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    Transitivity of preferences is a plausible rationality co... — Carmelics
    Home/Moral Responsibility
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    Transitivity of preferences is a plausible rationality condition.

    Moral ResponsibilityTruth & Knowledge
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.If an agent's preferences are intransitive and the agent is willing to make exchanges, the agent can be exploited indefinitely (money pump).
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    • 2.Agents will refuse to trade or adjust preferences to eliminate intransitivity rather than be exploited.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Preferences can be legitimately context-dependent, making apparent intransitivity reflect rational sensitivity to framing rather than incoherence.
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    • 2.Tversky's preference reversal experiments show systematic intransitivity in human judgment that cannot be dismissed as mere error or irrationality.
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    • 3.A rationality condition that fails to describe any actual rational agent is descriptively and normatively inadequate as a universal constraint.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The money pump argument assumes agents make sequential, isolated choices, but real agents anticipate the sequence and refuse the first trade.
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    • 2.McClennen's 'resolute choice' framework shows agents can be rationally immune to money pumps without requiring transitive preferences.
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    • 3.Therefore, the money pump fails to establish transitivity as a necessary condition of rationality, only as one sufficient defense against exploitation.
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    Moral ResponsibilityTruth & Knowledge

    Connections

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    Consequentialism1 linked

    Related

    A rationality condition that fails to describe any actual rational agent is desc...Agents will refuse to trade or adjust preferences to eliminate intransitivity ra...If an agent's preferences are intransitive and the agent is willing to make exch...McClennen's 'resolute choice' framework shows agents can be rationally immune to...
    +4 moreShow less
    Preferences can be legitimately context-dependent, making apparent intransitivit...The money pump argument assumes agents make sequential, isolated choices, but re...Therefore, the money pump fails to establish transitivity as a necessary conditi...Tversky's preference reversal experiments show systematic intransitivity in huma...

    Similar

    The barebones theory of rationality (requiring complete preferences) m...87%The economic account of rationality requires that an agent's choices c...81%Having incomplete preferences is not irrational in situations involvin...79%Representation theorems hold that any agent with qualitative preferenc...79%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: economics
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    The barebones theory of rationality discussed above in Section 1.1 takes an agent’s preferences (rankings of states of affairs) to be rational if they are complete and transitive, and it takes the agent’s choice to be rational if the agent does not prefer any feasible alternative to the one he or she chooses. Such a theory of rationality is clearly too weak, because it says nothing about belief or what rationality implies when agents do not know (with certainty) everything relevant to their
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit