Another way to put it: coherence theorems assume the existence of some resources (e.g. money), and talk about systems which are pareto optimal with respect to those resources—e.g. systems which “don’t throw away money”. Implicitly, we’re assuming that the system generally “wants” more resources (instrumentally, not necessarily as an end goal), and we derive the system’s “preferences” over everything else (including things which are not resources) from that. The agent “prefers” X over Y if it expends resources to get from Y to X. If the agent reaches a world-state which it could have reached with strictly less resource expenditure in all possible worlds, then it’s not an expected utility maximizer—it “threw away money” unnecessarily. We assume that the resources are a measuring stick of utility, and then ask whether the system maximizes any utility function over the given state-space measured by that measuring stick.
That is the best explanation of “what the tool of coherence theorems does and is useful for” that I’ve ever read, including discussions with you. Thanks for that!
That is the best explanation of “what the tool of coherence theorems does and is useful for” that I’ve ever read, including discussions with you. Thanks for that!