The structure of normative control

Law and Philosophy

Volumn 17, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 419-441

  Heath, Joseph ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0032237609     PISSN: 01675249     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3505088     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. This ambition is clearest in David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
2. Initial attempts to build commitment directly in the decision-theoretic foundations of game theory are now generally regarded as hopeless, so attention has turned toward eliminating sequential rationality as a constraint on equilibrium belief sets. This ambition is clearest in Edward F. McLennan, "Pragmatic Rationality and Rules," Philosophy & Public Affairs 26 (1997), pp. 210-258, but also underlies David Gauthier's strategy in "Assure and Threaten," Ethics 104 (1994), pp. 690-721.
3. Initial attempts to build commitment directly in the decision-theoretic foundations of game theory are now generally regarded as hopeless, so attention has turned toward eliminating sequential rationality as a constraint on equilibrium belief sets. This ambition is clearest in Edward F. McLennan, "Pragmatic Rationality and Rules," Philosophy & Public Affairs 26 (1997), pp. 210-258, but also underlies David Gauthier's strategy in "Assure and Threaten," Ethics 104 (1994), pp. 690-721.
4. John Nash, "Noncooperative Games," Annals of Mathematics 54 (1951), pp. 289-295.
5. See David M. Kreps, Game Theory and Economic Modelling (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 101.
6. See Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960).
7. David Lewis, Convention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969).
8. Robert Sugden has argued that the way agents label their strategies can generate focal effects, see "A Theory of Focal Points," The Economic Journal 105 (1995), pp. 533-550, but he makes no attempt to explain how agents arrive at these labels. As a result, his analysis does not so much dispel the mystery as relocate it.
9. Cristina Bicchieri, "Strategic Behavior and Counterfactuals," Synthese 76 (1988), pp. 135-169 at 138.
10. See summary in Selten, "Reexamination of the Perfectness Concept for Equilibrium Points in Extensive Games," International Journal of Game Theory 4 (1975), pp. 25-55.
11. Ultimately it created more problems, by embroiling game theorists in debates over the probability of counterfactuals. The so-called 'forward induction' problems, such as Eric van Damme, "Stable Equilibria and Forward Induction," Journal of Economic Theory 48 (1989), pp. 476-496, are just examples of cases where the probability of an equilibrium-sustaining counterfactual need not be equivalent to its conditional probability. For discussion , see Bicchieri, supra.
12. Ultimately it created more problems, by embroiling game theorists in debates over the probability of counterfactuals. The so-called 'forward induction' problems, such as Eric van Damme, "Stable Equilibria and Forward Induction," Journal of Economic Theory 48 (1989), pp. 476-496, are just examples of cases where the probability of an equilibrium-sustaining counterfactual need not be equivalent to its conditional probability. For discussion , see Bicchieri, supra.
13. Drew Fudenberg and Eric Maskin, "The Folk Theorem in Repeated Games with Discounting or with Incomplete Information," Econometrica 54 (1986), pp. 533-554. Note that for such results to obtain players must not discount the future too heavily.
14. Joseph Farrell, "Meaning and Credibility in Cheap-Talk Games," Games and Economic Behavior 5 (1993), pp. 514-531.
15. This assumes that meanings are not fixed exogenously. If they are, it undermines the Nash solution concept. For overview, see Joseph Heath, "Is Language a Game?", Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26 (1996), pp. 1-28.
16. Roger Myerson, for instance, suggests that the indeterminacy problem reveals 'an essential limit on the ability of mathematical game theory to predict people's behavior in real conflict situations and an important agenda for research in social psychology and cultural anthropology'. See Myerson, Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 113-114.
17. John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, 3rd ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1953), p. 27.
18. This can never happen in a decision problem, because the agent's beliefs are interpreted as subjective probabilities. This means that even when the agent has absolutely no evidence for or against the occurrence of any state, she can still fall back on Laplace's principle of insufficient reason - treat all events as equiprobable unless given reason not to. However, this recourse is not available in games, because using this principle would amount to ascribing a mixed strategy to the other player, which will either be false if it is not a part of an equilibrium strategy profile, or question-begging if it is.
19. Although the fact that the theory of action developed here takes urges to be exogenously determined means that it will need to be supplemented by some account of where this particular pattern of preference comes from. In principle, there is no reason why this supplementary theory could not include some account of how agents could rationally deliberate over and revise their urges. Thus the theory presented here leaves the cognitive status of the agent's urges an entirely open question (just as standard decision theory leaves open the question of where the agent's desire-based preferences come from).
20. This is how I interpret some of the results in Judith Mehta, Chris Starmer, Robert Sugden, "Focal Points in Pure Coordination Games: An Experimental Investigation," Theory and Decision 36 (1994), pp. 658-673. Other results, such as those which follow the 'rule of equality', suggest to me that agents are relying upon social norms rather than urges (see below).
21. See Ken Binmore, Playing Fair (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), p. 140.
22. I am assuming that principles can directly motivate action, just like desires. In so doing, I am setting aside a certain traditional Humean line of argument. For the rationale, see Joseph Heath, "Foundationalism and Practical Reason," Mind 106 (1997), pp. 451-473.
23. See general discussion in Jean Piaget, The Moral Judgment of the Child, Trans. Marjorie Gabain (New York: The Free Press, 1965).
24. The classic statement of this view is in Talcott Parsons, The Social System (New York: Free Press, 1951). He refers to these higher-order choices as 'pattern-variable' choices, which select between different 'action-orientations'.
25. See Michael Taylor, The Possibility of Cooperation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
26. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, Trans. George Simpson (New York: The Free Press, 1933), p. 426.
27. See discussion in Parsons, supra, note 23, at 236-240.
28. Id., at 206.