Decision-Theoretic Pluralism

Abstract

A prominent philosophical debate concerns whether we should accept causal decision theory (CDT) or evidential decision theory (EDT) as our best theory of rational choice. However, instead of accepting one of these theories at the expense of the other, an alternative would be to accept that both theories play a partial role in the true account of rational choice. In this paper, I defend a pluralist account of this sort. In particular, I argue that rational permissibility is an indeterminate notion, with EDT and CDT each corresponding to one sharpening of this notion.