29 found
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  1. Taking Risks on Behalf of Another.Johanna Thoma - 2023 - Philosophy Compass 18 (3):e12898.
    A growing number of decision theorists have, in recent years, defended the view that rationality is permissive under risk: Different rational agents may be more or less risk-averse or risk-inclined. This can result in them making different choices under risk even if they value outcomes in exactly the same way. One pressing question that arises once we grant such permissiveness is what attitude to risk we should implement when choosing on behalf of other people. Are we permitted to implement any (...)
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  2. Decision Theory.Johanna Thoma - 2019 - In Richard Pettigrew & Jonathan Weisberg (eds.), The Open Handbook of Formal Epistemology. PhilPapers Foundation. pp. 57-106.
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  3. Risk aversion and the long run.Johanna Thoma - 2018 - Ethics 129 (2):230-253.
    This article argues that Lara Buchak’s risk-weighted expected utility (REU) theory fails to offer a true alternative to expected utility theory. Under commonly held assumptions about dynamic choice and the framing of decision problems, rational agents are guided by their attitudes to temporally extended courses of action. If so, REU theory makes approximately the same recommendations as expected utility theory. Being more permissive about dynamic choice or framing, however, undermines the theory’s claim to capturing a steady choice disposition in the (...)
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  4. The Epistemic Division of Labor Revisited.Johanna Thoma - 2015 - Philosophy of Science 82 (3):454-472.
    Some scientists are happy to follow in the footsteps of others; some like to explore novel approaches. It is tempting to think that herein lies an epistemic division of labor conducive to overall scientific progress: the latter point the way to fruitful areas of research, and the former more fully explore those areas. Weisberg and Muldoon’s model, however, suggests that it would be best if all scientists explored novel approaches. I argue that this is due to implausible modeling choices, and (...)
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  5. In Defence of Revealed Preference Theory.Johanna Thoma - 2021 - Economics and Philosophy 37 (2):163-187.
    This paper defends revealed preference theory against a pervasive line of criticism, according to which revealed preference methodology relies on appealing to some mental states, in particular an agent’s beliefs, rendering the project incoherent or unmotivated. I argue that all that is established by these arguments is that revealed preference theorists must accept a limited mentalism in their account of the options an agent should be modelled as choosing between. This is consistent both with an essentially behavioural interpretation of preference (...)
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  6. Social Science, Policy and Democracy.Johanna Thoma - 2023 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 52 (1):5-41.
  7. On the possibility of an anti-paternalist behavioural welfare economics.Johanna Thoma - 2021 - Journal of Economic Methodology 28 (4):350-363.
    Behavioural economics has taught us that human agents don't always display consistent, context-independent and stable preferences in their choice behaviour. Can we nevertheless do welfare economics...
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  8. Risk writ large.Johanna Thoma & Jonathan Weisberg - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (9):2369-2384.
    Risk-weighted expected utility theory is motivated by small-world problems like the Allais paradox, but it is a grand-world theory by nature. And, at the grand-world level, its ability to handle the Allais paradox is dubious. The REU model described in Risk and Rationality turns out to be risk-seeking rather than risk-averse on one natural way of formulating the Allais gambles in the grand-world context. This result illustrates a general problem with the case for REU theory, we argue. There is a (...)
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  9.  67
    Judgementalism about normative decision theory.Johanna Thoma - 2021 - Synthese 198 (7):6767-6787.
    Judgementalism is an interpretation of normative decision theory according to which preferences are all-things-considered judgements of relative desirability, and the only attitudes that rationally constrain choice. The defence of judgementalism we find in Richard Bradley’s Decision Theory with a Human Face relies on a kind of internalism about the requirements of rationality, according to which they supervene on an agent’s mental states, and in particular those she can reason from. I argue that even if we grant such internalism, attitudes other (...)
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  10. Instrumental Rationality Without Separability.Johanna Thoma - 2018 - Erkenntnis 85 (5):1219-1240.
    This paper argues that instrumental rationality is more permissive than expected utility theory. The most compelling instrumentalist argument in favour of separability, its core requirement, is that agents with non-separable preferences end up badly off by their own lights in some dynamic choice problems. I argue that once we focus on the question of whether agents’ attitudes to uncertain prospects help define their ends in their own right, or instead only assign instrumental value in virtue of the outcomes they may (...)
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  11. Risk Imposition by Artificial Agents: The Moral Proxy Problem.Johanna Thoma - 2022 - In Silja Voeneky, Philipp Kellmeyer, Oliver Mueller & Wolfram Burgard (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Responsible Artificial Intelligence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Cambridge University Press.
    Where artificial agents are not liable to be ascribed true moral agency and responsibility in their own right, we can understand them as acting as proxies for human agents, as making decisions on their behalf. What I call the ‘Moral Proxy Problem’ arises because it is often not clear for whom a specific artificial agent is acting as a moral proxy. In particular, we need to decide whether artificial agents should be acting as proxies for low-level agents — e.g. individual (...)
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  12.  99
    Folk Psychology and the Interpretation of Decision Theory.Johanna Thoma - 2020 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 7.
    Most philosophical decision theorists and philosophers of the social sciences believe that decision theory is and should be in the business of providing folk psychological explanations of choice behaviour, and that it can only do so if we understand the preferences, utilities and probabilities that feature in decision-theoretic models as ascriptions of mental states not reducible to choice. The behavioural interpretation of preference and related concepts, still common in economics, is consequently cast as misguided. This paper argues that even those (...)
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  13.  67
    No escape from Allais: reply to Buchak.Johanna Thoma & Jonathan Weisberg - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (9):2493-2500.
    In Risk and Rationality, Lara Buchak advertised REU theory as able to recover the modal preferences in the Allais paradox. But we pointed out that REU theory only applies in the “grand world” setting, where it actually struggles with the modal Allais preferences. Buchak offers two replies. Here we enumerate technical and philosophical problems they face.
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  14. The influence of private interests on research in behavioural public policy: A system-level problem.Liam Kofi Bright, Jonathan Parry & Johanna Thoma - 2023 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 46:e150.
    Chater & Loewenstein argue that i-frame research has been coopted by private interests opposed to system-level reform, leading to ineffective interventions. They recommend that behavioural scientists refocus on system-level interventions. We suggest that the influence of private interests on research is problematic for wider normative and epistemic reasons. A system-level intervention to shield research from private influence is needed.
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  15. Advice for the Steady: Decision Theory and the Requirements of Instrumental Rationality.Johanna Thoma - 2017 - Dissertation, University of Toronto
    Standard decision theory, or rational choice theory, is often interpreted to be a theory of instrumental rationality. This dissertation argues, however, that the core requirements of orthodox decision theory cannot be defended as general requirements of instrumental rationality. Instead, I argue that these requirements can only be instrumentally justified to agents who have a desire to have choice dispositions that are stable over time and across different choice contexts. Past attempts at making instrumentalist arguments for the core requirements of decision (...)
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  16.  60
    On the Hidden Thought Experiments of Economic Theory.Johanna Thoma - 2016 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 46 (2):129-146.
    Most papers in theoretical economics contain thought experiments. They take the form of more informal bits of reasoning that precede the presentation of the formal, mathematical models these papers are known for. These thought experiments differ from the formal models in various ways. In particular, they do not invoke the same idealized assumptions about the rationality, knowledge, and preferences of agents. The presence of thought experiments in papers that present formal models, and the fact that they differ from the formal (...)
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  17. Time for Caution.Johanna Thoma - 2021 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 50 (1):50-89.
    Precautionary principles are frequently appealed to both in public policy and in discussions of individual decision-making. They prescribe omission or reduction of an activity, or taking precautionary measures whenever potential harmful effects of the activity surpass some threshold of likelihood and severity. One crucial appeal of precautionary principles has been that they seem to help guard against procrastinating on confronting certain kinds of risk. I raise a challenge for precautionary principles serving as effective action-guiding tools to guard against (policy) inaction, (...)
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  18. Bargaining and the impartiality of the social contract.Johanna Thoma - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (12):3335-3355.
    The question of what a group of rational agents would agree on were they to deliberate on how to organise society is central to all hypothetical social contract theories. If morality is to be based on a social contract, we need to know the terms of this contract. One type of social contract theory, contractarianism, aims to derive morality from rationality alone. Contractarians need to show, amongst other things, that rational and self-interested individuals would agree on an impartial division of (...)
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  19.  30
    Introduction.Richard Bradley & Johanna Thoma - 2024 - Economics and Philosophy 40 (2):468-468.
    As readers of this journal can attest to, although philosophers and economists are somewhat used to talking to and learning from each other, it tends to be the subset of philosophers working in decision theory, philosophy of science, and particular areas of ethics and political philosophy that contribute to our interdisciplinary field of research. The book that is the subject of this review symposium, Anna Mahtani’s The Objects of Credence (Oxford University Press, 2024), is a wonderful exemplar of what can (...)
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  20.  56
    Reply to Hausman.Johanna Thoma - 2024 - Economics and Philosophy 40 (1):226-227.
  21. Weighing the Costs and Benefits of Public Policy: On the Dangers of Single Metric Accounting.Johanna Thoma - 2021 - LSE Public Policy Review 2 (2).
    This article presents two related challenges to the idea that, to ensure policy evaluation is comprehensive, all costs and benefits should be aggregated into a single, equity-weighted wellbeing metric. The first is to point out how, even allowing for equity-weighting, the use of a single metric limits the extent to which we can take distributional concerns into account. The second challenge starts from the observation that in this and many other ways, aggregating diverse effects into a single metric of evaluation (...)
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  22.  37
    The dangers of single-metric accounting in public policy.Johanna Thoma - 2021 - LSE Covid-19 Blog.
  23.  35
    Can welfare economics avoid paternalism after the behavioural turn?Johanna Thoma - 2022 - LSE Business Review.
  24.  29
    How should artificial agents make risky choices on our behalf?Johanna Thoma - 2021 - LSE Philosophy Blog.
  25. (1 other version)Negotiating with myself.Johanna Thoma - 2016 - Lse Philosophy Blog.
    Can the concept of “temporal selves” help us understand temptation and restraint? Johanna Thoma on self-negotiation.
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  26.  14
    (3 other versions)Temptation and preference-based instrumental rationality.Johanna Thoma - 2018 - In José Luis Bermúdez (ed.), Self-control, decision theory and rationality. Cambridge University Press.
    In the dynamic choice literature, temptations are usually understood as temporary shifts in an agent’s preferences. What has been puzzling about these cases is that, on the one hand, an agent seems to do better by her own lights if she does not give into the temptation, and does so without engaging in costly commitment strategies. This seems to indicate that it is instrumentally irrational for her to give into temptation. On the other hand, resisting temptation also requires her to (...)
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  27.  31
    Economics Rules, Dani Rodrik, W. W. Norton & Company, 2015, xv + 253 pages. [REVIEW]Johanna Thoma - 2018 - Economics and Philosophy 34 (1):127-133.
  28. Jeroen Van Bouwel, ed. 2009. The Social Sciences and Democracy (Johanna Thoma). [REVIEW]Johanna Thoma - 2012 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 27 (2):247-251.
  29.  52
    The SAGE Handbook of the Philosophy of Social Sciences by Ian Jarvie & Jesús Zamora-Bonilla, eds. [REVIEW]Johanna Thoma - 2014 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 29 (2):311-315.