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A Note in Defence of Ratificationism

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Abstract

Andy Egan argues that neither evidential nor causal decision theory gives the intuitively right recommendation in the cases The Smoking Lesion, The Psychopath Button, and The Three-Option Smoking Lesion. Furthermore, Egan argues that we cannot avoid these problems by any kind of ratificationism. This paper develops a new version of ratificationism that gives the right recommendations. Thus, the new proposal has an advantage over evidential and casual decision theory and standard ratificationist evidential decision theory.

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Notes

  1. Egan (2007, p. 94).

  2. Egan (2007, p. 97).

  3. See Jeffrey (1983, p. 16).

  4. Egan (2007, p. 107).

  5. Egan (2007, p. 111).

  6. Egan (2007, p. 112).

  7. Egan (20077, pp. 112–113).

  8. See Weirich (1986, pp. 444–445) and Rabinowicz (1989, pp. 633–634) for two previous weakenings of ratifiability. However, as noted by Rabinowicz, both of their proposals violate strong domination.

References

  • Egan, A. (2007). Some counterexamples to causal decision theory. The Philosophical Review, 116(1), 93–114.

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  • Jeffrey, R. C. (1983). The logic of decision (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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  • Rabinowicz, W. (1989). Stable and retrievable options. Philosophy of Science, 56(4), 624–641.

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  • Weirich, P. (1986). Decisions in dynamic settings. In PSA: Proceedings of the biennial meeting of the philosophy of science association (pp. 438–449).

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Frank Arntzenius, John Cantwell, Sven Ove Hansson, Martin Peterson, Wlodek Rabinowicz, Tor Sandqvist, and two anonymous referees for Erkenntnis.

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Correspondence to Johan E. Gustafsson.

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Gustafsson, J.E. A Note in Defence of Ratificationism. Erkenn 75, 147–150 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-010-9267-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-010-9267-6

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