Is Game Theory an Aid to Reasoning?

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Game theory is used in very different ways and has very different connections to data across different cases. Means there's a sort of model building aspect for some particular empirical phenomenon you're trying to understand. Also just the theoretical aspect of understanding what it means to be rational. And also, here's another one, like another role that i think often game theory can play. You're looking at certain cultural patterns, and you’re trying to reason about them,. Then sometimes it plays a role as like an aid to reasoning. So let i this is so much to talk about here, i'm sort of tongue tied about it. Butid say, we're oing tol about evolution.

You can’t always get what you want, as a wise person once said. But we do try, even when someone else wants the same thing. Our lives as people, and the evolution of other animals over time, are shaped by competition for scarce resources of various kinds. Game theory provides a natural framework for understanding strategies and behaviors in these competitive settings, and thus provides a lens with which to analyze evolution and human behavior, up to and including why racial or gender groups are consistently discriminated against in society. Cailin O’Connor is the author or two recent books on these issues: Games in the Philosophy of Biology and The Origins of Unfairness: Social Categories and Cultural Evolution.

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Cailin O’Connor received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of California, Irvine. She is currently Associate Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science and a member of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Science at UCI. Her works involves questions in the philosophy of biology and behavioral science, game theory, agent-based modeling, social epistemology, decision theory, rational choice, and the spread of misinformation.

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