- Main
Rationality and Expected Utility
- Gee, Max
- Advisor(s): Kolodny, Niko;
- Buchak, Lara
Abstract
We commonly make a distinction between what we simply tend to do and what
we would have done had we undergone an ideal reasoning process - or, in other words,
what we would have done if we were perfectly rational. Formal decision theories, like
Expected Utility Theory or Risk-Weighted Expected Utility Theory, have been used
to model the considerations that govern rational behavior.
But questions arise when we try to articulate what this kind of modeling amounts
to. Firstly, it is not clear how the components of the formal model correspond to
real-world psychological or physical facts that ground judgments about what we
ought to do. Secondly, there is a great deal of debate surrounding what an accurate
model of rationality would look like. Theorists disagree about how much
flexibility a rational agent has in weighing the risk of a loss against the value of potential gains, for example.
The goal of this project is to provide an interpretation of Expected Utility Theory
whereby it explicates or represents the pressure that fundamentally governs how
human agents ought to behave. That means both articulating how the components
of the formal model correspond to real-world facts, and defending Expected Utility
Theory against alternative formal models of rationality.
Main Content
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