Subjective expected utility without preferences
In the latest issue of Journal of Mathematical Psychology, Denis Bouyssou and Thieery Marchant provide a model for subjective expected utility without preferences. Abstract:
This paper proposes a theory of subjective expected utility based on primitives only involving the fact that an act can be judged either ‘‘attractive’’ or ‘‘unattractive’’. We give conditions implying that there are a utility function on the set of consequences and a probability distribution on the set of states such that attractive acts have a subjective expected utility above some threshold. The numerical representation that is obtained has strong uniqueness properties.
PDF.
One of my more surreal memories from college was discovering a closet full of issues of Journal of Mathematical Psychology on the forbidden fifth floor of the psychology department. Sort of like my personal Mirror of Erised, except instead of showing me my parents, I saw articles with titles as weird as “Quantum structure in cognition”.
Forbidden fifth floor?
Well, it was locked.
After skimming, I’m thinking, strong assumptions in, strong results out. Meh.