Hostname: page-component-669899f699-rg895 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-25T13:07:30.934Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Can Free Evidence Be Bad? Value of Information for the Imprecise Probabilist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Seamus Bradley  and
Katie Steele
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article considers a puzzling conflict between two positions that are each compelling: (a) it is irrational for an agent to pay to avoid ‘free’ evidence, and (b) rational agents may have imprecise beliefs. An important aspect of responding to this conflict is resolving the question of how rational (imprecise) agents ought to make sequences of decisions—we make explicit what the key alternatives are and defend our own approach. We endorse a resolution of the aforementioned puzzle—we privilege decision theories that merely permit avoiding free evidence over decision theories that make avoiding free information obligatory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 83 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 1 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

†

Katie Steele’s research was supported by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant AH/J006033/1; Managing Severe Uncertainty project). Seamus Bradley’s research was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt foundation. We would like to thank Richard Bradley and Jim Joyce for very helpful comments on the article and to thank audiences at the LSE Choice Group, the Paris Seminar on Economics and Philosophy, the Formal Epistemology Festival in Konstanz, and the Cambridge Decision Theory Workshop.

References

Al-Najjar, N. I., and Weinstein, J. 2009. “The Ambiguity Aversion Literature: A Critical Assessment.” Economics and Philosophy 25:249–84.Google Scholar
Augustin, T., Coolen, F. P., de Cooman, G., and Troffaes, M. C., eds. 2014. Introduction to Imprecise Probabilities. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradley, S., and Steele, K. 2014a. “Should Subjective Probabilities Be Sharp?” Episteme 11:277–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradley, S., and Steele, K. 2014b. “Uncertainty, Learning and the ‘Problem’ of Dilation.” Erkenntnis 79:1287–1303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, L. G., and Breton, M. Le. 1993. “Dynamically Consistent Beliefs Must Be Bayesian.” Journal of Economic Theory 61:1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gärdenfors, P., and Sahlin, N.-E. 1982. “Unreliable Probabilities, Risk Taking and Decision Making.” Synthese 53:361–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Good, I. J. 1967. “On the Principle of Total Evidence.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 17:319–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grünwald, P. D., and Halpern, J. Y. 2004. “When Ignorance Is Bliss.” In Proceedings of the Twentieth Conference on Uncertainty in AI, 226–34. Arlington, VA: AUAI.Google Scholar
Halpern, J. Y. 2003. Reasoning about Uncertainty. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Huttegger, S. 2013. “Learning Experiences and the Value of Knowledge.” Philosophical Studies 171:279–88.Google Scholar
Joyce, J. M. 2005. “How Probabilities Reflect Evidence.” Philosophical Perspectives 19:153–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kadane, J. B., Schervish, M. J., and Seidenfeld, T. 2008. “Is Ignorance Bliss?” Journal of Philosophy 105:5–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, M. 1996. Decision Theory as Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levi, I. 1974. “On Indeterminate Probabilities.” Journal of Philosophy 71:391–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levi, I. 1980. The Enterprise of Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Levi, I. 1986. Hard Choices: Decision Making under Unresolved Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levi, I. 1991. “Consequentialism and Sequential Choice.” In Foundations of Decision Theory, ed. Bacharach, M. and Hurley, S., 92–122. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hurley, S. 1999. “Value Commitments, Value Conflict and the Separability of Belief and Value.” Philosophy of Science 66:509–33.Google Scholar
Maher, P. 1992. “Diachronic Rationality.” Philosophy of Science 59:120–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, D. 1994. Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence. La Salle, IL: Open Court.Google Scholar
Moore, R. E., Kearfott, R. B., and Cloud, M. J. 2009. Introduction to Interval Analysis. Philadelphia: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pedersen, A. P., and Wheeler, G. 2014. “Demystifying Dilation.” Erkenntnis 79:1305–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raiffa, H., and Schlaifer, R. 1961. Applied Statistical Decision Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School.Google Scholar
Ramsey, F. P. 1990. “Weight of the Value of Knowledge.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 41:1–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Savage, L. 1972. The Foundations of Statistics. 2nd ed. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Schervish, M. J., Seidenfeld, T., Kadane, J. B., and Levi, I. 2003. “Extensions of Expected Utility Theory and Some Limitations of Pairwise Comparisons.” In Proceedings of ISIPTA 2003, 496–510. Waterloo: Carleton Scientific.Google Scholar
Seidenfeld, T. 1988. “Decision Theory without ‘Independence’ or without ‘Ordering’: What’s the Difference?” Economics and Philosophy 4:267–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seidenfeld, T. 2004. “A Contrast between Two Decision Rules for Use with (Convex) Sets of Probabilities: Gamma-Maximin versus E-Admissibility.” Synthese 140:69–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seidenfeld, T., Kadane, J. B., and Schervish, M. J. 1989. “On the Shared Preferences of Two Bayesian Decision Makers.” Journal of Philosophy 86:225–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seidenfeld, T., Schervish, M. J., and Kadane, J. B. 1995. “A Representation of Partially Ordered Preferences.” Annals of Statistics 23:2168–2217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seidenfeld, T., and Wasserman, L. 1993. “Dilation for Sets of Probabilities.” Annals of Statistics 21:1139–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skyrms, B. 1990. The Dynamics of Rational Deliberation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Steele, K. 2010. “What Are the Minimal Requirements of Rational Choice? Arguments from the Sequential Setting.” Theory and Decision 68 (4): 463–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sturgeon, S. 2008. “Reason and the Grain of Belief.” Noûs 42:139–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wakker, P. 1988. “Nonexpected Utility as Aversion to Information.” Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 1:169–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walley, P. 1991. Statistical Reasoning with Imprecise Probabilities. Monographs on Statistics and Applied Probability, vol. 42. London: Chapman & Hall.CrossRefGoogle Scholar