Interactive Epistemology I

Formal Interactive Epistemology deals with the logic of knowledge and belief when there is more than one agent or "player." One is interested not only in each person's knowledge about substantive matters, but also in his knowledge about the others' knowledge. This paper examines two parallel approaches to the subject. The first is the semantic approach, in which knowledge is represented by a space of states of the world, together with partitions of the state space for each player i; the atom of i's partition containing a given state of the world represents i's knowledge at that state - the set of those other states that i cannot distinguish from that state. The second is the syntactic approach, in which knowledge is embodied in sentences constructed according to certain syntactic rules. This paper examines the relation between the two approaches, and shows that they are in a sense equivalent.

Robert J Aumann has received numerous prizes, including the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for 2005.With his 1976 paper, 'Agreeing to Disagree', Robert Aumann pioneered the subject of interactive epistemology: the study of what people know, and what they know about what others know. Since then, the discipline has burgeoned enormously. This book documents Aumann's work leading to the 1976 paper and his subsequent contributions to the discipline. The scientific controversies emanating from his work are also included.

This volume presents 38 classic texts in formal epistemology, and strengthens the ties between research into this area of philosophy and its neighbouring intellectual disciplines. The editors provide introductions to five subsections: Bayesian Epistemology, Belief Change, Decision Theory, Interactive Epistemology and Epistemic Logic. 'Formal epistemology' is a term coined in the late 1990s for a new constellation of interests in philosophy, the origins of which are found in earlier works of epistemologists, philosophers of science and logicians. It addresses a growing agenda of problems concerning knowledge, belief, certainty, rationality, deliberation, decision, strategy, action and agent interaction – and it does so using methods from logic, probability, computability, decision and game theory. The volume also includes a thorough index and suggestions for further reading, and thus offers a complete teaching and research package for students as well as research scholars of formal epistemology, philosophy, logic, computer science, theoretical economics and cognitive psychology.

The interaction paradigm is a new conceptualization of computational phenomena that emphasizes interaction over algorithms, reflecting the shift in technology from main-frame number-crunching to distributed intelligent networks with graphical user interfaces. The book is arranged in four sections: "Introduction", comprising three chapters that explore and summarize the fundamentals of interactive computation; "Theory" with six chapters, each discussing a specific aspect of interaction; "Applications," five chapters showing how this principle is applied in subdisciplines of computer science; and "New Directions," presenting four multidisciplinary applications. The book challenges traditional Turing machine-based answers to fundamental questions of problem solving and the scope of computation.

This book presents comparisons of recent accounts in the formalization of natural language (dynamic logics and formal semantics) with informal conceptions of interaction (dialogue, natural logic and attribution of rationality) that have been developed in both psychology and epistemology. There are four parts which explore: historical and systematic studies; the formalization of context in epistemology; the formalization of reasoning in interactive contexts in psychology; the formalization of pathological conversations. Part one discusses the Erlangen School, which proposed a logical analysis of science as well as an operational reconstruction of psychological concepts. These first chapters provide epistemological and psychological insights into a conceptual reassessment of rational reconstruction from a pragmatic point of view. The second focus is on formal epistemology, where there has recently been a vigorous contribution from experts in epistemic and doxatic logics and an attempt to account for a more realistic, cognitively plausible conception of knowledge. The third part of this book examines the meeting point between logic and the human and social sciences and the fourth part focuses on research at the intersection between linguistics and psychology. Internationally renowned scholars have contributed to this volume, building on the findings and themes relevant to an interdisciplinary scientific project called DiaRaFor (“Dialogue, Rationality, Formalisms”) which was hosted by the MSH Lorraine (Lorraine Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities) from 2007 to 2011.

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

This volume is a collation of original contributions from the key actors of a new trend in the contemporary theory of knowledge and belief, that we call “dynamic epistemology”. It brings the works of these researchers under a single umbrella by highlighting the coherence of their current themes, and by establishing connections between topics that, up until now, have been investigated independently. It also illustrates how the new analytical toolbox unveils questions about the theory of knowledge, belief, preference, action, and rationality, in a number of central axes in dynamic epistemology: temporal, social, probabilistic and even deontic dynamics.