Reflexive Decision and Game Theory

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The paradigm of homo oeconomicus, as explicated in modern decision and game theory, shapes extensive parts of our social sciences. These theories count as delivering a basically complete normative ideal and hence serve as the critical reference point of behavioral, psycho-, and neuroeconomics, which attempt to overcome the empirical deficiencies of those theories. In contrast to this mainstream, the present project takes game and decision theory to be normatively deficient and thus attempts to improve the normative ideal of a homo oeconomicus and to thereby shift the point of attack of empirical criticism. The project does so by conceptualizing and theorizing `reflexive ascent' in a formally rigorous way. According to it, a person considers not only her possible actions and their possible consequences, but also her possible (future) decision situations, which entail those actions. This will provide a systematization of so-called dynamic choice, a systematic treatment of (pre-)commitment, as widely discussed in the litersture, and in particular a new fundamental equilibrium concept for game theory, which promises a novel treatment of cooperation and indeed a unification of non-cooperative and cooperative game theory.