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PRODID:-//Grails iCalendar plugin//NONSGML Grails iCalendar plugin//EN
VERSION:2.0
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260501T203456Z
DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20170818T070000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20170818T090000
SUMMARY:Counterfactuals\, Centering\, and the Gibbard-Harper Collapse Lemma
UID:20260505T183305Z-iCalPlugin-Grails@philevents-web-6b96c54f56-bljdq
TZID:Australia/Melbourne
LOCATION:Old Quad\, Parkville\, Australia\, 3010
DESCRIPTION:<p>Melissa Fusco (Columbia) will present "Counterfactuals\, Centering\, and the Gibbard-Harper Collapse Lemma" at 11 in Old Quad G10.</p>\n<p>Abstract:&nbsp\;Egan (2007) argued that while Causal Decision Theorists adhere to the motto "do whatever has the best expected outcome\, holding fixed [one's] initial views about the likely causal structure of the world"\, there are cases where we should&nbsp\;<em>not</em>&nbsp\;hold such views fixed as we act.&nbsp\; In these cases\, Egan claimed\, agents should use their anticipated credences Cr(a -> s | a) in states s to estimate the expected utility of their acts a\, (where `->' is the counterfactual conditional and `|' is the slash of conditionalization). &nbsp\;</p>\n<p>However\, it has been known since Gibbard &amp\; Harper (1978) that if an agent is probabilistically coherent\, and the semantics for counterfactuals obeys Centering---roughly\, the view that each world is counterfactually closest to itself---Cr(a -> s | a) reduces to Cr(s|a).&nbsp\; It follows that Egan's view of such cases collapses into classical EDT.&nbsp\; This complicates the traditional way of putting the difference between EDT and CDT\, according to which the latter\, but not the former\, requires causal information.&nbsp\; By Gibbard &amp\; Harper's result\, the work of putting causal information into a simple EDT system is exactly undone by adding conditionalization. &nbsp\; &nbsp\;</p>\n<p>In this talk\, I focus on the dialectic from the CDTer's point of view. The Gibbard-Harper result forces the causalist to choose between (i) the learning norm of conditionalization\, (ii) centering for counterfactuals\, and (iii) CDT itself\, as a theory distinct from EDT.&nbsp\; I explore these options\, presenting\, along the way\, some new cases in which agents' acts seem to give them knowledge of causal relations.&nbsp\;</p>
ORGANIZER;CN=Shawn Standefer:
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