ABSTRACT
This chapter explains a broad class of theories, developed first in economics, but extending now to a variety of studies concerned with competitive situations in economic markets, politics, labour relations, and international relations. Such theories are variously known as 'preference theories', 'decision theories', or 'theories of conflict resolution'. The relation between preference and choice is therefore a crucial one for praxeological theories. Like the concept of rationality, the technical concept of preference, while clearly related to, and deriving from, the ordinary notion, acquires certain special conditions and drops others. The praxeologist, by contrast, sets out to derive from a few limited very general postulated canons and formally defined choice-situations the forms of rational decisions. Game theorists have not given much attention to the epistemic problem of how one forms beliefs about one's opponent's value-structure: they take for granted that one knows whether the game one is playing is or is not zero-sum.
