Thanks for the comment, Alejandro, and apologies for the delay responding—a vacation and then a bout of covid.
On the first: yes, it’s definitely true that there are other theories besides Buchak’s that capture the Allais preferences, and a regret averse theory that incorporates the regret into the utilities would do that. So we’d have to look at a particular regret-averse theory and then look to cases in which it and Buchak’s theory come apart and see what we make of them. Buchak herself does offer an explicit argument in favour of her theory that goes beyond just appeal to the intuitive response to Allais. But it’s quite involved and it might not have the same force.
On the second: thanks for the link!
On the third: I’m not so sure about the analogy with Zero. It’s true that Sheila needn’t defer to Zero’s axiology, since we might think that which axiology is correct is a matter of fact and so Sheila might just think she’s right and Zero is wrong. But risk attitudes aren’t like that. They’re not matters of fact, but something more like subjective preferences. But I can see that it is certainly a consistent moral view to be total hedonist utilitarian and think that you have no obligation to take the risk attitudes of others into account. I suppose I just think that it’s not the correct moral view, even for someone whose axiology is total hedonist utilitarian. For them, that axiology should supply their utility function for moral decisions, but their risk attitudes should be supplied in the way suggested by the Risk Principle*. But I’m not clear how to adjudicate this.
Thanks for the comment, Alejandro, and apologies for the delay responding—a vacation and then a bout of covid.
On the first: yes, it’s definitely true that there are other theories besides Buchak’s that capture the Allais preferences, and a regret averse theory that incorporates the regret into the utilities would do that. So we’d have to look at a particular regret-averse theory and then look to cases in which it and Buchak’s theory come apart and see what we make of them. Buchak herself does offer an explicit argument in favour of her theory that goes beyond just appeal to the intuitive response to Allais. But it’s quite involved and it might not have the same force.
On the second: thanks for the link!
On the third: I’m not so sure about the analogy with Zero. It’s true that Sheila needn’t defer to Zero’s axiology, since we might think that which axiology is correct is a matter of fact and so Sheila might just think she’s right and Zero is wrong. But risk attitudes aren’t like that. They’re not matters of fact, but something more like subjective preferences. But I can see that it is certainly a consistent moral view to be total hedonist utilitarian and think that you have no obligation to take the risk attitudes of others into account. I suppose I just think that it’s not the correct moral view, even for someone whose axiology is total hedonist utilitarian. For them, that axiology should supply their utility function for moral decisions, but their risk attitudes should be supplied in the way suggested by the Risk Principle*. But I’m not clear how to adjudicate this.