F.Knight_1921_Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit_4.pdf (2024)

Risk , uncertainty and the expected utility theory

2019

The present contribution examines the emergence of expected utility theory by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, the subjective the expected utility theory by Savage, and the problem of choice under risk and uncertainty, focusing in particular on the seminal work “The Utility Analysis of Choices involving Risk" (1948) by Milton Friedman and Leonard Savage to show how the evolution of the theory of choice has determined a separation of economics from psychology.

Does Utilitarianism Need a Rethink? (Preprint)

2021

Cross references: EXPECTED UTILITY HYPOTHESIS, METHODOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALISM, SAVAGE’S SUBJEC- TIVE EXPECTED UTILITY MODEL, UNCERTAINTY, UTILITARIANISM AND ECONOMIC THEORY, UTILITY

Vindicating Utilitarianism (2002)

Utilitas, 2002

Utilitarianism, The Moral Sciences, and Political Economy: Mill-Grote-Sidgwick

This paper, developed from my Istvan Hont Memorial Lecture of 2015, considers the work of Alfred Marshall in Cambridge not from the perspective its eventual outcome, but instead from that of its slow and complex genesis, in the context of the Moral Sciences Tripos. By placing Sidgwick's own political economy in the context of the response to Mill's utilitarianism, it is possible to understand rather better why Marshall sought to diminish the importance of Jevons's Theory of Political Economy (1871), while also seeing more clearly how Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics (1874) relates to contemporary political economy.

The Relevance of Utilitarianism

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

On Adam Smith's Anti-Utilitarianism in the Wealth of Nations

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015

The Elgar Companion To Economics and Philosophy - Introduction.pdf

The closing decades of the twentieth century saw a dramatic increase in interest in the role of philosophical ideas in economics. The period also saw a significant expansion in scholarly investigation into the different connections between economics and philosophy, as seen in the emergence of new journals, professional associations, conferences, seminar series, websites, research networks, teaching methods, and interdisciplinary collaboration. One of the results of this set of developments has been a remarkable distillation in thinking about philosophy and economics around a number of key subjects and themes. The goal of this Companion to Economics and Philosophy is to exhibit and explore a number of these areas of convergence. The volume is accordingly divided into three parts, each of which highlights a leading area of scholarly concern. They are: political economy conceived as political philosophy, the methodology and epistemology of economics, and social ontology and the ontology of economics. The authors of the chapters in the volume were chosen on the basis of their having made distinctive and innovative contributions to their respective areas of expertise. In addition, authors were asked to not only survey the state of the field as they saw it, but also provide statements of their own positions and their perspectives on the field in question and its possible direction of development in the future. We thus hope this volume will serve not only as an introduction to the field, but also stimulate further work and thinking concerning the questions it investigates. Political economy conceived as political philosophy The essays in the first part of this Companion investigate the idea of economics or political economy as political philosophy. This last term should not to be understood in the pejoratively restrictive sense of Rosenberg's (1992) definition of economics as mathematical political science. Rather, it should be taken to refer to the use of specific (namely economic) tools to understand the conditions of social order. This perspective harks back to the founders of economics and their conception of the discipline. Of course some would argue that more than two hundred years of scientific research have carried the discipline away from this conception. In fact, however, and as the issues discussed in the chapters in this section show, the distance that separates political economy in its recent developments from its origins is not that large.

Prospect Utilitarianism and the Original Position

Journal of the American Philosophical Association

Suppose we assume that the parties in the original position took Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory as constituting their general knowledge of human psychology that survives through the veil of ignorance. How would this change the choice situation of the original position? In this paper, I present what I call ‘prospect utilitarianism’. Prospect utilitarianism combines the utilitarian social welfare function with individual utility functions characterized by Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory. I will argue that, once prospect utilitarianism is on the table, Rawls's original arguments in support of justice as fairness as well as his arguments against utilitarianism are, at best, inconclusive. This shows that how implausible a choice for utilitarianism in the original position is heavily depends on what one assumes to be general knowledge of human psychology that the original contracting parties know.

Utilitarianism: Historical Theories and Contemporary Debates

2008