Expectational v. Instrumental Reasoning: What Statistics Contributes to Practical Reasoning

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Opublikowane: 2017-10-04
DOI: https://doi.org/10.13153/diam.53.0.1104
Słowa kluczowe:
statistics, distributions, risk, instrumental reasoning, expectational reasoning

Main Article Content

Mariam Thalos
University of Tennessee, Department of Philosophy

Abstrakt

Utility theories—both Expected Utility (EU) and non-Expected Utility (non-EU) theories—offer numericalized representations of classical principles meant for the regulation of choice under conditions of risk—a type of formal representation that reduces the representation of risk to a single number. I shall refer to these as risk-numericalizing theories of decision. I shall argue that risk--numericalizing theories (referring both to the representations and to the underlying axioms that render numericalization possible) are not satisfactory answers to the question: “How do I take the (best) means to my ends?” In other words, they are inadequate or incomplete as instrumental theories. They are inadequate because they are poor answers to the question of what it is for an option to be instrumental towards an end. To say it another way, they do not offer a sufficiently rich account of what it is for something to be a means (an instrument) toward an end.

Article Details

Numer

Nr 53 (2017)

Dział

Ethics and Uncertainty

Teksty zaproponowane do naszego czasopisma nie powinny być nigdzie publikowane przed ukazaniem się w „Diametros”. Wraz z przesłaniem swojego utworu redakcji autor akceptuje, że w momencie zakwalifikowania tekstu do publikacji czasopismo „Diametros” będzie stosowało licencję the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Na podstawie tej licencji autorzy zgadzają się, że ich prace mogą być zgodnie z prawem ponownie wykorzystywane do jakichkolwiek celów bez konieczności uzyskania uprzedniej zgody ze strony autora lub wydawcy. Każdy może prace te czytać, pobierać, kopiować, drukować, rozpowszechniać oraz przetwarzać, pod warunkiem poprawnego oznaczenia autorstwa oraz oryginalnego miejsca publikacji. Autorzy zachowują prawa autorskie do swoich utworów bez żadnych innych ograniczeń. Pełna informacja na temat licencji CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

Biogram autora

Mariam Thalos - University of Tennessee, Department of Philosophy

Mariam Thalos, Professor
Department of Philosophy
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
801 McClung Tower
Knoxville TN 37996-0480
US

E-mail: m.thalos@gmail.com

Jak cytować

„Expectational V. Instrumental Reasoning: What Statistics Contributes to Practical Reasoning”. 2017. Diametros, nr 53 (październik): 125-49. https://doi.org/10.13153/diam.53.0.1104.

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