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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Awareness and Partitional Informational Structures

subject

description

We begin with an example to motivate the introduction of the concept of unawareness in models of information. There are a subject and two possible states of the world, σ and τ. At σ a certain fact p happens — it is true — and the subject sees it or hears it or anyhow perceives it, so that he knows it is true (in Geanakoplos [5] the subject is Sherlock Holmes’ assistant and fact p is ‘the dog barks’). At state τ fact p does not occur (it is false), and the subject not only does not see it or hear it etc.; but what is more, he does not even think of the possibility that it might: fact p is not present to the subject’s mind. What is an appropriate formal model for this story?