"[This book] proposes new foundations for the Bayesian principle of rational action, and goes on to develop a new logic of desirability and probabtility."—Frederic Schick, Journal of Philosophy

The four main essays in this volume investigate new sectors of the theory of decision, preference, act-characteristics, and action analysis. Herbert A. Simon applies tools developed in the theory of decision-making to the logic of action, and thereby develops a novel concept of heuristic power. Adapting ideas from utility and decision theory, Nicholas Rescher proposes a logic of preference by which conflicting theories proposed by G. H. von Wright, R. M. Chisholm, and others can be systematized. Donald Davidson discusses difficulties in specifying the structure of action sentences to elucidate how their meaning depends on that structure. G. H. von Wright devises a method for describing each "state of the world" that results from an action, in a revision of his own earlier work. Additionally, a study of the logic of norms by Alan Ross Anderson is presented as an appendix, along with an appendix by Rescher outlining the aspects of action.

Originally published in 1968. This is a critical study of the concept of ‘rule’ featuring in law, ethics and much philosophical analysis which the author uses to investigate the concept of ‘rationality’. The author indicates in what manner the modes of reasoning involved in reliance upon rules are unique and in what fashion they provide an alternative both to the modes of logico-mathematical reasoning and to the modes of scientific reasoning. This prepares the groundwork for a methodology meeting the requirements of the fields using rules such as law and ethics which could be significant for communications theory and the use of computers in normative fields. Other substantive issues related to the mainstream of legal philosophy are discussed - theories of interpretation, the notion of purpose and the requirements of principled decision-making. The book utilizes examples drawn from English and American legal decisions to suggest how the positions of legal positivism and of natural law are equally artificial and misleading.

Explores how decision-makers can manage uncertainty that varies in both kind and severity by extending and supplementing Bayesian decision theory.

It is not unusual for a festschrift to include offerings from several areas of study, but it is highly unusual for those areas to cross disciplinary lines. This book, in doing just that, is a testimony to Bob Abelson's impact on the disciplines of social psychology, artificial intelligence and cognitive science, and the applied areas of political psychology and decision-making. The contributors demonstrate that their association with Abelson, whether as students or colleagues, has resulted in an impressive intellectual cross-fertilization.

We respect Herbert A. Simon as an established leader of empirical and logical analysis in the human sciences while we happily think of him as also the loner; of course he works with many colleagues but none can match him. He has been writing fruitfully and steadily for four decades in many fields, among them psychology, logic, decision theory, economics, computer science, management, production engineering, information and control theory, operations research, confirmation theory, and we must have omitted several. With all of them, he is at once the technical scientist and the philosophical critic and analyst. When writing of decisions and actions, he is at the interface of philosophy of science, decision theory, philosophy of the specific social sciences, and inventory theory (itself, for him, at the interface of economic theory, production engineering and information theory). When writing on causality, he is at the interface of methodology, metaphysics, logic and philosophy of physics, systems theory, and so on. Not that the interdisciplinary is his orthodoxy; we are delighted that he has chosen to include in this book both his early and little-appreciated treatment of straightforward philosophy of physics - the axioms of Newtonian mechanics, and also his fine papers on pure confirmation theory.

Every day decision making and decision making in complex human-centric systems are characterized by imperfect decision-relevant information. Main drawback of the existing decision theories is namely incapability to deal with imperfect information and modeling vague preferences. Actually, a paradigm of non-numerical probabilities in decision making has a long history and arose also in Keynes’s analysis of uncertainty. There is a need for further generalization – a move to decision theories with perception-based imperfect information described in NL. The languages of new decision models for human-centric systems should be not languages based on binary logic but human-centric computational schemes able to operate on NL-described information. Development of new theories is now possible due to an increased computational power of information processing systems which allows for computations with imperfect information, particularly, imprecise and partially true information, which are much more complex than computations over numbers and probabilities. The monograph exposes the foundations of a new decision theory with imperfect decision-relevant information on environment and a decision maker’s behavior. This theory is based on the synthesis of the fuzzy sets theory with perception-based information and the probability theory. The book is self containing and represents in a systematic way the decision theory with imperfect information into the educational systems. The book will be helpful for teachers and students of universities and colleges, for managers and specialists from various fields of business and economics, production and social sphere.

This text, written by a philosopher and a social psychologist, emphasizes concrete applications of decision research to problems of everyday living, as well as to business, social, and political issues. The text contains scores of interesting examples and problems for analysis, ranging from personal decisions about medical treatment to Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb. There is no other text with such a wide-ranging coverage, with so practical an orientation, with such clear descriptions of the steps to effective decision making, and with so many end-of-chapter problems for analysis and practice.

What is ‘good care’ and does more choice lead to better care? This innovative and compelling work investigates good care and argues that the often touted ideal of ‘patient choice’ will not improve healthcare in the ways hoped for by its advocates.

The message of this book is to actively seek input and advice from all the sources you possibly can before making a key decision, keep yourself open to these cues. However in the final analysis, you must make the decision based on how you feel. You must trust yourself. The book tells you how to use your intuition to help make key decisions at work and in your personal life. It also outlines steps you can take to develop your present intuitive ability further, and how you can join or establish an 'intuition network' worldwide to promote the use of this skill in your own organization.