Two models of unawareness: comparing the object-based and the subjective-state-space approaches

Over the past 20 years or so, a small but growing literature has emerged with the aim of modeling agents who are unaware of certain things. In this paper we compare two different approaches to modeling unawareness: the object-based approach of Board and Chung (Object-based unawareness: theory and ap...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Synthese (Dordrecht) 2011-04, Vol.179 (Suppl 1), p.13-34
Main Authors: Board, Oliver J., Chung, Kim-Sau, Schipper, Burkhard C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Axiomatization
Economic models
Economic theory
Education
Epistemology
Explicit knowledge
Formal languages
Introspection
Logic
Logical conjunctions
Mathematical functions
Measurability
Metaphysics
Philosophy
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Science
Property partitioning
Space
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Summary:Over the past 20 years or so, a small but growing literature has emerged with the aim of modeling agents who are unaware of certain things. In this paper we compare two different approaches to modeling unawareness: the object-based approach of Board and Chung (Object-based unawareness: theory and applications. University of Minnesota, Mimeo, 2008) and the subjective-state-space approach of Heifetz et al. (J Econ Theory 130: 78-94,2006). In particular, we show that subjectivestate-space models (henceforth HMS structures) can be embedded within object-based models (henceforth OBU structures), demonstrating that the latter are at least as expressive. As long as certain restrictions are imposed on the form of the OBU structure, the embedding can also go the other way. A generalization of HMS structures (relaxing the partitional properties of knowledge) gives us a full converse.
ISSN:0039-7857
1573-0964
DOI:10.1007/s11229-010-9850-z