The ‘as if’ Approach to Game Theory: Three Positive Results and Four Obstacles

The usual justifications of non-cooperative solution criteria are rationalistic in nature, building on individual rationality and expectation-coordination postulates. In contrast, the ‘as if’ approach to game-theoretic rationality is evolutionary, arguing that even if strategically interacting agents do not meet these epistemic conditions, their long-run aggregate behavior will nevertheless conform with them because of the workings of biological or social selection processes. The present essay discusses three implications of evolutionary selection dynamics in favour of the ‘as if’ paradigm, and four potential obstacles to the general validity of these implications.