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Utility and framing
pp. 83-103
Abstract
Standard principles of rational decision assume that an option’s utility is both comprehensive and accessible. These features constrain interpretations of an option’s utility. This essay presents a way of understanding utility and laws of utility. It explains the relation between an option’s utility and its outcome’s utility and argues that an option’s utility is relative to a specification of the option. Utility’s relativity explains how a decision problem’s framing affects an option’s utility and its rationality even for an agent who is cognitively perfect and lacks only empirical information. The essay rewrites standard laws of utility to accommodate relativization to propositions’ specifications. The new laws are generalizations of the standard laws and yield them as special cases.
Publication details
Published in:
Weirich Paul (2010) Realistic standards for decisions. Synthese 176 (1).
Pages: 83-103
DOI: 10.1007/s11229-009-9485-0
Full citation:
Weirich Paul (2010) „Utility and framing“. Synthese 176 (1), 83–103.