Philosophical intuitions and psychological theory

Ethics

Volumn 108, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 367-385

  Horowitz, Tamara ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0000400416     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/233809     Document Type: Article

References (20)

1. Warren Quinn, "Actions, Intentions, and Consequences: The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing," in his Morality and Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 149.
2. The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing and this thought experiment are orginally the work of Professor P. Foote. See P. Foote, "Killing and Letting Die," in Abortion: Moral and Legal Perspectives, ed. Jay Garfield (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), pp. 178-85.
3. Quinn, p. 152.
4. Ibid., p. 167.
5. For an account of prospect theory, see D. Kahneman and A. Tversky, "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk," Econometrica 47 (1979): 263-91.
6. By "classical expected utility theory" I mean to refer to the theories found in J. Von Neumann and O. Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972);
7. and in L. Savage, The Foundations of Statistics (New York: Dover, 1972).
8. Problem 2 is obtained from problem 1 by increasing the original amount by $200 and subtracting this amount from both options.
9. An expected-utility maximizer would not exhibit this pattern, since any person who is maximizing expected utility would choose the first option in each problem or the second option in each problem.
10. The other operations include combining probabilities associated with identical outcomes, segregating risky from riskless components of prospects, discarding components that are shared by all of the available prospects, rounding off probabilities or outcomes, and rejecting dominated alternatives. For a full discussion of these processes, see Kahneman and Tversky, p. 274.
11. Positive and negative prospects are evaluated in the following way. In the editing phase, they are segregated into two components, a riskless component which is the minimum loss or gain certain to be received and a risky component comprised of the additional gain or loss at stake. These prospects are then evaluated in the following way: if p + q = 1 and either x > y > 0 or x < y < 0, then D(x, p; y, q) = v(y) + w(p)[v(x) - v(y)]. This value equals the value of the riskless component, plus the difference between the two outcomes multiplied by the weight associated with the outcome with the greater absolute value. See Kahneman and Tversky, p. 276.
12. Kahneman and Tversky, p. 279.
13. Notice that no such hypothesis is needed for the analysis of the experiments reported by Kahneman and Tversky. They are concerned to explain the order in which subjects prefer certain possible actions in different decision problems. To do this, they must hypothesize that, in each decision problem, a subject arrives at a D value for various alternative actions, but they are never required to hypothesize that these D values can be compared from one decision problem to the other.
14. Nevertheless, I suspect prospect theory does explain most of these intuitions, although I will not try to survey them here.
15. This is a version of an objection offered by one of the editors of Ethics.
16. I am especially indebted to Joseph Camp for many helpful discussions of the issues treated in this section.
17. Assume that I am at a gym and that I am wearing my glasses. A thief to my left steals my pocketbook off a chair. Fortunately, there is a police officer in uniform to my right. Then, (a) the thief to my left stealing my pocketbook is a reason for (b) my calling to the police officer to my right. If my glasses are off, I will not be so lucky because (c) the dark figure to my left holding a dark object is not a reason for (d) my calling to the dark figure to my right. One can argue that (a) and (c) are strictly identical states and that (b) and (d) are strictly identical states. 'Is a reason for' resembles 'implies' in its logic.
18. See W. Labov, "Empirical Foundations of Linguistic Theory," in The Scope of American Linguistics, ed. R. Austerlitz (Ghent: Peter De Ridder, 1975), pp. 77-133;
19. and N. Spencer, "Differences between Linguists and Nonlinguists in Intuitions of Grammaticality-Acceptability," Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 2 (1973): 83-98 (cited in Labov).
20. It was called to my attention after this article was written that Robert Nozick points to the "strong similarity" between the doing and allowing distinction and framing effects in R. Nozick, The Nature of Rationality (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 60.