From local assessments to global rationality

We present a theory and a tool for the treatment of problems arising when a decision making agent faces a situation involving a choice between a finite set of strategies, having access to a finite set of autonomous agents reporting their opinions. Each of these agents may itself be a decision making agent, and the theory is independent of whether there is a specific coordinating agent or not. Any decision making agent is allowed to assign different credibilities to the statements made by the other autonomous agents. The theory admits the representation of vague and numerically imprecise information, and the evaluation results in a set of admissible strategies by using criteria conforming to classical statistical decision theory. The admissible strategies can be further investigated with respect to strength and also with respect to the range of values that makes them admissible.