Choosing for Changing Selves

What we value, like, endorse, want, and prefer changes over the course of our lives. Richard Pettigrew presents a theory of rational decision making for agents who recognise that their values will change over time and whose decisions will affect those future times.

List of contents

• Preface


• Part I: Aggregating Selves


• 1: The Problem of Choosing for Changing Selves


• 2: The Economists' Orthodoxy: Expected Utility Theory


• 3: Existing Solutions I: The Unchanging Utility Solution


• 4: Existing Solutions II: The Utility of Utility Solution


• 5: Existing Solutions III: the One True Utility Solution


• 6: The Aggregate Utility Solution I: Which Attitudes to Aggregate?


• 7: The Aggregate Utility Solution II: The Solution Itself


• 8: Can We Compare Utilities Between Different Selves?


• 9: Why Aggregate Using Weighted Averages?


• 10: Do We Know Enough to Make Decisions This Way?


• Part II: Setting the Weights


• 11: The Problem of Weighting Changing Selves


• 12: The Weight of the Past


• 13: Discounting the Future


• 14: The Nearer the Dearer


• 15: I'll be Glad I Did It--So, I'll Do It


• 16: The Road Ahead


• Bibliography

About the author

Richard Pettigrew is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bristol. He has worked in a number of areas: the philosophy of mathematics, with a particular focus on mathematical structuralism; formal epistemology, with a focus on the epistemic utility theory programme; and rational choice theory, investigating risk-sensitive decision theories and transformative choices, in particular. He is the author of Accuracy and the Laws of Credence (Oxford 2016) and the co-editor of The Bloomsbury Companion to Philosophical Logic (Bloomsbury 2014, with Leon Horsten).

Summary

What we value, like, endorse, want, and prefer changes over the course of our lives. Richard Pettigrew presents a theory of rational decision making for agents who recognise that their values will change over time and whose decisions will affect those future times.

Product details

• Authors: Richard Pettigrew, Richard (Department of Philosophy Pettigrew, Pettigrew Richard
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.12.2019
• EAN: 9780198814962
• ISBN: 978-0-19-881496-2
• No. of pages: 268
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Philosophy > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Philosophy: general, reference works; PSYCHOLOGY / General, PHILOSOPHY / Epistemology, PHILOSOPHY / Ethics & Moral Philosophy, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economics / Theory, Psychology, Economic theory & philosophy, Ethics & moral philosophy, Ethics and moral philosophy, Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge, Philosophy: epistemology and theory of knowledge, Economic theory and philosophy