Epistemic Logic And The Theory Of Games And Decisions

The convergence of game theory and epistemic logic has been in progress for two decades and this book explores this further by gathering specialists from different professional communities, i.e., economics, mathematics, philosophy, and computer science. This volume considers the issues of knowledge, belief and strategic interaction, with each contribution evaluating the foundational issues. In particular, emphasis is placed on epistemic logic and the representative topics of backward induction arguments and syntax/semantics and the logical omniscience problem. Part I of this collection deals with iterated knowledge in the multi-agent context, and more particularly with common knowledge. The first two papers in Part II of the collection address the so-called logical omniscience problem, a problem which has attracted much attention in the recent epistemic logic literature, and is pertinent to some of the issues discussed by decision theorists under the heading 'bounded rationality'. The remaining two chapters of section II provide two quite different angles on the strength of S5 (or the partitional model of information)- and so two different reasons for eschewing the strong form of logical omniscience implicit in S5. Part III gives attention to application to game theory and decision theory.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Epistemic Game Theory and Modal Logic" that was published in Games

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Logic and the Foundations of the Theory of Game and Decision Theory, LOFT8 2008, held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, July 2008. This volume is based on a selection of the presented papers and invited talks. They survived a thorough and lengthy reviewing process. The LOFT conferences are interdisciplinary events that bring together researchers from a variety of fields: computer science, economics, game theory, linguistics, logic, multi-agent systems, psychology, philosophy, social choice and statistics. Its focus is on the general issue of rationality and agency. The papers collected in this volume reflect the contemporary interests and interdisciplinary scope of the LOFT conferences.

The first textbook to explain the principles of epistemic game theory.

Edited by three leading figures in the field, this exciting volume presents cutting-edge work in decision theory by a distinguished international roster of contributors. These mostly unpublished papers address a host of crucial areas in the contemporary philosophical study of rationality and knowledge. Topics include causal versus evidential decision theory, game theory, backwards induction, bounded rationality, counterfactual reasoning in games and in general, analyses of the famous common knowledge assumptions in game theory, and evaluations of the normal versus extensive form formulations of complex decision problems.

This volume contains eight papers written by Adam Brandenburger and his co-authors over a period of 25 years. These papers are part of a program to reconstruct game theory in order to make how players reason about a game a central feature of the theory. The program OCo now called epistemic game theory OCo extends the classical definition of a game model to include not only the game matrix or game tree, but also a description of how the players reason about one another (including their reasoning about other players' reasoning). With this richer mathematical framework, it becomes possible to determine the implications of how players reason for how a game is played. Epistemic game theory includes traditional equilibrium-based theory as a special case, but allows for a wide range of non-equilibrium behavior. Sample Chapter(s). Foreword (39 KB). Introduction (132 KB). Chapter 1: An Impossibility Theorem on Beliefs in Games (299 KB). Contents: An Impossibility Theorem on Beliefs in Games (Adam Brandenburger and H Jerome Keisler); Hierarchies of Beliefs and Common Knowledge (Adam Brandenburger and Eddie Dekel); Rationalizability and Correlated Equilibria (Adam Brandenburger and Eddie Dekel); Intrinsic Correlation in Games (Adam Brandenburger and Amanda Friedenberg); Epistemic Conditions for Nash Equilibrium (Robert Aumann and Adam Brandenburger); Lexicographic Probabilities and Choice Under Uncertainty (Lawrence Blume, Adam Brandenburger, and Eddie Dekel); Admissibility in Games (Adam Brandenburger, Amanda Friedenberg and H Jerome Keisler); Self-Admissible Sets (Adam Brandenburger and Amanda Friedenberg). Readership: Graduate students and researchers in the fields of game theory, theoretical computer science, mathematical logic and social neuroscience."

Does game theory - the mathematical theory of strategic interaction - provide genuine explanations of human behaviour? Can game theory be used in economic consultancy or other normative contexts? Explaining Games: The Epistemic Programme in Game Theory - the first monograph on the philosophy of game theory - is a bold attempt to combine insights from epistemic logic and the philosophy of science to investigate the applicability of game theory in such fields as economics, philosophy and strategic consultancy. De Bruin proves new mathematical theorems about the beliefs, desires and rationality principles of individual human beings, and he explores in detail the logical form of game theory as it is used in explanatory and normative contexts. He argues that game theory reduces to rational choice theory if used as an explanatory device, and that game theory is nonsensical if used as a normative device. A provocative account of the history of game theory reveals that this is not bad news for all of game theory, though. Two central research programmes in game theory tried to find the ultimate characterisation of strategic interaction between rational agents. Yet, while the Nash Equilibrium Refinement Programme has done badly thanks to such research habits as overmathematisation, model-tinkering and introversion, the Epistemic Programme, De Bruin argues, has been rather successful in achieving this aim.