The Conception of the Individual in Non-Cooperative Game Theory

This paper examines the conception of individuals as being of certain types in Harsanyi’s transformation of games of incomplete information into games of complete information. It argues that while the conception of the individual in games of complete information offers potential advances over the problematic neoclassical conception of the individual, Harsanyi’s more realistic incomplete information games framework essentially re-introduces the difficulties from the neoclassical conception. A further argument of the paper is that fixed point equilibrium existence proof theorems and individual existence proofs function in an analogous manner, and can consequently been seen as both dependent upon one another. Thus the inadequacy of Harsanyi’s conception of individuals raises questions about Nash equilibrium approaches to equilibria in games.