Diversity Reading List

Publisher’s Note:

Adrian Piper argues that the Humean conception can be made to work only if it is placed in the context of a wider and genuinely universal conception of the self, whose origins are to be found in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. This conception comprises the basic canons of classical logic, which provide both a model of motivation and a model of rationality. These supply necessary conditions both for the coherence and integrity of the self and also for unified agency. The Kantian conception solves certain intractable problems in decision theory by integrating it into classical predicate logic, and provides answers to longstanding controversies in metaethics concerning moral motivation, rational final ends, and moral justification that the Humean conception engenders. In addition, it sheds light on certain kinds of moral behavior – for example, the whistleblower – that the Humean conception is at a loss to explain.

Abstract:

These two sets of comments on Volume II of my Rationality and the Structure of the Self (henceforth RSS II), from the two leading philosophers in their respective areas of specialization – Kant scholarship and decision theory – are the very first to appear from any quarter within academic philosophy. My gratitude to Paul Guyer and Richard Bradley for the seriousness, thoroughness and respect with which they treat RSS – and my admiration for their readiness to acknowledge the existence of books that in fact have been in wide circulation for a long time – know no bounds. Their comments and criticisms, though sharp, are always constructive. I take my role here to be to incorporate those comments and criticisms where they hit the mark, and, where they go astray, to further articulate my view to meet the standard of clarity they demand. While Guyer’s and Bradley’s comments both pertain to the substantive view elaborated in RSS II, my responses often refer back to the critical background it presupposes that I offer in RSS Volume I: The Humean Conception (henceforth RSS I). I address Guyer’s more exegetically oriented remarks first, in order to provide a general philosophical framework within which to then discuss the decision-theoretic core of the project that is the focus of Bradley’s comments.

Abstract:

In “The Irrelevance of the Diachronic Money-Pump Argument for Acyclicity,” The Journal of Philosophy CX, 8 (August 2013), 460-464, Johan E. Gustafsson contends that if Davidson, McKinsey and Suppes’ diachronic money-pump argument in their "Outlines of a Formal Theory of Value, I," Philosophy of Science 22 (1955), 140-160 is valid, so is the synchronic argument Gustafsson himself offers. He concludes that the latter renders irrelevant diachronic choice considerations in general, and the two best-known diachronic solutions to the money pump problem in particular. I argue here that this reasoning is incorrect, and that Gustafsson’s synchronic argument is faulty on independent grounds. Specifically, it is based on a false analogy between the derivation of a synchronic ordinal ranking from a transitive series of pairwise comparisons, and the putative derivation of such a ranking from an intransitive series. The latter is not possible under the assumption of revealed preference theory, and is highly improbable even if that assumption is rejected. Moreover, Gustafsson’s argument raises issues of fidelity to the historical texts that must be addressed. I conclude that the money pump, and cyclical choice more generally, are necessarily diachronic; and therefore that the two best-known diachronic solutions to the money pump problem remain relevant.

Publisher's Note: In The Grammar of Society, first published in 2006, Cristina Bicchieri examines social norms, such as fairness, cooperation, and reciprocity, in an effort to understand their nature and dynamics, the expectations that they generate, and how they evolve and change. Drawing on several intellectual traditions and methods, including those of social psychology, experimental economics and evolutionary game theory, Bicchieri provides an integrated account of how social norms emerge, why and when we follow them, and the situations where we are most likely to focus on relevant norms. Examining the existence and survival of inefficient norms, she demonstrates how norms evolve in ways that depend upon the psychological dispositions of the individual and how such dispositions may impair social efficiency. By contrast, she also shows how certain psychological propensities may naturally lead individuals to evolve fairness norms that closely resemble those we follow in most modern societies.

Abstract: I hope to show that, although belief is subject to two quite robust forms of agency, "believing at will" is impossible; one cannot believe in the way one ordinarily acts. Further, the same is true of intention: although intention is subject to two quite robust forms of agency, the features of belief that render believing less than voluntary are present for intention, as well. It turns out, perhaps surprisingly, that you can no more intend at will than believe at will.

Abstract: The Prisoner’s Dilemma game is one of the classic games discussed in game theory,  the  study  of  strategic  decision  making  in  situations  of conflict,  which  stretches  between  mathematics  and  the  social  sciences. Game theory was  primarily developed  during  the  late  1940s  and  into  the  1960s  at  a number of research sites funded by various arms of the U.S. military establishment as part of their Cold War research.