Bøger i Theory and Decision Library A: serien

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.

Arturo Carsetti According to molecular Biology, true invariance (life) can exist only within the framework of ongoing autonomous morphogenesis and vice versa. With respect to this secret dialectics, life and cognition appear as indissolubly interlinked. In this sense, for instance, the inner articulation of conceptual spaces appears to be linked to an inner functional development based on a continuous activity of selection and "anchorage" realised on semantic grounds. It is the work of "invention" and g- eration (in invariance), linked with the "rooting" of meaning, which determines the evolution, the leaps and punctuated equilibria, the conditions related to the unfo- ing of new modalities of invariance, an invariance which is never simple repetition and which springs on each occasion through deep-level processes of renewal and recovery. The selection perpetrated by meaning reveals its autonomy aboveall in its underpinning, in an objective way, the ongoing choice of these new modalities. As such it is not, then, concerned only with the game of "possibles", offering itself as a simple channel for pure chance, but with providing a channel for the articulation of the " le" in the humus of a semantic (and embodied) net in order to prepare the necessary conditionsfor a continuousrenewal and recoveryof original creativity. In effect, it is this autonomy in inventing new possible modules of incompressibility whichdeterminestheactualemergenceofnew(andtrue)creativity,whichalsotakes place through the "narration" of the effected construction.

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.

At the Economic Institute of Leyden Universi ty, I learned that economists study human behavior too, although their studies are limited to economic affairs. At the Institute of Scientific Research on Consumer Affairs became (SWOKA), I aware of the needs of consumer organizations and the government for consumer research to base their policy on.

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.

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.

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.

Value change and uncertainty about the validity of traditional moral convictions are frequently observed when scientific re search confronts us with new moral problems or challenges the moral responsibility of the scientist.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Revised Edition with a Second Part with a new Foreword by Anatol Rapoport

Develops and defends a version of utilitarianism, including expected-utility theory, as a normative model of decision-making. The work considers the endorsement of a norm as a decision and asks what reasons there are for endorsing norms for decision-making.

We have witnessed the often unhappy course of societal and political decision making concerning projects such as hazardous chemical installations, novel types of electric power plant or storage sites for solid wastes.

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.

may be related to another basic assumption in economic psychology: that the human capacity to process information from the environment is limited, and that the kind of optimal use of that information postulated in many economic theories is therefore not possible.

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;

This book explains the notational system NUSAP (Numeral, Unit, Spread, Assessment, Pedigree) and applies it to several examples from the environmental sciences. The authors are now making further extensions of NUSAP, including an algorithm for the propagation of quality-grades through models used in risk and safety studies.