Laurie Paul argues that, when it comes to many of your most significant life-changing decisions, the principles of rational choice are silent. That is because, in these cases, you anticipate that one of your choice options would yield a transformative experience. We argue that such decisions are best seen as ones in which you anticipate awareness growth. You do not merely lack knowledge about which possible outcome will arise from a transformative option; you lack knowledge about what are the possible outcomes. We show how principles of rational choice can be extended to cases of anticipated awareness growth.

The Repugnant Conclusion is an implication of some approaches to population ethics. It states, in Derek Parfit's original formulation,

Many examples of calibration in climate science raise no alarms regarding model reliability. We examine one example and show that, in employing classical hypothesis testing, it involves calibrating a base model against data that are also used to confirm the model. This is counter to the ‘intuitive position’ (in favor of use novelty and against double counting). We argue, however, that aspects of the intuitive position are upheld by some methods, in particular, the general cross-validation method. How cross-validation relates to other prominent classical methods such as the Akaike information criterion and Bayesian information criterion is also discussed.

This article considers a puzzling conflict between two positions that are each compelling: (a) it is irrational for an agent to pay to avoid ‘free’ evidence, and (b) rational agents may have imprecise beliefs. An important aspect of responding to this conflict is resolving the question of how rational (imprecise) agents ought to make sequences of decisions—we make explicit what the key alternatives are and defend our own approach. We endorse a resolution of the aforementioned puzzle—we privilege decision theories that merely permit avoiding free evidence over decision theories that make avoiding free information obligatory.

There has been much recent interest in imprecise probabilities, models of belief that allow unsharp or fuzzy credence. There have also been some influential criticisms of this position. Here we argue, chiefly against Elga (2010), that subjective probabilities need not be sharp. The key question is whether the imprecise probabilist can make reasonable sequences of decisions. We argue that she can. We outline Elga's argument and clarify the assumptions he makes and the principles of rationality he is implicitly committed to. We argue that these assumptions are too strong and that rational imprecise choice is possible in the absence of these overly strong conditions.

Richard Rudner famously argues that the communication of scientific advice to policy makers involves ethical value judgments. His argument has, however, been rightly criticized. This article revives Rudner's conclusion, by strengthening both his lines of argument: we generalize his initial assumption regarding the form in which scientists must communicate their results and complete his ‘backup’ argument by appealing to the difference between private and public decisions. Our conclusion that science advisors must, for deep-seated pragmatic reasons, make value judgments is further bolstered by reflections on how the scientific contribution to policy is far less straightforward than the Rudner-style model suggests.