Values and Uncertainty

Keynote Speakers:

• Sven Ove Hansson, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
• Michael Otsuka, London School of Economics, UK

Decision making under risk and uncertainty is a well-explored topic but many of the philosophical problems in the area have been discussed on the basis of single preference relations or corresponding monist utility representations or on the basis of overall betterness without taking into account the fine structure of values, multiple criteria, different value dimensions, and their aggregation. The purpose of this conference is to bring together experts in decision making and practical reasoning and experts in value theory from (meta-)ethics to take a fresh look at the interplay between values and uncertainty in decision making and the normative problems that may arise from uncertainty during the evaluation of policies and possible courses of action.

Venue: IFILNOVA Institute of Philosophy, New University of Lisbon. I&D Building (Research & Development FCSH), 1069-061 Lisbon, Av. de Berna, 26 - 4th Floor, 1069-061 Lisbon, Portugal, Room Sala Multiuso 3.

Date: 6-7 Dec 2018

Conference Fee: The conference fee is 50.- Euro (reduced to 20.- Euro for Ph.D. students) and needs to be paid in cash on site on the first day of the conference during registration.

Conference Schedule: The final conference program is now available. If there are any further changes, we will inform you at the conference. We're looking forward in seeing you!

Conference Poster: Click here to download the poster (5MB PDF)

Call for Abstracts: *** The call for abstracts is now closed. Thank you very much for your submissions! ***

Suggestions for topics (non-exhaustive list):

- epistemic versus moral uncertainty and their role in decision making

- methods of value aggregation and their interplay with risk and uncertainty

- the failure of the trichotomy thesis and uncertainty

- inductive risk

- nontransitive betterness relations and their role in decision making under uncertainty

- moral peer disagreement

- hypothetical retrospection and other evaluative heuristics

- weighing versus outranking of reasons about future actions

- value-based argument and practical reasoning about uncertain events

- essential comparability and the evaluation of uncertain events

- nonconsenquentialist criteria in expected utility theory

- normative arguments for and against decision principles (e.g. Expected Utility, Maximin, Minimax Regret) and their connection to uncertainty

- possible relations between stakes, uncertainty, and moral flexibility

- lexicographic theories of value structure and their combination with risk and uncertainty

- qualitative decision making under uncertainty and Arrow’s Theorem

- value conflicts and moral dilemmas in the context of decision making under uncertainty

- the normative role of temporal discounting in population ethics and medical decision making

- normative problems of cataclysms, high stakes, and very low probability events

- value pluralism and policy making in the light of an uncertain future

Important Dates:

- Conference Date: 6.-7. December 2018

Organizers: Daniele Chiffi, Erich Rast, Javier Gonzales de Prado Salas at the IFILNOVA Institute of Philosophy of the New University of Lisbon on behalf of the project "Values in Argumentative Discourse" funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.

Contact: Please send general inquiries about the conference to the conference email address LVU18Conference@gmail.com. Postal address: E. Rast / Av. de Berna, 26 - 4º Piso / 1069-061 Lisbon, Portugal.

Responsible Investigator: Erich Rast <erich@snafu.de>, Senior Research Fellow @ IFILNOVA