Thinking about Acting Logical Foundations for

John Pollock aims to construct a theory of rational decision making for real agents--not ideal agents. Real agents have limited cognitive powers, but traditional theories of rationality have applied only to idealized agents that lack such constraints. Pollock argues that theories of ideal rationality are largely irrelevant to the decision making of real agents. Thinking about Acting aims to provide a theory of "real rationality."

John L. Pollock is Regents' Professor of Philosophy and Research Professor of Cognitive Science, University of Arizona, Tucson.

Chapter 1: Rational Choice and Classical Decision Theory

3

(20)

1. Rational Cognition

3

(2)

2. Ideal Rationality and Real Rationality

5

(3)

3. Human Rationality and Generic Rationality

8

(4)

4. Decision Making

12

(2)

5. Classical Decision Theory and the Optimality Prescription

14

(9)

Part I: Values

Chapter 2: Evaluative Cognition and the Evaluative Database

23

(14)

1. The Doxastic/Conative Loop

23

(1)

2. Preference Rankings

24

(6)

3. Analog Representations of Values

30

(5)

4. Conclusions

35

(2)

Chapter 3: Evaluative Induction

37

(18)

1. The Need for Evaluative Induction

37

(1)

2. Human Conative States

38

(5)

3. Evaluative Induction

43

(7)

4. Evaluative Induction as a Q&I Module

50

(4)

5. Conclusions

54

(1)

Chapter 4: Some Observations about Evaluative Cognition

55

(12)

1. Liking Activities

55

(1)

2. Evaluating the Human Cognitive Architecture

56

(3)

3. State Liking

59

(7)

4. Conclusions

66

(1)

Chapter 5: The Database Calculation

67

(14)

1. The Database Calculation

68

(4)

2. Justifying the Database Calculation

72

(5)

3. Feature-Based Evaluative Cognition

77

(4)

Part II: Probabilities

Chapter 6: Subjective Probabilities

81

(20)

1. Two Kinds of Probabilities

81

(1)

2. Subjective Probabilities and Degrees of Belief

82

(4)

3. Belief Simpliciter

86

(1)

4. Subjective Expected Utility Theory

87

(1)

5. Rational Decision Making

88

(2)

6. Do Subjective Probabilities Exist

90

(2)

7. Deriving the Optimality Prescription from Rationality Constraints

92

(1)

8. Subjective Probabilities from Epistemology

93

(5)

9. A Return to Objective Probabilities

98

(3)

Chapter 7: Objective Probabilities

101

(16)

1. Physical Probabilities and Relative Frequencies

101

(3)

2. Empirical Theories

104

(2)

3. Nomic Probability

106

(5)

4. Mixed Physical/Epistemic Probabilities

111

(5)

5. Conclusions

116

(1)

Chapter 8: Causal Probabilities

117

(28)

1. Causal Decision Theory

117

(1)

2. Probabilistic Causation

118

(4)

3. Skyrms and Lewis

122

(3)

4. Defining Causal Probability

125

(3)

5. Conditional Causal Probability

128

(2)

6. C-PROBA and K-PROBA

130

(5)

7. Computing Causal Probabilities

135

(3)

8. Computing Conditional Causal Probabilities

138

(2)

9. Simplifying the Computation Defeasibly

140

(2)

10. Conclusions

142

(3)

Part III: Decisions

Chapter 9: Rational Choice and Action Omnipotence

145

(22)

1. Actions and the Optimality Prescription

145

(1)

2. Action Omnipotence

146

(1)

3. Restricting the Scope of the Optimality Prescription

147

(8)

4. Expected Utility

155

(5)

5. Conditional Policies and Expected Utilities

160

(3)

6. Two Problems

163

(2)

7. Computing Expected-Utilities

165

(1)

8. Conclusions

166

(1)

Chapter 10: Plans and Decisions

167

(26)

1. Against Optimality

167

(1)

2. The Logical Structure of Practical Deliberation

168

(7)

3. Groups of Actions

175

(3)

4. Actions and Plans

178

(2)

5. Choosing between Plans

180

(3)

6. AI Planning Theory: The Real World versus Toy Problems

183

(1)

7. When Is a Plan a Good One?

184

(3)

8. Locally Global Planning

187

(2)

9. Conclusions

189

(4)

Chapter 11: Plans and Their Expected Utilities

193

(20)

1. Linear Plans

193

(2)

2. Linear Policies

195

(4)

3. Nonlinear Plans

199

(2)

4. Conditional Plans

201

(2)

5. An Example

203

(8)

6. Conclusions

211

(2)

Chapter 12: Locally Global Planning

213

(12)

1. The Theory

213

(1)

2. Incremental Decision-Theoretic Planning

213

(2)

3. Goal-Directed Planning

215

(5)

4. Presumptively Additive Expected Utilities

220

(1)

5. Finding and Repairing Decision-Theoretic Interference

221

(2)

6. Conclusions

223

(2)

Appendix: The Theory of Nomic Probability

225

(28)

1. Introduction

225

(2)

2. Computational Principles

227

(5)

3. The Statistical Syllogism

232

(4)

4. Direct Inference and Definite Probabilities

236

(5)

5. Indefinite Probabilities and Probability Distributions

241

(1)

6. Induction

242

(9)

7. Conclusions

251

(2)

Bibliography

253

(10)

Index

263

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Thinking about Acting Logical Foundations for Rational Decision Making

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials