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Are Objections to Decision Theory also Objections to the Dual Process Theory of Action?

habitual process

Action occurs in the presence of Stimulus.

Agent is rewarded [/punished]

Stimulus-Action Link is strengthened [/weakened] due to reward [/punishment]

Given Stimulus, will Action occur? It depends on the strength of the Stimulus-Action Link.

‘goal-directed’ process

Action leads to Outcome.
 

Belief in Action-Outcome link is strengthened.

Agent has a Desire for the Outcome
 

Will Action occur? It depends on the Belief in the Action-Outcome Link and Agent’s Desire.

Repeats some of `what_are_preferences`
What are these beliefs and desires? How exactly do they lead to actions? I suggested that we can appeal to decision theory for an answer to both questions.

What are beliefs? And what are desires?

If you replace them with subjective probabilities and preferences, this question is easy to answer: they are constructs of game theory.

How do beliefs and desires determine actions (or intentions)?

The agents’ subjective probabilities and preferences determine the expected utilities of various actions she could take.

The agent selects the action with most expected utility.

This idea seems to fit well enough with Jeffry’s ideas ...

This book has ‘a philosophical end: elucidation of the notions of subjective probability and subjective desirability or utility’

(Jeffrey, 1983, p. xi)

problem:

Agents who make certain choices do not have subjective probabilities or preferences at all.

And many agents do make such choices (the Ellsberg Paradox illustrates; Jia, Furlong, Gao, Santos, & Levy, 2020).

consequence:

To characterise goal-directed processes in terms of game theory is to deny that goal-directed process occur in agents with aversion to ambiguity (and other conditions).

What should we do?

by ‘we’ I mean you.

option 1: find a way to hold on to game theory despite the objections

option 2: find an alternative formalization
(cumulative prospect theory Tversky & Kahneman, 1992?)

I wonder whether one or another form of non-expected utility theory could do the trick. E.g. cumulative prospect theory Tversky & Kahneman (1992) is supposed to address, among others, Ellsberg’s insight about preferring different kinds of risk.

option 3: find an informal way to characterise these processes

Or, as a philosopher, you may be inclined to think that a formal model is too much.
I have much sympathy for this position. There is excellent reason to think that other notions likely to play a role in behavioural sciences cannot be given good formal models, for example knowledge (see Stalnaker, 1999 on the problem of logical opacity).
But, equally, we should recognize that having nothing to say about goal-directed processes is a problem. Philosophers sometimes underestimate this because they are mainly concerned with questions and the limits of understanding.
But scientifically we need a little more.
The informal characterisation of goal-directed processes has allowed us to distinguish them from habitual processes. So it is not that the informa characterisation is useless.
But it would be desirable to go further. To illustrate, goal-directed processes are found in a wide range of animal behaviours. It may be fruitful to distinguish more and less sophisticated forms of goal-directed process---perhaps there are multiple kinds of goal-directed process involved in a single action.
For instance, there is no role at all for intention in the goal-directed process as usually characterised. There does not seem to be a good way to introduce intention in terms of the informal characterisation we have. Will probably need a more rigorous approach.