Foundations and philosophical applications of game theory

I investigate three questions. The first belongs to game theory: When will people play a Nash equilibrium? The second, to decision theory: Why maximize expected value? The third, to the philosophy of language: How should we work out the meaning of a sentence? What unites my dissertation is a decision-theoretic approach to games, and a game-theoretic approach to meaning. An epistemic characterization of a solution concept shows under what epistemic conditions the players behave as the solution concept describes. Chapter 1 is about epistemic characterizations of Nash equilibrium. First, I argue that theorists have slipped between two interpretations of Nash equilibrium: strategic and doxastic. As a result, they've drawn unwarranted conclusions from the characterizations. Second, following a broader discussion of the role of solution concepts, I assess doxastic equilibrium on its own merits. I argue that it doesn't deserve the attention it's received.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Grant, Cosmo(Cosmo Douglas)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Vann McGee.

• Linguistics and Philosophy.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124098

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/124098