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COMMON REASONING IN GAMES: A LEWISIAN ANALYSIS OF COMMON KNOWLEDGE OF RATIONALITY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2014

Robin P. Cubitt  and
Robert Sugden
Robin P. Cubitt
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham, UKrobin.cubitt@nottingham.ac.uk
Robert Sugden
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia, UKr.sugden@uea.ac.uk
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Abstract

We present a new class of models of players’ reasoning in non-cooperative games, inspired by David Lewis's account of common knowledge. We argue that the models in this class formalize common knowledge of rationality in a way that is distinctive, in virtue of modelling steps of reasoning; and attractive, in virtue of being able to represent coherently common knowledge of any consistent standard of individual decision-theoretic rationality. We contrast our approach with that of Robert Aumann (1987), arguing that the former avoids and diagnoses certain paradoxes to which the latter may give rise when extended in particular ways.

Type
Articles
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , November 2014 , pp. 285 - 329
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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