LOFT06: Logic and the Foundations of Game and Decision Theory

我们提议于2006年在英国主办逻辑和博弈与决策理论基础会议（LOFT）。这一高级别的国际会议汇集了计算机科学研究人员（对交互和通信感兴趣，特别是在类似游戏的分布式系统中，即，多智能体系统（MAS），经济学，博弈论，逻辑和知识表示。LOFT的关键问题是：1互动：在博弈论启发MAS关于竞争和两个人的游戏，MAS有助于进一步合作游戏和游戏中联盟发挥作用的理论。动力学很重要：在一个静态的世界里没有交互作用，游戏中的许多问题都是关于均衡的。2信息：在现实问题中，代理人没有信息和记忆。他们面临着一个权衡：是根据给定的知识采取行动，还是首先获得更多的知识。动力学也很重要：玩家通常会在游戏中修改他们的信念。3代理：当给玩家分配某些信息，动机甚至情感态度时，对玩家的推理更容易：代理必须有信念和目标才能采取行动（博弈论中占主导地位的假设是理性：代理人最大化预期收益）。在这些主题之上，LOFT的定义价值之一是它的跨学科性。LOFT最初的目标是将经济学家和计算机科学家聚集在一起，现在有一大批人整合并进一步发展“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。虽然英国在许多领域都有杰出的人物和团体，但对LOFT主题组合的兴趣出现得相对较晚，并且，我们认为，只有在英国MAS的研究达到世界领先水平之后，在Agent研究中，将MAS看作是一个计算博弈已成为普遍现象，MAS中的部分信息、有限计算能力、迭代交互、联盟形成等问题为“经典”博弈论提供了新的观点和问题。下面是一个例子：在博弈论采取了游戏（或互动cenario）是理所当然的，然后试图挑出某些模式的行为（解决方案的概念），MAS社会，与驱动器建立代理系统，也解决了它所谓的机制设计：我们可以，给定一些可取的行为的整体系统，设计代理和协议的方式，这种行为将产生的rationalaction的代理？此外，MAS为非经典博弈论提供了丰富的应用领域，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等。研究这些复杂领域的正式和计算模型的领域也被称为社会软件。最后但并非最不重要的一点是，计算机科学背景下的许多MAS的研究提供了丰富的计算模型，分支时间模型，modelsfor互动，和不动点逻辑博弈Theorists。这种利益集团的合并是加强了由逻辑学家的兴趣采取了博弈论和MAS。自从第一个LOFT以来，逻辑学家们已经应用他们的工具来正式描述游戏中的属性。最近的逻辑形式化的奥曼的主张，常识的合理性解释逆向归纳法只是众多例子之一，证明了附加值的逻辑方法。逻辑有助于指定丰富的交互环境，也有助于验证MAS中的复杂行为。最后，逻辑可以说是形式化推理的最合适的工具，（反事实）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.