Subjective Reasoning in Games
by
Yossi Feinberg
Stanford University

A unified framework is developed for representing and reasoning about dynamic games. A game is described by the subjective knowledge of players at hypothetical situations -- the epistemic game form. Existence and uniqueness of the epistemic form are shown. Subjective knowledge allows us to replace objective reasoning about hypothetical events with reasoning about the subjective knowledge of hypothetical identities -- players in hypothetical situations. This is demonstated via the centipede game, where it is shown that common (subjective) knowledge of rationality contradicts the definition of the game. However, rationality and common (subjective) knowledge of future rationality are shown to be consistent and to imply backward induction for perfect information games. Among other notions developed are the definition of choice via knowledge and the definition of the players' names through knowledge.

Date received: June 19, 2000

Copyright © 2000 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cafk-02.