 With this proposal, Niiniluoto also made a connection with the application of decision theory to epistemology. Decision theory is an account of what it is rational to do in light of one’s beliefs and desires. One’s goal, it is assumed, is to maximize utility. But given that one does not have perfect information about the state of the world, one cannot know for sure how to accomplish that. Given uncertainty, the rule to maximize utility or value cannot be applied in normal circumstances. So under conditions of uncertainty, what it is rational to do, according to the theory, is to maximize subjective expected utility. Starting with Hempel’s classic 1960 essay, epistemologists conjectured that decision-theoretic tools might be applied to the problem of theory acceptance – which hypothesis it is rational to accept on the basis of the total available evidence to hand. But, as Hempel argued, the values or utilities involved in a decision to accept a hypothesis cannot be simply regular practical values. These are typically thought to be generated by one’s desires for various states of affairs to obtain in the world. But the fact that one would very much like a certain favored hypothesis to be true does not increase the cognitive value of accepting that hypothesis.