Abstract
We model unawareness of possibilities in decision making and pragmatic reasoning. A background model is filtered through a state of limited awareness to provide the epistemic state of an agent who is not attending to all possibilities. We extend the standard notion of awareness with assumption (implicit beliefs about propositions the agent is unaware of) and define a dynamic update for ‘becoming aware.’ We give a propositional model and a decision-theoretic model, and show how pragmatic relevance reasoning can be described in the latter. An utterance can be relevant even if semantically uninformative, if it brings relevant alternatives to awareness. This gives an explanation for the use of possibility modals and questions as hedged suggestions, bringing possibilities to awareness but only implicating their degree of desirability or probability.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Board, O., Chung, K.-S.: Object-Based Unawareness. In: Bonanno, G., van der Hoek, W., Woolridge, M. (eds.) Proceedings of the Seventh Conference on Logic and the Foundations of Game and Decision Theory (2007)
Byrne, R.M.J.: Suppressing Valid Inferences With Conditionals. Cognition 31(1), 61–83 (1989)
Dekel, E., Lipman, B.L., Rustichini, A.: Standard State-Space Models Preclude Unawareness. Econometrica 66(1), 159–173 (1998)
Feinberg, Y.: Subjective Reasoning — Games with Unawareness. Research Paper No. 1875. Stanford University (November 2004), https://gsbapps.stanford.edu/researchpapers/library/RP1875.pdf
Feinberg, Y.: Games with Incomplete Awareness. Stanford University (May 2005), http://www.stanford.edu/%7Eyossi/Files/Games%20Incomplete%20DP.pdf
Fagin, R., Halpern, J.Y.: Belief, Awareness and Limited Reasoning. Artificial Intelligence 34, 39–76 (1988)
von Fintel, K.: Counterfactuals in a Dynamic Context. In: Kenstowicz, M. (ed.) Ken Hale: A Life in Language, pp. 123–152. MIT Press, Cambridge (2001)
Franke, M., de Jager, T.: The relevance of awareness. In: Aloni, M., Dekker, P., Roelofsen, F. (eds.) Proceedings of the Sixteenth Amsterdam Colloquium, pp. 91–96 (2007)
Gillies, A.S.: Counterfactual Scorekeeping. Linguistics and Philosophy 30, 329–360 (2007)
Grice, P.H.: Studies in the Ways of Words. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (1989)
Halpern, J.Y.: Alternative Semantics for Unawareness. Games and Economic Behavior 37, 321–339 (2001)
Heifetz, A., Meier, M., Schipper, B.C.: Interactive Unawareness. Journal of Economic Theory 130, 78–94 (2006)
Heifetz, A., Meier, M., Schipper, B.C.: Unawareness, Beliefs and Games. Tech. rep. 6. Bonn Econ Discussion Papers (2007)
Heifetz, A., Meier, M., Schipper, B.C.: A canonical model for interactive unawareness. Games and Economic Behavior 62, 304–324 (2008)
Heifetz, A., Meier, M., Schipper, B.C.: Dynamic Unawareness and Rationalizable Behavior (April 2008) (unpublished manuscript)
Halpern, J.Y., Rêgo, L.C.: Extensive Games with Possibly Unaware Players. In: Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, pp. 744–751 (2006); Full paper unpublished; a preliminary version appeared, http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/halpern/papers/aamas06.pdf
Lewis, D.: Scorekeeping in a language game. Journal of Philosophical Logic 8, 339–359 (1979)
Moss, S.: On the Pragmatics of Counterfactuals. MIT, Cambridge (2007) (unpublished manuscript)
Modica, S., Rustichini, A.: Awareness and Partitional Information Structures. Theory and Decision 37, 107–124 (1994)
Modica, S., Rustichini, A.: Unawareness and Partitional Information Structures. Games and Economic Behavior 27, 265–298 (1999)
Milgrom, P., Stokey, N.: Information, trade and common knowledge. Journal of Economic Theory 26, 17–27 (1982)
Ozbay, E.Y.: Unawareness and strategic announcements in games with uncertainty. In: Samet, D. (ed.) Proceedings of TARK XI, pp. 231–238 (2007)
Parikh, P.: A Game-Theoretic Account of Implicature. In: Moses, Y. (ed.) Proceedings of TARK IV, pp. 85–94 (1992)
van Rooy, R.: Revelance of Communicative Acts. In: van Benthem, J. (ed.) Proceedings of the 8th Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge (TARK 2001), pp. 83–96 (2001)
Raiffa, H., Schlaifer, R.: Applied Statistical Decision Theory. MIT Press, Cambridge (1961)
Stenning, K., van Lambalgen, M.: Human reasoning and cognitive science. MIT Press, Cambridge (2008)
Stalnaker, R.: Assertion. In: Cole, P. (ed.) Syntax and Semantics, vol. 9, pp. 315–332. Academic Press, New York (1978)
Swanson, E.: Interactions with Context. PhD thesis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2006)
Swanson, E.: Something ‘Might’ Might Mean. University of Michigan (2006) (unpublished manuscript)
Robert, J., Williams, G.: Conversation and Conditionals. In: Philosophical Studies, vol. 138(2), pp. 211–223 (March 2008)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Franke, M., de Jager, T. (2011). Now That You Mention It. In: Benz, A., Ebert, C., Jäger, G., van Rooij, R. (eds) Language, Games, and Evolution. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6207. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-18006-4_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-18006-4_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-18005-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-18006-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)