Thinking about Acting: Logical Foundations for Rational Decision Making / Edition 1

by John L. Pollock

Overview

John Pollock aims to construct a theory of rational decision making for real agents—not ideal agents. Real agents have limited cognitive powers, but traditional theories of rationality have applied only to idealized agents that lack such constraints. Pollock argues that theories of ideal rationality are largely irrelevant to the decision making of real agents. Thinking about Acting aims to provide a theory of "real rationality."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195304817
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/27/2006
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.32(w) x 9.40(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

John L. Pollock is Regents' Professor of Philosophy and Research Professor of Cognitive Science, University of Arizona, Tucson.

Table of Contents

Rational Choice and Classical Decision Theory     3
Rational Cognition     3
Ideal Rationality and Real Rationality     5
Human Rationality and Generic Rationality     8
Decision Making     12
Classical Decision Theory and the Optimality Prescription     14
Values
Evaluative Cognition and the Evaluative Database     23
The Doxastic/Conative Loop     23
Preference Rankings     24
Analog Representations of Values     30
Conclusions     35
Evaluative Induction     37
The Need for Evaluative Induction     37
Human Conative States     38
Evaluative Induction     43
Evaluative Induction as a Q&I Module     50
Conclusions     54
Some Observations about Evaluative Cognition     55
Liking Activities     55
Evaluating the Human Cognitive Architecture     56
State Liking     59
Conclusions     66
The Database Calculation     67
The Database Calculation     68
Justifying the Database Calculation     72
Feature-Based Evaluative Cognition     77
Probabilities
SubjectiveProbabilities     81
Two Kinds of Probabilities     81
Subjective Probabilities and Degrees of Belief     82
Belief Simpliciter     86
Subjective Expected Utility Theory     87
Rational Decision Making     88
Do Subjective Probabilities Exist     90
Deriving the Optimality Prescription from Rationality Constraints     92
Subjective Probabilities from Epistemology     93
A Return to Objective Probabilities     98
Objective Probabilities     101
Physical Probabilities and Relative Frequencies     101
Empirical Theories     104
Nomic Probability     106
Mixed Physical/Epistemic Probabilities     111
Conclusions     116
Causal Probabilities     117
Causal Decision Theory     117
Probabilistic Causation     118
Skyrms and Lewis     122
Defining Causal Probability     125
Conditional Causal Probability     128
C-PROB[subscript A] and K-PROB[subscript A]     130
Computing Causal Probabilities     135
Computing Conditional Causal Probabilities     138
Simplifying the Computation Defeasibly      140
Conclusions     142
Decisions
Rational Choice and Action Omnipotence     145
Actions and the Optimality Prescription     145
Action Omnipotence     146
Restricting the Scope of the Optimality Prescription     147
Expected Utility     155
Conditional Policies and Expected Utilities     160
Two Problems     163
Computing Expected-Utilities     165
Conclusions     166
Plans and Decisions     167
Against Optimality     167
The Logical Structure of Practical Deliberation     168
Groups of Actions     175
Actions and Plans     178
Choosing between Plans     180
AI Planning Theory: The Real World versus Toy Problems     183
When Is a Plan a Good One?     184
Locally Global Planning     187
Conclusions     189
Plans and Their Expected Utilities     193
Linear Plans     193
Linear Policies     195
Nonlinear Plans     199
Conditional Plans     201
An Example     203
Conclusions     211
Locally Global Planning     213
The Theory     213
Incremental Decision-Theoretic Planning     213
Goal-Directed Planning     215
Presumptively Additive Expected Utilities     220
Finding and Repairing Decision-Theoretic Interference     221
Conclusions     223
The Theory of Nomic Probability     225
Introduction     225
Computational Principles     227
The Statistical Syllogism     232
Direct Inference and Definite Probabilities     236
Indefinite Probabilities and Probability Distributions     241
Induction     242
Conclusions     251
Bibliography     253
Index     263