Barry Maguire Speaks on Rational Choice in Deontic Contexts

Barry Maguire from UNC-Chapel Hill will give a talk on the topic “Rational Choice in Deontic Contexts” at Virginia Tech. The talk takes place on November 11, 2015, from 4-6 PM in Pamplin Hall 30. The talk is tailored to appeal to both students and faculty, with plenty of time for discussion and interaction with the guest speaker. You are cordially invited to attend.

Here is the abstract of the talk: A number of puzzles focus pressure on a deep structural assumption shared by Act Consequentialism and Orthodox Rational Choice theory. These include Warren Quinn’s classic “self-torturer” puzzle along with other sorites cases, infinite goods cases, imprecise goods cases, sunk costs, and time-stamped options. In all these cases the agent knows that her action is one in a series the whole of which has an evaluative significance not identical to the evaluative significance of the aggregate of the parts. The deep structural assumption is that the deontic status of an action is explained just by facts about that action and its consequences and never by facts about the deontic status of sets of actions of which it is a possible part. By rejecting this assumption and replacing it with something better we can develop solutions to these puzzles while fully vindicating the core motivations for value-first ethical theory.