p. cm. — (Zeuthen lecture book series) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-262-18187-8 (hardcover : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-262-68100-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Decision-making. 2. Economic man. 3. Game theory. 4. Rational expectations (Economic theory) I. Title. II. Series.

This book presents Ariel Rubinstein's lecture notes for the first part of his well-known graduate course in microeconomics.

Introduction Introducing Accessibility theory 0.1 On the role of context Utterances cannot be processed and interpreted on their own. ...

ABSTRACT In several publications, François Recanati argues that time, world, location, and similar constituents are not arguments of the verb, although they do affect truth conditions. However, he points out that this fact does not decide the debate regarding whether these notions are represented as sentential operators variables bound by quantifiers, as both approaches can be made compatible with such non-arguments. He makes these points using philosophical arguments; in this paper I use linguistic evidence from a variety of languages. Specifically, (...) I demonstrate that time, world, location, and person behave syntactically and semantically the same across languages. Hence, either all are arguments, or neither are; and the evidence points to the latter position. The cross-linguistic data give rise to a generalization, which connects the availability of quantifying over times, worlds, locations, or persons with the availability of indexical expressions of the corresponding type. For example, a language that does not have temporal indexicals cannot have tense. I demonstrate that this generalization follows naturally from the quantifier approach, but would remain a mystery under the operator view. Therefore, the cross-linguistic evidence argues in the favor of the quantificational approach. (shrink)

Arising out of the author's lifetime fascination with the links between the formal language of mathematical models and natural language, this short book comprises five essays investigating both the economics of language and the language of economics. Ariel Rubinstein touches the structure imposed on binary relations in daily language, the evolutionary development of the meaning of words, game-theoretical considerations of pragmatics, the language of economic agents and the rhetoric of game theory. These short essays are full of challenging ideas (...) for social scientists that should help to encourage a fundamental rethinking of many of the underlying assumptions in economic theory and game theory. As a postscript two economists, Tilman Borgers and Bart Lipman, and a logician, Johan van Benthem offer comments. (shrink)

Our knowledge about the world is often expressed by generic sentences, yet their meanings are far from clear. This book provides answers to central problems concerning generics: what do they mean? Which factors affect their interpretation? How can one reason with generics? Cohen proposes that the meanings of generics are probability judgments, and shows how this view accounts for many of their puzzling properties, including lawlikeness. Generics are evaluated with respect to alternatives. Cohen argues that alternatives are induced by the (...) kind as well as by the predicated property, and thus provides a uniform account of the varied interpretations of generics. He studies the formal properties of alternatives and provides a compositional account of their derivation by focus and presupposition. Cohen uses his semantics of generics to provide a formal characterization of adequate default reasoning, and proves some desirable results of this formalism. (shrink)

On a souvent voulu expliquer les oeuvres par la vie de leur auteur. Ariel Suhamy fait l'inverse : il raconte ce qu'on sait de la vie de Spinoza à la lumière de sa doctrine. Son objet, c'est donc la vie humaine, la "vie véritable", celle qui ne se définit pas par la simple circulation du sang et la durée de l'existence, mais par l'intelligence de Dieu, du monde et de soi, et par les actes qui en découlent. Alors, comment (...) l'auteur de l'Éthique a-t-il vécu? Comment a-t-il mis en application sa pensée? Les mythes qui entourent cet homme, ce que l'Histoire peut reconstituer de sa vie, ne dérivent-ils pas aussi de cette pensée et de sa réception? Un livre novateur pour redécouvrir Spinoza."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

What ends should designers pursue? To what extent should they care about the societal and environmental impact of their work? And why should they care at all? Given the key influence design has on the way people live their lives, designing is fraught with ethical issues. Yet, unlike education or nursing, it lacks widespread professional principles for addressing these issues. -/- Rooted in a communitarian view of design practice, this lively and accessible book examines design through the lens of professions, (...) offering a critical vision that enables practitioners, academics and students of design in all disciplines to reflect on the practice’s overarching purposes. Considering how these are connected to others' flourishing and moulded by community interactions, "The Goods of Design" argues for a practice-based approach to cultivate professional ethics; it provides a normative direction that can meaningfully guide professional design activity, both individually and collectively. The volume also looks into the implications work has for the designer's self-growth as a person, offering ways to discover and navigate the complex tensions between personal and professional life. (shrink)

The paper is a discussion of the interpretation of game theory. Game theory is viewed as an abstract inquiry into the concepts used in social reasoning when dealing with situations of conflict and not as an attempt to predict behavior. The first half of the paper..

We develop a framework for modeling choice in the presence of framing effects. An extended choice function assigns a chosen element to every pair (A, f ) where A is a set of alternatives and f is a frame. A frame includes observable information that is irrelevant in the rational assessment of the alternatives, but nonetheless affects choice. We relate the new framework to the classical model of choice correspondence. Conditions are identified under which there exists either a transitive or (...) a transitive and complete binary relation R such that an alternative x is chosen in some (A, f ) iff x is R-maximal in the set A. We then demonstrate that the framework of choice correspondence misses information, which is essential to economic modeling and which is incorporated in the extended choice function. (shrink)

Ten qualitative research articles published from July 2013 through June 2014 on ethical topics in healthcare and health research are examined here. Full reference information is given for each article. A brief summary of the background, objectives, methods, results and conclusions is offered. These articles were chosen based on the quality of the work done and how well the work fits the interests of Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics readers.

Cognitive and affective penetration of perception refers to the influence that higher mental states such as beliefs and emotions have on perceptual systems. Psychological and neuroscientific studies appear to show that these states modulate the visual system at the visuomotor, attentional, and late levels of processing. However, empirical evidence showing that similar consequences occur in early stages of visual processing seems to be scarce. In this paper, I argue that psychological evidence does not seem to be either sufficient or necessary (...) to argue in favour of or against the cognitive penetration of perception in either late or early vision. In order to do that we need to have recourse to brain imaging techniques. Thus, I introduce a neuroscientific study and argue that it seems to provide well-grounded evidence for the cognitive penetration of early vision in face perception. I also examine and reject alternative explanations to my conclusion. (shrink)

This Article explores the rule of law aspects of the intersection between intellectual property and antitrust law. Contemporary discussions and debates on intellectual property, antitrust, and the intersection between them are typically framed in economically oriented terms. This Article, however, shows that there is more law in law than just economics. It demonstrates how the rule of law has influenced the development of several IP doctrines, and the interface between IP and antitrust, in important, albeit not always acknowledged, ways. In (...) particular, it argues that some limitations on IP rights, such as exhaustion and limitations on tying arrangements, are grounded in rule of law principles restricting the arbitrary exercise of legal power, rather than solely in considerations of economic efficiency. The historical development of IP law has reflected several tensions, both economic and political, that lie at the heart of the constitutional order of the modern state: the tension between the benefits of free competition and the recognition that some restraints on competition may be beneficial and justified; the concern that power, even when conferred in the public interest, can often be abused and arbitrarily. (shrink)

Derrière la prétention de résoudre tous les problèmes de nos sociétés par les nouvelles technologies se cache un populisme d’un nouveau genre, non plus par excès mais par défaut de politique, celle-ci s’étant dissoute dans l’économie hyper-capitaliste. L’ ubérisation est l’arme de « disruption » massive de ce populisme paradoxal, porté par l’esprit libertarien de la Silicon Valley et qui porte en lui la perspective d’une société homogénéisée de femmes et d’hommes sans qualité.

The paper argues that four-dimensionalism is incompatible with the existence of additively cumulative properties, including mass, volume, and electrical charge. These properties add up over disjoint objects: for example, the mass of a whole composed of two disjoint objects is a sum of the individual masses of the objects. The difficulty with such properties for four-dimensionalism stems from the way this theory makes persistence depend on the existence of disjoint objects at disjoint times. I consider various possible responses to this (...) difficulty and conclude that they all fail. (shrink)

The political phenomenon that covered the period between 1958 and 1974 was known as the National Front. From the context of conceptual references related to this period, we will work on the concept of “hegemony”, which will be addressed based on Antonio Gramsci’s category. This paper aims to unravel the different political interests during a time of national unity that prevailed since the two-party system was established. Our general goal is to contribute to the discussion and analysis of our political (...) culture from a historical perspective, mostly of the student community, which, once inserted in the country’s reality, can take a stand regarding political events, thereby stopping dominance and hegemony based on National Unity agreements from becoming new totalitarian forms of “democracy”. (shrink)

In standard economic models, two basic assumptions are made: the first, that actors are rational, and the second, that actors’ preferences are a given and exogenously determined. Behavioral economics — followed by behavioral law and economics — has questioned the first assumption. This Article challenges the second one, arguing that in many instances, social welfare should be enhanced not by maximizing satisfaction of existing preferences but by changing the preferences themselves. The Article identifies seven categories of cases where the traditional (...) objections to intentional preference change by the state and the law lose force and argues that in these cases, such a change warrants serious consideration. It then proposes four different modes of intervention in people’s preferences, varying in intensity, on the one hand, and in the identity of their addressees, on the other, and explains the relative advantages and disadvantages of each form of intervention. (shrink)

Let me start with what you should not do. Do not attend too many seminars in your own field. Otherwise you may simply end up adding a comment to the existing literature, which is mostly made up of comments on previous comments which were themselves only marginal comments. If you want a good idea, look at the world around you or take courses in other disciplines. Some of the papers in my own dissertation (like my 1979 paper on a principal-agent (...) problem with moral hazard and an infinite horizon) were thought of while daydreaming in some law courses I took. (shrink)

What on earth are economic theorists like me trying to accomplish? This paper discusses four dilemmas encountered by an economic theorist: The dilemma of absurd conclusions: Should we abandon a model if it produces absurd conclusions or should we regard a model as a very limited set of assumptions that will inevitably fail in some contexts? The dilemma of responding to evidence: Should our models be judged according to experimental results? The dilemma of modelless regularities: Should models provide the hypothesis (...) for testing or are they simply exercises in logic that have no use in identifying regularities? The dilemma of relevance: Do we have the right to offer advice or to make statements that are intended to influence the real world? (shrink)

Both traditional accounts of hope and some of their recent critics analyze hope exclusively in terms of attitudes that a hoper bears towards a hoped-for prospect, such as desire and probability assignment. I argue that all of these accounts misidentify cases of despair as cases of hope, and so misconstrue the nature of hope. I show that a more satisfactory view is arrived at by noticing that in addition to the aforementioned attitudes, hope involves a characteristic attitude towards an external (...) factor, on whose operation the hoper takes the prospect's realization to depend causally. (shrink)

Lecture audiences and students were asked to respond to virtual decision and game situations at gametheory.tau.ac.il. Several thousand observations were collected and the response time for each answer was recorded. There were significant differences in response time across responses. It is suggested that choices made instinctively, that is, on the basis of an emotional response, require less response time than choices that require the use of cognitive reasoning.

In 2022, two surveys revealed important data about vision in the United States. According to the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), over 50 million American adults reported they either “have...

Character education is an increasingly discussed topic drawing upon virtue ethics as a moral theory. Scholars have predominantly understood educating character as a process that entails the formation of certain distinct character traits or functions through practice and habituation. However, these approaches present some problems. This paper explores the educational implications of various accounts focusing on the relationship between _phronesis_ and other virtues. In particular, our focus will be on those that Miller ( 2023 ) has classified as Standard Model (...) and Eliminativist Model of practical wisdom. Starting from these accounts, we will outline three specific problems that the latter models appear to generate at a theoretical level in character education. Finally, we will address the task of demonstrating why the monist account of moral virtue recently proposed by the Aretai group—which conceives being virtuous in possessing _phronesis_ understood as ethical expertise—might offer a refined response to these challenges. In addition, we will illustrate three educational pathways that can emerge from the same model. (shrink)

Forget the technology, and ask instead about the sampler’s gesture. For a long time, like Mozart’s « Don Giovanni », all citation supposed an instrument, an orchestra. Then, with the first recording technology, came the possibility of using tape recorders or analog turntables. But ultimately, the gesture is the same: overtly drawing upon a work .for its creation. In itself, the act of pillaging is not condemnable. Better, the détournement of advertising and of those artists like Michael Jackson who flood (...) our ears are indispensable acts of resistance and humour. Ariel Kyrou - the author of Techno Rebelle, Un Siècle de musiques électroniques , front which this « elegy to pillage » conies - prefers a scathing recycling to the recitals of the market, prefers the « loan » that one goes way beyond by rage and talent to the application of painless recipes for success. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 260-272 [Access article in PDF] Tragic Conflict and Greatness of Character Ariel Meira IT IS A SURPRISING FACT that some of our best literary examples of greatness of character are of persons acting in a way that involves them in a terrible burden of guilt. As spectators we perceive Oedipus, in Sophocles's Oedipus the King, 1 as one who upon discovering the identity (...) of his father and mother affirms that he bears guilt for killing the former and committing incest with the latter, and we typically concur in some vague way with his affirmation. 2 We do not, after all, think that his affirmation is merely the consequence of some confusion about morals on his part, and that he would have been more justified in treating his discovery with a light conscience. Furthermore, it seems that our conception of his greatness is intimately bound up with our being acquainted with him as someone who acted so as to render himself profoundly guilty in this way. What is paradoxical is that moral taint would be expected to reduce our admiration for a character and our attribution of greatness to it. Why then should noteworthy paradigms of greatness of character be morally tainted characters? Can we make sense of the idea that some kinds of guiltiness might be constitutive of greatness of character?As it is well-known, Aristotle says that in order for a tragedy best to achieve its desired effect, it should portray a protagonist "who is not pre-eminent in moral virtue, who passes to bad fortune not through vice or wickedness, but because of some hamartia...." 3 The term "hamartia" is variously translated as "piece of ignorance," "miscalculation," and "error of judgment," but as O. B. Hardison notes, it must be treated as designating a moral flaw, because it renders the protagonist [End Page 260] less than "pre-eminent in moral virtue." 4 However, even if the term is interpreted as covering what I have described as the moral taint associated with greatness of character, it should be clear that Aristotle does not provide here an answer to my question. At best he can be viewed as explaining why morally tainted characters of this sort are crucial to achieving tragic effect. He is not explaining how it is that such characters can be viewed as paradigms of greatness.I propose not to treat this paradox in its most general form, but rather by confining my attention to an interesting subclass of cases. What I have in mind are cases in which a protagonist finds himself or herself in what I shall call circumstances of tragic conflict. Such circumstances determine that a choice must be made between two (or perhaps more) courses of action, even though each of the courses involves the violation of an important moral claim, or the destruction of a crucial value. As spectators or readers, we typically perceive the protagonist as emerging with a heavy burden of guilt (much in the way noted above regarding Oedipus), and we recognize that he or she was bound to emerge guilty, no matter which course of action would have been chosen. Cases such as that of Agamemnon (bearing guilt for the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia in Aeschylus's Agamemnon), 5 of Jephthah (again bearing guilt for the sacrifice of his daughter, in Judges 11), 6 and of Orestes (bearing guilt for the murder of his mother Clytemnestra in Euripides's Orestes) 7 belong quite uncontroversially to this subclass. 8These protagonists make difficult choices, and carry them out with courage and resolution, qualities which explain to some extent our perception of them as possessing greatness of character. But in making their choice, they necessarily render themselves guilty, whether or not they have made the correct choice (assuming there is a correct choice in the circumstances). And we sense that suffering the peculiarly poignant pain which accompanies their guilty action is at least partly constitutive of their greatness. Clearly, we are faced again with the paradox of the association of guilt with greatness of character.In... (shrink)

A collection of essays in which philosophers of widely different interests grapple with the problem of the relative and the absolute in philosophy and religion.

The present investigation studies buying and selling encounters in a Mexican fruit and vegetable shop. It is a conversation-analytic study that shows aspects of the institutional character of these interactions, their overall organisation and sequential structure. It suggests that the core sequential structure of these encounters consists of two base adjacency pairs, buying and selling. In particular, the analysis describes the preparatory characteristics of the pre-expansions that precede the product request formulations, the linguistic composition and sequential positioning of request formulations, (...) the insertions of the buying adjacency pair and the sequencing of the commercial exchange which is described as the climax of the institutional event. The designs of the first pair part of the selling adjacency pair and the product request formulations are presented as clear instances of the referential framework or common ground shared by seller and customer. (shrink)

Si estimamos pertinente indagar por el fundamento de la filosofía, centrarnos en el estudio de la _prima philosophia_ se convierte en una tarea tan urgente como necesaria. Por creerlo así, en el presente trabajo nos detendremos en dos alternativas. Por un lado, nos referiremos a la posición de Ernst Tugendhat y, por otro lado, a la de Karl-Otto Apel. Mientras que este sugiere que el lugar de la _prima philosophia_ debe ser ocupado por la _filosofía del lenguaje_; aquel sostiene que (...) la pregunta fundamental de la _antropología filosófica_ –“¿qué es el hombre?”– es aún _más básica_. Según su punto de vista, abordar el lenguaje humano implica un paso _posterior_: para comprenderlo como un elemento fundamental debemos preguntarnos _primero_ por las características que tienen los seres humanos en cuanto tales. En las dos primeras partes, daremos cuenta de ambos puntos de vista para, finalmente, concluir que las diferencias presentadas, que_ prima facie_ los separan, pueden salvarse. (shrink)

Socrates' promise and Alcibiades' failure (Alcibiades 103-116) -- The exaltation of virtue (Alcibiades 116-135) -- Rescuing Alcibiades (Second Alcibiades) -- A puzzling retrospective (Symposium 211-222).

Negligence law is built around the paradigmatic case of a person who unreasonably preferred his own interests to those of others and, as a result, caused damage to another person. However, this case is not representative of all instances of negligence. In some cases, the negligent injurer failed in balancing between the interests of the victim alone; in other cases, he failed in balancing between the victim’s interests and those of a third party; sometimes the injurer failed in balancing the (...) victim’s interests and the interests of the public or of society as a whole; and in yet other instances, he failed in balancing between his own interests. This article argues that the law should not treat in the same manner the different types of instances of failure in balancing between interests. Both justice and deterrence considerations mandate different treatment for the different types of instances, in accordance with the type of interests that the negligent injurer failed to balance. The article focuses on the typical types of balances of interests that the potential injurer is required to conduct before taking action, with the aim of determining the degree to which it is crucial to impose tort liability in each type of case. The article also examines whether prevailing negligence law is compatible with the thesis developed in the article and proposes tools for achieving such compatibility. (shrink)