Event Detail

Thu Oct 19, 2023
Howison Library
4–6 PM
Philosophy Colloquium
Thomas Icard (Stanford University)
What are cognitive costs?

Traditional approaches to decision theory typically idealize away from cognitive limitations on the part of the decision maker, as well as from the deliberative processes that ultimately lead to a decision. A common way of accommodating limitations on deliberative capacities is to introduce a concept of cognitive cost, assumed to trade off against some independent notion of value or utility. The aim of this talk will be to present some puzzles about this concept, and to make some progress toward a more comprehensive account of it and of its role in a theory of rational decision making.