Wilde heuristics and Rum Tum Tuggers: preference indeterminacy and instability
Synthese 189 (S1):5-15 (2012)
| Abstract | Models in decision theory and game theory assume that preferences are determinate: for any pair of possible outcomes, a and b, an agent either prefers a to b, prefers b to a, or is indifferent as between a and b. Preferences are also assumed to be stable: provided the agent is fully informed, trivial situational influences will not shift the order of her preferences. Research by behavioral economists suggests, however, that economic and hedonic preferences are to some degree indeterminate and unstable, which in turn suggests that other sorts of preferences may suffer the same problem. Even fully informed agents do not always determinately prefer a to b, prefer b to a, or feel indifferent as between a and b. Seemingly trivial situational influences rearrange the order of their preferences. One could respond that decision theory and game theory are not meant to describe actual behavior, and that they instead adumbrate an ideal of rationality from which human action diverges in various ways. When the divergences are small and systematic, they help us identify the heuristics that conspire to help people approximate rationality. One such heuristic, dubbed the Wilde heuristic, is explored. However, the divergences documented by behavioral economists threaten to be too large to handle through idealization. The Rum Tum Tugger Model, in which indifference is intransitive, is spelled out as one promising way for decision and game theory to retrench. Preferences may be locally unstable and indeterminate, but when the differences between options are sufficiently large, they approximate stability and determinacy | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,701 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesDonald Bruckner (2011). Second-Order Preferences and Instrumental Rationality. Acta Analytica 26 (4):367-385.
Margaret P. Gilbert (2001). Collective Preferences, Obligations, and Rational Choice. Economics and Philosophy 17 (1):109-119.
Martin Peterson (2006). Indeterminate Preferences. Philosophical Studies 130 (2):297-320.
Duncan Macintosh (1991). Co-Operative Solutions to the Prisoner's Dilemma. Philosophical Studies 64 (3):309 - 321.
Donald W. Bruckner (2009). In Defense of Adaptive Preferences. Philosophical Studies 142 (3):307 - 324.
Andrew M. Colman (2007). Love is Not Enough: Other-Regarding Preferences Cannot Explain Payoff Dominance in Game Theory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30 (1):22-23.
Wynn C. Stirling (2002). Games Machines Play. Minds and Machines 12 (3):327-352.
Alex Voorhoeve (2008). Heuristics and Biases in a Purported Counter-Example to the Acyclicity of 'Better Than'. Politics, Philosophy and Economics 7 (3):285-299.
Isabelle Brocas (2011). Dynamic Inconsistency and Choice. Theory and Decision 71 (3):343-364.
Elizabeth Anderson (2001). Symposium on Amartya Sen's Philosophy: 2 Unstrapping the Straitjacket of ‘Preference’: A Comment on Amartya Sen's Contributions to Philosophy and Economics. Economics and Philosophy 17 (1):21-38.
J. David Velleman (1993). The Story of Rational Action. Philosophical Topics 21 (1):229-254.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2012-06-02Total downloads18 ( #67,593 of 549,113 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,361 of 549,113 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
