Today, 3.30. Refectory
Towards metaphysical foundations for decision theory
The first goal of this talk is to illuminate—from the perspective of
economic science—the tension in two important facts: (1) that the
discipline of economics, which deals in decisions made by anything from
individuals to firms to whole governments, with emphasis on wise use of
resources, is supposed to be founded on an autonomous decision
theory; and
(2) that autonomous decision theory (EU or any of its would-be
successors)
takes the number of agents in a given decision as exogenous and often
simply just counts heads. The tension in these two ideas, while perhaps
not obvious, is not hard to make clear: the taking of a decision
involves
expenditure of resources, and (as every peer-reviewed journal editor
knows) this often involves expenditure of social capital. You have to
utilize some means of reaching a decision, expend some resources,
capture,
assemble, call in or even invent others. So how can it be that the
number
of agents in any situation is exogenous, if the decision process itself
could conceivably call for bringing them on stage? The second goal will
then be to steer a course towards its resolution. We will consequently
address the subject of resources generally, and decision-taking
resources
specifically. And this will take us through to some interesting
questions
and issues of metaphysics.
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