PHIL 325

PHIL 325: Risk, Choice, and Rationality
Instructor: Hassan Masoud

Course Objectives

This course provides an introduction to the formal theory of rationality including probability and induction, and elementary decision theory, with attention to the paradoxes of choice. Decision theory is concerned with the problem of determining the best decision an agent can make especially under conditions of risk or ignorance. The rules of inductive logic and probability calculus are among tools that are used in the way of decision making. Decision theory, in a broad sense, also includes game theory, concerning the situations in which the outcome of an agent’s decision depends upon others’ moves, and social choice theory, concerning the situations in which a decision is to be made for several agents with different preferences.