Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-d5ftd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-23T23:55:47.410Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Smart Representations: Rationality and Evolution in a Richer Environment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Paolo Galeazzi  and
Michael Franke
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Standard applications of evolutionary game theory look at a single game and focus on the evolution of behavior for that game alone. Instead, this article uses tools from evolutionary game theory to study the competition between choice mechanisms in a rich and variable multigame environment. A choice mechanism is a way of subjectively representing a decision situation, paired with a method for choosing an act based on this subjective representation. We demonstrate the usefulness of this approach by a case study that shows how subjective representations in terms of regret that differ from the actual fitness can be evolutionarily advantageous.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 84 , Issue 3 , July 2017 , pp. 544 - 573
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Alchian, Armen. 1950. “Uncertainty, Evolution and Economic Theory.” Journal of Political Economy 58:211–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alger, Ingela, and Weibull, Jörgen W.. 2013. “Homo Moralis: Preference Evolution under Incomplete Information and Assortative Matching.” Econometrica 81 (6): 2269–2302.Google Scholar
Anderson, John R. 1991. “Is Human Cognition Adaptive?” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (3RA): 471–517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Battigalli, Pierpaolo et al. 2015. “Self-Confirming Equilibrium and Model Uncertainty.” American Economic Review 105 (2): 646–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, Gary S. 1976. “Altruism, Egoism, and Genetic Fitness: Economics and Sociobiology.” Journal of Economic Literature 14:817–26.Google Scholar
Bednar, Jenna, and Page, Scott. 2007. “Can Game(s) Theory Explain Culture? The Emergence of Cultural Behavior within Multiple Games.” Rationality and Society 19 (1): 65–97.. http://rss.sagepub.com/content/19/1/65.full.pdf+html.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, David E. 1982. “Regret in Decision Making under Uncertainty.” Operations Research 30 (5): 961–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bester, Helmut, and Güth, Werner. 1998. “Is Altruism Evolutionarily Stable?” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 34:193–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bleichrodt, Han, and Wakker, Peter P.. 2015. “Regret Theory: A Bold Alternative to the Alternatives.” Economic Journal 125 (583): 493–532.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charness, Gary, and Rabin, Matthew. 2002. “Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 117 (3): 817–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chater, Nick, and Oaksford, Mike. 2000. “The Rational Analysis of Mind and Behavior.” Synthese 122:93–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Finetti, Bruno. 1937. “La prevision: Ses lois logiques, ses sources subjectives.” Annales de l’Institute Henri Poincare 7:1–68.Google Scholar
Dekel, Eddie, Ely, Jeffrey C., and Ylankaya, Okan. 2007. “Evolution of Preferences.” Review of Economic Studies 74 (3): 685–704.Google Scholar
Ellsberg, Daniel. 1961. “Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 75 (4): 643–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fawcett, Tim W., Hamblin, Steven, and Giraldeau, Luc-Alain. 2013. “Exposing the Behavioral Gambit: The Evolution of Learning and Decision Rules.” Behavioral Ecology 24 (1): 2–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, Ernst, and Schmidt, Klaus M.. 1999. “A Theory of Fairness, Competition and Cooperation.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 114:817–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fishburn, Peter C. 1982. “Nontransitive Measurable Utility.” Journal of Mathematical Psychology 26 (1): 31–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Milton. 1953. Essays in Positive Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gardenfors, Peter, and Sahlin, Nils-Eric. 1982. “Unreliable Probabilities, Risk Taking, and Decision Making.” Synthese 53:361–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ghirardato, Paolo, and Marinacci, Massimo. 2002. “Ambiguity Made Precise: A Comparative Foundation.” Journal of Economic Theory 102:251–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gigerenzer, Gerd, and Goldstein, Daniel G.. 1996. “Reasoning the Fast and Frugal Way: Models of Bounded Rationality.” Psychological Review 103 (4): 650–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gilboa, Itzhak, and Marinacci, Massimo. 2013. “Ambiguity and the Bayesian Paradigm.” In Advances in Economics and Econometrics, Vol. 1, ed. Daron Acemoglu, Manuel Arellano, and Eddie Dekel, 179–242. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilboa, Itzhak, and Schmeidler, David. 1989. “Maxmin Expected Utility with Non-unique Prior.” Journal of Mathematical Economics 18:141–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hagen, Edward H., et al. 2012. “Decision Making: What Can Evolution Do for Us?” In Evolution and the Mechanisms of Decision Making, ed. Hammerstein, Peter and Stevens, Jeffrey R., 97–126. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Halpern, Joseph Y., and Pass, Rafael. 2012. “Iterated Regret Minimization: A New Solution Concept.” Games and Economic Behavior 74:184–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hammerstein, Peter, and Stevens, Jeffrey R.. 2012. “Six Reasons for Invoking Evolution in Decision Theory.” In Evolution and the Mechanisms of Decision Making, ed. Hammerstein, Peter and Stevens, Jeffrey R.. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harley, Calvin B. 1981. “Learning the Evolutionarily Stable Strategy.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 89 (4): 611–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Heifetz, Aviad, Meier, Martin, and Schipper, Burkhard C.. 2013. “Dynamic Unawareness and Rationalizable Behavior.” Games and Economic Behavior 81:50–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levi, Isaac. 1974. “On Indeterminate Probabilities.” Journal of Philosophy 71 (13): 391–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loomes, Graham, and Sugden, Robert. 1982. “Regret Theory: An Alternative Theory of Rational Choice under Uncertainty.” Economic Journal 92 (368): 805–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard Smith, John. 1982. Evolution and the Theory of Games. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNamara, John M. 2013. “Towards a Richer Evolutionary Game Theory.” Journal of the Royal Society Interface 10 (88): 1–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mengel, Friederike. 2012. “Learning across Games.” Games and Economic Behavior 74 (2): 601–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mohlin, Erik. 2012. “Evolution of Theories of Mind.” Games and Economic Behavior 75 (1): 299–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nowak, Martin A. 2006. Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Connor, Cailin. 2015. “Evolving to Generalize: Trading Precision for Speed.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. doi:10.1093/bjps/axv038.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rayo, Luis, and Becker, Gary S.. 2007. “Evolutionary Efficiency and Happiness.” Journal of Political Economy 115:302–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robalino, Nikolaus, and Robson, Arthur. 2016. “The Evolution of Strategic Sophistication.” American Economic Review 106 (4): 1046–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robson, Arthur, and Samuelson, Larry. 2011. “The Evolutionary Foundations of Preferences.” In Handbook of Social Economics, vol. 1A, ed. J. Benhabib, M. Jackson, and A. Bisin. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Savage, Leonard Jimmie. 1951. “The Theory of Statistical Decision.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 46:55–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Savage, Leonard Jimmie 1954. The Foundations of Statistics. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Scheibehenne, Benjamin, Rieskamp, Jörg, and Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan. 2013. “Testing the Adaptive Toolbox Models: A Bayesian Hierarchical Approach.” Philosophical Review 120 (1): 39–64.Google ScholarPubMed
Skyrms, Brian, and Zollman, Kevin J. S.. 2010. “Evolutionary Considerations in the Framing of Social Norms.” Politics, Philosophy and Economics 9 (3): 265–73.. http://ppe.sagepub.com/content/9/3/265.full.pdf+html.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smead, Rory, and Zollman, Kevin J. S.. 2013. “The Stability of Strategic Plasticity.” Unpublished manuscript, Carnegie Mellon University.Google Scholar
Taylor, Peter D., and Jonker, Leo B.. 1978. “Evolutionary Stable Strategies and Game Dynamics.” Mathematical Bioscience 40 (1–2): 145–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trautmann, Stefan T., and van de Kuilen, Gijs. 2016. “Ambiguity Attitudes.” In The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making, ed. Keren, G. and Wu, G.. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Tversky, Amos, and Kahnemann, Daniel. 1981. “The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice.” Science 211 (4481): 453–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
von Neumann, John, and Morgenstern, Oskar. 1944. Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Walley, Peter. 1996. “Inferences from Multinomial Data: Learning about a Bag of Marbles.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 58 (1): 3–57.Google Scholar
Zollman, Kevin J. S. 2008. “Explaining Fairness in Complex Environments.” Politics, Philosophy and Economics 7 (1): 81–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zollman, Kevin J. S., and Smead, Rory. 2010. “Plasticity and Language: An Example of the Baldwin Effect?” Philosophical Studies 147 (1): 7–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar