Stockholm university

Both decision and game theory concern the reasoning process underlying people’s choices, that is, how their desires, beliefs, and other attitudes combine in a way that make people choose one option over another.

The aim is to study either how people in fact reason about their choices—which is typically the subject of psychology and behavioural economics—or how they should reason about the choices—which typically the focus of philosophical decision and game theory.

Whereas decision theory is concerned with an individual decision-maker who tries to make the best decision based on their understanding of the world, game theory is concerned with the interaction between different decision-makers each of whom is trying to make the best decision based on their beliefs about what others will choose. A classical problem in decision theory is what attitudes to risk and uncertainty are rationally permissible. A classical problem in game theory is whether rationality requires one to free-ride on others in interactive decision-problems such as the “prisoner’s dilemma”. Both decision and game theory have been fruitfully applied in ethics, for instance, in an attempt to determine the ideally just social structure by asking what rational decision-makers in ideal circumstances would come to agree on.

Related research subject

Philosophy, Practical
Game theory
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Researchers

Orri Stefansson

Professor

Department of Philosophy
Orri Stefansson

Gustaf Arrhenius

Professor

Department of Philosophy
Gustaf Arrhenius

Erik Angner

Professor

Department of Philosophy
Headshot: Erik Angner

Krister Bykvist

Professor

Department of Philosophy
Krister Bykvist