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. Each part comprises a main paper followed by two (in Part IV three) papers commenting on it. On the whole there is an equal division into philo sophical and sociological papers. In particular each main paper receives both inter- and innerdisciplinary comments. The Berlin Symposium was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Bonn) and, to a smaller extent,...

In the past 25 years or so, the issue of ethical universalizability has figured prominently in theoretical as well as practical ethics. The term, 'universaliz ability' used in connection with ethical considerations, was apparently first introduced in the mid-1950s by R. M. Hare to refer to what he characterized as a logical thesis about certain sorts of evaluative sentences (Hare, 1955). 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...

This book results from a research program on which I have spent most of my time since 1974. It addresses two of the major problems facing social system account ing: how to measure and account for nonmarket activities and how to combine social and economic indicators. The solution I propose is accounts based on behavior settings, a concept originated by Roger G. Barker more than thirty years ago. Behavior settings are the natural units of social activity into which people sort themselves to get on with the busi ness of daily life--grocery stores, school classes, reI i gious services, meetings,...

This book is devoted to the problems of stochastic (or probabilistic) programming. The author took as his basis the specialized lectures which he delivered to the graduates from the economic cybernetics department of Leningrad University beginning in 1967. Since 1971 the author has delivered a specialized course on Stochastic Programming to the gradu ates from the faculty of applied mathematics/management processes at Leningrad University. The present monograph consists of seven chapters. In Chapter I, which is of an introductory character, consideration is given to the problems of...

The reality around us constantly demonstrates physical and social processes in which the interests of the participants are not diametrically opposed, though they by no means always coincide. The study of such processes (interesting in itw own right) is essential for working out ways of making decisions, that is, for choosing among available parameters of the processes. If, in view of certain considerations, a participant i h 1 f 0 h' . b c ooses a va ue Xi 0 a parameter Xi' s act on can e formally described as an attempt to maximize the function f. = -llx. - x ll. For this reason any decision...