Acts are either means to an end or ends in themselves. This is no infinite regression. There is bound to be an holy grail (happiness ?) in the role of the ultimate end. A more commonsense view would be to regard acts as means and states of affairs as ends. This, in turn, leads to a teleological outlook : acts are right or wrong in accordance with their effectiveness at securing the achievement of the right goals. Deontology (and its stronger version, absolutism) constrain the means. It states that there is a permitted subset of means, all the other being immoral and, in effect, forbidden. Game Theory is out to shatter both the notion of a finite chain of means and ends culminating in an ultimate end ? and of the deontological view. It is consequentialist but devoid of any value judgement.
Game Theory pretends that human actions are breakable into much smaller ?molecules? called games. Human acts within these games are means to achieving ends but the ends are improbable in their finality. The means are segments of ?strategies? : prescient and omniscient renditions of the possible moves of all the players. Aside from the fact that it involves mnemic causation (direct and deterministic influence by past events) and a similar influence by the utility function (which really pertains to the future) ? it is highly implausible. Additionally, Game Theory is mired in an internal contradiction : on the one hand it solemnly teaches us that the psychology of the players is absolutely of no consequence. On the other, it hastens to explicitly and axiomatically postulate their rationality and implicitly (and no less axiomatically) their benefit-seeking behaviour (though this aspect is much more muted). This leads to absolutely outlandish results : irrational behaviour leads to total cooperation, bounded rationality leads to more realistic patterns of cooperation and competition (coopetition) and an unmitigated rational behaviour leads to disaster (also known as Paretto dominated outcomes).
Moreover, Game Theory refuses to acknowledge that real games are dynamic, not static. The very concepts of strategy, utility function and extensive (tree like) representation are static. The dynamic is retrospective, not prospective. To be dynamic, the game must include all the information about all the actors, all their strategies, all their utility functions. Each game is a subset of a higher level game, a private case of an implicit game which is constantly played in the background, so to say. This is a hyper-game of which all games are but derivatives. It incorporates all the physically possible moves of all the players. An outside agency with enforcement powers (the state, the police, the courts, the law) are introduced by the players. In this sense, they are not really an outside event which has the effect of altering the game fundamentally. They are part and parcel of the strategies available to the players and cannot be arbitrarily ruled out. On the contrary, their introduction as part of a dominant strategy will simplify Game theory and make it much more applicable. In other words : players can choose to compete, to cooperate and to cooperate in the formation of an outside agency. There is no logical or mathematical reason to exclude the latter possibility. The ability to thus influence the game is a legitimate part of any real life strategy. Game Theory assumes that the game is a given ? and the players have to optimize their results within it. It should open itself to the inclusion of game altering or redefining moves by the players as an integral part of their strategies. After all, games entail the existence of some agreement to play and this means that the players accept some rules (this is the role of the prosecutor in the Prisoners? Dilemma). If some outside rules (of the game) are permissible ? why not allow the ?risk? that all the players will agree to form an outside, lawfully binding, arbitration and enforcement agency ? as part of the game ? Such an agency will be nothing if not the embodiment, the materialization of one of the rules, a move in the players? strategies, leading them to more optimal or superior outcomes as far as their utility functions are concerned. Bargaining inevitably leads to an agreement regarding a decision making procedure. An outside agency, which enforces cooperation and some moral code, is such a decision making procedure. It is not an ?outside? agency in the true, physical, sense. It does not ?alter? the game (not to mention its rules). It IS the game, it is a procedure, a way to resolve conflicts, an integral part of any solution and imputation, the herald of cooperation, a representative of some of the will of all the players and, therefore, a part both of their utility functions and of their strategies to obtain their preferred outcomes. Really, these outside agencies ARE the desired outcomes. Once Game Theory digests this observation, it could tackle reality rather than its own idealized contraptions.
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