Taking Risks, With and Without Probabilities

Bibliographic Data

ID21364052
AuthorsLara Buchak (0000-0002-0232-4274, Princeton University Princeton New Jersey USA, corresponding author)
Year2025
Publication date2025-11-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNoûs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0029-4624 • E-ISSN: 1468-0068
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/nous.70018
OpenAlexW4416378612
LanguageEN
References cited70

Some hold that expected utility is too restrictive in the way it handles risk. Risk‐weighted expected utility is an alternative that allows decision‐makers to have a range of attitudes toward probabilistic risk. It holds that any attitude within this range is instrumentally rational, since these attitudes represent different, equally good, strategies for taking the means to one's ends. A different challenge to expected utility is that it is too restrictive in the way it handles ambiguity—it requires decision‐makers to have sharp probabilities—and risk‐weighted expected utility shares this restrictive feature. This paper presents a generalization of risk‐weighted expected utility which allows for ambiguity. It defends this theory as a theory of instrumental rationality, and argues that attitudes toward risk and attitudes toward ambiguity each represent different but important features of instrumental rationality

Ambiguity · Decision theory · Expected utility hypothesis · Generalization · Preference · Probabilistic logic · Range (aeronautics) · Subjective expected utility · Utility theory · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Risk Perception and Management

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