Brad Armendt                               

Much of my research centers on decision making and the epistemology of rational belief.  Beliefs and inferences about causation have particular significance to both areas, and I am interested in causation and causal inference. 

I am also interested in understanding social phenomena--patterns of behavior, norms, networks, communication systems--as products and conditions of complex interactions among individuals.  Can evolutionary and agent-based models help us understand and explain such phenomena? 

I have an historical interest in the work of the remarkable early 20th-century philosopher, Frank Ramsey.

I am a member of the Center for Biology and Society in the School of Life Sciences, and an affiliate of the Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity at ASU.

Selected Papers

► On rational degrees of belief and Dutch book arguments:

  "Stake-Invariant Belief" Acta Analytica 23:29-43, 2008. Published version

   "Dutch books, Additivity, and Utility Theory" Philosophical Topics 21:1-20, 1993.

   "Dutch Strategies for Diachronic Rules" PSA 1992, Vol. 1, Philosophy of Science Association.  JSTOR version

   "Is There a Dutch Book Argument for Probability Kinematics?" Philosophy of Science 47:583-588, 1980. JSTOR version

► On causal decision theory:

   "Impartiality and Causal Decision Theory" PSA 1988, Vol. 1, 326-336, 1988. JSTOR version

   "Conditional Preference and Causal Expected Utility" Causation in Decision, Belief Change, and Statistics, Reidel, 1988.

   "A Foundation for Causal Decision Theory" Topoi 5:3-19, 1986. Published version

► On Ramsey:

   "Frank Ramsey" The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia, Routledge, 2006.

   "Frank Ramsey" A Companion to Analytic Philosophy, Blackwell, 2001.