Bøger i Theory and Decision Library A: serien

THE CONCEPTION OF THIS VOLUME This volume, Cardinalism, has been initiated by Ole Hagen, and is now published due to his perseverance and to Kluwer Academic Publishers. Because of various activities and duties, my contribution to the general conception of this volume has only been formal, and all the credit for it is due to Ole Hagen.

sociologists, utility and game theorists, biologists, mathematicians, moral philosophers and philosophers have created totally new concepts and methods of understanding the function and role of humans in their modern societies.

Generating Images of Stratification is a self-contained presentation of a theoretical research program that deals with a significant explanatory problem relating to social inequality and that constructs generative theoretical models in doing so.

To give an answer to these onerous questions we should immediately point out that cognition (as well as natural language) has to be considered first of all as a peculiar fu- tion of active biosystems and that it results from complex interactions between the - ganism and its surroundings.

1.1 Utilitarian Theories This book is a monograph on moral philosophy and social philosophy, particularly the part of the philosophy of economics that is related to the general distribution problem.

Intends to provide a methodological framework, capable of analyzing the multiple aspects related to technological dynamics, and to arrive - at times ex post, at times ex ante - at assessments regarding the economic results that can be achieved at various levels, with the innovation and diffusion of technologies in the manufacturing activities.

For the first time in history, scholars working on language and culture from within an evolutionary epistemological framework, and thereby emphasizing complementary or deviating theories of the Modern Synthesis, were brought together.

This work for the first time brings together case law and law based on norms. It is addressed to philosophers of law, historians of law, theorists of science and social scientists.

Olof Dahlback's book breaks new ground for the analysis of crime from a rationality perspective by presenting models and methods that go far beyond those with which researchers have hitherto been equipped.

Writing about sociocultural evolution is always a complicated enterprise, because the subject is not only difficult in a scientific way but also in a political one.

In that book, Den Hartogh extends Lewis' analysis of semantic norms to moral norms. The third book is a book on economics, largely ignored by economists, which only lately has started to receive some recognition among philosophers: Robert Sugden's The Economics of Rights, Co operation and Welfare.

Agent-based modelling on a computer appears to have a special role to play in the development of social science. What are the sociological concepts of norms and norm processing that could either be used for planned implementation or for identifying equivalents of social norms among co-operative agents?

Nonlinear `evolution equations' and serial stochastic matrices of evolutionary game theory allow us to optimally compute possible serial evolutionary solutions of societal conflicts.

Therefore I tried to reformulate several classical problems of theoretical sociology in terms of these formal systems and outline new possibilities for a mathematical sociology which is able to join immediately on the great traditions of theoretical sociology.

It is an obvious fact that human agency is constrained and structured by many kinds of rules: rules that are constitutive for communication, morality, persons, and society, and juridical rules. So the question is: what roles are played by social rules and the structural traits of human agency in rational decision making?

These considerations, as developed by Quine, introduce us to a conceptual perspective like the "internal realist" perspective advocated by Putnam whose principal aim is, for cer tain aspects, to link the philosophical approaches developed respectively by Quine and Wittgenstein.

The theory of practical rationality does not belong to one academic discipline alone. Decision theory in the broader sense, embracing the theory of games and collective choice theory, can help to understand practical reason in philosophical analysis.

This volume demonstrates that recognizing the many forms of uncertainty that enter into the development of any particular subject matter is a precondition for more responsible choice and deeper knowledge.

It addresses sociologists and other social scientists interested in formal modelling, mathematical sociology, and computer simulation as well as computer scientists interested in social science applications, and philosophers of social science.

A new approach to explaining the existence of firms and markets, focusing on variability and coordination. This approach, called the variability approach, allows us to: show why both the need for communication and the coordination costs increase when the division of labor increases;

He also shows that certain moral theories cannot be reformulated as consequentialist theories. The relevant alternatives for an agent in a situation are taken to comprise all actions that they can perform in the situation. The problem of whether agents should adapt their actions to their own future actions is also addressed.

Current environmental problems and technological risks are a challenge for a new institutional arrangement of the value spheres of Science, Politics and Morality.

The philosophical basis of the logic of norm sentences and of other systems of practical thinking (formal teleology, axiology, logic of preferences) is discussed. The book addresses readers interested in philosophical logic, practical philosophy, sociology of institutions, legal philosophy, and theory democracy.

It will be shown that utility and probability fu- tions derived in a non-Bayesian manner can be used for generating preferences over uncertain prospects, that support the principle of maximising subjective expected utility.

Ten original essays examine the central themes of John Searle's ontology of society. Written by an international team of philosophers and social scientists, the essays contribute to a deeper understanding of Searle's work. Moreover, these essays open the door to new approaches to addressing fundamental questions about social phenomena.

Changing preferencesis a phenomenonoften invoked but rarely properlyaccounted for. Instead of constructing complex, all-encompassing theories of preference change, the authors of this volume start with very simple, formal accounts of some possible and hopefully plausible mechanism of preference change.

This book offers a radical new theoretical approach for the understanding of communication. The theory is operationalized by the application of certain computer programs, namely Soft Computing programs like cellular automata and artificial neural nets.

With respect to the possible outlining of new models of the process of knowledge construction, we are really faced, at the moment, with the appearance of a new frontier. This title aims to recognize some of the peculiar knots of this particular conceptual revolution.