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Subjunctive Conditionals and Revealed Preference

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Brian Skyrms
Brian Skyrms*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of California, Irvine
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Abstract

Subjunctive conditionals are fundamental to rational decision both in single agent and multiple agent decision problems. They need explicit analysis only when they cause problems, as they do in recent discussions of rationality in extensive form games. This paper examines subjunctive conditionals in the theory of games using a strict revealed preference interpretation of utility. Two very different models of games are investigated, the classical model and the limits of reality model. In the classical model the logic of backward induction is valid, but it does not use subjunctive conditionals; the relevant subjunctive conditionals do not even make sense. In the limits of reality model the subjunctive conditionals do make sense but backward induction is valid only under special assumptions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , December 1998 , pp. 545 - 574
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1998

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Footnotes

†

Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697.

‡

Earlier versions of this paper were read at a conference in Honor of John Harsanyi and John Rawls at the University of Caen in June 1996, an economics seminar at the University of California, Davis in April 1997, and a conference, Quantities in Science II, at the University of Salzburg in August 1997. I would like to thank Gary Bell, Cristina Bicchieri, Ken Binmore, Giacomo Bonnano, Peter Hammond, Bill Harper, Richard Jeffrey, Mark Machina, Edward McClennen, Klaus Nehring, Wlodek Rabinowicz, Reinhart Selten, Robert Sugden, Peter Woodruff, and an anonymous referee for helpful discussions.

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