A central question in many debates on paternalism is whether a decision analyst can ever go against the stated preference of a client, even if merely intending to improve the decisions for the client. Using four gedanken-experiments, this paper shows that this central question, so cleverly and aptly avoided by libertarian paternalism (nudge), cannot always be avoided. The four thought experiments, while purely hypothetical, serve to raise and specify the critical arguments in a maximally clear and pure manner. The first (...) purpose of the paper is, accordingly, to provide a litmus test on the readers’ stance on paternalism. We thus also survey and organize the various stances in the literature. The secondary purpose of this paper is to argue that paternalism cannot always be avoided and consumer sovereignty cannot always be respected. However, this argument will remain controversial. (shrink)

Peter Baumann uses the Monty Hall game to demonstrate that probabilities cannot be meaningfully applied to individual games. Baumann draws from this first conclusion a second: in a single game, it is not necessarily rational to switch from the door that I have initially chosen to the door that Monty Hall did not open. After challenging Baumann's particular arguments for these conclusions, I argue that there is a deeper problem with his position: it rests on the false assumption that what (...) justifies the switching strategy is its leading me to win a greater percentage of the time. In fact, what justifies the switching strategy is not any statistical result over the long run but rather the "causal structure" intrinsic to each individual game itself. Finally, I argue that an argument by Hilary Putnam will not help to save Baumann's second conclusion above. (shrink)

David Lewis'sPrincipal Principle states that our credence in a single case follows from the general probability of all such cases. Against this stands the Challenge Argument – to show that the inference is justified. Recent law-to-chance, Bayesian, and propensity theories of probability take up the challenge – but, I argue, fall short. Rather, we should understand propensity via Aristotle's analysis of spontaneity and probabilistic reasoning via theAnti-PPand the practice ofbundling one offs, where forced bad-odds one offsilluminate how extensive a role (...) luck plays in our lives. (shrink)

In Baumann (American Philosophical Quarterly 42: 71–79, 2005) I argued that reflections on a variation of the Monty Hall problem throws a very general skeptical light on the idea of single-case probabilities. Levy (Synthese, forthcoming, 2007) puts forward some interesting objections which I answer here.

The Monty-Hall Problem ($MHP$) has been used to argue against a subjectivist view of Bayesianism in two ways. First, psychologists have used it to illustrate that people do not revise their degrees of belief in line with experimenters' application of Bayes' rule. Second, philosophers view $MHP$ and its two-player extension ($MHP2$) as evidence that probabilities cannot be applied to single cases. Both arguments neglect the Bayesian standpoint, which requires that $MHP2$ (studied here) be described in different terms than usually applied (...) and that the initial set of possibilities be stable (i.e., a focusing situation). This article corrects these errors and reasserts the Bayesian standpoint; namely, that the subjective probability of an event is always conditional on a belief reviser's specific current state of knowledge. (shrink)

Starting from the sixties of the past century theory change has become a main concern of philosophy of science. Two of the best known formal accounts of theory change are the post-Popperian theories of verisimilitude (PPV for short) and the AGM theory of belief change (AGM for short). In this paper, we will investigate the conceptual relations between PPV and AGM and, in particular, we will ask whether the AGM rules for theory change are effective means for approaching the truth, (...) i.e., for achieving the cognitive aim of science pointed out by PPV. First, the key ideas of PPV and AGM and their application to a particular kind of propositional theories - the so called "conjunctive propositions" - will be illustrated. Afterwards, we will prove that, as far as conjunctive propositions are concerned, AGM belief change is an effective tool for approaching the truth. (shrink)