What Is Team Reasoning?

Prerequisites

This section depends on you having studied some other sections:

• Game Theory Introduction

• Nash Equilibrium

Aim

This section provides an informal explanation of team reasoning starting from Bacharach’s initial characterisation:

‘somebody team reasons if she works out the best possible feasible combination of actions for all the members of her team, then does her part in it.’ (Bacharach, 2006, p. 121)

What Is a Team?

Several different proposals have been made. Sugden (2000) proposes:

‘[A] team exists to the extent that its members take themselves to be members of it.’

and

‘[T]o take oneself to be a member of a team is to engage in such reasoning oneself, while holding certain beliefs about the use of such reasoning by others’

What Makes an Action Best Possible?

Sugden (2000) explains the contrast between the standard, game-theoretic way of thinking about best possible actions ...

‘In the standard theory, the individual appraises alternative actions by her in relation to some objective (her preferences), given her beliefs about the actions that other individuals will choose.’

... and the distinctive way of thinking about best possible actions that is characteristic of team reasoning:

‘An individual who engages in team-directed reasoning appraises alternative arrays of actions by members of the team in relation to some objective (team-directed preferences).’

‘At the level of the team, team preference is a ranking of outcomes which is revealed in the team's decisions.’

Applications of Team Reasoning

Team reasoning can be drawn on in attempting, perhaps not always successfully, to provide:

• an account of rational decision which differs from plain vanilla game theory on what is rational in many ordinary social interactions which have the structure of games like the Prisoner’s Dilemma^[1] and Hi-Lo^[1:1] (Bacharach, 2006; Sugden, 2000)

• an alternative to Bratman on Shared Intentional Action (Gold & Sugden, 2007; Pacherie, 2013)

• an explanation of how there could be aggregate subjects.

Alternative Approach

Although not covered in these lectures, Misyak & Chater (2014)’s proposal about virtual bargaining also looks like a promising development of game theory.