Probably many people have cyclic preferences: they prefer A to B, B to C and C to A for some objects of choice A, B and C. Recent work has resurrected the objection to cyclic preference that agents possessing them are open to exploitation by means of ‘money pumps’. The paper briefly reviews this work and proposes a general approach to problems of sequential choice that makes cyclic preference immune to exploitation by means of these new (...) mechanisms. (shrink)

An example shows that 'pairwise preferences' (certain hypothetical choices) can cycle even when rational. General considerations entail that preferences tout court (certain relations of actual valuations) cannot cycle. A world-bayesian theory is explained that accommodates these two kinds of preference, and a theory for rational actions that would have them maximize and be objects of ratifiable choices. It is observed that choices can be unratifiable either because of troublesome credences or because of troublesome preferences. An appendix comments (...) on a third way in which efforts to maximize can be frustrated. (shrink)

Bermúdez describes the extensionality principle as being “almost unquestioned.” This claim might come as a surprise to philosophers who work on agency and ethics. In Kantian deontological ethics and in Platonic or Aristotelian virtue ethics, our preferences for outcomes can be rationally affected by how those outcomes are framed in terms of maxims and character traits.

Women’s preferences for several male traits, including voices, change over the menstrual cycle, but the proximate causes of these changes are unknown. This paper explores relationships between levels of estradiol, progesterone, luteinizing hormone, follicle stimulating hormone, prolactin, and testosterone (estimated using menstrual cycle information) and women’s preferences for male vocal masculinity in normally cycling and hormonally contracepting heterosexual females. Preferences for vocal masculinity decreased with predicted progesterone levels and increased with predicted prolactin levels in normally cycling—but not (...) hormonally contracepting—women. Adaptive explanations for menstrual variation in women’s preferences for masculine traits are discussed and evaluated in light of these findings. (shrink)

According to some psychological studies, women approaching ovulation feel the increased desire to have short-term sexual affairs with “sexy cads” while they are in long-term relations with “good dads.” I argue that this psychological property is a vestige of our evolutionary history. Early hominid females occasionally acquired good genes from top-ranking males while they were in long-term relations with low-ranking males. The Paleolithic living conditions indicate that women with the foregoing psychological trait were more likely to have viable children than (...) those without it. Sexy cads are the descendents of the top-ranking males, and good dads are the descendents of the low-ranking males. Sexy cads and good dads will continue to coexist in the future, developing better methods to detect cheaters and to escape detection. (shrink)

This paper uses the idea of a proxy, which figures in discussions of bounded rationality, to construct an argument for a revisionary conclusion about ideal instrumental rationality. I consider how subjective responses can figure as proxies in heuristics and develop the following argument: (1) Proxies, even if relatively easy to recognize, can sometimes be messy, prompting incomplete or cyclic preferences. (2) From the point of view of ideal instrumental rationality, it is permissible for an agent to be concerned (...) with a proxy rather than with what it is a proxy for. And so, (3) although it is standardly assumed, as part of the prevailing conception of ideal instrumental rationality, that rational preferences are complete and acyclic, neither incomplete preferences nor cyclic preferences can be dismissed as invariably irrational from the point of view of ideal instrumental rationality. (shrink)

Bermúdez's arguments in favour of the rationality of quasi-cyclical preferences conflate reasons, desires, emotions, and responses with genuine preferences. Rational preference formation requires that the decision-makers not only identify reasons, but also weigh them in a coherent way.

Bermúdez argues for rational framing effects in the form of quasi-cyclical preferences. This is supposed to refute the extensionality principle in standard decision theory. In response, I argue that it is better to analyze seemingly quasi-cyclical preferences as ceteris paribus preferences. Furthermore, if frames are included as objects of choice, we can acknowledge rational framing effects without rejecting extensionality.

I argue that we can generate intransitive preference orderings for a single person on the model of Sen's Libertarian Paradox.

The quasi-cyclical preferences that Bermúdez ascribes to Agamemnon and others in analogous situations do not best represent them. I offer two alternative accounts. One works best if the preference ordering is taken to be the agent's personal betterness ordering of acts; the other works best if it is taken to provide a summary of the agent's dispositions to act.

It is shown that a fundamental question of revealed preference theory, namely whether the weak axiom of revealed preference (WARP) implies the strong axiom of revealed preference (SARP), can be reduced to a Hamiltonian cycle problem: A set of bundles allows a preference cycle of irreducible length if and only if the convex monotonic hull of these bundles admits a Hamiltonian cycle. This leads to a new proof to show that preference cycles can be of arbitrary length for more than (...) two but not for two commodities. For this, it is shown that a set of bundles satisfying the given condition exists if and only if the dimension of the commodity space is at least three. Preference cycles can be constructed by embedding a cyclic $(L-1)$ -polytope into a facet of a convex monotonic hull in $L$ -space, because cyclic polytopes always admit Hamiltonian cycles. An immediate corollary is that WARP only implies SARP for two commodities. The proof is intuitively appealing as this gives a geometric interpretation of preference cycles. (shrink)

The standard argument for the claim that rational preferences are transitive is the pragmatic money-pump argument. However, a money-pump only exploits agents with cyclic strict preferences. In order to pump agents who violate transitivity but without a cycle of strict preferences, one needs to somehow induce such a cycle. Methods for inducing cycles of strict preferences from non-cyclic violations of transitivity have been proposed in the literature, based either on offering the agent small monetary (...) transaction premiums or on multi-dimensional preferences. This paper argues that previous proposals have been flawed and presents a new approach based on the dominance principle. (shrink)

We applaud Wood, Kressel, Joshi, and Louie’s careful, nuanced meta-analysis. The evolutionary hypotheses designed to explain menstrual cycle fluctuations in mate preferences are convoluted and, based on this new meta-analysis, unnecessary because the existence of the fluctuations is not supported by the data. Evolutionary explanations are still possible if they predict women’s mate preferences rather than cyclic fluctuations in those preferences. The biosocial model provides a plausible alternative account. We emphasize the importance of improved methods in (...) future research, focusing especially on ascertainment of cycle phase. (shrink)

The money-pump argument figures as the staple argument in support of the view that cyclic preferences are irrational. According to a prominent way of understanding the argument, it is grounded in the assumption that it is irrational to make choices that lead one to a dispreferred alternative. My aim in this paper is to motivate diffidence with respect to understanding the money-pump argument in this way by suggesting that if it is so understood, the argument emerges as question-begging (...) and as a complicated distraction in the debate concerning cyclic preferences, and that there is a way of understanding the argument that casts it as grounded in a less controversial starting point. (shrink)

The puzzle of the self-torturer raises intriguing questions concerning rationality, cyclic preferences, and resoluteness. Interestingly, what makes the case puzzling has not been clearly pinpointed. The puzzle, it seems, is that a series of rational choices foreseeably leads the self-torturer to an option that serves his preferences worse than the one with which he started. But this is a very misleading way of casting the puzzle. I pinpoint the real puzzle of the self-torturer and, in the process, (...) reveal a neglected but crucial dimension of instrumental rationality. (shrink)

In the standard money pump, an agent with cyclical preferences can avoid exploitation if he shows foresight and solves his sequential decision problem using backward induction (BI). This way out is foreclosed in a modified money pump, which has been presented in Rabinowicz (2000). There, BI will lead the agent to behave in a self-defeating way. The present paper describes another sequential decision problem of this kind, the Centipede for an Intransitive Preferrer, which in some respects is even more (...) striking than the modified pump. In the new problem, the BI reasoning that implies self-defeating behavior does not rest on the controversial robustness assumption concerning beliefs in one's future rationality. This strengthens the claim that foresight cannot save the intransitive preferrer from a self-defeating course of action. (shrink)

One might think that money pumps directed at agents with cyclic preferences can be avoided by foresight. This view was challenged two decades ago by the discovery of a money pump with foresight, which works against agents who use backward induction. But backward induction implausibly assumes that the agent would act rationally and retain her trust in her future rationality even at choice nodes that could only be reached if she were to act irrationally. This worry does not (...) apply to BI-terminating decision problems, where at each choice node backward induction prescribes a move that terminates further action. For BI-terminating decision problems, it is enough to assume that rationality and trust in rationality are retained at choice nodes reachable by rational moves. The old money pump with foresight was not BI-terminating. In this paper, we present a new money pump with foresight, one that is both BI-terminating and considerably simpler. (shrink)

It is commonly held that rational preferences must be acyclic. There have, however, been cases that have been put forward as counterexamples to this view. This paper focuses on the following question: If the counterexamples are compelling and rational preferences can be cyclic, what should we conclude about the presumed acyclicity of the “better than” relation? Building on some revisionary suggestions concerning acyclicity and betterness, I make a case for hanging on to the presumption that “better than” (...) is acyclic even if “is rationally preferred to” is not. As I explain, the divergence my view makes room for does not threaten to make “better than” judgments less relevant to choice than judgments about rational preference. To the contrary, it makes them more relevant. Toward the end of the paper, I extend my results to the relation “is morally better than” in light of the possibility that there might be moral preferability cycles. (shrink)

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 terms of the satisfaction of his actual preferences. Rather, we can admit that his advancing would always be optimal, but argue that advancing isn’t always what he ought to do given that advancing sometimes fails to meet some necessary condition for being what he ought to do. For instance, something can be what he ought to do only if it’s an option for him. What’s more, something can be what he ought to do only if it’s something that he can do without responding inappropriately to his reasons—or, so, I argue. Thus, the solution to the puzzle is, I argue, to realize that, in certain circumstances, advancing is not what the self-torturer ought to do given that he can do so only by responding inappropriately to his reasons. (shrink)

This paper concerns regret, where regretting is to be understood, roughly, as mourning the loss of a forgone good. My ultimate aim is to add a new dimension to existing debate concerning the internal logic of regret by revealing the significance of certain sorts of cases—including, most interestingly, certain down-to-earth cases involving vague goals—in relation to the possibility of regret in continued endorsement cases. Intuitively, it might seem like, in continued endorsement cases, an agent’s regret must be tied to the (...) idea that the forgone good is no better than the achieved good but is also not fully made up for by the achieved good because the goods are different in kind. But this view is controversial. After describing a challenge to the view, as well as the main features of the debate regarding regret in which it figures, I appeal first to a fanciful case involving a set of ever-better options, and then to a more down-to-earth case involving a vague goal, to develop a defense of the opposing view that, even in continued endorsement cases, mourning the loss of a forgone good need not be tied to the idea that the loss of the good is not fully made up for by the gain of a preferred or incomparable good of a different kind. (shrink)

An action is unratifiable when, on the assumption that one performs it, another option has higher expected utility. Unratifiable actions are often claimed to be somehow rationally defective. But in some cases where multiple options are unratifiable, one unratifiable option can still seem preferable to another. We should respond, I argue, by invoking a graded notion of ratifiability.

On the standard interpretation, if a person holds cyclical preferences, the person is prone to acting irrationally. I provide a different interpretation, tying cyclical preferences not to irrationality, but to indecision. According to this alternative understanding – coined the indecision interpretation – top cycles in a person’s preferences can be associated with a difficulty in justifying one’s choice. If an agent’s justificatory impasse persists despite attempts to resolve the cycle, the agent can be deemed undecided. The indecision (...) interpretation is compatible with the standard interpretation of such cycles as instances of irrationality. Yet indecision corresponds to a first-person, non-instrumental perspective on the problem, whereas irrationality usually corresponds to a third-person, instrumental perspective. Due to these differences, interpreting cycles in terms of indecision offers a novel conceptual perspective, pertinent both for explanatory purposes and for the aim of normative theorizing. (shrink)

This book focuses on the challenges associated with effective choice over time. In particular, it considers the challenges raised by cyclic preferences and by incomplete preferences, both of which interfere with the agent's neatly ordering her options, and which make the agent susceptible to self-defeating patterns of choice in which the agent is drawn into taking each of a series of steps that collectively lead her to a result that she deems unacceptable. The book's guiding questions are (...) the following: What is an agent to do if she finds herself with cyclic preferences or with incomplete preferences? Is an agent or group of agents with such preferences necessarily irrational? It is argued that the answer to the latter question is "no"; rationality does not invariably prohibit disorderly preferences, but it does (to get back to the first question) prompt us to proceed with caution and with a readiness to show restraint, based on an awareness of larger dynamics, when our preferences are disorderly. Theories of rational choice often dismiss or abstract away from the sorts of disorderly preferences at issue here. They assume that rational agents can and should have neat preferences over their options; but this assumption is problematic. Rationality can validate certain disorderly preference structures while also protecting us from self-defeating patterns of choice. Rationality can thus handle quite a lot of messiness, which is important, since rationality wouldn't be all that helpful if, whenever messiness threatened, we could not turn to it for guidance. (shrink)

The Money Pump argument is designed to demonstrate the irrational flaw of having cyclic preferences, by showing how the irrational agent is vulnerable to exploitation. The argument faces some longstanding objections, which point out how one may avoid the threat of exploitation without resolving the associated irrationality. Recently a new, synchronic version of Money Pump has been put forward which promises to undercut those standard objections. However, I argue that the synchronic Money Pump cannot deliver on its promise: (...) parallel objections can be reconstructed for this version, too, demonstrating that it ultimately does not improve on the original. (shrink)

In “The Irrelevance of the Diachronic Money-Pump Argument for Acyclicity,” The Journal of Philosophy CX, 8 (August 2013), 460-464, Johan E. Gustafsson contends that if Davidson, McKinsey and Suppes’ diachronic money-pump argument in their "Outlines of a Formal Theory of Value, I," Philosophy of Science 22 (1955), 140-160 is valid, so is the synchronic argument Gustafsson himself offers. He concludes that the latter renders irrelevant diachronic choice considerations in general, and the two best-known diachronic solutions to the money pump problem (...) in particular. I argue here that this reasoning is incorrect, and that Gustafsson’s synchronic argument is faulty on independent grounds. Specifically, it is based on a false analogy between the derivation of a synchronic ordinal ranking from a transitive series of pairwise comparisons, and the putative derivation of such a ranking from an intransitive series. The latter is not possible under the assumption of revealed preference theory, and is highly improbable even if that assumption is rejected. Moreover, Gustafsson’s argument raises issues of fidelity to the historical texts that must be addressed. I conclude that the money pump, and cyclical choice more generally, are necessarily diachronic; and therefore that the two best-known diachronic solutions to the money pump problem remain relevant. (shrink)

The phenomenon of ‘structural irrationality’ covers a diverse range of combinations of attitudes, including (inter alia) contradictory beliefs, contradictory intentions, means–end incoherence, akratic incoherence, and cyclical preferences. This paper offers a novel, unified account of when a pattern of attitudes qualifies as structurally irrational. It begins by setting up the core of the view I will be defending: a set of attitudes is irrational if and only if it is impossible for those attitudes to be jointly successful. I show (...) that this view can account for a wide range of paradigmatically irrational combinations of attitudes. I then refine the account to make it sufficiently subjective. I argue that a set of attitudes is irrational only if the impossibility of their joint success is (i) logically transparent, (ii) subjectively inferable, and (iii) not justifiably denied. (shrink)

Orthodox decision theory is fanatical in the way it treats small probabilities of enormous value, if unbounded utility functions are allowed. Some have suggested a fix, Nicolausian discounting, according to which outcomes with small enough probabilities should be ignored when making decisions. However, there are lotteries involving only small-probability outcomes, none of which should intuitively be ignored. So the Nicolausian discounter needs a procedure for distinguishing the problematic cases of small-probability outcomes from the unproblematic ones. In this paper, I present (...) a dilemma for Nicolausian discounting: the view must be coupled either with a procedure that delivers fanatical verdicts of its own, as bad as those of orthodox decision theory, or with one that entails intransitive cyclic preferences. (shrink)

I describe in section 1 how cyclical preferences can arise. In section 2, I relate preference to judgments of choiceworthiness and distinguish between two kinds of preference cycles, vicious and benign. In section 3, I run through the standard money pump in order to show, in section 4, how this pump can be stopped by foresight, using backward induction. A new money pump that *cannot* be stopped by foresight is presented in section 5. This pump works even for agents (...) with benign cyclical preferences. What makes it work is persistency on the part of the would-be exploiter. In section 6, I compare this pump to a diachronic Dutch book that can be set up against someone whose probability assignments violate Reflection. Even in this case, the book only works if the bookie is assumed to be persistent. I use this comparison between preference cyclicity and violations of Reflection in order to question whether exploitability must be seen as a proof of irrationality. Finally, in section 7, I consider resolute choice as an alternative to the backward-induction procedure. While a resolute chooser cannot be exploited, I argue that resoluteness is not required by rationality. The argument is based on a suggestion that rationality, when it comes to actions, is a local rather than a global requirement. (shrink)

The money-pump argument is the standard argument for the acyclicity of rational preferences. The argument purports to show that agents with cyclic preferences are in some possible situations forced to act against their preference. In the usual, diachronic version of the money-pump argument, such agents accept a series of trades that leaves them worse off than before. Two stock objections are (i) that one may get the drift and refuse the trades and (ii) that one may adopt (...) a plan to only accept some of the trades. This article argues that these objections are irrelevant. If the diachronic money-pump argument is cogent, so is a more direct synchronic argument. The upshot is that the standard objections to the diachronic money-pump argument do not affect this simpler synchronic argument. Hence the standard objections to the money-pump argument for acyclicity are irrelevant. (shrink)

Joe Horton argues that partial aggregation yields unacceptable verdicts in cases with risk and multiple decisions. I begin by showing that Horton’s challenge does not depend on risk, since exactly similar arguments apply to riskless cases. The underlying conflict Horton exposes is between partial aggregation and certain principles of diachronic choice. I then provide two arguments against these diachronic principles: they conflict with intuitions about parity, prerogatives, and cyclical preferences, and they rely on an odd assumption about diachronic choice. (...) Finally, I offer an explanation, on behalf of partial aggregation, for why these diachronic principles fail. (shrink)

I describe in section 1 how cyclical preferences can arise. In section 2, I relate preference to judgments of choiceworthiness and distinguish between two kinds of preference cycles, vicious and benign. In section 3, I run through the standard money pump in order to show, in section 4, how this pump can be stopped by foresight, using backward induction. A new money pump that *cannot* be stopped by foresight is presented in section 5. This pump works even for agents (...) with benign cyclical preferences. What makes it work is persistency on the part of the would-be exploiter. In section 6, I compare this pump to a diachronic Dutch book that can be set up against someone whose probability assignments violate Reflection. Even in this case, the book only works if the bookie is assumed to be persistent. I use this comparison between preference cyclicity and violations of Reflection in order to question whether exploitability must be seen as a proof of irrationality. Finally, in section 7, I consider resolute choice as an alternative to the backward-induction procedure. While a resolute chooser cannot be exploited, I argue that resoluteness is not required by rationality. The argument is based on a suggestion that rationality, when it comes to actions, is a local rather than a global requirement. (shrink)

After maintaining in that certain cyclical preferences can be reasonable, the following questions were tabled: “in what circumstances and under what assumptions … these … preferences of George's would turn him into a ”money pump,” and in what circumstances and under what assumptions they would not do that.” Two pumps afford answers. George, who is sufficiently reasonable and well-informed to use backward induction, has, for this reason, nothing to fear from the first pump, but the second, of a (...) nonstandard design by Wlodek Rabinowicz, ruins him just because he is subject to the constraints of backward induction. Could he be helped by extending his options from actions in a single round, to courses of actions starting in that round? Possibly not. He would be safe if he were capable of resolute choices of couses of action. Even so, he is in trouble through no fault of his, if, as I think, not having that capacity, though a misfortune, is not a fault. (shrink)

In the standard money pump, an agent with cyclical preferences can avoid exploitation if he shows foresight and solves his sequential decision problem using backward induction. This way out is foreclosed in a modified money pump, which has been presented in Rabinowicz. There, BI will lead the agent to behave in a self-defeating way. The present paper describes another sequential decision problem of this kind, the Centipede for an Intransitive Preferrer, which in some respects is even more striking than (...) the modified pump. In the new problem, the BI reasoning that implies self-defeating behavior does not rest on the controversial robustness assumption concerning beliefs in one's future rationality. This strengthens the claim that foresight cannot save the intransitive preferrer from a self-defeating course of action. (shrink)

The use of Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) in healthcare allocation has been criticized as discriminatory against people with disabilities. This article considers a response to this criticism from Nick Beckstead and Toby Ord. They say that even if QALYs are discriminatory, attempting to avoid discrimination – when coupled with other central principles that an allocation system should favour – sometimes leads to irrationality in the form of cyclic preferences. I suggest that while Beckstead and Ord have identified a (...) problem, it is a misdiagnosis to lay it at the feet of an anti-discrimination principle. The problem in fact comes from a basic tension between respecting reasonable patient preferences and other ways of ranking treatment options. As such, adopting a QALY system does not solve the problem they identify. (shrink)

We distinguish two types of cases that have potential to generate quasi-cyclical preferences: self-involving choices where an agent oscillates between first- and third-person perspectives that conflict regarding their life-changing implications, and self-serving choices where frame-based reasoning can be “first-personally rational” yet “third-personally irrational.” We argue that the distinction between these types of cases deserves more attention in Bermúdez's account.

Trolley-like dilemmas are other cases of what Bermúdez refers to as (conscious) quasi-cyclical preferences. In these dilemmas, identical outcomes are obtained through morally non-identical actions. I will argue that morality is the context where descriptive invariance and ecological relevance may be crucially distinguished. Logically irrational moral choices in the short term may promote greater social benefits in the longer term.

Bermúdez argues for rational framing effects based on normatively appropriate quasi-cyclical preferences. We suggest that this argument conflates preferences over specific outcomes with preferences over outcome aspects. Instead of implying quasi-cyclical preferences, framing affects decisions through standard economic trade-offs. Nonetheless, we demonstrate that framing can affect behavior through altering perceptions of particular outcome aspects when framing effects are not decomposable.

Suppose that you prefer A to B, B to C, and C to A. Your preferences violate Expected Utility Theory by being cyclic. Money-pump arguments offer a way to show that such violations are irrational. Suppose that you start with A. Then you should be willing to trade A for C and then C for B. But then, once you have B, you are offered a trade back to A for a small cost. Since you prefer A to (...) B, you pay the small sum to trade from B to A. But now you have been turned into a money pump. You are back to the alternative you started with but with less money. This Element shows how each of the axioms of Expected Utility Theory can be defended by money-pump arguments of this kind. The Element also defends money-pump arguments from the standard objections to this kind of approach. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

The relations between rationality and optimization have been widely discussed in the wake of Herbert Simon's work, with the common conclusion that the rationality concept does not imply the optimization principle. The paper is partly concerned with adding evidence for this view, but its main, more challenging objective is to question the converse implication from optimization to rationality, which is accepted even by bounded rationality theorists. We discuss three topics in succession: (1) rationally defensible cyclical choices, (2) the revealed preference (...) theory of optimization, and (3) the infinite regress of optimization. We conclude that (1) and (2) provide evidence only for the weak thesis that rationality does not imply optimization. But (3) is seen to deliver a significant argument for the strong thesis that optimization does not imply rationality. (shrink)

So-called money pump arguments aim to show that intransitive preferences are irrational because they will lead someone to accept a series of deals that leaves his/her financially worse off and better off in no respect. A common response to these arguments is the foresight response, which counters that the agent in question may see the exploitation coming, and refuse to trade at all. To obviate this response, I offer a “deluxe money pump argument” that applies dominance reasoning to a (...) modified money pump case. (shrink)

ABSTRACT. The relations between rationality and optimization have been widely discussed in the wake of Herbert Simon’s work, with the common conclusion that the rationality concept does not imply the optimization principle. The paper is partly concerned with adding evidence for this view, but its main, more challenging objective is to question the converse implication from optimization to rationality, which is accepted even by bounded rationality theorists. We discuss three topics in succession: (1) rationally defensible cyclical choices, (2) the revealed (...) preference theory of optimization, and (3) the infinite regress of optimization. We conclude that (1) and (2) provide evidence only for the weak thesis that rationality does not imply optimization. But (3) is seen to deliver a significant argument for the strong thesis that optimization does not imply rationality. (shrink)

Sociobiologists and feminists agree that men in patriarchal social systems seek to control females, but sociobiologists go further, using Darwin’s theory of sexual selection and Trivers’s ideas on parental investment to explain why males should attempt to control female sexuality. From this perspective, the stage for the development under some conditions of patriarchal social systems was set over the course of primate evolution. Sexual selection encompasses both competition between males and female choice. But in applying this theory to our “lower (...) origins” (prehominid ancestors), Darwin assumed that choices were made by essentially “coy” females. I argue here that female solicitation of multiple males (either simultaneously or sequentially, depending on the breeding system) characterized prehominid females; this prehominid legacy of cyclical sexual assertiveness, itself possibly a female counter-strategy to male efforts to control the timing of female reproduction, generated further male counter-strategies. This dialectic had important implications for emerging hominid mating systems, human evolution, and the development of patriarchal arrangements in some human societies. For hominid males who will invest in offspring, there would be powerful selection for emotions, behaviors, and customs that ensure them certainty of paternity. The sexual modesty that so struck Darwin can be explained as a recent evolved or learned (perhaps both) adaptation in women to avoid penalties imposed by patrilines on daughters and mates who failed to conform to the patriline’s prevailing norms for their sex. Other supposedly innate universals, such as female preferences for wealthy husbands, are also likely to be facultative accommodations by women to constraints set up when patrilines monopolized resources needed by females to survive and reproduce, and passed on intergenerational control of these resources preferentially to sons. (shrink)

Stuart Rachels and Larry Temkin have offered a purported counter-example to the acyclicity of the relationship 'all things considered better than'. This example invokes our intuitive preferences over pairs of alternatives involving a single person's painful experiences of varying intensity and duration. These preferences, Rachels and Temkin claim, are confidently held, entirely reasonable, and cyclical. They conclude that we should drop acyclicity as a requirement of rationality. I argue that, together with the findings of recent research on the (...) way people evaluate episodes of pain, the use of a heuristic known as similarity-based decision-making explains why our intuitive preferences may violate acyclicity in this example. I argue that this explanation should lead us to regard these preferences with suspicion, because it indicates that they may be the result of one or more biases. I conclude that Rachels' and Temkin's example does not provide sufficient grounds for rejecting acyclicity. (shrink)

Sorensen provides a panoramic view of paradoxes of theoretical and practical rationality. These puzzles are organized as apparent counterexamples to attractive principles such as the principle of charity, the transitivity of preferences, and the principle that we should maximize expected utility. The following paradoxes are discussed: fearing fictions, the surprise test paradox, Pascal’s Wager, Pollock’s Ever Better wine, Newcomb’s problem, the iterated prisoner’s dilemma, Kavka’s paradoxes of deterrence, backward inductions, the bottle imp, the preface paradox, Moore’s problem, Buridan’s ass, (...) Condorcet’s paradox of cyclical majorities, the St. Petersburg paradox, weakness of will, the Ellsberg paradox, Allais’s paradox, and Peter Cave’s puzzle of self-fulfilling beliefs. (shrink)