Professor of Philosophy
Time and place:
7:35 AM on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008; NAC 4113
Description:
Speaker: Lou Marinoff (City College )
In 1946, John von Neumann and Oscar Morgenstern created a new branch of mathematics with the publication of their Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Among other things, the book provides analyses of rational choice in situations of risk or conflict of interest. Yet the authors also admit that “there is no satisfactory treatment of the question of rationality.”
This talk will explain why rationality cannot be satisfactorily treated. It presents a classic model of rational choice, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and well as a derivative model, namely Newcomb’s problem. The talk will illustrate the richness and applicability of these models. It will also enlist the audience in real-time experiments that demonstrate inevitable divergencies of rational choice.
For his Bio and more information, please see:
