Bøger i Theory and Decision Library serien

Further, a player is rational in the sense that he assumes that every other player is rational in the above sense. The rational player utilizes knowledge of the other players' payoffs in guiding his choice of strategy, because it gives him information about how the other players' choices are guided.

It followed the major breakthrough of decision theory that came with von Neumann and Morgenstern's Theory of Games and Economic Behavior in 1944. Psychologists became interested in studying how people's decision behavior agreed with what was prescribed by the theory.

For instance Amartya Sen - comparing the two current notions of rationality, internal consistency and self-interest pursuit introduces the concept of reasoning and considers the irrationality which may result from the failure of a positive correspondence between reasoning and choice or from a limited capacity of reasoning.

Proceedings of the Joint Meeting of the Austrian and Swiss Operations Research Societies, Vienna, September 22-24, 1980

The present volume collects some of the talks given at the Bertrand Russell Colloquium on Exact Philosophy, attached to the McGill University Foundations and Philosophy of Science Unit.

In the last decade, geographers significantly -augmented their methodologi cal base by developing quantitative techniques which are specifically directed towards analysis of explicitly spatial problems.

In spite of the seeming heterogeneity of topics in its title - Revolutions, Systems, and Theories - this volume purports to be something more than a random collection of Essays in Political Philosophy. The Colloquium of the Philosophy Department of the University of Western Ontario (29-31 Octo­ ber, 1971) at which initial versions of the first eight papers were delivered was entitled 'Political Theory'; and while the organizers anticipated and indeed welcomed topicality in the issues accorded priority arid in the empirical evidence invoked, they were also hoping for a reasonably comprehensive explorat ion of some of the central issues of political philosophy. For this reason it was quickly decided that in such a field a philosophical focus on clarification of ordering concepts required the suppIement - and test - of researches into more particular subject maUers by social scientists. Thus, to speak in general terms (where the specializatlons and their taxonomies multi­ ply fissiparously!), contributors include political scientists, economists and sociologists (Barnard, Baston, Tullock, Rapoport) as well as philosophers (Scriven, Morgenbesser, Braybrooke, TayIor), and juxtaposed as proponents and commentators ·to generate exchanges across disciplinary frontiers. While the five additional invited papers are alI by professional philosophers, they extend the original Colloquium either by continuing controversy on its funda­ mental issues (e. g. , Rubinoff, Nielsen, Roy) or by their continued explorations in what are acknowledged to be boundary areas (e. g. , Schick, Wartofsky). The greatest topical emphasis is that on revolution.

One of the most promising trends in modem political science is the develop ment of a theory of politics as rational action.

The purpose o~ the con~erence was to provide a ~orum within which scientists could report on interesting applications o~ modern decision theory and exchange ideas about controversial issues in the ~oundations o~ the theory o~ choice under un certainty.

Proceedings of the Fifth Research Conference on Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making, Darmstadt 1975

The observation that utility and risk theory now appears to be in a state of rapid change has prompted us to choose the title PROGRESS IN UTILITY AND RISK THEORY for the book, in the belief that science always moves from poorer to more advanced paradigms or from weaker to more forceful theories.

The first article, by John Marshall and Roger Wales (Great Britain) concerns the pragmatic values of communication, starting by considering bird-song and passing to the infinitely more complex 'meaningful' values of human language and pictures.

The term has since been used to cover a broad variety of ethical considerations including those associated with the ideas of impartiality, consistency, justice, equality, and reversibility as well as those raised in the familar questions: 'What if everyone did that?' and 'How would you like it if someone did that to you?

while the work of at least some philosophers of science comes to have an empirical flavour, sociologists of science are increasingly apt to include logical and methodo logical components of the research process as their objects of examina tion.

The papers of Jacob Marschak which follow in these volumes are an extraordinary combination of original and fruitful departures in economic and social thought, superb clarity of exposition, and sensitivity to the values of earlier work and even competing traditions.

Philosophy of Science deals with the problem, 'What is science?' It seems that the answer to this question can only be found if we have an answer to the question, 'How does science function?' Thus, the study of the methodology of social sciences is a prominent factor in any analysis of these sciences.

The present volume collects some of the talks given at the Bertrand Russell Colloquium on Exact Philosophy, attached to the McGill University Foundations and Philosophy of Science Unit.

The present volume brings together current interdisciplinary research which adds up to an evolutionary theory of human knowledge, Le.

Investigations of this kind, that can be described as belonging to an ana lytical philosophy of technology, form the topic of this anthology. But it is an astonishing fact that the commonly accepted and carefully investigated philosophy of science has not yet found its counterpart in an established philosophy of technology.

The papers contained in this volume are based on the contributions to an international, interdisciplinary Symposium entitled 'Analytical and Sociologi cal Action Theories' which took place in Berlin (West) on September 1-3, 1982.

Utility theory or, value theory in general, is certainly the cornerstone of decision theory, game theory, microecon~mics, and all social and political theories which deal with public decisions.