Believing and Acting: Voluntary Control and the Pragmatic Theory of Belief

I argue that a attractive theory about the metaphysics of belief—the prag- matic, interpretationist theory endorsed by Stalnaker, Lewis, and Dennett, among others—implies that agents have a novel form of voluntary control over their beliefs. According to the pragmatic picture, what it is to have a given belief is in part for that belief to be part of an optimal rationalization of your actions. Since you have voluntary control over your actions, and what actions you perform in part determines what beliefs you count as having, this theory entails that you have some voluntary control over your beliefs. However, the pragmatic picture doesn’t entail that you can believe something as a result of intention to believe it. Nevertheless, I argue that the limited sort of voluntary control implied by the pragmatic picture may be of use in vindicating the deontological conception of epistemic justification

Self-Reinforcing and Self-Frustrating Decisions

There is a sense of the term ‘ought’ according to which what a person ought to do depends not on how the world is, but on how the person believes the world to be. Philosophers typically isolate this as their intended sense of the term by talking of what people ‘subjectively ought’ to do. Suppose, for example, that you are offered hors d'oeuvres at a fancy party. They look delicious, you are hungry, and you wish to please your host. However, unbeknownst to you, they are riddled with a lethal strain of botulism. A philosopher may say that, in light of your beliefs, you subjectively ought to eat the hors d'oeuvres, though the consequences of your doing so will be disastrous. Our focus here will be on theories of the subjective ought that imply Decision Dependence In some cases what you subjectively ought to do at a certain time depends on what you believe you will do at that time

Uniqueness and Metaepistemology

We defend Uniqueness, the claim that given a body of total evidence, there is a uniquely rational doxastic state that it is rational for one to be in. Epistemic rationality doesn't give you any leeway in forming your beliefs. To this end, we bring in two metaepistemological pictures about the roles played by rational evaluations. Rational evaluative terms serve to guide our practices of deference to the opinions of others, and also to help us formulate contingency plans about what to believe in various situations. We argue that Uniqueness vindicates these two roles for rational evaluations, while Permissivism clashes with them

Multidimensional adjectives

Multidimensional adjectives are ubiquitous in natural language. An adjective F is multidimensional just in case whether F applies to an object or pair of objects depends on how those objects stand with respect to multiple underlying dimensions of F-ness. Developing a semantics for multidimensional adjectives requires us to address the problem of dimensional aggregation: how do the application conditions of an adjective F in its positive and comparative forms depend on its underlying dimensions? Here we develop a semantics for multidimensional adjectives that incorporates aggregation functions. We then explore an analogy between dimensional aggregation and preference aggregation, bringing results from social choice theory to bear on the number and kind of aggregation functions which are admissible in a context. These results suggest that, for any given adjective, there will often be multiple aggregation functions admissible, meaning that multidimensional comparatives are often vague.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Does MITE Make Right?: On Decision-Making under Normative Uncertainty

We typically have to act under uncertainty. We can be uncertain about the relevant descriptive facts, but also about the relevant normative facts. However, the search for a theory of decision-making under normative uncertainty is doomed to failure. First, the most natural proposal for what to do given normative uncertainty faces two devastating problems. Second, the motivations for wanting a theory of what to do given descriptive uncertainty do not carry over to normative uncertainty. Descriptive facts may be inaccessible even in principle, and ignorance of them excuses one from blame, but normative facts are in principle accessible, and ignorance of them arguably is no excuse. Normative facts differ from descriptive facts: normative facts affect what we ought to do no matter what, while descriptive facts affect what we ought to do only insofar as we are aware of them

On statistical criteria of algorithmic fairness

Predictive algorithms are playing an increasingly prominent role in society, being used to predict recidivism, loan repayment, job performance, and so on. With this increasing influence has come an increasing concern with the ways in which they might be unfair or biased against individuals in virtue of their race, gender, or, more generally, their group membership. Many purported criteria of algorithmic fairness concern statistical relationships between the algorithm’s predictions and the actual outcomes, for instance requiring that the rate of false positives be equal across the relevant groups. We might seek to ensure that algorithms satisfy all of these purported fairness criteria. But a series of impossibility results shows that this is impossible, unless base rates are equal across the relevant groups. What are we to make of these pessimistic results? I argue that none of the purported criteria, except for a calibration criterion, are necessary conditions for fairness, on the grounds that they can all be simultaneously violated by a manifestly fair and uniquely optimal predictive algorithm, even when base rates are equal. I conclude with some general reflections on algorithmic fairness

Consistency in choice and credence

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2012."September 2012." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 75-78).This thesis concerns epistemic and practical rationality. That is, it is about what to believe and what to do. In Chapter 1, 1 argue that theories of practical rationality should be understood as evaluating decisions as opposed to ordinary sorts of non-mental actions. In Chapter 2, I use the machinery developed in Chapter 1 to rebut 'Money Pump' or 'Diachronic Dutch Book' arguments, which draw conclusions about rational beliefs and preferences from premises about how rational agents will behave over time. In Chapter 3, I develop a new objection to the Synchronic Dutch Book Argument, which concludes that rational agents must have probabilistic degrees of belief in order to avoid predictable exploitation in betting scenarios.by Brian Hedden.Ph.D

Counterfactual Decision Theory

I defend counterfactual decision theory, which says that you should evaluate an action in terms of which outcomes would likely obtain, were you to perform it. Counterfactual decision theory has traditionally been subsumed under causal decision theory as a particular formulation of the latter. This is a mistake. Counterfactual decision theory is importantly different from, and superior to, causal decision theory, properly so-called. Causation and counterfactuals come apart in three kinds of cases. In cases of overdetermination, an action can cause a good outcome without the latter counterfactually depending on the former. In cases of constitution, an action can constitute a good outcome rather than causing it. And in cases of determinism, either the laws or the past counterfactually depend on your action, even though your action cannot cause the laws or the past to be different. In each of these cases, it is counterfactual decision theory which gives the right verdict, and for the right reasons