Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-21T21:59:59.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Why We Still Need the Logic of Decision

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

James M. Joyce
James M. Joyce*
Affiliation:
The University of Michigan
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, The University of Michigan, 435 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109–1003.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In The Logic of Decision Richard Jeffrey defends a version of expected utility theory that advises agents to choose acts with an eye to securing evidence for thinking that desirable results will ensue. Proponents of “causal” decision theory have argued that Jeffrey's account is inadequate because it fails to properly discriminate the causal features of acts from their merely evidential properties. Jeffrey's approach has also been criticized on the grounds that it makes it impossible to extract a unique probability/utility representation from a sufficiently rich system of preferences (given a zero and unit for measuring utility). The existence of these problems should not blind us to the fact that Jeffrey's system has advantages that no other decision theory can match: it can be underwritten by a particularly compelling representation theorem proved by Ethan Bolker; and it has a property called partition invariance that every reasonable theory of rational choice must possess. I shall argue that the non-uniqueness problem can be finessed, and that it is impossible to adequately formulate causal decision theory, or any other, without using Jeffrey's theory as one's basic analysis of rational desire.

Type
A Symposium in Honor of Richard Jeffrey
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 67 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Sep., 2000 , 2000 , pp. S1 - S13
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 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.)

References

Anscombe, F. and Aumann, R. (1963), “A Definition of Subjective Probability”, Annals of Mathematical Statistics 34: 199–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armendt, B. (1986), “A Foundation for Causal Decision Theory”, Topoi 5: 3–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolker, E. (1966), “Functions Resembling Quotients of Measures”, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society 124: 293–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolker, E. (1967), “A Simultaneous Axiomatization of Utility and Subjective Probability”, Philosophy of Science 34: 333–340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradley, R. (1999) “A Representation Theorem for Decision Theory with Conditionals”, Synthese 116, 2.Google Scholar
De Finetti, B. (1964), “Foresight: Its Logical Laws, Its Subjective Sources”, in Kyburg, H. and Smokier, H. (eds.), Studies in Subjective Probability. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 93–158.Google Scholar
Fishburn, P. (1973), “A Mixture-Set Axiomatization of Conditional Subjective Expected Utility”, Econometrica 41: 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibbard, A. and Harper, W. (1978), “Counterfactuals and Two Kinds of Expected Utility”, in Hooker, C., Leach, J., and McCIennen, E. (eds.), Foundations and Applications of Decision Theory, vol 1. Dordrecht: Reidel, 125–162.Google Scholar
Harper, W. and Skyrms, B. (eds.) (1988), Causation in Decision, Belief Change, and Statistics, II. New York: Kluwer Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jeffrey, R. (1978), “Axiomatizing The Logic of Decision”, in Hooker, C., Leach, J., and McCIennen, E. (eds.), Foundations and Applications of Decision Theory, vol. 1. Dordrecht: Reidel, 227–231.Google Scholar
Jeffrey, R. (1983), The Logic of Decision, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Jeffrey, R. (1983), “Bayesianism with a Human Face”, in Earman, J. (ed.), Testing Scientific Theories. Midwest Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. X. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 133–156.Google Scholar
Joyce, J. (1999), The Foundations of Causal Decision Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, M. (1996), Decision Theory as Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, D. (1976), “Probabilities of Conditionals and Conditional Probabilities”, The Philosophical Review 85: 297–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, D. (1981), “Causal Decision Theory”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 59: 5–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, D. (1986), “Probabilities of Conditionals and Conditional Probabilities II”, The Philosophical Review 95: 581–589.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luce, R. D. and Krantz, D. (1971), “Conditional Expected Utility”, Econometrica 39: 253–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramsey, F. (1931), “Truth and Probability”, in The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays. Edited by Braithwaite, R. London: Kegan Paul, 156–198.Google Scholar
Savage, L. (1972), The Foundations of Statistics, 2nd ed. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Skyrms, B. (1984), Pragmatics and Empiricism. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sobel, J. H. (1994), Taking Chances: Essays on Rational Choice. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Villegas, C. (1964), “On Qualitative Probability σ-Algebras”, Annals of Mathematical Statistics 35: 1787–1796.CrossRefGoogle Scholar