Conditional desirability

Authors
Citation
R. Bradley, Conditional desirability, THEOR DECIS, 47(1), 1999, pp. 23-55
Citations number
6
Categorie Soggetti
Economics
Journal title
THEORY AND DECISION
ISSN journal
00405833 → ACNP
Volume
47
Issue
1
Year of publication
1999
Pages
23 - 55
Database
ISI
SICI code
0040-5833(199908)47:1<23:CD>2.0.ZU;2-E
Abstract
Conditional attitudes are not the attitudes an agent is disposed to acquire in event of learning that a condition holds. Rather they are the component s of agents' current attitudes that derive from the consideration they give to the possibility that the condition is true. Jeffrey's decision theory c an be extended to include quantitative representation of the strength of th ese components. A conditional desirability measure for degrees of condition al desire is proposed and shown to imply that an agent's degrees of conditi onal belief are conditional probabilities. Rational conditional preference is axiomatised and by application of Bolker's representation theorem for ra tional preferences it is shown that conditional preference rankings determi ne the existence of probability and desirability measures that agree with t hem. It is then proven that every conditional desirability function agrees with an agent's conditional preferences and, under certain assumptions, eve ry desirability function agreeing with an agent's conditional preferences i s a conditional desirability function agreeing with her unconditional prefe rences.