The classic formulation of causal decision theory (CDT) appeals to counterfactuals. It says that you should aim to choose an option that would have a good outcome, were you to choose it. However, this version of CDT faces trouble if the laws of nature are deterministic. After all, the standard theory of counterfactuals says that, if the laws are deterministic, then if anything—including the choice you make—were different in the present, either the laws would be violated or the distant past would be changed. And as several authors have shown, it's easy to transform this upshot of the standard theory of counterfactuals into full-blown counterexamples to CDT. In response to these counterexamples, I argue here that the problem lies, not so much with CDT's guiding idea—that it's the expected causal consequences of your actions that matter for rational decision-making—but with the fact that the classic formulation of CDT doesn't pay sufficient attention to the context-sensitivity of counterfactuals. I develop a contextualist version of CDT which better accounts for this context-sensitivity. And I show that my theory avoids the problems faced by the classic formulation of CDT in determinstic worlds.

中文翻译：

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因果决策理论、背景和决定论

因果决策理论（CDT）的经典表述诉诸于反事实。它说，如果你选择的话，你应该致力于选择一个会产生良好结果的选项。然而，如果自然法则是确定性的，这个版本的 CDT 就会遇到麻烦。毕竟，反事实的标准理论认为，如果法律是确定性的，那么如果现在有任何事情（包括你所做的选择）有所不同，要么法律就会被违反，要么遥远的过去就会被改变。正如几位作者所表明的那样，很容易将标准反事实理论的结果转化为 CDT 的全面反例。针对这些反例，我在这里认为，问题不在于 CDT 的指导思想——对理性决策而言重要的是你的行为的预期因果后果——而是在于 CDT 的经典表述并不重要。没有对反事实的上下文敏感性给予足够的重视。我开发了 CDT 的情境主义版本，它更好地解释了这种情境敏感性。我证明我的理论避免了 CDT 的经典表述在确定性世界中所面临的问题。