Dutch books and agent rationality

Theory and Decision 47 (3):247-266 (1999)
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Abstract

According to the Dutch Book Argument (DBA), if an agent's subjective probabilities fail to satisfy the axioms of the probability calculus and so make the agent vulnerable to a Dutch Book, the agent's subjective probabilities are incoherent and the agent is therefore irrational. Critics of DBA have argued, however, that probabilistic incoherence is compatible with various kinds of rationality – logico-semantic, epistemic, instrumental and prudential. In this paper, I provide an interpretation of DBA on which it is true that probabilistic incoherence entails agent irrationality. Articulating this interpretation requires the specification of some of the connections among the varieties of rationality. Once this is done, it becomes possible to vindicate a modest version of DBA

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The s-shaped utility function.R. Dacey - 2003 - Synthese 135 (2):243 - 272.

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The Foundations of Statistics.Leonard J. Savage - 1954 - Wiley Publications in Statistics.
Contemporary Theories of Knowledge.John Pollock - 1986 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 39 (1):131-140.
Decision Theory as Philosophy.Mark Kaplan - 1996 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
A Treatise on Probability.J. M. Keynes - 1989 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 40 (2):219-222.

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