LOFT06: Logic and the Foundations of Game and Decision Theory

我们建议在英国主办2006年逻辑与博弈与决策理论基础(LOFT)会议。这个排名很高的国际会议汇集了计算机科学(对交互和通信感兴趣，特别是在类似游戏的分布式系统-MASS)、经济学、博弈论、逻辑和知识表示方面的研究人员。LOFT的关键问题是：1交互：当博弈论启发MAS关于竞争和两人博弈时，MAS有助于进一步研究合作博弈和联盟在其中发挥作用的博弈理论。动力学很重要：在静态世界中没有相互作用，博弈中的许多问题都与均衡有关。2信息：在现实问题中，代理人有不完美的信息和记忆。他们面临着一种取舍，是根据给定的知识采取行动，还是首先获得更多的知识。同样，动态是重要的：玩家通常会在游戏中修改他们的信念。3代理：当向玩家分配某些信息、激励甚至情感态度时，关于他们的推理更容易：代理必须有信念和目标才能采取行动(博弈论中的首要假设是理性：代理最大化预期收益)。除了这些主题，loft最重要的价值之一就是它的跨学科特性。LOFT最初的目的是将经济学家和计算机科学家聚集在一起，现在有一大群人在整合和进一步发展LOFT-问题：博弈论、逻辑、计算机科学、哲学、认知心理学、认识论、人工智能和MAS的研究人员。尽管英国在许多领域都有杰出的人物和团队，但对LOFT主题的结合的兴趣相对较晚，在我们看来，只有在英国MAS的研究确立了世界领先水平之后。在智能体研究中，MAS被普遍认为是一种计算游戏，而MAS中的部分信息、有限计算能力、迭代交互和联盟形成等问题为经典的博弈论提供了新的观点和问题。这里有一个例子：博弈论认为一场游戏(或互动游戏)是理所当然的，然后试图挑出某些行为模式(解决方案概念)，MAS社区为了建立代理系统，也解决了它所称的机制设计：我们能否在给定整体系统的一些理想行为的情况下，以这样一种方式设计代理和协议，使这种行为将由代理的理性行为产生？此外，MASS提供了非经典博弈论的丰富应用领域，如电子拍卖、交易和投标、电子投票、辩论和对话、联盟形成和社会法律。研究这种复杂领域的形式和计算模型的领域也被称为社交软件。最后但并非最不重要的是，许多MAS研究的计算机科学背景为博弈论者提供了丰富的计算模型、分支时间模型、交互模型和定点逻辑。这种利益集团的合并因逻辑学家对博弈论和MAS的兴趣而得到加强。从第一个阁楼开始，逻辑学家就开始使用他们的工具来正式地描述游戏中的属性。奥曼最近的逻辑形式化声称，理性的常识解释了反向归纳法，这只是证明逻辑方法的附加值的许多例子之一。逻辑有助于指定丰富的交互环境，但也有助于大量验证复杂的行为。最后，逻辑可以说是形式化推理的最合适的工具，而(反事实的)推理是在任何互动中做出决定和理解他人行为的关键。

We propose to host the conference on Logic and theFoundations of Game and Decision Theory (LOFT) in the UK, 2006.This highly ranked international conference brings togetherresearchers in computer science (with an interest in interaction and communication, particularly in game-likedistributed systems, i.e., multi-agent systems -- MASs),economics, game theory, logic and knowledge representation.Key issues of LOFT are:1 Interaction: Where game theory inspired MASsregarding competitive and two-person games, MAShelps to further the theory of cooperative games and games inwhich coalitions play a role. Dynamics is important: there is nointeraction in a static world, and many questions in games dealwith equilibrium.2 Information: in realistic problems agents have imperfectinformation and memory. They face a trade-off between actingupon the given knowledge, or first acquiring more of it. Again,dynamics is important: players typically revise their beliefsduring a game.3 Agency: Reasoning about players is easier whenassigning them certain informational, motivational and evenemotional attitudes: agents must have beliefs and goals in orderto be able to act (the pre-dominant assumption in game theory isthat of rationality: agents maximise expected payoff). On top of these themes, one of LOFT's defining values is itsinter-disciplinarity. Where the initial aim of LOFT was to bringtogether Economists and Computer Scientists, now there is alarge group of people integrating and further developing`LOFT-issues': researchers in Game Theory, Logic, ComputerScience, Philosophy, Cognitive Psychology, Epistemology,Artificial Intelligence and MAS.Although the UK has outstanding figures and groups inmany of those areas, the interest in the combination of theLOFT-themes emerged relatively late, and, in our opinion, onlyafter the research in MAS in the UK had established itsworld-leading level. In agent research, it is now common toconceive of a MAS as a computational game, and issues in MAS,like partial information, bounded computational power, iterativeinteraction, and coalition formation have provided `classic'game theory with new view-points and problems. Here is anexample: Where Game Theory takes a game (or an interactivescenario) for granted, and then tries to single out certainpatterns of behaviour (solution concepts), the MAS community,with a drive to built agent systems, has also addressed what itcalls Mechanism Design: can we, given some desirable behaviourof the overall system, design the agents and the protocol insuch a way that this behaviour will be generated by rationalaction of the agents?Moreover, MASs provide rich application domains ofnon-classical Game Theory, like e-auctions, trading andbidding, e-voting, argumentation and dialogues, coalitionformation and social laws. The area that investigates formal andcomputational models for such complex domains is also calledSocial Software. Last but not least, the Computer Sciencecontext of much of the MAS research has provided Game Theoristswith rich models of computation, branching time models, modelsfor interaction, and fixpoint logics.This merge of interest groups is reinforced by the interesttaken up by Logicians for both Game Theory and MAS. Since thefirst LOFTs, logicians have applied their tools to formallydescribe properties in games. The recent logical formalisationsof Aumann's claim that common knowledge of rationality explainsbackward induction is only one of many examples demonstratingthe added value of logical approaches. Logic helps to specifyrich interaction environments, but also to verify complexbehaviour in MASs. Finally, Logic is arguably the mostappropriate tool to formalise reasoning, and (counterfactual)reasoning is the key to making one's decisions and understandingother's behaviour in any interaction.