Ambiguity and Logic [Hardcover]

In this book Frederic Schick develops his challenge to standard decision theory.In this book Frederic Schick develops his challenge to standard decision theory. Professor Schick argues that talk of the beliefs and desires of an agent is not sufficient to explain choices. To account for a given choice we need to take into consideration how the agent understands the problem, how he sees in a selective way the options open to him. This book questions the foundations of technical and philosophical decision theory and will appeal to all those who work in that field, be they philosophers, economists or psychologists.In this book Frederic Schick develops his challenge to standard decision theory. Professor Schick argues that talk of the beliefs and desires of an agent is not sufficient to explain choices. To account for a given choice we need to take into consideration how the agent understands the problem, how he sees in a selective way the options open to him. This book questions the foundations of technical and philosophical decision theory and will appeal to all those who work in that field, be they philosophers, economists or psychologists.In this book, Frederic Schick extends and applies the decision theory he proposed in two previous Cambridge books: Understanding Action (1991) and Making Choices (1997). He shows how the way we see situations affects the choices we make, and he develops a logic of thought responsive to how things are seen. The book considers many questions of choosing and some familiar human predicaments. Why do people in choice experiments act so often against expectations? How might they and the experimenters be looking at different problems in them? Why do people cooperate so often where the textbook logic excludes that? How can there be weakness of will - and must it always be faulted? Does how we see things affect what they mean, and what are people reporting who say that their lives have no meaning for them? These very different questions turnl£?