Philosophy of Science of Decision Making

SEMINAR SCHEDULE 2026-27

September 11, 2026 

LARA BUCHAK

Princeton University

Title: Playing Risky Games (joint work with Rebecca Sutton Koeser)

September 25, 2026 

KONSTANTINOS KATSIKOPOULOS

University of Southampton 

Title:  The Road to rationality: Axiomatic, optimizing, engineering, and heuristic approaches 

October 23, 2026 

ALESSANDRA NICOLETTA CRUZ YU

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai  

Title: Grounding Affect in Agentivity: Philosophical and Empirical Foundations) (16:00)

November 6, 2026

LISA BORTOLOTTI

University of Birmingham

Title: The Agential Stance

November 20, 2026 

RICHARD BRADLEY

London School of Economics

Title: Risk and Chance

December 18, 2026

ANTOINETTE BAUJARD

University of Lyon and Jean Monnet University at Saint-Etienne 

Title: Agency and the framework issue in welfare economics

January 15, 2027

JAMES JOYCE

University of Michigan

Title: TBA

January 29, 2027

JOSHUA MUGG

Park University (at Kansas City)

Title: Cognitive architecture of human reasoning: Dual process or sound board? 

February 12, 2027

THORSTEN PACHUR

Technical University of Munich

Title:  Intuitive and economic concepts of risk preference: Same sides, different coins?) 

February 26, 2027

CHRISTIAN RUFF 

University of Zurich

Title:  Risk attitudes: Preference or perception?

March 5, 2027

ELLEN PETERS

University of Oregon

Title: Numeracy and the motivational mind (17:00) **

March 26, 2027

EDOUARD MACHERY

University of Pittsburgh

Title: TBA

SEMINAR SCHEDULE

September 12, 2025 

DON ROSS

Title: “Integrating the economics of networks with quantitative sociology”

Keywords: Agency, network models, influence propagation, information flow, game theory, utility functions

Abstract: One way of framing the general problem of unifying economic and sociological models is that economists assume agency, often to strongly idealised and empirically unrealistic degrees, while sociologists often idealise agency away. This long-observed barrier to unification is arguably too abstract to matter much (except to philosophers). When we focus specifically on network models, we see this difference again, but along with it a complementary duality that gives rise to a truly urgent scientific problem. The latest wave of sociological modelling of complex contagions (e.g., Centola 2018) has discovered, on theoretical and empirical grounds, that non-epistemic influence propagates most efficiently via clustered strong ties in peripheral sub-networks, rather than via week ties from hubs. Meanwhile, in game-theoretic models of networks, the more traditionally understood efficiency properties – formerly agreed on between sociologists and economists – endure. We can understand this as indicating fundamentally different dynamics separating influence propagation from information flow. This gives rise to a classic form of scientific conundrum. Most social change phenomena involve propagation of both influence and information. Thus outputs of network activation are net products of forces pushing in opposite directions, with structures that promote influence impeding information flow and vice-versa. Empirical adequacy thus depend on factorising theory that we don’t yet have. Here the traditional barrier to integration of sociology and economics emerges as a real practical problem: the sociological network models involve no agency, while the economic models assume immovable agency based on fixed utility functions. In this talk, I describe a new technical methodology for (i) incorporating agency into models of influence propagation, and (ii) allowing utility functions to shift under influence, while (iii) preserving the power of established game-theoretic solution concepts.

September 26, 2025 

ARMIN SCHULZ

Title:  “Agency: The Case for an Eliminative Pluralism "

 Keywords: Agency, scientific pluralism, eliminativism, economics and biology, conceptual analysis

Abstract: Concepts of agency are invoked in explanations, models, theories, and predictions in many different sciences, from evolutionary biology to computer science and economics. In order to understand and assess the work in these sciences, therefore, it is crucial to understand these appeals to “agency.” To make progress in this, this paper makes the case for three interrelated conclusions. First, the best way to understand the question about the nature of agency is as an account that lays out defensible scientific uses of the concept of agency—not a purely metaphysical-philosophical account, or a purely interpretationist account. Second, the paper seeks to show that there is not one right answer about what an agent is—that is, we should be eliminativists about the general concept of agency. Third, though, it also shows that this should not be conflated with the view that anything goes as far as agency is concerned: in specific scientific contexts, such as economics and biology, there are more and less defensible views of agency in that context. That is, we should be scientific pluralists about agency.  

October 10,2025 

CAMILLA COLOMBO

Title: "Choice automation as choice deferral: rationality and autonomy"

Keywords: Choice automation, choice deferral, decisional enhancement, cognitive offloading, intrinsic value of choice, autonomy

Abstract: “Choice deferral” is a weird beast: this umbrella term has been used in the decision theory literature to cover a wide variety of choice behaviours, from procrastination to delegation and, more recently, choice automation. In this talk, I first discuss how choice deferral can prove difficult to conceptualize and to model in standard decision theory settings; I then argue that different cases and patterns of deferral can be addressed as specific instances of choice delegation. In the second part of this talk, we will survey which could be the grounds for reasonable choice delegation: that is, when it is normatively rational to delegate your choice to your future self, to another human, to “Nature”, or to a technology. This discussion highlights that the rational justifications for choice deferral, from cognitive offloading to consistency, are far from univocal, and are often motivated by opposite desiderata and goals in our decision-making practices. I conclude that an unitary justification for rational choice deferral cannot be provided, but that different purposes and instances of choice delegation, such as automation, would require a rich and nuanced understanding of its motivations, if we strive to model normatively sound criteria for choice deferral.  

October 24, 2025

MAGDA OSMAN

Title: “Judged unconscious manipulation and free choice are not neatly associated, at least not when we look at folk beliefs”

Keywords: Free choice, unconscious, causal attributions, agency, identity

Abstract: Threats to our free choice can come to us in profound but often mundane ways. As a result we carry around intuitions about philosophical concepts such as free will, manipulation, autonomy, and causality. We use these intuitions to make practical judgements about what is and isn’t acceptable when we experience manipulation. Take microtargeting as an example. Products, services, or political voting campaigns are shown to us in ways uniquely designed to our tastes based on data collected to profile who we are (e.g. age, gender, ethnicity, political interests). It almost feels like our choices are being engineered unconsciously. Is this manipulative and how concerning is this to us "folk"? To answer this the appropriate way to examine people’s judgments of free choice when under threat from manipulative tactics has to start with relatable concepts and examples from people’s own point of view. When this is done we find that people make pragmatic judgments based on context and other factors which means manipulation is not by default an automatic threat to their to free choice. 

November 21, 2025 

JOSÉ L. BERMÚDEZ

Title: “Framing in game theory: The 'I' frame vs. the 'we' frame”

Keywords: Framing, rationality, frame-sensitive reasoning, ultraintensionality

Abstract: This paper starts from Michael Bacharach’s notion of mode-P reasoning, which is intended to capture the notion of reasoning as a member of a group or team (in the “We”-frame, rather than the “I”-frame). Mode-P reasoners can converge on the intuitively correct solutions to common interest games (e.g., Stag Hunt), as well as on the cooperative solution in Prisoner’s Dilemma interactions. Bacharach sees the shift between frames as a priming phenomenon, brought about by structural features of the game. Against this, I argue for a more nuanced approach, based on a more general account of frames and framing, that allows agents to reason their way into adopting (or not adopting) the “we”-frame. 

December 5, 2025

CONRAD HEILMANN

Title: “Intrapersonal conflict resolved”

Keywords: Intrapersonal choice, weakness of will, choice over time, temporal discounting

Abstract: Cases of intertemporal weak will, such as procrastination, are associated with inner conflict. I advance a distinction between 'shallow' and 'deep' inner conflict that applies to such cases. Shallow inner conflict describes situations in which an individual promotes now over later. It is a time conflict. Deep inner conflict describes situations in which an individual has more than one credible evaluative perspective which differ in recommendation. It is a value conflict. The distinction has a couple of payoffs. For one, the distinction can be used as a therapeutic tool. As such, it can help individuals with reflecting about what to do in cases that are commonly associated with intertemporal weak will. For another, distinguishing between shallow and deep inner conflict also has methodological advantages. The distinction effectively separates the time and value dimension in intertemporal weak will cases. This in turn, offers a new perspective with which to critically appraise philosophical and economic theories of intertemporal weak will.   

January 23, 2026

MALVINA ONGARO

Title: "Decision-making for the management of natural risks"

Keywords: Risk management, uncertainty, natural hazards, cost-benefit analysis, multi-criteria analysis

Abstract: The category of natural risks comprises events that differ widely in terms of their predictability, spatial scale, temporal horizon, and type of impacts. Managing these risks includes a variety of possible measures, which may act on prevention or on reconstruction, during the emergency or at peacetime. Due to all this complexity, decision contexts in the management of natural risks can vary significantly, and require different approaches. Thus, decision-making for natural risks management needs a significant degree of flexibility and adaptability. Due to the rigidity of their assumptions, formal decision-supporting instruments like cost-benefit analysis or multi-criteria analysis are not well-equipped to fully determine this type of decisions. On the other hand, however, lack of standardized guidance makes very consequential decisions like these susceptible to a "defensive" approach from the decision-makers, who may have the incentive to prioritize avoiding any personal liability over the optimization of social risk reduction. We need to construct a rich toolbox of principles and instruments that can guide natural risks management and help decision-makers make rational decisions for the social good. 

February 6, 2026

ALIYA RUMANA

Title: "Norm arbitration as a problem for functional analysis"

Keywords: Judgment and Decision-Making, Evaluation, Objectivism, Explanation, Functional Analysis

Abstract: Most studies in the psychology of judgment and decision-making (JDM) administer tasks, which participants can perform correctly or incorrectly. Since the 1960s and '70s, there has been significant disagreement about how to evaluate participant responses to tasks as correct or incorrect. Prima facie, this is a surprising state-of-affairs: JDM psychology aims to explain human JDM, so how has it come to be entrenched in disagreements about how to evaluate human JDM? Many think explanation and evaluation are separable activities, and disagree about whether JDM psychology may do both (e.g., Stanovich, 2011) or ought to leave evaluation to philosophy (e.g., Elqayam & Evans, 2011). In this paper, I argue that objectivism about evaluation (the view that normative properties instantiate independently of our normative commitments) implies that evaluation is partly constitutive of explanation. In particular, it implies a more sophisticated conception of functional analysis, compared to the standard account by Cummins (1983). I won't defend objectivism about evaluation, of course, but I'll argue that it provides a way to explain why JDM psychologists try so vigorously to resolve evaluative disagreements: if they are objectivists about evaluation, then they need to resolve evaluative disagreements in order to resolve explanatory ones.  

February 13, 2026 

WIM DE NEYS

Title: "Fast and Slow thinking: Quo Vadis?"

Keywords: Dual process theory, System 1, System 2, intuitive vs. deliberate thought, system interaction

Abstract: The two-headed, dual process view of human thinking has been very influential in the cognitive sciences. The core idea that thinking can be conceived as an interplay between a fast-intuitive and slower-deliberate process has inspired a wide range of psychologists, philosophers, and economists. However, despite the popularity of the dual process framework it faces multiple challenges. One key issue is that the precise interaction between intuitive and deliberate thought processes (or System 1 and 2, as they are often referred to) is not well understood. In my talk I will give an overview of recent advances and discuss broader implications for our view of human cognition and intelligence. 

February 20, 2026

LUKAS BECK

Title: "Like It or Not - Recommender Systems, Welfarism, and Performativity" (co-authored w/ Donal Khosrowi)

Keywords: Recommender Systems, Welfare Consequentialism, Preference Satisfaction, Behaviorally Informed Design 

Abstract:  Recommender Systems (RS) are among the most widely-deployed algorithmic systems, shaping the contents and items that billions of users see, engage with, and purchase on a daily basis. The central aim of RS is often characterized as estimating users' preferences and using this information to recommend good items for users. What is striking about this dominant narrative is that it offers a welfare consequentialist justification for RS, in which preference satisfaction is the core welfare criterion that tells us how to rank outcomes in terms of agents' welfare. While intuitively compelling, we argue that this justification is severely undertheorized and defective. More specifically, we argue that RS research currently lacks a coherent conceptualization of the relationship between preference, choice, and welfare, and the means to identify welfare-relevant preferences. Instead, it relies on outdated economic theories that have since been contravened by decades of research in the behavioral sciences and philosophy. To make our case, we draw out several interconnected challenges that call into question whether RS deals in genuine information about welfare-relevant preferences. To address this situation, we argue for behaviorally informed RS, grounded in explicit and coherent welfare-theoretical foundations, and highlight how interdisciplinary collaborations between RS research, social and behavioral science, and ethics and philosophy of science are needed to deliver on RS's welfarist ambitions. 

March 6, 2026 

ENRICO PETRACCA

Title: “Four shades of embodied rationality”

Keywords: Embodied rationality, ecological rationality, embodied cognition, extended cognition

Abstract: I intend to provide an overview of the idea of embodied rationality recently introduced in the judgment and decision-making literature. I will start with the label’s first appearance in 2009, discuss its connection with other concepts of rationality, and then focus on the recent shift in which embodied rationality has taken the form of a plurality of proposals characterized by different degrees of embodied radicalism. In particular, I will discuss four, increasingly radical views of embodied rationality: embodied bounded rationality, somatic rationality, extended rationality, and radical embodied/enactive rationality. I will also dwell on the distinction between descriptive and normative aspects of embodied rationality. Alternative ways to understand the embodiment of individuals affect not only how we describe rational behavior, but also the normative criteria that guide rationality and through which we assess it.

March 20, 2026 

MATTEO COLOMBO

Title: "Tolerance to drugs"

Keywords: Drug tolerance, addiction, substance use disorders, compulsion and denial, sensory adaptation 

Abstract:  Drug tolerance is the decrease in the effects of a substance after repeated consumption. Despite its significant role in the development and maintenance of substance use disorders, tolerance has received hardly any philosophical attention, particularly in the context of the puzzle of addiction, which is why a person continues to consume drugs despite their negative consequences. Prominent answers to this question emphasise conative and cognitive dimensions of addiction in the form of, respectively, compulsion and denial. Here, I explore an alterative answer focused on tolerance, namely that there is no puzzle of as to why drug use persists despite its negative effects if I develop tolerance to these effects. To evaluate this answer, I distinguish different ways of understanding the nature and mechanism of tolerance, and conclude that, while tolerance does not solve the puzzle of addiction, it helpfully displays addiction also as a disorder of sensory adaptation.  

March 27, 2026

ANGELICA KAUFMANN

Title: “An empirical approach to studying joint commitment in animals”

Keywords: Commitment, choice, non-human animals, comparative ethology

Abstract: The ability to form joint commitments has been highlighted as a crucial factor stabilizing joint actions among humans, and thereby underpinning characteristically human forms of sociality. While similar abilities in animals may shed light on the evolution of joint commitment, they remain challenging to detect unambiguously. We revisit joint commitment in non-human animals, and suggest that progress in identifying homologous or analogous abilities has been hampered by the adoption of an approach approach which builds human-specific cognitive mechanisms into the definition of joint commitment. To move forward, we propose a framework which does not presuppose characteristically human forms of cognition, communication, or awareness. The framework specifies a series of criteria, each of which can be operationalised, investigated empirically, and must be met for joint commitment to be demonstrated. Our framework is sufficiently broad to include paradigmatic cases of joint action in humans as well as cases of joint commitment in non-human animals. This will enable us to identify mechanisms which humans share with other animals, as well as to home in on uniquely human mechanisms, as well as differences across species.