![]() ) on how the members of that population are designated. I have argued elsewhere :303-323 2017) that the concept of ex ante Pareto superiority is not well defined, because its application in a choice situation concerning a fixed population can depend (. But this principle faces a serious problem. ![]() ![]() The principle has been used to criticize and refine a range of positions in welfare economics, including egalitarianism and prioritarianism. The ex ante Pareto principle has an intuitive pull, and it has been a principle of central importance since Harsanyi’s defence of utilitarianism. We argue that both of these approaches are well-motivated and can be readily incorporated into Lewisian Causal Decision Theory. We provide two ways of avoiding this problem: 1) supplement the standard semantics for counterfactuals with impossible worlds, or 2) introduce rigid designators into the description of problematic decision situations. The truth of deterministic laws is `modally fragile' on the standard semantics for counterfactuals: if determinism is true and you were to do otherwise, the laws would be different. Our response is that this is not a problem for Causal Decision Theory per se, but arises because of the standard method for assessing the truth of (. Causal Decision Theory, as it stands, is problematically biased against your endorsing deterministic propositions (for example it tells you to deny Newtonian physics, regardless of how confident you are of its truth). In this paper we discuss how Causal Decision Theory should be modified to handle a class of problematic cases involving deterministic laws.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |