In 2014, the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote: ‘Some of the smartest thinkers on problems at home and around the world are university professors, but most of them just don't matter in today's great debates … I write this in sorrow, for I considered an academic career and deeply admire the wisdom found on university campuses. So, professors, don't cloister yourselves like medieval monks – we need you!’ At that time, a group of academics were working to launch the International Panel on Social Progress, with the aim of preparing a report analysing the current prospects for improving our societies.1 It gathered about 300 researchers from more than 40 countries and from all disciplines of the social sciences, law and philosophy.

Professor Arnold's reply to my reply seems not to have touched the substance of my argument. Perhaps I have been unclear. Arnold contends that any form of market socialism, if unchecked by central authorities, would revert to a system essentially undistinguishable from capitalism. Against this contention I have argued that a democratic, worker-controlled, market socialism that generates its investment fund by taxation exhibits no such tendency. Specifically, I argued that in such a society

1. there exists no tendency for socialized property to revert to private property (since workers have no incentive to sell off their firms to private individuals);

2. the ability of private individuals to accumulate vast wealth is sharply curtailed (since interest and stock income are absent);

3. the authority structures within enterprises are much more democratic than under capitalism;

4. intra-firm income differentials will be far more egalitarian than under capitalism.

This paper addresses the issue of finite versus countable additivity in Bayesian probability and decision theory – in particular, Savage’s theory of subjective expected utility and personal probability. I show that Savage’s reason for not requiring countable additivity in his theory is inconclusive. The assessment leads to an analysis of various highly idealized assumptions commonly adopted in Bayesian theory, where I argue that a healthy dose of, what I call, conceptual realism is often helpful in understanding the interpretational value of sophisticated mathematical structures employed in applied sciences like decision theory. In the last part, I introduce countable additivity into Savage’s theory and explore some technical properties in relation to other axioms of the system.

I examine some behavioural and heuristic models of individual decision-making and argue that the diverse psychological mechanisms these models posit are too demanding to be implemented, either consciously or unconsciously, by actual decision makers. Accordingly, and contrary to what their advocates typically claim, behavioural and heuristic models are best understood as ‘as-if’ models. I then sketch a version of scientific antirealism that justifies the practice of as-if modelling in decision theory but goes beyond traditional instrumentalism. Finally, I relate my account of decision models to the recent controversy about mentalism versus behaviourism, reject both positions, and offer an alternative view.

Formal analyses of Pascal’s Wager have almost all been decision-theoretic, with a human as the sole decision-maker. This paper analyses Pascal’s Wager in a game-theoretic setting in which the deity whose existence the human is considering wagering on is also a decision-maker. There is an equilibrium in which the human chooses to wager that the deity exists and Pascal’s Wager thus operates, but also one in which the human does not wager. Thus, in a game-theoretic setting, Pascal’s Wager is indeterminate: wagering and not wagering are both consistent with equilibrium behaviour.

This paper addresses how to think about the permissibility of introducing deadweight costs (so-called ‘ordeals’) on candidate recipients of goods in order to attain better outcomes. The paper introduces some distinctions between different kinds of value dimensions that should be taken into account when such judgements are made and draws from the literature on comparisons across different value dimensions in order to canvas what sort of situations one might arguably face when evaluating ordeals. In light of the distinctions drawn and the possibilities canvassed, the paper proceeds to outline what circumstances indicate which of the possible situations one is in.