Preference-Based Unawareness

TL;DR

This paper extends preference-based definitions of knowledge and belief to unawareness structures, linking decision theory and epistemic logic by characterizing unawareness behaviorally through preferences over acts.

Contribution

It introduces a preference-based framework for unawareness, establishing their equivalence to epistemic notions and bridging decision theory with epistemic logic.

Findings

Unawareness is characterized as both an event and its negation being null.

Preference-based definitions of unawareness align with epistemic notions.

The approach provides a behavioral foundation for unawareness in decision theory.

Abstract

Morris (1996, 1997) introduced preference-based definitions of knowledge and belief in standard state-space structures. This paper extends this preference-based approach to unawareness structures (Heifetz, Meier, and Schipper, 2006, 2008). By defining unawareness and knowledge in terms of preferences over acts in unawareness structures and showing their equivalence to the epistemic notions of unawareness and knowledge, we try to build a bridge between decision theory and epistemic logic. Unawareness of an event is characterized behaviorally as the event being null and its negation being null.