Reasoning in Games

ESSLLI 2015

Course Information

• Lecturer: Eric Pacuit (website)
• Venue: Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
• Dates: August 5 - 10, 2015
• Meeting Times: 9am - 10:30am
• Course Overview

Day 1    Decision Theory

• Slides

• I introduced the basics of decision theory: Decision problems, strict/weak dominance, expected utility, minmax regret, ordinal/cardinal utilities. We discussed the von Neumann-Morgenstern Theorem and Newcomb's paradox. We concluded with a brief discussion of ratifiability (focusing on the Death in Damascus problem).

  Background Reading

  • Rachel Briggs, Normative Theories of Rational Choice, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
  • Kaushik Basu, The Traveler's, Scientific American, pg. 90 - 95, 2007.

Day 2    From Decisions to Games

• Slides

• This lecture introduced the basic concepts of game theory (e.g., strategic and extensive games, Nash equilibrium, iterated strict/weak dominance, rationalizability).

  Background Reading

  • K.R. Apt (2011). A Primer on Strategic Games, in Lectures in Game Theory for Computer Scientists, Cambridge University Press, pgs. 1 - 33.
  • Online game theory course by Kevin Leyton-Brown, Matthew Jackson and Yoav Shoham (the website contains a link to a youtube channel containing the video lectures from the course).

Day 3    Game Models

• Slides

• The lecture introduced epistemic models of games. We discussed epistemic characterizations of Nash equilibrium, correlated equilibrium, iterated strict/weak dominance.

  Background Reading

  • EP and O. Roy, Epistemic Foundations of Game Theory, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2015
  • A. Perea, Epistemic Game Theory: Reasoning and Choice, Cambridge University Press, 2012

Day 4    Deliberation (in Games)

• Slides

• This lecture introduced Brian Skyrms' model of deliberation in games. We discussed a number of extensions of the model. We also briefly discussed how to incorporate belief revision in game models.

  Background Reading

  • EP, Dynamic Models of Reasoning in Games, forthcoming, 2015

Day 5    Backward and Forward Induction, Concluding Remarks

• Slides

• The main part of the lecture focused on epistemic issues that arise when characterizing forward and backward induction on extensive games. I ended with a few concluding remarks.

  Backward Induction

  • R. Stalnaker, Belief Revision in Games: Backward and Forward Induction, Mathematical Social Sciences, 36:1, pgs. 31 - 56, 1998
  • A. Knoks and E. Pacuit, Deliberating between Backward and Forward Induction: First Steps, TARK 2015