Paradoxes of Rationality and Cooperation: Prisoner’s Dilemma and Newcomb’s Problem

This anthology, the first to bring together the most important philosophical essays on the paradoxes, analyses the concepts underlying the Prisoner’s Dilemma and Newcomb’s Problem and evaluates the proposed solutions. The relevant theories have been developed over the past four decades in a variety of mathematics, economics, psychology, political science, biology, and philosophy. And the problems these paradoxes uncover can arise in many different in debates over nuclear disarmament, labour-management disputes, marital conflicts, Calvinist theology, and even in the evolution of disease through the “cooperation” of microorganisms. The possibilities for application are virtually limitless.