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Preference-Revision and the Paradoxes of Instrumental Rationality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Duncan MacIntosh
Duncan MacIntosh*
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University, Halifax NS, CanadaB3H 3J5
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Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , December 1992 , pp. 503 - 529
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1992

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References

1 For helpful discussion I thank Neera Badhwar, David Braybrooke, Bob Bright, Douglas Butler, Peter Danielson, Bob Martin, Tory McGeer, Howard Sobel, Kadri Vihvelin, Sheldon Wein, and especially Julie Colterjohn, Richmond Campbell, and Terry Tomkow. Thanks also to my commentator, David Zimmerman, at the 1988 CPA, to which part of an earlier version was given. Finally, I am very grateful to referees Gregory Kavka and Michael Webster, to two anonymous referees, and to the editors for advice on form and for deep questions. A Killam Post-Doctoral Fellowship from Dalhousie University funded early research.

2 For details, see Campbell, Richmond and Sowden, Lanning eds., Paradoxes of Rationality and Cooperation: Prisoner’s Dilemma and Newcomb’s Problem (Vancouver: The University of British Columbia Press 1985)Google Scholar.

3 Gauthier, David Morals By Agreement (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1986)Google Scholar, ch. 1, 5, 6; and ‘Deterrence, Maximization, and Rationality,’ Ethics 94 (1984) 474-95

4 I suggested this in Two Gauthiers?’ Dialogue 28 (1988) 43-61 and later papers. It appears briefly in different forms in Kavka, Gregory ‘Some Paradoxes of Deterrence,’ The Journal of Philosophy 75 (1978) 285-302CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Perry, John and Bratman, Michael eds. Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings (New York: Oxford University Press 1986) 516-26Google Scholar (references are to the latter); Lewis, David ‘Devil’s Bargains and the Real World,’ in Maclean, Douglas ed., The Security Gamble: Deterrence Dilemmas in the Nuclear Age (Totowa, NJ: Rowan and Allenheld 1984) 141-54Google Scholar; and Sen, Amartya ‘Choice, Orderings and Morality,’ in Korner, Stephan ed., Practical Reasoning (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1974) 54-67Google Scholar. It is mentioned skeptically in Sobel, Jordan Howard ‘Maximizing, Optimizing, and Prospering,’ Dialogue 27 (1988) 233-62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and in passing in some of his earlier papers. Edward McClennen, in his ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma and Resolute Choice,’ in Campbell and Sowden, 94-104, and his ‘Constrained Maximization and Resolute Choice,’ Social Philosophy & Policy 5 (1988) 95-118, may give views on preferences for the Prisoner’s Dilemma like those I push here for PCSs in general; if so, I am developing his idea. But he may not see agents undergoing revisions in their preferences in PCSs; they would just have different ones then, or just resolve to act differently. I hope to examine elsewhere what the former might involve. I argue that resolutions cannot rationalize non-maximizing choices in my ‘McClennen’s Early Co-operative Solution to the Prisoner’s Dilemma,’ The Southern Journal of Philosophy 29 (1991) 341-58.

5 E.g., see Gauthier, Morals By Agreement, ch. 1,4, 5; and my Treference’s Progress: Rational Self-Alteration and the Rationality of Morality,’ Dialogue 30 (1991) 3-32.

6 For the DD, see Gauthier, ‘Deterrence,’ Lewis, ‘Devil’s Bargains,’ and Kavka, ‘Some Paradoxes.’

7 Kavka, ‘Some Paradoxes,’ 519-21; and Vorobej, Mark ‘Gauthier on Deterrence,’ Dialogue 25 (1986) 471-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 I think Vorobej’s criticism can be made conclusive. See my ‘Retaliation Rationalized: Gauthier’s Solution to the Deterrence Dilemma,’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1991) 9-32, my ‘Libertarian Agency and Rational Morality: Action-Theoretic Objections to Gauthier’s Dispositional Solution of the Compliance Problem,’ The Southern Journal of Philosophy 26 (1988) 399-425, and my ‘Preference’s Progress,’ where I try to show that rational choices must maximize.

9 I give a similar rationale for revising one’s preferences before facing some PDs in my ‘Co-operative Solutions to the Prisoner’s Dilemma,’ Philosophical Studies 64 (1991) 21-33, and my ‘Preference’s Progress.’ Also, see McClennen’s papers.

10 The question is from Kavka’s referee’s report.

In ‘Two Gauthiers?’ I argue that a similar reading of Gauthier’s Constrained Maximizer disposition best serves his conclusions on the rationality of morality as exemplified in rational choices in some PDs. See also McClennen, ‘Constrained Maximization.’ Gauthier insists in ‘Morality, Rational Choice, and Semantic Representation: A Reply to My Critics,’ Social Philosophy & Policy 5 (1988) 173-221, that his proposal is different and independently viable.

12 Is Gauthier’s account better here? For he may think it rational to retaliate only if the disposition to do so was maximizing, i.e., deterring. If one learns it never was, one needn’t retaliate. But I think Gauthier holds that a disposition maximized not if it in fact made a desired outcome likely, but was believed to on the evidence when adopted. So unless he carefully formulates the disposition, his agent too must retaliate against those later discovered to be undeterrable. For the disposition to retaliate against them would still be one it ‘subjectively’ maximized to adopt earlier. Thus he must have the disposition be to retaliate only against those still believed to have been deferrable (as I must have the rational retaliatory preference), or he must say that things ‘maximize’ relative to the facts, not just beliefs. (Thanks to an anonymous referee for the issue, and to Terry Tomkow for help in replying.)

13 Thanks to Richmond Campbell, Douglas Butler and Howard Sobel for discussion on the issues in this section.

14 See Kavka, ‘Some Paradoxes’; The Toxin Puzzle,’ Analysis 43 (1983) 33-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Responses to the Paradox of Deterrence,’ in Maclean, 155-9. He sees some justification for doing it, but may not see it as conclusive, especially for rational moral agents. See below and my ‘Kavka Revisited: Some Paradoxes of Deterrence Dissolved’ (unpublished ms).

15 Thanks to Sobel for this suggestion.

16 This worry is in Kavka, ‘Some Paradoxes.’

17 My thanks to Douglas Butler for this approach.

18 I quote from his referee’s report.

19 Thanks to Terry Tomkow for discussion here.

20 Thanks to Peter Schotch and an anonymous referee for help on this. And see my ‘Retaliation Rationalized,’ 28-9.

21 There may be a utility cost if one disprefers the beliefs one acquires. But our agent only prefers that harms be minimal. So if he comes to believe that harms have occurred, it is they which trouble him, not his belief in them.

22 See Tomkow, Terranee Against Representation (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press)Google Scholar on the relation between intentions and rational actions.

23 Thanks to Sobel for the issue.

24 For other examples, see my Tersons and the Satisfaction of Preferences: Problems in the Rational Kinematics of Values’ (unpublished ms).

25 Kavka brought this and the next few issues to my attention.

26 Howard Sobel may suggest agents have such a self-concept in his ‘Maximizing, Optimizing, and Prospering.’

27 Lewis makes a similar point in his ‘Devil’s Bargains,” 142.

28 For more on this, see my ‘Kavka Revisited.’

29 For more on this, see my ‘Preference’s Progress.’