about.


The Ninth Workshop in Decisions, Games and Logic (DGL) will be hosted by the Department of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor on July 8-10, 2016. The DGL workshop series started in 2007 and aims to bring together graduate students, post-docs and senior researchers from economics, logic, and philosophy working on formal approaches to rational individual and group decision making. This is the first DGL to be held in North America.

past editions.

  • Eighth edition: LSE London, 2015.
  • Seventh edition: Stockholm, June 17-19 2013
  • Sixth Workshop in Munich, June 28-30 2012
  • Fifth Workshop in Maastricht, July 7-9 2011
  • Fourth Workshop in Paris, June 9-11 2010
  • Third Workshop in Lausanne, June 15-17 2009
  • Second Workshop in Amsterdam, June 30 - 2 July 2008
  • First Workshop in London July 17-18, 2007

Program.


  • Download the PDF version.
    All talks free and open to the public.

    All talks in AH 3222 (Google Maps).
    Poster sessions will be in Tanner Library (AH 1171).

  • Friday July 8, 2016

  • 2:00 - 3:30pm

    Joseph Halpern, "Decision theory with resource-bounded agents." [Abstract]

    3:30 - 5:00pm

    Gordon Belot, "Difficulty itself?" (Tutorial)

    5:00 - 6:00pm

    Hannah Rubin et. al.[*], "Communication without the Cooperative Principle: A Signaling Experiment."

  • Saturday July 9, 2016

  • 10:30 - 12:00pm

    Brian Weatherson, "Coordination games, solution concepts, and intuitions." (Tutorial)

    12:00 - 1:30pm

    -- Lunch --

    1:30 - 3:00pm

    Kevin Zollman, "The theory of games as a tool for the social epistemologist."[Abstract]

    3:00 - 4:30pm

    Katie Steele, "Inference and decision in light of norms for seeking evidence."[Abstract]

    4:30 - 6:30pm

    Poster Session I + Dinner

  • Sunday July 10, 2016

  • 10:30 - 12:00pm

    Michael Caie, "Agreement and updating for self-locating belief."[Abstract]

    12:00 - 2:00pm

    Poster Session II + Lunch.

    2:00 - 3:30pm

    Kenny Easwaren, "A New Framework for aggregating utility."[Abstract]

    3:30 - 4:30pm

    Dan Singer, et al.[**], "Group polarization as a limitedly rational response to evidence.

  • Poster Presentations

    • 1. William Berger (EMU) et. al. [***], “Epistemic Sorrows and Triumphs of Representative Democracy: Condorcet and Hong-Page.”
    • 2. Justin Bruner (ANU), “Bargaining, meta-bargaining and the evolution of divisional norms.”
    • 3. Joe McCool and Isaac Davis (CMU), “Almost Fair: Conjoint Measurement Theory and Score Based Bargaining Solutions.”
    • 4. Will Fleisher (Rutgers), “You Don’t Even Believe That: Endorsement and Inquiry.”
    • 5. Mattias Jenny (MIT), “The Conditional Logic of Turing Reducibility.”
    • 6. Nadiya Kostyuk (Michigan), “Sinister Side of the Web: Principal-agent model of the hacker-government contract.”
    • 7. Yang Liu (Cambridge), “Towards a More Realistic Version of Savage’s System.”
    • 8. Zoe Johnson King (Michigan), “On acting when uncertain about the norms governing action under risk and uncertainty.”

Abstracts.


  • Michael Caie (University of Pittsburgh)

    "Agreement and updating for self-locating belief." There are well-known results, such as Robert Aumann’s “no agreeing to disagree theorem”, that show that if two or more agents, who have epistemic and credal states that are defined over algebras that do not include any self-locating propositions, have certain information about one another’s epistemic and credal states, then such agents must assign the same credence to certain propositions. We can show, however, that these theorems fail when we consider agents who have epistemic and credal states that are defined over algebras that do include self-locating propositions. In this talk, I’ll consider what sorts of agreement theorems may be shown to hold for agents with credences defined over such algebras. I’ll then consider how these results bear on some tricky questions about how agents should update their credences in light of self-locating information.
    [Top of the Page]
  • Kenny Easwaran (Texas A & M)

    "A new framework for aggregating utility." My 2014 paper, ’Decision Theory without Represen- tation Theorems’, describes a project for using utility and probability (or more generally, the distribution of value over possible outcomes of an action) to give norms on preference over actions. The project of this paper applies a similar methodology to give norms on preference over actions that don’t just have multiple possible outcomes, but also affect multiple agents, based on the value of each possible outcome to each agent. The aim is to show that a kind of aggregative utilitarianism can get around many problems that arise with infinitely many agents, especially in combination with uncertainty. This project does not aim to respond to challenges to consequentialism generally. However, it may be able to provide a new way of expressing the motivation and foundations of aggregative utilitarianism.
    [Top of the Page]
  • Joseph Halpern (Cornell)

    "Decision theory with resource-bounded agents." There have been two major lines of research aimed at capturing resource-bounded players in game theory. The first, initiated by Rubinstein, charges an agent for doing costly computation; the second, initiated by Neyman does not charge for computation, but limits the computation that agents can do, typically by modeling agents as finite automata. We review recent work on applying both approaches in the context of decision theory. For the first approach, we take the objects of choice in a decision problem to be Turing machines, and charge players for the “complexity” of the Turing machine chosen (e.g., its running time). This approach can be used to explain well-known phenomena like first- impression-matters biases (i.e., people tend to put more weight on evidence they hear early on) and belief polarization (two people with different prior beliefs, hearing the same evidence, can end up with diametrically opposed conclusions) as the outcomes of quite rational decisions. For the second approach, we model people as finite automata, and provide a simple algorithm that, on a problem that captures a number of settings of interest, provably performs optimally as the number of states in the automaton increases. Perhaps more importantly, it seems to capture a number of features of human behavior, as observed in experiments.
    (This is joint work with Rafael Pass and Lior Seeman. No previous background is assumed.)
    [Top of the Page]
  • Katie Steele (LSE/ANU)

    "Inference and decision in light of norms for seeking evidence." One of A. J. Ayer’s two main criteria for a successful account of scientific method is that the account should make it advisable for scientists to pursue ‘free evidence’. Here I reflect on Ayer’s claim, interpreted as a norm for judging our models of rational inference and decision. We see that the free-evidence norm, in basic form, is not upheld by theories that deviate from standard Bayesian decision theory, e.g., theories that explicitly incorporate ‘risk sensitivity’ and theories that accommodate ‘severe uncertainty’. One might ask, then, whether some violations of the norm are more defensible than others. Indeed, I consider whether some decision theories (as opposed to others) furnish good reasons to avoid free evidence, and furthermore, what is the theoretical and practical significance of these subtle differences in observing the basic norm.
    [Top of the Page]
  • Kevin Zollman (Carnegie Mellon University)

    "The theory of games as a tool for the social epistemologist." Traditionally, epistemologists have distinguished between epistemic and pragmatic goals. This distinction has cast much of decision and game theory as irrelevant to epistemic enterprises. It is said that these theories only apply in a pragmatic context because they are designed around the satisfaction of pragmatic desires. In this talk, I will show that interesting and complex game theory problems will arise when we consider social epistemology. Even if we restrict attention to purely epistemic motivations, members of epistemic groups will face a multitude of strategic choices. After illustrating the conditions necessary for there to be non-trivial, purely epistemic games, I turn to a few case studies. I illustrate several contexts where individuals who are concerned solely with the discovery of truth will nonetheless face difficult game theoretic problems. Examples of purely epistemic coordination problems and social dilemmas will be presented.
    [Top of the Page]
  • [*] The full authorship of this paper, in addition to Hannah Rubin, includes: Justin Bruner, Cailin O’Connor and Simon Huttegger. [Top of the Page]
  • [**] The full authorship of this paper, in addition to Dan Singer, includes: Patrick Grim, Aaron Bramson, Bennett Holman, Karen Kovaka, Jiin Jung, Anika Ranginani, and William Zev Berger. [Top of the Page]
  • [***] The full authorship of this paper, in addition to William Berger, includes: Patrick Grim, Daniel J. Singer, Aaron Bramson, Bennett Holman, and Sean McGeehan. [Top of the Page]

call for abstracts.


We invite submissions from graduate students, post-docs and other early career researchers in decision theory, game theory, logic, and formal philosophy more generally, including philosophy of science and epistemology. All submissions will be blind reviewed. Co-authored papers and interdisciplinary work are highly encouraged.
  • Full Presentation: Please submit an abstract (approximately 750 words, no more than 1000 words) prepared for anonymous review and suitable for a 20 minute presentation followed by a 10 minute Q & A.
  • Poster Presentation: Please submit a 750 word abstract prepared for anonymous review and suitable for a 5-10 minute presentation followed by informal discussion.
  • You may submit an abstract for either or both formats, but each main author will only be selected once.

  • Submissions must be made via our EasyChair page. Click here to access our page.

Important Dates

Deadline 1 March 2016

Notification 1 April 2016

contact.


You can contact the organizers by email:

Sara Aronowitz (skaron at umich dot edu)
Boris Babić (bbabic at umich dot edu)