Voorhoeve, Alex 
ORCID: 0000-0003-3240-3835
(2008)
Heuristics and biases in a purported counter-example to the acyclicity of "better than".
Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 7 (3).
pp. 285-299.
ISSN 1470-594X
Abstract
Stuart Rachels and Larry Temkin have offered a purported counter-example to the acyclicity of the relationship 'all things considered better than'. This example invokes our intuitive preferences over pairs of alternatives involving a single person's painful experiences of varying intensity and duration. These preferences, Rachels and Temkin claim, are confidently held, entirely reasonable, and cyclical. They conclude that we should drop acyclicity as a requirement of rationality. I argue that, together with the findings of recent research on the way people evaluate episodes of pain, the use of a heuristic known as similarity-based decision-making explains why our intuitive preferences may violate acyclicity in this example. I argue that this explanation should lead us to regard these preferences with suspicion, because it indicates that they may be the result of one or more biases. I conclude that Rachels' and Temkin's example does not provide sufficient grounds for rejecting acyclicity.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://ppe.sagepub.com/ |
| Additional Information: | © 2008 SAGE |
| Divisions: | Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method |
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) |
| Date Deposited: | 08 Jan 2009 20:01 |
| Last Modified: | 11 Dec 2024 23:18 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/21912 |
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