Essays on paradoxes / Terence Horgan.

Author
Horgan, Terry, 1948- [Browse]
Uniform title
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2017]
Description
vii, 322 pages ; 25 cm

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Firestone Library - Stacks BC199.P2 H67 2017 Browse related items Request

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    Summary note
    "This volume brings together many of Terence Horgan's essays on paradoxes: Newcomb's problem, the Monty Hall problem, the two-envelope paradox, the sorites paradox, and the Sleeping Beauty problem. Newcomb's problem arises because the ordinary concept of practical rationality constitutively includes normative standards that can sometimes come into direct conflict with one another. The Monty Hall problem reveals that sometimes the higher-order fact of one's having reliably received pertinent new first-order information constitutes stronger pertinent new information than does the new first-order information itself. The two-envelope paradox reveals that epistemic-probability contexts are weakly hyper-intensional; that therefore, non-zero epistemic probabilities sometimes accrue to epistemic possibilities that are not metaphysical possibilities; that therefore, the available acts in a given decision problem sometimes can simultaneously possess several different kinds of non-standard expected utility that rank the acts incompatibly. The sorites paradox reveals that a certain kind of logical incoherence is inherent to vagueness, and that therefore, ontological vagueness is impossible. The Sleeping Beauty problem reveals that some questions of probability are properly answered using a generalized variant of standard conditionalization that is applicable to essentially indexical self-locational possibilities, and deploys "preliminary" probabilities of such possibilities that are not prior probabilities."--Jacket flap.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references and index.
    Contents
    • Part One: Newcomb's problem
    • Counterfactuals and Newcomb's problem
    • Newcomb's problem: a stalemate
    • Newcomb's problem revisted
    • Part Two: The Monty Hall Problem
    • Let's make a deal
    • Part Three: The two-envelope paradox, nonstandard expected utility, and the intensionality of probability
    • The two-envelope paradox and the foundations of rational decision theory (abridged)
    • Part Four: The sorites paradox
    • Robust vagueness and the forced-march sorites paradox
    • Transvaluationism: a Dionysian approach to vagueness
    • Part Five: The sleeping beauty problem
    • Sleeping beauty awakened: new odds at the dawn of the new day
    • Synchronic Bayesian updating and the sleeping beauty problem: reply to Pust
    • The exchange continued: response to Pust's response to my reply
    • Generalized conditionalization and the sleeping beauty problem, II
    • Part Six: Epistemic probabilty
    • Epistemic probability.
    ISBN
    • 9780199858422 ((hardcover ; : alk. paper))
    • 019985842X ((hardcover ; : alk. paper))
    LCCN
    2016007610
    OCLC
    958962348
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