You’ll need to explain how that relates to my previous comment. I get the sense that we’re talking past each other (or at least starting from very different places).
The point is, your judging a decision theory based on the results for agents that happen to do what it recommends rather for agents that systematically do what it recommends because they actually compute what it recommends and then do that, is not a good way to judge decision theories, if you are judging them with the purpose of choosing one to systematically follow. In particular, a big problem with using the results for agents that happen to do what the decision theory recommends is that you don’t expect other agents to expect the agent you are considering to follow the decision theory in counterfactual computations they make that inform their own decisions, which in affect the outcome for the agent under consideration.
Thanks, that’s helpful. I’m actually not “judging them with the purpose of choosing one to systematically follow”—my interests are more theoretical than that (e.g., I’m interested in what sort of moral theory best represents the core idea of Consequentialism).
Having said that, I agree about the importance of counterfactuals here, and hence the importance of agents following a theory rather than merely conforming their behaviour to it—indeed, that’s precisely the point I was wanting to highlight from Regan’s classic work. (Note that this is actually a distinct point from systematicity across time: we can imagine a case where agents have reliable knowledge that just this once the other person is following the CU decision procedure.)
You’ll need to explain how that relates to my previous comment. I get the sense that we’re talking past each other (or at least starting from very different places).
The point is, your judging a decision theory based on the results for agents that happen to do what it recommends rather for agents that systematically do what it recommends because they actually compute what it recommends and then do that, is not a good way to judge decision theories, if you are judging them with the purpose of choosing one to systematically follow. In particular, a big problem with using the results for agents that happen to do what the decision theory recommends is that you don’t expect other agents to expect the agent you are considering to follow the decision theory in counterfactual computations they make that inform their own decisions, which in affect the outcome for the agent under consideration.
Thanks, that’s helpful. I’m actually not “judging them with the purpose of choosing one to systematically follow”—my interests are more theoretical than that (e.g., I’m interested in what sort of moral theory best represents the core idea of Consequentialism).
Having said that, I agree about the importance of counterfactuals here, and hence the importance of agents following a theory rather than merely conforming their behaviour to it—indeed, that’s precisely the point I was wanting to highlight from Regan’s classic work. (Note that this is actually a distinct point from systematicity across time: we can imagine a case where agents have reliable knowledge that just this once the other person is following the CU decision procedure.)