Conditionals in Game Theory

ESSLLI 2022

Course Information

• Lectures: Eric Pacuit (website) and Ilaria Canavotto (website)
• Venue: National University of Ireland Galway

  AC203

• Dates: Monday, August 15th - Friday, August 19th
• Meeting Times: 9:00am - 10:30am
• Course Overview

Reasoning about conditionals, such as ``If I do action $a$, the outcome will be $c$", plays an important role when studying the foundations of game theory. This course will introduce game theory with a special emphasis on the puzzles and paradoxes that involve reasoning about conditionals (such as the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Aumann-Stalnaker debate about backwards induction). This course will provide a solid foundation for students interested in studying the semantics of conditionals and for students interested in using ideas from game theory in their own field of study.

Day 1    Introduction to game theory

• Slides

• R. Aumann (1987), Correlated Equilibrium as an Expression of Bayesian Rationality

  O. Board (2006), The Equivalence of Bayes and Causal Rationality in Games

Day 2    Conditionals in strategic games and the independence assumption

• Slides

• O. Board, The Equivalence of Bayes and Causal Rationality in Games

Day 3    Dropping the independence assumption

• Slides

Day 4    Conditionals in extensive form games I

• Slides

• J. Halpern, Substantive rationality and backward induction

Day 5    Conditionals in extensive form games II and concluding remarks

• Slides

• S. Huttegger and G. Rothfus, Bradley Conditionals and Dynamic Choice

  I. Canavotto and E. Pacuit, Choice-driven counterfactuals