The influence of regret on moral decision making

Abstract

This interdisciplinary thesis combines topics from philosophy, economy, computer science, and logics. Moral luck is the philosophical problem in which agents can be morally judged for factors beyond their control. The feeling of regret when things turn out the wrong way is an important effect in cases of moral bad luck. In decision theory, regret can play a role as well. This is incorporated in regret theory, which explains human behaviour better than maximum expected utility does. Decisions can be modelled in STIT logic to reason about what actions an agent can perform and what action it actually performs, as well as the decision making process before performing the action of choice. This thesis researches the relation between moral luck and regret theory. This will be done by extending probabilistic XSTIT logic with both maximum expected utility and regret theory. The resulting framework will then be used to formalise two moral luck examples and relate them to regret theory.