Causal Decision Research Articles

Fostering Creativity in New Product Development through Entrepreneurial Decision Making

Research has emphasized the importance of employees' individual entrepreneurial decision making for innovation. In this context, practised creativity as the ability to perceive and exploit creative opportunities, can be regarded as a crucial requirement for employees in new product development. We discuss the application of decision making logic as an important antecedent of practised creativity in new product development. We survey 219 employees from new product development departments of German product and service firms. Results indicate that the use of entrepreneurial decision making logic positively impacts practised creativity; comparably we find indicators that the use of causal decision making logic negatively influences creativity. The effects significantly depend on the moderating role of uncertainty. The results contribute to the literature of creativity, entrepreneurship and new product development by theoretically and empirically revealing effectuation as antecedent to practised creativity. The results open promising avenues for future research and allow the derivation of valuable guidelines for practitioners. Aligning the new product development process to support employees' entrepreneurial decision making may help generating practised creativity.

A critique of benchmark theory

Benchmark theory (BT), introduced by Ralph Wedgwood, departs from decision theories of pure expectation maximization like evidential decision theory (EDT) and causal decision theory (CDT) and instead ranks actions according to the desirability of an outcome they produce in some state of affairs compared to a standard—a benchmark—for that state of affairs. Wedgwood motivates BT through what he terms Gandalf’s principle, that the merits of an action in a given state should be evaluated relative only to the performances of other actions in that state, and not to their performances in other states. Although BT succeeds in selecting intuitively rational actions in a number of cases—including some in which EDT or CDT seem to go wrong—it places constraints on rational decision-making that either lack motivation or are untenable. Specifically, I argue that as it stands BT is committed both to endorsing and rejecting the independence of irrelevant alternatives. Furthermore its requirement that weakly dominated actions be excluded from consideration of rational action lacks motivation and threatens to collide with traditional game theory. In the final section of the paper, I construct a counterexample to BT.

Causal Decision Theory and EPR correlations

The paper argues that on three out of eight possible hypotheses about the EPR experiment we can construct novel and realistic decision problems on which (a) Causal Decision Theory and Evidential Decision Theory conflict (b) Causal Decision Theory and the EPR statistics conflict. We infer that anyone who fully accepts any of these three hypotheses has strong reasons to reject Causal Decision Theory. Finally, we extend the original construction to show that anyone who gives any of the three hypotheses any non-zero credence has strong reasons to reject Causal Decision Theory. However, we concede that no version of the Many Worlds Interpretation (Vaidman, in Zalta, E.N. (ed.), Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy 2014) gives rise to the conflicts that we point out.

Dicing with death

You should rather play hide-and-seek against someone who cannot predict where you hide than against someone who can, as the article illustrates in connection with a high-stakes example. Causal Decision Theory denies this. So Causal Decision Theory is false.

Diagnostic Preliminaries to Applying a Theory of Decision

AbstractDecision theory cannot be a purely formal theory, free of all metaphysical assumptions and ascertainments. It must instead rely upon the end user for the wisdom it takes to prime the decision formalism – with principles and assumptions about the metaphysics of the application context – so that the formalism in its turn can generate good advice. Appreciating this idea is fundamental to understanding the true rivalry between evidential decision theory (EDT) and causal decision theory (CDT) in specific cases. I shall argue that no decision theory can deliver a verdict unless assumptions are made about the

Increasing the Problem Solving Speed Through Effectual Decision Making

Effectuation has been acknowledged as an appropriate alternative to causal decision making in highly uncertain situations by shifting the focus from a logic of prediction to a logic of control (Sarasvathy, 2001). Problem-solving speed as part of the holistic problem solving competence is crucial for the establishment of competitive advantages within corporations, as it promotes the ability to develop and market innovative products in a timely manner (Atuahene-Gima and Wei, 2011). Problem- solving speed can be defined as the time needed to find, evaluate and implement an adequate solution to a particular problem (Atuahene-Gima and Li, 2004). We conducted a survey with employees from new product development (NPD) departments of industrial and service companies located in Germany and discovered, that embracing the unexpected as one of the four effectual dimensions has a positive impact on the problem solving speed in highly uncertain situations. In contrast the causal dimensions of goal- and competition-orientation slow down problem-solving speed. All effects depend on the moderating influence of uncertainty. Thus, building decisions on entrepreneurial decision-making logic in uncertain situations partially explains the differences in problem-solving speed and uncovers a novel source of competitive advantage.

Epistemic Decision Theory

I explore the prospects for modelling epistemic rationality (in the probabilist setting) via an epistemic decision theory, in a consequentialist spirit. Previous work has focused on cases in which the truth-values of the propositions in which the agent is selecting credences do not depend, either causally or merely evidentially, on the agent�s choice of credences. Relaxing that restriction leads to a proliferation of puzzle cases and theories to deal with them, including epistemic analogues of evidential and causal decision theory, and of the Newcomb Problem and �Psychopath Button� Problem. A variant of causal epistemic decision theory deals well with most cases. However, there is a recalcitrant class of problem cases for which no epistemic decision theory seems able to match our intuitive judgements of epistemic rationality. This lends both precision and credence to the view that there is a fundamental mismatch between epistemic consequentialism and the intuitive notion of epistemic rationality; the implications for understanding the latter are briefly discussed.

Causal Decision Theory and the Fixity of the Past

Causal decision theory (CDT) cares only about the effects of a contemplated act, not its causes. The article constructs a case in which CDT consequently recommends a bet that the agent is certain to lose, rather than a bet that she is certain to win. CDT is plainly giving wrong advice in this case. It therefore stands refuted. 1 The Argument2 The Argument in More Detail 2.1 The betting mechanism 2.2 Soft determinism 2.3 The content of P 2.4 The argument again3 The Descriptive Premise 3.1 Causal decision theory 3.2 Causal decision theory prefers A14 The Normative Premise5 Objections 5.1 Table 1 and Table 2 are misleading 5.2 The agency theory of causation 5.3 The payment mechanism 5.4 Newcomb’s problem 5.5 Against the normative premise 5.6 Drop soft determinism

Causal Decision Theory: A Counterexample

The essay presents a novel counterexample to Causal Decision Theory (CDT). Its interest is that it generates a case in which CDT violates the very principles that motivated it in the first place. The essay argues that the objection applies to all extant formulations of CDT and that the only way out for that theory is a modification of it that entails incompatibilism. The essay invites the reader to find this consequence of CDT a reason to reject it.

What is the ‘Cause’ in Causal Decision Theory?

A simple counterfactual theory of causation fails because of problems with cases of preemption. This might lead us to expect that preemption will raise problems for counterfactual theories of other concepts that have a causal dimension. Indeed, examples are easy to find. But there is one case where we do not find this. Several versions of causal decision theory are formulated using counterfactuals. This might lead us to expect that these theories will yield the wrong recommendations in cases of preemption. But they do not. The explanation, I argue, is that the ‘cause’ that has been the target of counterfactual analyses is a specific relation, ‘actual causation’, that is not needed for prospective deliberation. A simple counterfactual theory of causation seems to capture the notion of cause needed for causal decision theory. This shows, in opposition to some critics, that counterfactual theories of causation are not barking up the wrong tree.

Career as Antecedent of Entrepreneurial Decision-making

This study explores how careers of entrepreneurs influence their preference for causal and effectual decision logics in the process of new venture creation. We adopt a qualitative research approach...

Repeated causal decision making.

Many of our decisions refer to actions that have a causal impact on the external environment. Such actions may not only allow for the mere learning of expected values or utilities but also for acquiring knowledge about the causal structure of our world. We used a repeated decision-making paradigm to examine what kind of knowledge people acquire in such situations and how they use their knowledge to adapt to changes in the decision context. Our studies show that decision makers' behavior is strongly contingent on their causal beliefs and that people exploit their causal knowledge to assess the consequences of changes in the decision problem. A high consistency between hypotheses about causal structure, causally expected values, and actual choices was observed. The experiments show that (a) existing causal hypotheses guide the interpretation of decision feedback, (b) consequences of decisions are used to revise existing causal beliefs, and (c) decision makers use the experienced feedback to induce a causal model of the choice situation even when they have no initial causal hypotheses, which (d) enables them to adapt their choices to changes of the decision problem. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).

Causation, Chance, and the Rational Significance of Supernatural Evidence

In “A Subjectivist’s Guide to Objective Chance,” David Lewis says that he is “led to wonder whether anyone but a subjectivist is in a position to understand objective chance.” The present essay aims to motivate this same Lewisean attitude, and a similar degree of modest subjectivism, with respect to objective causation. The essay begins with Newcomb problems, which turn on an apparent tension between two principles of choice: roughly, a principle sensitive to the causal features of the relevant situation, and a principle sensitive only to evidential factors. Two-boxers give priority to causal beliefs, and one-boxers to evidential beliefs. The essay notes that a similar issue can arise when the modality in question is chance, rather than causation. In this case, the conflict is between decision rules based on credences guided solely by chances, and rules based on credences guided by other sorts of probabilistic evidence. Far from excluding cases of the latter kind, Lewis’s Principal Principle explicitly allows for them, in the form of the caveat that credences should follow beliefs about chances only in the absence of “inadmissible evidence.” The essay then exhibits a tension in Lewis’s views on these two matters, by presenting a class of decision problems—some of them themselves Newcomb problems—in which Lewis’s view of the relevance of inadmissible evidence seems in tension with his causal decision theory. It offers a diagnosis for this dilemma and proposes a remedy, based on an extension of a proposal due to Ned Hall and others from the case of chance to that of causation. The remedy suggests a new view of the relation between causal decision theory and evidential decision theory, namely, that they stand to each other much as chance stands to credence, being objective and subjective faces of the same practical coin. This has much the same metaphysical benefits as Lewis’s own view of chance and also throws interesting new light on Newcomb problems, providing an irenic resolution of the apparent disagreement between causal and evidential decision rules.

Conditionals in causal decision theory

This paper explores the possibility that causal decision theory can be formulated in terms of probabilities of conditionals. It is argued that a generalized Stalnaker semantics in combination with an underlying branching time structure not only provides the basis for a plausible account of the semantics of indicative conditionals, but also that the resulting conditionals have properties that make them well-suited as a basis for formulating causal decision theory. Decision theory (at least if we omit the frills) is not an esoteric science, however unfamiliar it may seem to an outsider. Rather it is a systematic exposition of the consequences of certain well-chosen platitudes about belief, desire, preference and choice. It is the very core of our common-sense theory of persons, dissected out and elegantly systematized. (David Lewis, Synthese 23:331–344, , p. 337). A small distortion in the analysis of the conditional may create spurious problems with the analysis of other concepts. So if the facts about usage favor one among a number of subtly different theories, it may be important to determine which one it is. (Robert Stalnaker, A Defense of Conditional Excluded Middle, pp. 87–104, , p. 87)

Push the Button

The article discusses a well-known type of counterexample to Causal Decision Theory (CDT), in which CDT recommends an option that probably causes the best outcome while itself being evidence that it causes the worst. Intuition disagrees. Many philosophers accept that this justifies either modifying CDT or dropping it altogether. I argue to the contrary that (a) if intuition is right about this case, then transitivity of preference must be violated in another, but (b) this violation is untenable. I conclude that CDT stands.

Arntzenius on ‘Why ain’cha rich?’

The best-known argument for Evidential Decision Theory (EDT) is the ‘Why ain’cha rich?’ challenge to rival Causal Decision Theory (CDT). The basis for this challenge is that in Newcomb-like situations, acts that conform to EDT may be known in advance to have the better return than acts that conform to CDT. Frank Arntzenius has recently proposed an ingenious counter argument, based on an example in which, he claims, it is predictable in advance that acts that conform to EDT will do less well than acts that conform to CDT. We raise two objections to Arntzenius’s example. We argue, first, that the example is subtly incoherent, in a way that undermines its effectiveness against EDT; and, second, that the example relies on calculating the average return over an inappropriate population of acts.

Regret and instability in causal decision theory

Andy Egan has recently produced a set of alleged counterexamples to causal decision theory (CDT) in which agents are forced to decide among causally unratifiable options, thereby making choices they know they will regret. I show that, far from being counterexamples, CDT gets Egan’s cases exactly right. Egan thinks otherwise because he has misapplied CDT by requiring agents to make binding choices before they have processed all available information about the causal consequences of their acts. I elucidate CDT in a way that makes it clear where Egan goes wrong, and which explains why his examples pose no threat to the theory. My approach has similarities to a modification of CDT proposed by Frank Arntzenius, but it differs in the significance that it assigns to potential regrets. I maintain, contrary to Arntzenius, that an agent facing Egan’s decisions can rationally choose actions that she knows she will later regret. All rationality demands of agents it that they maximize unconditional causal expected utility from an epistemic perspective that accurately reflects all the available evidence about what their acts are likely to cause. This yields correct answers even in outlandish cases in which one is sure to regret whatever one does.

Reversing 30 years of discussion: why causal decision theorists should one-box

The paper will show how one may rationalize one-boxing in Newcomb’s problem and drinking the toxin in the Toxin puzzle within the confines of causal decision theory by ascending to so-called reflexive decision models which reflect how actions are caused by decision situations (beliefs, desires, and intentions) represented by ordinary unreflexive decision models.

Gandalf’s solution to the Newcomb problem

This article proposes a new theory of rational decision, distinct from both causal decision theory (CDT) and evidential decision theory (EDT). First, some intuitive counterexamples to CDT and EDT are presented. Then the motivation for the new theory is given: the correct theory of rational decision will resemble CDT in that it will not be sensitive to any comparisons of absolute levels of value across different states of nature, but only to comparisons of the differences in value between the available options within states of nature; however, the correct theory will also resemble EDT in that it will rely on conditional probabilities (not unconditional probabilities). The new theory gives a prominent role to the notion of a “benchmark” for each state of nature, by comparison with which the value of the available options in that state of nature are measured, and so it has been called the Benchmark Theory (BT). It is argued that BT gives the right verdict on the cases that seem to be counterexamples to CDT and EDT. Finally, some objections to BT are considered and answered.

A Note in Defence of Ratificationism

Andy Egan argues that neither evidential nor causal decision theory gives the intuitively right recommendation in the cases The Smoking Lesion, The Psychopath Button, and The Three-Option Smoking Lesion. Furthermore, Egan argues that we cannot avoid these problems by any kind of ratificationism. This paper develops a new version of ratificationism that gives the right recommendations. Thus, the new proposal has an advantage over evidential and casual decision theory and standard ratificationist evidential decision theory.