Lecture Series on Philosophical Foundations of Probability and Decision Theory

Lecturer: Professor Alan Hájek, the Philosophy Program at Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University

Contents:
1. An opinionated introduction to probability theory, and its philosophy
Time: 3:00-5:00 p.m., March 13, 2007
2. A Peregrine Adventure tour of the interpretations of probability
Time: 9:30-11:30 a.m., March 15, 2007
3. Arguments For - Or Against - Probabilism?
Time: 3:00-5:00 p.m., March 20, 2007
4. Two new paradoxes in decision theory
Time: 9:30-11:30 a.m., March 22, 2007
5. All values great and small: infinite decision theory
Time: 3:00-5:00 p.m., March 27,2007
6. Conditional probability is the guide to life
Time: 9:30-11:30 a.m., March 29, 2007

Venue: Room 307, the Arts Building
Sponsor: Institute of Logic and Cognition, SYSU

Lecturer’s profile:
Professor Alan Hájek took a Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton University (1993), winning the Porter Ogden Jacobus fellowship. He has taught at the University of Melbourne (1990) and at Caltech (1992-2004), where he received the ASCIT Teaching Award (2004). He has also spent time as a visiting professor at MIT (1995), Auckland University (2000), and Singapore Management University (2005). He joined the Philosophy Program at Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University, as Professor of Philosophy in February 2005.
Professor Hájek's research interests include the philosophical foundations of probability and decision theory, epistemology, the philosophy of science, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion. His paper "What Conditional Probability Could Not Be" won the 2004 American Philosophical Association Article Prize for "the best article published in the previous two years" by a "younger scholar". The Philosopher's Annual selected his "Waging War on Pascal's Wager" as one of the ten best articles in philosophy in 2003.