Drafts by Kendra Chilson
In trying to argue about what would constitute the correct normative theory of ethics, many comme... more In trying to argue about what would constitute the correct normative theory of ethics, many commentators have shied away from otherwise desirable contenders due to the declaration that such theories are "too demanding." Utilitarianism, Traditional Act Consequentialism (henceforth TAC), and non-consequentialist deontic theories such as Kantianism have all been decried as unreasonable codes that might require agents to make absurdly self-sacrificing decisions for paltry justification. 1 Consider the example Doug Portmore presents in chapter 2 of Commonsense Consequentialism: "[A]ccording to utilitarianism, I am morally required to sacrifice my life, to neglect my relationship with my daughter, and to abandon my project of completing this book if I could thereby produce more, even just slightly more, aggregate utility." 2 He continues to explicate the problem with utilitarianism specifically, pointing out that it would seem to require us to make unfair sacrifices, such as relinquishing a possession to someone even better off than ourselves, if doing so meant securing even "one measly utile, which is, as you will recall, equivalent to someone's experiencing the mildest of pleasures for the briefest of moments." 3 Other theories subject to this objection make similarly high demands: TAC might likewise require that you sacrifice your livelihood or your most cherished interests, if it were to have even slightly better consequences than the secondbest option, and Kant's Categorical Imperative demands that you never treat anyone as a mere means, even if doing so would only slightly impact them and refraining would have drastic 1 I do not mean to imply that the demandingness objection is the only hurdle left to cross for any of these theories; indeed, all those I have named have other serious difficulties. I mainly refer to these well-known examples of supposedly overdemanding theories in order to provide context for the patterns of thinking surrounding the discussion of how demanding the correct moral theory can be expected to be. 2 Portmore, Commonsense Consequentialism, pg. 25. 3 Portmore, pg. 26. Kendra Chilson consequences for you. As Dale Dorsey states the Demandingness Objection, Morality is normative: not only does it categorize a certain set of actions as moral or non-moral, that something is a moral requirement appears to be a strong, even over-riding, reason to perform the action. If morality is both normative in this sense and impartial, it must be the case that we are bound, obligated, to do extremely demanding things, including sacrifice our own interests to a significant degree (perhaps even lay down our own lives) for the benefit of others. 4
s Risk-Weighted Expected Utility Theory (hereafter REU) is undeniably useful as a descriptive the... more s Risk-Weighted Expected Utility Theory (hereafter REU) is undeniably useful as a descriptive theory of rational choice. However, I will argue that REU and other theories that attempt to rationalize risk-sensitive behaviors ultimately fail at the task of defining an ideal normative rational theory, because risk-sensitive behaviors are, upon reflection, irrational. More specifically, Buchak's main improvement over Expected Utility Theory (EU), her risk-weighting function, fails to allow agents to best achieve what ought to be their ends. Like other attempts to explain normatively irrational behaviors, REU falls short of representing how a perfectly rational agent would act, mistaking the ways in which people do behave for how they should behave, thereby falling into the is/ought gap.
In Decision Theory and Rationality, Joseé Luis Bermué dez makes his assessment of decision theory... more In Decision Theory and Rationality, Joseé Luis Bermué dez makes his assessment of decision theory on the basis of three "dimensions" of evaluation: action-guiding, normative criterion, and explanatory/predictive. As I will detail in Section 1, I find reason to disagree with his conclusions as to how decision theory measures up on each of these three dimensions. Decision theory, as shown by the works of behavioral economists, can work as a predictive tool if altered to accommodate human psychological realities, and does not need to be a particularly plausible explanatory account of practical decision-making to be immensely useful. Moreover, a normative decision theory can be useful as a tool for normative assessment in certain cases, and its action-guiding usefulness, as already alluded to, can sometimes even be superior to that of the wider norms of rational choice. Finally, I wish to introduce a "fourth dimension" of assessment when considering the usefulness and explanatory correctness of decision theory as a rational tool: the "decision design" dimension. I will explicate this new criterion in more detail in Section 2, but in short, the decision design dimension evaluates decision theory's usefulness in terms of answering necessary normative questions arising from the consideration of designing a hypothetical intelligent decision-maker, such as an artificial intelligence. I contend that norms of rational choice, which take into account specifics of human psychology, are not always as well-suited to this task as would be an ideal normative decision theory and that considering the decision design dimension of rationality can be a useful tool to pump this intuition.
In practical decision-making, it seems clear that if we hope to make an optimal or at least defen... more In practical decision-making, it seems clear that if we hope to make an optimal or at least defensible decision, we must weigh our alternatives against each other and come to a principled judgment between them. In the formal literature of classical decision theory, it is taken as an indispensable axiom that cardinal rankings of alternatives be defined for all possible alternatives over which we might have to decide. Whether there are any items " beyond compare " is thus a crucial question for decision theorists to consider when constructing a formal framework. At the very least, it seems problematic to presuppose that no such incommensurability is possible on the grounds that it would make formalizing axioms for decision-making more difficult, or even intractable. With this in mind, I plan to argue in this paper that a formal notion of comparability can be introduced to the classical understanding of preference relations such that the question of comparability between alternatives can be taken non-trivially. Building on the work of Richard Bradley and Ruth Chang, I argue that the comparability relation should be understood to be transitive but not complete. I contend that this understanding of comparability within decision theory can explain both why we believe that some alternatives may be incommensurable, yet we are still able to make justified decisions despite incomplete preference relations. In Section I, I lay the groundwork for understanding the conceptual relationship between comparability and commensurability with respect to decision-making. In Section II, I will argue that Bradley's definition of the preference relation with comparability leads to absurdity and contradiction due to a small oversight, which I propose to remedy. Then,
A Model of Lying as a Signaling Game: Conceptual Analysis, Implications, and Applications possibi... more A Model of Lying as a Signaling Game: Conceptual Analysis, Implications, and Applications possibilities for explaining the development of lying as an evolutionary strategy. Finally, in Part III, I suggest how my model of lying could provide new directions for employing the Cognitive Load Approach developed in cognitive science as a method of deception detection. Part I: A Conceptual Analysis and Formalization of Lying How much of human life depends on deception? Because of the very nature of the subject
Reviews by Kendra Chilson
Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts, 2018
Review of the "Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959-1989." exhibition at t... more Review of the "Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959-1989." exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
Papers by Kendra Chilson
Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts, Jun 4, 2018
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Drafts by Kendra Chilson
Reviews by Kendra Chilson
Papers by Kendra Chilson