Alan Hájek studied statistics and mathematics at the University of Melbourne (B.Sc. (Hons). 1982), where he won the Dwight Prize in Statistics. He took an M.A. in philosophy at the University of Western Ontario (1986) and 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 Associated Students of California Institute of Technology Teaching Award (2004). He has also spent time as a visiting professor at MIT (1995), Auckland University (2000), and Singapore Management University (2005). Hájek joined the Philosophy Program at RSSS, ANU, as Professor of Philosophy in February 2005.

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.

He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He was the keynote speaker at the 2007 Chinese Analytic Philosophy Association conference, Wuhan (picture). He has co-authored a paper with Lina Eriksson of the Social and Political Theory Group ("What Are Degrees of Belief?"), and a paper with Michael Smithson of the Psychology Department ("Rationality Requires Imprecise Probabilities").

Click here for Hájek's curriculum vitae and publications.

Email: alanh at coombs.anu.edu.au

Selected publications

Nb: see CV for a more up-to-date list.

Monograph in progress

• "Most Counterfactuals Are False"

Forthcoming and 2009

• Probability: 5 Questions, edited by Alan Hájek and Vincent F. Hendricks, New York / London: Automatic Press / VIP, ISBN-10: 87-92130-05-4; ISBN-13: 978-87-92130-05-1. Expected release date: May 2009.
• "Conditional Probability", forthcoming in Philosophy of Statistics, eds. Prasanta Bandhopadhyay and Malcolm Forster, Elsevier.
• "Fifteen Arguments Against Hypothetical Frequentism".
  Erkenntnis (March 2009) 211-235.
  Forthcoming in The Routledge Anthology of Probability, ed. Antony Eagle. Routledge 2009.
• "Bayesian Epistemology" (with Stephan Hartmann), the Blackwell Companion to Epistemology, ed. Matthias Steup, forthcoming. ed. Antony Eagle, Routledge, 2009.
• Australasian Philosophy of Probability, and Probability in Australasian Philosophy", forthcoming in Companion to Philosophy in Australasia, eds. Graham Oppy, Nick Trakakis, Lynda Burns, Steve Gardner and Fiona Leigh.
• "Traditional Epistemology and Formal Epistemology: Two Hegelian Dialectics", forthcoming in The First Annual Synthese Conference, eds. Vincent Hendricks and John Symons.
• Two Interpretations of Two Stoic Conditionals", forthcoming in Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy.

2008

• "Complex Expectations" (with Harris Nover), Mind 117 (July), 643-664.
• "David Lewis", The New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Noretta Koertke, Scribner's.
• "Dutch Book Arguments", in The Oxford Handbook of Rational and Social Choice, ed. Paul Anand, Prasanta Pattanaik, and Clemens Puppe. Oxford University Press. 2008.
• "A Philosopher's Guide to Probability", in Uncertainty: Multi-disciplinary Perspectives on Risk, Earthscan (the Goolabri symposium organized by Gabriele Bammer and Michael Smithson), 2008.
• "Are Miracles Chimerical?", in Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, ed. Jon Kvanvig. [scanned version]
• "Probability - A Philosophical Overview", in Current Issues in the Philosophy of Mathematics From the Perspective of Mathematicians, ed. Bonnie Gold, Mathematical Association of America.
• "Arguments For - Or Against - Probabilism?"
  The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (December), 793-819.
  Also in Degrees of Belief, eds. Franz Huber and Christoph Schmidt-Petri, Springer, 2009. 229-251. [ this version ]
• "Confirmation" (with James M. Joyce), in the Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Science, eds. Stathis Psillos and Martin Curd, 2008.
• Interview, Epistemology: 5 Questions, eds. Vincent F. Hendricks and Duncan Pritchard, Automatic Press, 2008.
• "Pascal's Wager", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2008 edition), ed. E. Zalta. (Substantive revision of original 1998 article.)

2007

• Ramsey + Moore = God (with David Chalmers), Analysis 67 (294): 170-172.
• "The Reference Class Problem is Your Problem Too", Synthese 156: 185-215. 2007.
  • An older version of the paper, "The Reference Class Problem is Your Problem Too!" (note the exclamation mark!) is also forthcoming in Truth and Probability, eds. Bryson Brown and Francois Lepage, Kluwer.
• "What Are Degrees of Belief?" (with Lina Eriksson), Studia Logica 86: 185-215 (special issue on formal epistemology), ed. Branden Fitelson, 2007.
• "My Philosophical Position Says "p", and I Don't Believe "p", in Moorean Absurdity: Essays on Content, Context and Their Collision, eds. Mitchell Green and John Williams, Oxford University Press, 2007.
• "Interpretations of Probability", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2003 edition), ed. E. Zalta.

2006

• Interview on Formal Philosophy, Masses of Formal Philosophy, eds. Vincent F. Hendricks and John Symons, Automatic Press.
• "Perplexing Expectations" (with Harris Nover), Mind 115, July 2006.
• "Chance" (with Carl Hoefer), in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edition, ed. Donald Borchert, Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2006.
• "Some Reminiscences on Richard Jeffrey, and Some Reflections on The Logic of Decision", Philosophy of Science, PSA 2006 edition.

2005

• "The Cable Guy Paradox", Analysis, Vol. 65, No. 4, April 2005.
• "Probability" (with Branden Fitelson and Ned Hall), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Science, eds. Jessica Pfeiffer, Sherri Rausch, and Sahotra Sarkar, Routledge.
• "Scotching Dutch Books?", Philosophical Perspectives 19 (issue on Epistemology), ed. John Hawthorne.

2004

• "Vexing Expectations" (with Harris Nover), Mind, Vol. 113, April 2004, 237-249.
• "Desire Beyond Belief" (with Philip Pettit), Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 82, March 2004, 77-92.
  • Reprinted in Lewisian Themes: the Philosophy of David K. Lewis, eds. Frank Jackson and Graham Priest, Oxford University Press, 2004, 78-93.
• "Probability", the New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Charles  Scribner's Sons, 2004.

2003

• "Waging War On Pascal’s Wager", Philosophical Review, Vol. 113, January 2003, 27–56. Reprinted in The Philosopher’s Annual 2004, ed. Patrick Grim, www.philosophersannual.org.
• "What Conditional Probability Could Not Be", Synthese, Vol. 137, No. 3, December 2003, 273-323.
• "Conditional Probability is the Very Guide of Life", in Probability is the Very Guide of Life: The Philosophical Uses of Chance, eds. Henry Kyburg, Jr. and Mariam Thalos, Open Court. Abridged version in Proceedings of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis 2002.

2002

• "Counterfactual Reasoning—Quantitative (Philosophical Aspects)", International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Elsevier, 2872-2874.
• "Induction and Probability" (with Ned Hall), in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Science, eds. Peter Machamer and Michael Silberstein, Blackwell, 149-172.

2001

• "Probability, Logic, and Probability Logic", in The Blackwell Companion to Logic, ed. Lou Goble, Blackwell, 362-384.
• "Crimmins, Gonzales, and Moore" (with Daniel Stoljar), Analysis, Vol. 61, No. 3, 208-213.