This paper discusses the discounted utility (DU) model: its historical development, underlying assumptions, and "anomalies" - the empirical regularities that are inconsistent with its theoretical predictions. We then summarize the alternate theoretical formulations that have been advanced to address these anomalies. We also review three decades of empirical research on intertemporal choice, and discuss reasons for the spectacular variation in implicit discount rates across studies. Throughout the paper, we stress the importance of distinguishing time preference, per se, from many other considerations that also influence intertemporal choices.

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Time Discounting and Time Preference: A Critical Review

How are we able to understand and anticipate each other in everyday life, in our daily interactions? Through the use of such "folk" concepts as belief, desire, intention, and expectation, asserts Daniel Dennett in this first full-scale presentation of a theory of intentionality that he has been developing for almost twenty years. We adopt a stance, he argues, a predictive strategy of interpretation that presupposes the rationality of the people - or other entities - we are hoping to understand and predict.These principles of radical interpretation have far-reaching implications for the metaphysical and scientific status of the processes referred to by the everday terms of folk psychology and their corresponding terms in cognitive science.While Dennett's philosophical stance has been steadfast over the years, his views have undergone successive enrichments, refinements, and extensions. "The Intentional Stance" brings together both previously published and original material: four of the book's ten chapters - its first and the final three - appear here for the first time and push the theory into surprising new territory. The remaining six were published earlier in the 1980s but were not easily accessible; each is followed by a reflection - an essay reconsidering and extending the claims of the earlier work. These reflections and the new chapters represent the vanguard of Dennett's thought. They reveal fresh lines of inquiry into fundamental issues in psychology, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary theory as well as traditional issues in the philosophy of mind.Daniel C. Dennett is Distinguished Arts and Sciences Professor at Tufts University and the author of "Brainstorms" and "Elbow Room." "The Intentional Stance," along with these works, is a Bradford Book.

The Intentional Stance

Selection of efficient institutions or policies in politics requires constituents to estimate the net benefits of political reforms. Political competition fails to inform constituents of the costs of forgone political alternatives. Ignorance of ‘political opportunity costs’ prevents the adoption of welfare enhancing reforms of public institutions and policies. The empirical record supports this contention.

The use of knowledge about society

Much research in the last two decades has demon- strated that human responses deviate from the performance deemed normative according to various models of decision mak- ing and rational judgment (e.g., the basic axioms of utility theory). This gap between the normative and the descriptive can be inter- preted as indicating systematic irrationalities in human cognition. However, four alternative interpretations preserve the assumption that human behavior and cognition is largely rational. These posit that the gap is due to (1) performance errors, (2) computational limitations, (3) the wrong norm being applied by the experi- menter, and (4) a different construal of the task by the subject. In the debates about the viability of these alternative explanations, attention has been focused too narrowly on the modal response. In a series of experiments involving most of the classic tasks in the heuristics and biases literature, we have examined the implica- tions of individual differences in performance for each of the four explanations of the normative/descriptive gap. Performance er- rors are a minor factor in the gap; computational limitations un- derlie non-normative responding on several tasks, particularly those that involve some type of cognitive decontextualization. Un- expected patterns of covariance can suggest when the wrong norm is being applied to a task or when an alternative construal of the task should be considered appropriate.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0140525X00003435

Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate?

This volume is a single up-to-date source on the entire global epidemiology of diseases, injuries and risk factors with a comprehensive statement of methods and a complete presentation of results. It includes refined methods to assess data, ensure epidemiological consistency, and summarize the disease burden. Global Burden of Disease and Risk Factors examines the comparative importance of diseases, injuries, and risk factors; it incorporates a range of new data sources to develop consistent estimates of incidence, prevalence, severity and duration, and mortality for 136 major diseases and injuries. Drawing from more than 8,500 data sources that include epidemiological studies, disease registers, and notifications systems, this book incorporates information from more than 10,000 datasets relating to population health and mortality, representing one of the largest syntheses of global information on population health to date.

/pdf/global-burden-of-disease-and-risk-factors-2kzkym6sp5.pdf

Global burden of disease and risk factors

This book challenges, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity. The author claims that we have a false view of our own nature; that it is often rational to act against our own best interests; that most of us have moral views that are directly self-defeating; and that, when we consider future generations the conclusions will often be disturbing. He concludes that non-religious moral philosophy is a young subject, with a promising but unpredictable future.

Reasons and Persons

PART FOUR: COMMENTARIES HIKING THE RANGE HUMANITY AS AN END IN ITSELF A MISMATCH OF METHODS HOW I AM NOT A KANTIAN PART FIVE: RESPONSES ON HIKING THE RANGE ON HUMANITY AS AN END IN ITSELF ON A MISMATCH OF METHODS HOW THE NUMBERS COUNT SCANLONIAN CONTRACTUALISM THE TRIPLE THEORY PART SIX: NORMATIVITY ANALYTICAL NATURALISM AND SUBJECTIVISM NON-ANALYTICAL NATURALISM THE TRIVIALITY OBJECTION NATURALISM AND NIHILISM NON-COGNITIVISM AND QUASI-REALISM NORMATIVITY NORMATIVE TRUTHS METAPHYSICS EPISTEMOLOGY RATIONALISM AGREEMENT NIETZSCHE WHAT MATTERS MOST APPENDICES WHY ANYTHING? WHY THIS? THE FAIR WARNING VIEW SOME OF KANT'S ARGUMENTS FOR HIS FORMULA OF UNIVERSAL LAW KANT'S CLAIMS ABOUT THE GOOD AUTONOMY AND CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVES KANT'S MOTIVATIONAL ARGUMENT ON WHAT THERE IS Notes to Volume Two References Bibliography Index

On What Matters

In Nagel's article 'Equality', he imagines that he has two children, one healthy and happy, the other suffering from some painful handicap. Nagel writes: "This is a difficult choice on any view. To make it a test for the value of equality, I want to suppose that the case has the following feature: the gain to the first child of moving to the suburb is substantially greater than the gain to the second child of moving to the city". Nagel, and others, make a stronger claim. On their view, it is more urgent to help these people even if they are harder to help. While Utilitarians claim that we should give these people priority when, and because, we can help them more, this view claims that we should give them priority, even when we can help them less. On the Priority View, there is no ground for such doubts. This view naturally has universal scope.

Equality and priority

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1991, given by Derek Parfit (1942-2013), a British philosopher.

https://philosophy.rutgers.edu/joomlatools-files/docman-files/3ParfitEqualityorPriority2000.pdf

Derek Parfit

Papers

Reasons and Persons

Reasons and Persons

On What Matters

Equality and priority

Equality or Priority