop an analogy between decision-making under normative uncertainty and the problem of social choice, and then argue that the Borda Rule provides the best way of making decisions in the face of merely ordinal theories and intertheoretic incomparability. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of moral uncertainty in explaining the morally disruptive character of new technologies. We argue that existing accounts of technomoral change do not fully explain its disruptiveness. This explanatory gap can be bridged by examining the epistemic dimensions of technomoral change, focusing on moral uncertainty and inquiry. To develop this account, we examine three historical cases: the introduction of the early pregnancy test, the contraception pill, and brain death. The resulting account highlights what we (...) call “differential disruption” and provides a resource for fields such as technology assessment, ethics of technology, and responsible innovation. (shrink)

We are often uncertain how to behave morally in complex situations. In this controversial study, Ted Lockhart contends that moral philosophy has failed to address how we make such moral decisions. Adapting decision theory to the task of decision-making under moral uncertainly, he proposes that we should not always act how we feel we ought to act, and that sometimes we should act against what we feel to be morally right. Lockhart also discusses abortion extensively and proposes new ways to (...) deal with the ethical and moral issues which surround it. (shrink)

Moral dilemmas can arise from uncertainty, including uncertainty of the real values involved. One interesting example of this is that of experimentation on human embryos and foetuses, If these have a moral stauts similar to that of human persons then there will be server constraitns on what may be done to them. If embryous have a moral status similar to that of other small clusters of cells, then constraints will be motivated largely by consideration for the persons into (...) whom the embryos may develop. If the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes, the embryo having neither the full moral weight of persons, nor a completely negligible moral weight, then different kinds of constraints will be appropriate. On the face of it, in order to know what kinds of experiements, if any, we are morally justified in performing on embryos we have to know what the moral weight of the embryo is. But then an impasse threatens, for it seems implausible that we can settle with certainty the exact moral status of the human embryo. It is the purpose of this paper to show that moral uncertainty need not make rational moral justification impossible. I develop a framework which distinguishes between what is morally right/wrong, and what is morally justified/unjustified, and applies standard decision theoretic tools to the case of moral uncertainties. (This was the first published account of what has subsequently become known as Expected Moral Value Theory. An earlier version of the paper, "A decision theoretic argument against human embryo experimentation", was published in M. Fricke (ed.), Essays in honor of Bob Durrant. (University of Otago Press, 1986) 111-27.). (shrink)

There is now considerable evidence that human sentence processing is expectation based: As people read a sentence, they use their statistical experience with their language to generate predictions about upcoming syntactic structure. This study examines how sentence processing is affected by readers' uncertainty about those expectations. In a self-paced reading study, we use lexical subcategorization distributions to factorially manipulate both the strength of expectations and the uncertainty about them. We compare two types of uncertainty: uncertainty about (...) the verb's complement, reflecting the next prediction step; and uncertainty about the full sentence, reflecting an unbounded number of prediction steps. We find that uncertainty about the full structure, but not about the next step, was a significant predictor of processing difficulty: Greater reduction in uncertainty was correlated with increased reading times. We additionally replicated previously observed effects of expectation violation, orthogonal to the effect of uncertainty. This suggests that both surprisal and uncertainty affect human RTs. We discuss the consequences for theories of sentence comprehension. (shrink)

Role of the entrepreneur in a distinct role of profit.

In an age where issues like climate change and the unintended consequences of technological innovation are high on the ethical and political agenda, questions about the nature and extent of our responsibilities to future generations have never been more important, yet simultaneously so difficult to answer. This book takes a unique approach to the problem by drawing on diverse traditions of thinking about care (including developmental psychology, phenomenology and feminist ethics) to explore the nature and meaning of our relationship with (...) the future. Demonstrating that many influential perspectives on intergenerational ethics, including positions advanced by John Rawls, Brian Barry, and Ulrich Beck are undermined by problems relating to uncertainty, it shows that an approach based on care ethics can confront the uncertain future successfully and give a viable account of the nature and scope of future-oriented responsibilities. (shrink)

This book explains the notational system NUSAP (Numeral, Unit, Spread, Assessment, Pedigree) and applies it to several examples from the environmental sciences.

The main aim of this book is to introduce the topic of limited awareness, and changes in awareness, to those interested in the philosophy of decision-making and uncertain reasoning.

In their insightful article, Brent Kious and Margaret Battin (2019) correctly identify an inconsistency between an involuntary psychiatric commitment for suicide prevention and physician aid in dying (PAD). They declare that it may be possible to resolve the problem by articulating “objective standards for evaluating the severity of others’ suffering,” but ultimately they admit that this task is beyond the scope of their article since the solution depends on “a deep and difficult” question about comparing the worseness of two possible (...) scenarios: letting someone die (who could have been helped) with not letting someone die (whose suffering could only be alleviated by death). In our commentary, we argue that creating such standards is more difficult than the authors assume because of the many types of deep uncertainties we have to deal with: (1) diagnostic, (2) motivational, and (3) existential. (shrink)