BISER

2009 ◽  
pp. 66-68
Author(s):  
Dimitar Christozov
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Quality Indicator ◽  
The Other ◽  
Rational Decision ◽  
Single Measure ◽  
A Value ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Given ◽  
Integral Quality

The Simon’s model of the decision-making process includes the phase of choosing among alternatives or options, designed for solving the given problem. Usually an option dominates in some of the properties and is less suitable according to others. Making a rational decision in choosing an option means to balance between different properties. There are two principle strategies in performing this task: • To evaluate every option on the whole set of properties, and • To apply a procedure to extract the best (the most suitable) one. Integration of information associated with the multiple properties of competitive options into a single measure is presented and discussed. Options could be goods to purchase, list of products for manufacturing, suppliers, services, technologies, and even candidates for a given position. The common in all such cases are: • The decision maker has to assign a value to every option in the competing group by comparing it against its alternatives—the other members of the same group. Further, we shall call this value integral quality indicator of the option. • Options in the group are described with a common list of properties or characteristics, which we will call further single quality indicators of the option. Different measures, designed to integrate the information provided by single indicators, are presented and discussed.

The Rationality of Probabilities for Actions in Decision Theory

1998 ◽  
pp. 32-37
Author(s):  
Marion Ledwig
Keyword(s):  
Decision Theory ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Decision Model ◽  
The Other ◽  
Subjective Probabilities ◽  
Newcomb’S Problem ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
The One ◽  
The Given

Spohn's decision model, an advancement of Fishburn's theory, is valuable for making explicit the principle used also by other thinkers that 'any adequate quantitative decision model must not explicitly or implicitly contain any subjective probabilities for acts.' This principle is not used in the decision theories of Jeffrey or of Luce and Krantz. According to Spohn, this principle is important because it has effects on the term of action, on Newcomb's problem, and on the theory of causality and the freedom of the will. On the one hand, I will argue against Spohn with Jeffrey that the principle has to be given up. On the other, I will try to argue against Jeffrey that the decision-maker ascribes subjective probabilities to actions on the condition of the given decision situation.

scholarly journals Immigration, Humanity, and Morality

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunday Adeniyi Fasoro
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
A Value ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Common Ownership ◽  
Vulnerable People ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One

AbstractThe trend toward the concept of humanity in political theory has arisen largely as a reaction against the mistreatment of vulnerable people such as immigrants. The issue of immigrants’ vulnerability has led political thinkers to ponder on how to apply the principle of humanity to the question of the treatment of immigrants. I would like to address this matter by examining two questions: what is humanity, is it a value property, or a virtue? Does it really matter if the means by which an immigrant immigrates is demeaning to his own humanity as a person? The most common or intuitive reply to these questions would probably be: ‘humanity’ is simply a value-bestowing property, so regardless of immigrants’ actions they are owed respectful treatment. The aim of this paper is to emphasise instead that ‘humanity’ should be conceived as a virtue of actual commitment to act on moral principles. I explore three different meanings of humanity. First, I discuss ‘humanity’ as the common ownership of the earth. Second, I discuss ‘humanity’ as a value property. Third, I discuss humanity as a virtue of acting, on the one hand, with humanity, and on the other hand, on moral principles.

Rationalism, Platonism and God

2007 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Common ◽  
Constructive Criticism ◽  
The Given ◽  
Platonic Tradition

This book comprises three main chapters on Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, with extensive responses. It explores the common ground of the great early-modern rationalist theories, and provides an examination of the ways in which the mainstream Platonic tradition permeates these theories. One chapter identifies characteristically Platonic themes in Descartes’s cosmology and metaphysics, finding them associated with two distinct, even opposed attitudes to nature and the human condition, one ancient and ‘contemplative’, the other modern and ‘controlling’. It finds the same tension in Descartes’s moral theory, and believes that it remains unresolved in present-day ethics. Was Spinoza a Neoplatonist theist, critical Cartesian, or naturalistic materialist? The second chapter argues that he was all of these. Analysis of his system reveals how Spinoza employed Neoplatonist monism against Descartes’s Platonist pluralism. Yet the terminology — like the physics — is Cartesian. And within this Platonic-Cartesian shell Spinoza developed a rigorously naturalistic metaphysics and even, Ayers claims, an effectually empiricist epistemology. The final chapter focuses on the Rationalists’ arguments for the Platonist, anti-Empiricist principle of ‘the priority of the perfect’, i.e. the principle that finite attributes are to be understood through corresponding perfections of God, rather than the reverse. It finds the given arguments unsatisfactory but stimulating, and offers a development of one of Leibniz’s for consideration. These chapters receive informed and constructive criticism and development at the hands of, respectively, Douglas Hedley, Sarah Hutton and Maria Rosa Antognazza.

scholarly journals Niṣkāmakarma: A Philosophical Analysis in Light of the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Concept of Degrowth

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 3-30
Author(s):  
Tommi Lehtonen ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Prisoner's Dilemma ◽  
Prisoner’S Dilemma ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Personal Benefit ◽  
The Common ◽  
Harmful Effects

The prisoner's dilemma famously shows that individuals seeking their own benefit end up with a worse outcome than could be achieved through cooperation. This dilemma provides an effective but neglected method for the study of the Hindu principle of "desireless action" (niṣkāmakarma). In the context of the prisoner's dilemma, one or the other of the following decision-making strategies is feasible for prisoners who want to follow the principle of "desireless action": (1) to be indifferent and to leave the decision to chance (e.g. by arbitrarily drawing lots) or (2) to pursue the common good or the benefit of the other (by remaining silent) instead of seeking primarily to benefit oneself (by confessing). The second strategy is more appropriate assuming the following: the followers of the principle of "desireless action" can be goal-oriented and target-driven, as long as unselfish goals are considered, while remaining indifferent and non-attached in terms of personal benefit. This interpretation is tested and further discussed in this article in light of the values of the modem environmental and anti-consumerist degrowth movement. A non-profit orientation and the emphasis on duties are shared by the concepts of degrowth and niṣkāmakarma. Social- or reality-centredness rather than self-centredness is also common to both concepts. The degrowth movement focuses on economic contraction and deceleration, and thus its scope is narrower and more specific than that of niṣkāmakarma. Moreover, the degrowth movement rejects economic grovrth because of its ecologically and socially harmful effects, such as pollution and income inequality, but it is - at least in theory - indifferent to the harmless results of economic activities. On the contrary, the principle of niṣkāmakarma involves a critical stance toward both good and bad results of actions, insofar as they are pursued because of self-regarding desires.

scholarly journals Individuals with ventromedial frontal damage have more unstable but still fundamentally transitive preferences

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Q. Yu ◽  
Jason Dana ◽  
Joseph W. Kable
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Decision Process ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Rational Decision ◽  
Rational Choices ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Intransitive Preferences ◽  
Rational Decisions

AbstractThough the ventromedial frontal lobes (VMF) are clearly important for decision-making, the precise causal role of the VMF in the decision process has still not yet fully been established. Previous studies have suggested that individuals with VMF damage violate a hallmark axiom of rational decisions by having intransitive preferences (i.e., preferring A to B, B to C, but C to A), as these individuals are more likely to make cyclical choices (i.e., choosing C over A after previously choosing A over B and B over C). However, these prior studies cannot properly distinguish between two possibilities regarding effects of VMF damage: are individuals with VMF damage prone to choosing irrationally, or are their preferences simply more variable? We had individuals with focal VMF damage, individuals with other frontal damage, and healthy controls make repeated choices across three categories – artwork, chocolate bar brands, and gambles. Using sophisticated tests of transitivity, we find that, without exception, individuals with VMF damage made rational decisions consistent with transitive preferences, even though they more frequently exhibit choice cycles due to a greater variability in their preferences across time. That is, the VMF is necessary for having strong and reliable preferences across time and context, but not for being a rational decision maker. We conclude that VMF damage affects the noisiness with which value is assessed, but not the consistency with which value is sought.Significance statementThe VMF is a part of the brain that is thought to be one of the most important for preference-based choice. Despite this, whether it is needed to make rational choices at all is unknown. Previous studies have not discriminated between different possibilities regarding the critical necessary role that the VMF plays in value-based choice. Our study shows that individuals with VMF damage still make rational decisions consistent with what they prefer, but their choices are more variable and less reliable. That is, the VMF is important for the noisiness with which value is assessed, but not the consistency with which value is sought. This result has widespread implications for rethinking the role of VMF in decision-making.

scholarly journals How Much Would You Pay to Change a Game before Playing It?

Entropy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (7) ◽  
pp. 686
Author(s):  
David Wolpert ◽  
Justin Grana
Keyword(s):  
Willingness To Pay ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Direct Effect ◽  
Private Information ◽  
The Other ◽  
Rational Decision ◽  
Arbitrary Solution ◽  
Quantal Response ◽  
Parameter Change ◽  
Matching Pennies

Envelope theorems provide a differential framework for determining how much a rational decision maker (DM) is willing to pay to alter the parameters of a strategic scenario. We generalize this framework to the case of a boundedly rational DM and arbitrary solution concepts. We focus on comparing and contrasting the case where DM’s decision to pay to change the parameters is observed by all other players against the case where DM’s decision is private information. We decompose DM’s willingness to pay a given amount into a sum of three factors: (1) the direct effect a parameter change would have on DM’s payoffs in the future strategic scenario, holding strategies of all players constant; (2) the effect due to DM changing its strategy as they react to a change in the game parameters, with the strategies of the other players in that scenario held constant; and (3) the effect there would be due to other players reacting to a the change in the game parameters (could they observe them), with the strategy of DM held constant. We illustrate these results with the quantal response equilibrium and the matching pennies game and discuss how the willingness to pay captures DM’s anticipation of their future irrationality.

The Decision to Pollute

1974 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
R M Dawes ◽  
J Delay ◽  
W Chaplin
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Rational Decision ◽  
Commons Dilemma ◽  
Rational Decision Making ◽  
Pollution Problem ◽  
The Commons ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mathematical Model

One way of studying the pollution problem is to examine the decision making process in situations in which gain accrues directly to an individual, while loss is spread out across the group of which the individual is a member. Such a situation has been termed a commons dilemma by Lloyd in 1833; it is a variant of the well known prisoner's dilemma. The mathematical model of rational decision making when facing the commons dilemma implies the dismal conclusion that individuals acting rationally will end up by destroying, or nearly destroying, the common wealth. Suggestions are made concerning ways in which people may be persuaded not to pollute our environment.

Property Rights within Government and Devices to Increase Government Efficiency

1976 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-158
Author(s):  
Ryan C. Amacher ◽  
Robert D. Tollison
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The Other ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Government Efficiency ◽  
Gains And Losses

This paper demonstrates that bureaucratic decision-making is a more complex process than the literature that focuses narrowly on the lack of appropriability of gains and losses from efficient decision-making implies. The paper delineates some of the other types of constraints under which the governmental decision maker operates. These factors lead to the conclusion that there are many devices (like the volunteer army) that can move decision makers toward significantly more efficient decisions without the presence of appropriability (narrowly defined).

scholarly journals An investigation of the undesirable outputs congestion in data envelopment analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (02) ◽  
pp. 468-475
Author(s):  
Soodabeh Nazari ◽  
Mohsen Rostamy-Malkhalifeh ◽  
Ali Hamzehee
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Data Envelopment Analysis ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
The Other ◽  
Data Envelopment ◽  
Undesirable Outputs ◽  
Total Cost ◽  
Know How ◽  
Total Profit ◽  
Decision Making Units

Congestion is one of the most important subjects in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) which helps the Decision Maker (DM) to decide about changing the size of units. The estimation of congestion has attractive advantages from different perspectives. For example, the total cost of a partiular DMU, in which the congestion occurs, can be reduced by the decreases in inputs. On the other hand, the output of units can be increased by the recognizing and eliminating the congestion of DMUs and so, the total profit of decision making units can be increased. Hence, the management is eager to know how to recognize and eliminate the congestion of units. Most of the existing methods to estimation of the congestion in the literature consider only the desirable outputs. This study focuses on the evaluation of congestion in the presence of undesirable outputs and proposes an approach to recognize the congestion of units. The method is demonstrated on a numerical example to illustrate the validity of the proposed method.

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