Imprecision in normative domains

Being rational and being moral can be difficult. However, some theories of rationality and morality make living up to these ideals too difficult by imposing requirements which are excessively rigid. In this dissertation, I defend and explore the implications of relaxing some of these requirements. I first consider the implications of thinking that rational agents' doxastic attitudes can be represented by imprecise, rather than precise probabilities. In defending this position, I develop a distinction between an idealized, and less idealized notion of rationality. I then explore the moral implications of the thought that facts about value cannot be represented by a precise value function. Finally, I defend permissivism, the view that sometimes there is more than one doxastic attitude that it is rationally permissible to adopt given a particular body of evidence, and show that this view has some interesting implications for questions about higher order evidence.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Schoenfield, Miriam

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Roger White.

• Linguistics and Philosophy.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/72922

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/72922