Philosophy of science of decision making - Lukas Beck (Feb 20)

Lukas Beck (Universität Hannover)

Dear All,   

You're cordially invited to the next installment of the Philosophy of Science of Decision Making seminar series.   

Speaker: Lukas Beck (Leibniz University Hannover)

Title: “Like It or Not - Recommender Systems, Welfarism, and Performativity”

Date: 20 February 2026, 14:00 CET

Format: Online, in English  

Abstract: Recommender Systems (RS) are among the most widely-deployed algorithmic systems, shaping the contents and items that billions of users see, engage with, and purchase on a daily basis. The central aim of RS is often characterized as estimating users' preferences and using this information to recommend good items for users. What is striking about this dominant narrative is that it offers a welfare consequentialist justification for RS, in which preference satisfaction is the core welfare criterion that tells us how to rank outcomes in terms of agents' welfare. While intuitively compelling, we argue that this justification is severely undertheorized and defective. More specifically, we argue that RS research currently lacks a coherent conceptualization of the relationship between preference, choice, and welfare, and the means to identify welfare-relevant preferences. Instead, it relies on outdated economic theories that have since been contravened by decades of research in the behavioral sciences and philosophy. To make our case, we draw out several interconnected challenges that call into question whether RS deals in genuine information about welfare-relevant preferences. To address this situation, we argue for behaviorally informed RS, grounded in explicit and coherent welfare-theoretical foundations, and highlight how interdisciplinary collaborations between RS research, social and behavioral science, and ethics and philosophy of science are needed to deliver on RS's welfarist ambitions.  

Registration: If you would like to join this seminar and have not previously registered, please send an email to [email protected] with the subject line "PhilSciDec". Video links will be shared only with those who register at least 24 hrs in advance of the seminar.

Info: For more information about the seminar series, including future speakers and topics, please visit the website below.