Action is conceived of as an intentional behavior of an individual or of an institutional subject; it is determined by information processing, namely by a process in which pieces of descriptive and practical information are involved. Action is explained by a formal and finalistic theory which is connected with a specific theory of institutions. 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 author criticizes traditional deontic logic and argues in favor of a genuine logic of...

The papers presented at the Symposium focused mainly on two fields of interest. First, there were papers dealing with the theoretical background of fuzzy logic and with applications of fuzzy reasoning to the problems of artificial intelligence, robotics and expert systems. Second, quite a large number of papers were devoted to fuzzy approaches to modelling of decision-making situations under uncertainty and vagueness and their applications to the evaluation of alternatives, system control and optimization. Apart from that, there were also some interesting contributions from other areas, like...

MICHAEL T. POPE AND ACHIM MULLER Department of Chemistry, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057-2222, U.S.A.; Department of Chemistry, University of Bielefeld, D-4BOO Bielefeld 1, F.R.G. Polyoxometalates, from their discovery and early development in the final decades of the 19th century to their current significance in disciplines as diverse as chemistry, mathematics, and medicine, continue to display surprisingly novel structures, unexpected reactivities and applications, and to attract increasing attention worldwide. Most of the contributors to the present volume participated in the...

In a way, the problem of the body in Husserl' s writings is relatively straightfo r- ward: it is an exercise in faithful description and elaboration of a sense or mean- ing, that of the "lived body," using the tools and methods of intentional analysis. What is to be described is nothing exotic, but a recognizable, familiar element of experience; further, it is not something limited to any special type of experience, but is ever-present, whether it is in the background or the center of attention. Thus the lived body is, in a way, the most mundane of topics in phenomenology, to be du1y noted as...

Human decision making involves problems which are being studied with increasing interest and sophistication. They range from controversial political decisions via individual consumer decisions to such simple tasks as signal discriminations. Although it would seem that decisions have to do with choices among available actions of any kind, there is general agreement that decision making research should pertain to choice prob lems which cannot be solved without a predecisional stage of finding choice alternatives, weighing evidence, and judging values. The ultimate objective of scientific...

My interest in non-Archimedean utility theory and the problems related to it was aroused by discussions which I have had with Professors Werner Leinfellner and Gunter Menges. On the occasion of the Second Inter national Game Theory Workshop, Berkeley, 1970, which was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, I had the opportunity to report about a result on non-standard utilities. Work on this subject continued when I was a research assistant of Professor Gunter Menges at the Uni versity of Heidelberg. The present mono graph is essentially a translation of my habilitation thesis which was...

The Second World Conference on Mathematics at the Service of Man was held at the Universidad Politecnica de Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain, June 28 to July 3, 1982. The first volume of the Proceedings of the Conference, entitled "Functional Equations-Theory and Applications" has appeared in the Reidel series "Mathematics and Its Applications." The papers in this volume consist of the invited lectures delivered at the Conference, Section 7: Non-Classical Logics and Modelling, as well as some selected papers which offer an introduction to the philosophy, methodology and to the lite rature of...

1. PROGRESS IN UTILITY AND RISK THEORY At the First International Congress of Utility and Risk Theory in Oslo 1982 (FUR-82) it appeared to be a widespread feeling among the participants that the conference signalled something like a paradigm shift in the field. This does not necessarily mean that old truths were discarded and replaced by new ones, but rather that new theories and new empirical evidence were brought forth, compelling old theories to be critically analyzed from new angels. Some of the papers presented at FUR-82 have been published by Reidel in 1983 in a volume edited by Stigum...

In this book I develop a theory of complexity for economics and manage ment sciences. This book is addressed to the mathematically or analytically oriented economist, psychologist or management scientist. It could also be of interest to engineers, computer scientists, biologists, physicists and ecologists who have a constant desire to go beyond the bounds of their respective disciplines. The unifying theme is: we live in a complex world, but how can we cope with complexity? If the book has made the reader curious, and if he looks at modelling, problem recognition and problem solving within...

The first Joint Meeting of the Austrian and Swiss Operations Research Societies was held at the University of Technology in Vienna, Austria, from 22-24 September 1980. A selection of the papers then presented are published in this volume. The papers included provide a picture of Operations Research as a discipline comprehending various methods and models. The volume is divided into two parts. The first part contains papers on mathematical programming and optimal control theory. Moreover, two papers on decision and game theory are included as well as two on biomathematical to~ics. Being more...