Logic and the foundations of game theory

While the other lectures of the workshop apply various game-theoretic concepts and constructions to analyse issues in logic, this one will focus on logical issues in the foundations of game theory. The lecture will explain the logical difficulties which arise from traditional game theory s reliance on informal assumptions about the players knowledge, rationality, and reasoning capabilities, and the attempts that have been made during last decade to address those difficulties by means of formal logic, in particular various systems of epistemic modal logic. The following questions will be considered: 1) What are the epistemic conditions behind the different game-theoretic solution concepts? 2) To which extent are conditionals other than the material implication needed in game-theoretic reasoning? 3) What is a game?

Arnis Vilks