In this paper we distinguish between various kinds of doxastic theories. One distinction is between informal and formal doxastic theories. AGM-type theories of belief change are of the former kind, while Hintikka’s logic of knowledge and belief is of the latter. Then we distinguish between static theories that study the unchanging beliefs of a certain agent and dynamic theories that investigate not only the constraints that can reasonably be imposed on the doxastic states of a rational agent but also rationality (...) constraints on the changes of doxastic state that may occur in such agents. An additional distinction is that between non-introspective theories and introspective ones. Non-introspective theories investigate agents that have opinions about the external world but no higher-order opinions about their own doxasticnstates. Standard AGM-type theories as well as the currently existing versions of Segerberg’s dynamic doxastic logic (DDL) are non-introspective. Hintikka-style doxastic logic is of course introspective but it is a static theory. Thus, the challenge remains to devise doxastic theories that are both dynamic and introspective. We outline the semantics for truly introspective dynamic doxastic logic, i.e., a dynamic doxastic logic that allows us to describe agents who have both the ability to form higher-order beliefs and to reflect upon and change their minds about their own (higher-order) beliefs. This extension of DDL demands that we give up the Preservation condition on revision. We make some suggestions as to how such a non-preservative revision operation can be constructed. We also consider extending DDL with conditionals satisfying the Ramsey test and show that Gärdenfors’ well-known impossibility result applies to such a framework. Also in this case, Preservation has to be given up. (shrink)

Invited Critical Précis of Mark Schroeder’s “The Ubiquity of State-Given Reasons”.

An agent whose preferences violate the Independence Axiom or for some other reason are not representable by an expected utility function, can avoid 'dynamic inconsistency' either by foresight ('sophisticated choice') or by subsequent adjustment of preferences to the chosen plan of action ('resolute choice'). Contrary to McClennen and Machina, among others, it is argued these two seemingly conflicting approaches to 'dynamic rationality' need not be incompatible. 'Wise choice' reconciles foresight with a possibility of preference adjustment by rejecting the two assumptions (...) that create the conflict: Separability of Preferences in the case of sophisticated choice and Reduction to Normal form in the case of resolute choice.. (shrink)

The ‘buck-passing’ account equates the value of an object with the existence of reasons to favour it. As we argued in an earlier paper, this analysis faces the ‘wrong kind of reasons’ problem: there may be reasons for pro-attitudes towards worthless objects, in particular if it is the pro-attitudes, rather than their objects, that are valuable. Jonas Olson has recently suggested how to resolve this difficulty: a reason to favour an object is of the right kind only if its formulation (...) does not involve any reference to the attitudes for which it provides a reason. We argue that despite its merits, Olson's solution is unsatisfactory. We go on to suggest that the buck-passing account might be acceptable even if the problem in question turns out to be insoluble. (shrink)

The Interpersonal Addition Theorem, due to John Broome, states that, given certain seemingly innocuous assumptions, the overall utility of an uncertain prospect can be represented as the sum of its individual utilities. Given ‘Bernoulli's hypothesis’ according to which individual utility coincides with individual welfare, this result appears to be incompatible with the Priority View. On that view, due to Derek Parfit, the benefits to the worse off should count for more, in the overall evaluation, than the comparable benefits to the (...) better off. Pace Broome, the paper argues that prioritarians should meet this challenge not by denying Bernoulli's hypothesis, but by rejecting one of the basic assumptions behind the addition theorem: that a prospect is better overall if it is better for everyone. This conclusion follows if one interprets the priority weights that are imposed by prioritarians as relevant only to moral, but not to prudential, evaluations of prospects. (shrink)

In Rabinowicz (2008), I considered how value relations can best be analysed in terms of fitting pro-attitudes. In the formal model of that paper, fitting pro-attitudes are represented by the class of permissible preference orderings on a domain of items that are being compared. As it turns out, this approach opens up for a multiplicity of different types of value relationships, along with the standard relations of ‘better’, ‘worse’, ‘equally as good as’ and ‘incomparable in value’. Unfortunately, the approach (...) is vulnerable to a number of objections. I believe these objections can be avoided if one re-interprets the underlying notion of preference: instead of treating preference as a ‘dyadic’ attitude directed towards a pair of items, we can think of it as a difference of degree between ‘monadic’ attitudes of favouring. Each such monadic attitude has just one item as its object. Given this re-interpretation, permissible preferences can be modelled by the class of permissible assignments of degrees of favouring to items in the domain. From this construction, we can then recover the old modelling in terms of the class of permissible preference orderings, but the previous objections to that model no longer apply. (shrink)

In “Weighing Lives” (2004) John Broome criticizes a view common to many population axiologists. On that view, population increases with extra people leading decent lives are axiologically neutral: they make the world neither better nor worse, ceteris paribus. Broome argues that this intuition, however, attractive, cannot be sustained, for several independent reasons. I respond to his criticisms and suggest that the neutrality intuition, if correctly interpreted, can after all be defended.On the version I defend,the world with added extra people at (...) wellbeing levels within the neutrality range is incommensurable in value with the world in which these peaople are absent. (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)

In Rabinowicz 2008, I considered how value relations can best be analyzed in terms of fitting pro-­‐attitudes. In the formal model presented in that paper fitting pro-­‐attitudes are represented by the class of permissible preference orderings on a domain of items that are being compared. As it turns out, this approach opens up for a multiplicity of different types of value relationships, along with the standard relations of "better", "worse", "equally as good as" and "incomparable in value". Unfortunately, though, (...) the approach is vulnerable to a number of objections. I believe these objections can be avoided if one re-interprets the underlying notion of preference: Instead of treating preference as a 'dyadic' attitude directed towards a pair of items, we can think of it as a difference of degree between 'monadic' attitudes of favouring. Each such monadic attitude has just one item as its object. Given this re-interpretation, permissible preferences can be modelled by the class of permissible assignments of degrees of favouring to items in the domain. From this construction, we can then recover the old modelling in terms of the class of permissible preference orderings, but the previous objections to that model no longer apply. Thus, what we get is the old wine in new and hopefully tighter barrels. (shrink)

Two objects of valuation are said to be incommensurable if neither is better than the other, nor are they equally good. This negative, coarse-grained characterization fails to capture the nuanced structure of incommensurability. We argue that our evaluative resources are far richer than orthodoxy recognizes. We model value comparisons with the corresponding class of permissible preference orderings. Then, making use of our model, we introduce a potentially infinite set of degrees of approximation to better, worse, and equally good, which we (...) interpret as degrees of commensurability.One payoff is the solution our approach provides to a paradox in population ethics, generated by Parfit's “Continuum Argument”. Parfit imagines a sequence of populations, starting with one consisting of excellent lives and, by a sequence of apparent improvements, reaching a much larger population of lives barely worth living. What he dubs “the Repugnant Conclusion” is that the final population is better than the first. Developing Parfit's response, we argue that some of the populations in the sequence are merely almost better than their immediate predecessors. Almost better is not transitive (unlike better). We offer analogies to other ‘spectrum arguments’, Condorcet's paradox, and to developments in formal epistemology. (shrink)

The paper presents and discusses the so-called Wrong Kind of Reasons Problem (WKR problem) that arises for the fitting-attitudes analysis of value. This format of analysis is exemplified for example by Scanlon's buck-passing account, on which an object's value consists in the existence of reasons to favour the object- to respond to it in a positive way. The WKR problem can be put as follows: It appears that in some situations we might well have reasons to have pro-attitudes toward objects (...) that are not valuable. Or vice versa: we might have reasons not to have pro-attitudes toward some valuable objects. The paper goes through several attempts to solve (or dissolve) the WKR problem and argues that none of them is fully satisfactory. (shrink)

In 2014, Christian List and I published a paper that delineated our view regarding what it takes for an agent to act freely. We suggested that this requires the action to be endorsed by the agent and caused by this endorsement and yet not be necessitated. Free action requires indeterminism at the agential level—the kind of indeterminism that is compatible with physical determinism. I still think that our proposal was on the right track, but I believe it needs elaboration. As (...) we already noted in the paper, our formal modelling—a standard branching model—was too extensional, and therefore in need of revision. Also, on a substantive side, what we say about the causal component of our proposal does not quite take care of the danger of ‘flukishness’ of an undetermined action. It was this threat to agential control that the requirement of causation by endorsement was meant to disarm in the first place. But the threat still remains and needs to be confronted. Revising the formal model and finding a solution to the problem of flukishness are my two objectives in this paper. (shrink)

Presumption of Equality requires that individuals be treated equally in the absence of relevant information that would discriminate between them. Our objective is to make this principle more precise, if viewed as a principle of fairness, and to determine why and under what conditions it should be obeyed. Presumption norms are procedural constraints, but their justification can be sought in the possible or expected outcomes of the procedures they regulate. This is the avenue pursued here. The suggestion is that in (...) the absence of information that would discriminate between the individuals, equal treatment minimizes the expected unfairness of the outcome. A related suggestion is that equal treatment under these circumstances also minimizes the maximal possible unfairness of the outcome. Whether these suggestions are correct or not depends on the properties of the underlying unfairness measure. The required properties are specified. The essay also considers the normative status of equal lotteries on unequal treatments. (shrink)

My focus is on pragmatic arguments for various rationality constraints on a decision maker’s state of mind: on his beliefs or preferences. An argument of this kind purports to show that a violator of a given constraint can be exposed to a decision problem in which she will act to her guaranteed disadvantage. Dramatically put, she can be exploited by a clever bookie who doesn’t know more than the agent himself. Examples of pragmatic arguments of this kind are synchronic Dutch (...) Books, for the standard probability axioms, diachronic Dutch Books, for the more controversial principles of reflection and conditionalization, and Money Pumps, for the transitivity requirement on preferences. It is suggested that the proposed exploitation set-ups share a common feature. If the violator of a given constraint is logically and mathematically competent, she can be exploited only if she is disunified in his decision-making, i.e., only if she makes decisions on various issues she confronts separately rather than jointly. In other words, exploitation is possible only if the decision problem has been framed in a certain way. Unification in decision making is relatively unproblematic in synchronic contexts, but it may be quite costly and inconvenient diachronically, especially when the issues under consideration are widely spread over time. On my view, therefore, pragmatic arguments should be seen as delivering conditional recommendations: If you want to afford disunification, then you’d better satisfy these constraints. The arguments of this kind fail to establish the inherent rationality of the constraints under consideration. Isaac Levis view of the status of pragmatic arguments is diametrically opposed to mine. According to him, only synchronic pragmatic arguments are valid. The diachronic ones, he argues, lack any validity at all. This line of reasoning is questioned in my paper. (shrink)

Discussions about values are common in many contexts. Often, what is debated is the choice of means to realize or protect various values, but sometimes the discussion concerns the very values that ought to be realized or protected. Philosophical debate in this area has mainly been focused on two kinds of issues. Philosophers have tried to identify the set of fundamental values, i.e., to provide what might be called a substantive axiology, but they have also aimed to clarify the general (...) conceptual framework for our thinking about values. This latter area can in turn be subdivided into two interrelated but relatively independent fields of research. In one, we find theories about the meaning, the evidential grounds and the truth status of value statements, along with analyses of the alleged motivational pull of value judgments. In the other research field, which may be called formal axiology, the focus is on the structural features of our value notions: on the logic of value, on the conceptual distinctions and connections between different value types, on the relationships between value concepts and normative notions, etc. While this volume concentrates on formal axiology, it also makes some forays into other fields of value research. The papers appearing in the collection are, for the most part, preliminary reports. Their final versions may later be published in regular journals or books. (shrink)

My focus is on pragmatic arguments for various ‘rationality constraints’ on a decision maker’s state of mind: on his beliefs or preferences. An argument of this kind purports to show that a violator of a given constraint can be exposed to a decision problem in which he will act to his guaranteed disadvantage. Dramatically put, he can be exploited by a clever bookie who doesn’t know more than the agent himself. Examples of pragmatic arguments of this kind are synchronic Dutch (...) Books, for the standard probability axioms, diachronic Dutch Books, for the more controversial principles of reflection and conditionalization, and Money Pumps, for the transitivity requirement on preferences. The proposed exploitation set-ups share a common feature. If the violator of a given constraint is logically and mathematically competent, he can be exploited only if he is disunified in his decision-making. Exploitation is possible only if the agent makes decisions on various issues he confronts one by one, rather than on all of them together. Unity in decision making may be quite costly and is often inconvenient, especially when it concerns opportunity packages that are spread over time. On my view, therefore, pragmatic arguments should be seen as delivering conditional conclusions: “If you want to afford being disunified as a decision maker, then you’d better satisfy these constraints.” The arguments of this kind fail to establish the inherent rationality of the constraints under consideration. Levi’s view of the status of pragmatic arguments is opposed to mine. According to him, only synchronic pragmatic arguments are valid. The diachronic ones, he argues, lack any validity at all. This line of reasoning is questioned in my paper. (shrink)

in Undetermined On an influential interpretation, the agent's degrees of belief asr identified with her betting rates. However, being placed in a betting situation can itself change one’s degree of belief in the proposition in question. The problem as such isn’t new. Ramsey, for example, was right on to this idea when he wrote: "… the proposal of a bet may inevitably alter [one’s] state of opinion; just as we could not always measure electric intensity by actually introducing a charge (...) and seeing what force it was subject to, because the introduction of the charge would change the distribution to be measured." This ‘interference problem’ for the betting interpretation can best be put in the following way: The bets we are disposed to accept do not manifest our current unconditional degrees of belief in various propositions. Whether a bet on A would be accepted or not does not depend on the agent’s degree of belief in A but rather on the degree of belief she would have if she were confronted with this bet proposal, or – more generally – the degree of belief she would have if she were in a position to bet on A. Assuming the conditionalization model for belief change, this means that whether the agent would be willing to bet depends on her current conditional beliefs concerning A on the hypothetical supposition that she has an opportunity to make this bet. Furthermore, her disposition to bet also depends on the expected effects the act of betting would have on the truth of the proposition to be betted on. Both these phenomena imply that finding oneself in a betting situation might alter one’s expectations in important ways. Consequently, the identification of degrees of belief with betting rates is a mistake. We show that this problem comes up in several different versions, or – equivalently – that different kinds of arguments against the betting interpretation stem from the same source. (shrink)

Gert (2004) has suggested that several different types of value relations, including parity, can be clearly distinguished from each other if one interprets value comparisons as normative assessments of preference, while allowing for two levels of normativity - requirement and permission. While this basic idea is attractive, the particular modeling Gert makes use of is flawed. This paper presents an alternative modeling, developed in Rabinowicz (2008), and a general taxonomy of binary value relations. Another version of value analysis is (...) then brought in, which appeals to appropriate emotions rather than preferences. It is also shown what the modeling of value relations would look like from such an emotion-centered perspective. The preference-based and the emotion-based approaches differ importantly from each other, but they give rise to isomorphic taxonomies. (shrink)

The paper argues that the final value of an object-i.e., its value for its own sake-need not be intrinsic. Extrinsic final value, which accrues to things (or persons) in virtue of their relational rather than internal features, cannot be traced back to the intrinsic value of states that involve these things together with their relations. On the contrary, such states, insofar as they are valuable at all, derive their value from the things involved. The endeavour to reduce thing-values to state-values (...) is largely motivated by a mistaken belief that appropriate responses to value must consist in preferring and/or promoting. A pluralist approach to value analysis obviates the need for reduction: the final value of a thing or person can be given an independent interpretation in terms of the appropriate thing- or person-oriented responses: admiration, love, respect, protection, care, cherishing, etc. (shrink)

According to an influential tradition in value analysis, to be valuable is to be a fitting object of a pro-attitude – a fitting object of favoring. If it is fitting to favor an object for its own sake, then, in this view, the object has final value. If it is fitting to favor an object for the sake of its effects, then its value is instrumental. Disvalue is connected in the analogous way to disfavoring, i.e., to con-attitudes. For a history (...) of this fitting-attitudes analysis, or FA-analysis for short, see the following text. The label itself was coined rather recently, though, in Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen. (shrink)

This paper takes its departure from the Interpersonal Addition Theorem. The theorem, by John Broome, is a re-formulation of the classical result by Harsanyi. It implies that, given some seemingly mild assumptions, the overall utility of an uncertain prospect can be seen as the sum of its individual utilities. In sections 1 and 2, I discuss the theorem’s connection with utilitarianism and in particular the extent to which this theorem still leaves room for the Priority View. According to the latter, (...) the utilitarian approach needs to be modified: Benefits to the worse off should count for more, overall, than the comparable benefits to the better off.Broome and Jensen have argued that the Priority View cannot be seen as a plausible competitor to utilitarianism: Given the addition theorem, prioritarianism should be rejected for measurement-theoretical reasons. I suggest that this difficulty is spurious: The proponents of the Priority View would be well advised, on independent grounds, to reject one of the basic assumptions on which the addition theorem is based, the so-called Principle of Personal Good for uncertain prospects.According to the Principle of Personal Good, one prospect is better than another if it is better for everyone or at least better for some and worse for none. That the Priority View, as I read it, rejects this welfarist intuition may be surprising. Isn’t welfarism a common ground for prioritarians and utilitarians? Still, as I argue, this welfarist common ground is better captured by a restricted Principle of Personal Good that is valid for *outcomes*, but not necessarily for uncertain prospects. We obtain this surprising result if we take the priority weights imposed by prioritarians to be relevant only to *moral*, but not to *prudential*, evaluations of prospects. This makes it possible for a prospect to be morally better even though it is worse for everyone concerned. The proposed interpretation of the Priority View thus drives a sharp wedge between prudence and morality. (shrink)

Suppose one sets up a sequence of less-and-less valuable objects such that each object in the sequence is only marginally worse than its immediate predecessor. Could one in this way arrive at something that is dramatically inferior to the point of departure? It has been claimed that if there is a radical value difference between the objects at each end of the sequence, then at some point there must be a corresponding radical difference between the adjacent elements. The underlying picture (...) seems to be that a radical gap cannot be scaled by a series of steps, if none of the steps itself is radical. We show that this picture is incorrect on a stronger interpretation of value superiority, but correct on a weaker one. Thus, the conclusion we reach is that, in some sense at least, abrupt breaks in such decreasing sequences cannot be avoided, but that such unavoidable breaks are less drastic than it has been suggested. (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)

Can it be better or worse for a person to exist than not to exist at all? This old and challenging existential question has been raised anew in contemporary moral philosophy, mainly for two reasons. First, traditional “impersonal” ethical theories, such as utilitarianism, have counterintuitive implications in population ethics, for example, the repugnant conclusion. Second, it has seemed evident to many that an outcome can be better than another only if it is better for someone, and that only moral theories (...) that are in this sense “person affecting” can be correct. The implications of this Person-Affecting Restriction will differ radically, however, depending on which answer one gives to the existential question. The negative answer, which we argue against, would make the restriction quite untenable. Hence, many of the problems regarding our moral duties to future generations turn around the issue at hand. (shrink)

Authorized Polish translation of Rabinowicz, Wlodek "Preference utilitarianism by way of preference change?" In: Grüne-Yanoff, Till and Hansson, Sven Ove, 'Preference change: approaches from philosophy, economics and psychology.' Theory and decision library A. Springer, Dordrecht, Netherlands, pp. 185-206. ISBN 9789048125920. Translated by Krzysztof Saja.

It has long been common to identify an agent’s degrees of belief with her betting rates. Here is this betting interpretation in a nutshell: A bet on a proposition A with price C and a non-zero stake S is said to be fair for an agent iff the latter is willing to take each side of the bet, to buy the bet as to sell it. Assuming that such a bet on A exists and that the C/S ratio is constant (...) for different fair bets on A, this ratio is the agent’s betting rate for A. (shrink)

Jan Österberg (Self and Others, 1988) argues that the most defensible form of egoism should not only tell each of us what to do but also tell us what we ought to do. He also claims that collective norms should take precedence over individual ones. An individual ought to do one's part in an action pattern that is prescribed for the group - provided that other members of the group do their part. question This paper questions Österberg's claim that Collective (...) Egoism, unlike other forms of egoism, avoids violations of the principles which he takes to be analytical adequacy criteria for ethical theories: the principles of "deontic consequence" and "joint satisfiability". Furthermore, it questions his argument that Collective Egoism yields the "right" prescriptions in its main test-case: Prisoners' Dilemma. The improved version of Collective Egoism is able to deal with the two-person Prisoners' Dilemma, but it still misbehaves when we move to the many-persons cases. A certain type of "free rider"-problems proves to be especially troublesome. (shrink)

Discussions about values are common in many contexts. Often, what is debated is the choice of means to realize or protect various values, but sometimes the discussion concerns the very values that ought to be realized or protected. Philosophical debate in this area has mainly been focused on two kinds of issues. Philosophers have tried to identify the set of fundamental values, i.e., to provide what might be called a substantive axiology, but they have also aimed to clarify the general (...) conceptual framework for our thinking about values. This latter area can in turn be subdivided into two interrelated but relatively independent fields of research. In one, we find theories about the meaning, the evidential grounds and the truth status of value statements, along with analyses of the alleged motivational pull of value judgments. In the other research field, which may be called formal axiology, the focus is on the structural features of our value notions: on the logic of value, on the conceptual distinctions and connections between different value types, on the relationships between value concepts and normative notions, etc. While this volume concentrates on formal axiology, it also makes some forays into other fields of value research. The papers appearing in the collection are, for the most part, preliminary reports. Their final versions may later be published in regular journals or books. (shrink)

What distinguishes preference utilitarianism from other utilitarian positions is the axiological component: the view concerning what is intrinsically valuable. According to PU, intrinsic value is based on preferences. Intrinsically valuable states are connected to our preferences being satisfied.

The paper argues that the final value of an object, i.e., its value for its own sake, need not be intrinsic. It need not supervene on the object’s internal properties. Extrinsic final value, which accrues to things in virtue of their relational features, cannot be traced back to the intrinsic value of states that involve these things together with their relations. On the opposite, such states, insofar as they are valuable at all, derive their value from the things involved. The (...) endeavour to reduce thing-values to state-values is largely motivated by a mistaken belief that appropriate responses to value must consist in preferring and/or promoting. A pluralist approach to value analysis obviates the need for reduction: the final value of a thing or a person can be given an independent interpretation in terms of the appropriate thing- or person-oriented responses: admiration, love, respect, protection, cherishing, etc. (shrink)

Abstract: The paper provides a general account of value relations. It takes its departure in a special type of value relation, parity, which according to Ruth Chang is a form of evaluative comparability that differs from the three standard forms of comparability: betterness, worseness and equal goodness. Recently, Joshua Gert has suggested that the notion of parity can be accounted for if value comparisons are interpreted as normative assessments of preference. While Gert's basic idea is attractive, the way he develops (...) it is flawed: His modeling of values by intervals of permissible preference strengths is inadequate. Instead, I provide an alternative modeling in terms of intersections of rationally permissible preference orderings. This yields a general taxonomy of all binary value relations. The paper concludes with some implications of this approach for rational choice. (shrink)