Accurate Updating for the Risk-Sensitive

Abstract

Several philosophers have recently attempted to justify particular methods of belief revision by showing that they are the optimal means towards the epistemic end of accurate belief. These attempts, however, presuppose that means should be evaluated according to classical expected utility theory; and there is a long tradition maintaining that expected utility theory is too restrictive as a theory of means-end rationality, ruling out too many natural ways of taking risk into account. In this paper, we investigate what belief-revision procedures are supported by accuracy-theoretic considerations once we allow agents to be risk-sensitive. We conclude that, if accuracy-theoretic considerations tell risk-sensitive agents anything about belief-revision, they tell them the same thing they tell agents that maximize expected utility: they should conditionalize.

Publication
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science