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Metatickles and Ratificationism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

Jordan Howard Sobel
Jordan Howard Sobel*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

Responses to Newcomb-like challenges to evidential decision theories such as Jeffrey’s “logic of decision” range from allegations of incoherence and irrelevance; through stonewalling - “Just one box for me, thank you.“; to arguments that maintain that when properly applied by an ideal agent such theories get the right answers and, for example, prescribe the taking of both boxes, not just one; on to conservative revisions of evidential decision theories that are held to get these supposedly right answers while remaining true to its evidential, Humean spirit; and finally to responses of radical revisionists who claim that only causal decision theories can get all Newcomb-like problem cases right. I discuss responses of the first sort in another paper - “Newcomb-like Problems for Jeffrey’s Logic of Decision.”

Type
Part VI. General Philosophy of Science (B)
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1986 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1986 , 1986 , pp. 342 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1986

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References

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