Abstraction as flexibility: the veil of evaluative uncertainty

Investigating socialization's multifaceted nature, this study explores its philosophical, sociological, andpsychological dimensions, focusing on the role of family in shaping individual characteristics. Analysisreveals a reciprocal convergence between individuals and societal norms. Socialization, a two-fold process,involves passive reception and active participation, impacting personality beyond social influences.Pedagogical support becomes crucial, particularly for children with speech impairments. Using Dembo Rubinstein and Shur's methodologies, the research unveils correlations between children's self-esteem, parental attitudes, and future expectations. Findings underscore the pivotal role of parents in shaping a child's self-perception and future outlook, emphasizing the profound impact of family dynamics on socialization.

Nowadays organizations and social institutions in human society are the main elements and In addition to the traditional duties of his nature, which certainly is the ultimate organizational goals and they should be responsive to our internal and external expectations.Thus, organizations should not only be flexible and adaptable to the changing environment but also they should have ability to recognize problems and use the organizational change programs Because organizations are not static and continuous internal and external factors are in conflict.This model is inspired by Jerry Porras to investigate and identify problems of Agriculture bank of Isfahan in 1391.In this study, the population of agricultural bank managers and coaches to assess problems that were over 111 organizations and 111 distributed questionnaires.The questionnaires were distributed and 93 questionnaires were completed and returned.Evaluate test and internal consistency reliability using Cronbach's alpha model had been showed 82 % reliability.Collected data using SPSS statistical software and by using statistical and tests such as the Kolmogorov -Smirnov test, one-sample t test, ANOVA, and Friedman test was used to analyze.The findings suggest that the problems of Agricultural banks of Isfahan are social factors, physical environment, and the future outlook that these organizations need to focus on strategies mentioned above in this case.

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] In practical deliberation, your aim should not always only be to promote objective goodness. Rather, I argue, you should use your own practical evaluations, as long as they are reasonable. Reasonable evaluations are sensitive to agent-centered reasons (e.g., you should not have a favorite child), instrumental reasons (e.g., to have more common interests with others), and rational reasons. This dissertation primarily develops an account of rational reasons for evaluations. Particularly, I investigate which evaluations rationally fit objective values. For many items (e.g., career paths or hobbies), it is plausible that no particular sharp evaluation is rationally required, even though some evaluations are clearly too high or low. For other items (e.g., someone else's pain), their weight in practical deliberation do not depend on the evaluator's perspective. To explain this difference, I defend an interval account of rationally fitting evaluaations, noting that the intervals can collapse to points. Each chapter rebuts an objection to the interval account. Chapter 1 rebuts the objection that value relations cannot be modeled using relations between intervals. I offer different definitions. Chapter 2 rebuts the objection that arbitrarily sharpened evaluations (within the intervals) cannot be practically authoritative. I respond that they must be practically authoritative or else perfect rationality would be possible in principle. Chapter 3 responds to the objection that evaluations cannot be practically authoritative because it is practically impossible to change them. I grant that it is often permissible to change our evaluations, but I rhetorically challenge the objector to deny that such things can (though need not) contribute meaning to a life.

This article discusses three topics that have been the subject of debate in recent scholarship on Hegel's social and political philosophy: first, the relevance of Hegel's systematic metaphysics for interpreting Hegel's social and political writings; second, the relation between recognition (Anerkennung), social institutions, and rational agency; and third, the connection between the constellation of institutions and norms that Hegel calls “ethical life” (Sittlichkeit) and Hegel's theory of freedom. This article provides a critical overview of the positions in these three debates. In the case of the first debate, I clarify the conceptual terrain by distinguishing between several kinds of systematicity that are at issue. In the case of the second debate, I argue that the views of two of the major participants, Axel Honneth and Robert Pippin, are in fact compatible. In the case of the third debate, I seek to clarify the connection in Hegel between two different ideas of freedom in ethical life, each of which has been emphasized by different interpreters of Hegel: the idea of freedom asnon‐alienationand the idea of freedom associal freedom. I conclude with a discussion of the ways in which ethical life, for Hegel, enables the freedom of individuals.

Summary In recent years that has been a revival of interest in the economic analysis of social institutions and market behaviour in developing economies. Whilst customary arrangements surrounding economic exchange were once treated as irrational or out-moded, they are now understood in terms of cost-minimization and risk-reduction by rational agents responding to imperfect market environments. This article attempts to scrutinize some of the claims of the new institutional economics from a perspective largely neglected by institutional economists and their critics, that is the perspective of gender and agrarian social relations. The paper points to the shortcomings in institutional explanations of rules and social conventions that exclude or discriminate against women in agricultural labour markets, and the failure to adequately conceptualize the role of power and ideology in the formation and maintenance of social (sometimes socially sub-optimal) institutions. Resumé Sous-traitance et soumission: quelques observations sur le genre, le pouvoir et les institutions agraires Au cours des années récentes l'on a constaté un renouveau d'intérêt dans l'analyse économique des institutions sociales et du comportement des marchés au sein des économies en voie de développement. Alors que jadis, les arrangements coutumiers qui encadraient l'échange économique ont été censés irrationnels ou démodés, l'on commence à les interpréter comme outils de minimalisation des coûts et de réduction des risques, mis en place par des agents rationnels en réponse à des conditions imparfaites dans le marché. Le présent article cherche à examiner minutieusement certaines des revendications des pratiquants de l'économie institutionnelle nouvelle, à partir d'une perspective largement négligée par les économistes institutionnels, de même que par leurs critiques: à savoir, la perspective du genre et des rapports sociaux agraires. L'article révèle les manquements des explications institutionnelles des règles et des conventions sociales, lesquelles explications excluent ou défavorisent les femmes dans les marchés agraires du travail; et l'auteur s'adresse particulièrement à une conceptualisation qu'elle juge propre à l'examen du rôle du pouvoir et de l'idéologie dans la formation et le maintien des institutions sociales (qui parfois, sont déjà socialement sous-optimalisées). Resumen Contratos externos: suministros y sumisión: slgunas reflexiónes sobre el género, el poder y las instituciónes agrarias En los últimos años se ha renovado el interés en el análisis económico de las instituciones sociales y el comportamiento del mercado en las economías en desarrollo. Los trámites habituales del intercambio económico, que solían ser tratados como irracionales o anticuados, actualmente se entienden en términos de la minimización de costos y reducción de riesgos por agentes racionales en respuesta a entornos mercantiles imperfectos. Este artículo trata de examinar algunas de las reivindicaciones de la nueva economía política institucional desde una óptica en general descuidada por los economistas institucionales y sus críticos, es decir la perspectiva del género y las relaciones sociales agrarias. Se señalan aquí las deficiencias en las explicaciones de reglas y convenciones que excluyen o discriminan a la mujer en los mercados agrarios de trabajo, y el fracaso en la conceptualización del papel del poder y la ideología en la formación y mantenimiento de instituciones sociales (a veces imperfectas).

The article analyzes the problems of correction and re-socialization of convicts and former convicts. According to the author, many issues of correction and re-socialization remain open, there is a lack of conceptual clarity in understanding these processes. The conclusion is proposed for discussion that in the process of re-socialization of convicts and former convicts, two stages can be distinguished – social readaptation and internalization. It is proved that social readaptation as an adaptation of convicts and persons who have served their sentences to new or restored norms and values, social roles can be expressed in obtaining general or additional education, vocational training, advanced training, involvement in paid work, development of mutual assistance among convicts, restoration and (or) development of ties with relatives, friends, colleagues, etc. It is noted that at the second independent stage of re-socialization, the acquired experience, values are reinteriorized with the help of other people, social institutions: they are assimilated, incorporated into the inner world of individuals, turning into a kind of reflex. The article substantiates the position that the process of re-socialization should be implemented through individual social rehabilitation programs and act in accordance with international acts as a way to achieve the main goal – the reintegration of convicts into society. It is concluded that the focus of penal enforcement policy should not be on absolute theories with ideas of retribution, which represent «the criminal as a rational agent weighing the costs and benefits of crime,» but on correctional concepts that see the criminal as a person amenable to correction and in need of support and treatment.

Neuroethics is a collection of essays from thirty-four contributors, presented in three parts: The first part consists of seven essays describing various aspects of neuroscience research and practice, the role of ethics related to this field, selfhood and agency; the debate is focused on whether human decisions, intentions and actions are based on free will or not; the extent with which neuro-scientific knowledge can account for decisions taken by individuals, and whether this is due to determinism (the scientific view) or to autonomous intentional rational agency (the humanistic view). The last article in this section presents ethical dilemmas with regards to autonomy in the face of certain neuro-degenerative diseases like Alzheimer patients. The second part consists of nine articles on neuro-ethics in practice; this touches on contentious issues such as gene selection, the status of embryos, enhancing brain functionality through technology, research on brain disorders; this section also presents several of the new imaging technologies and the ethical implications of genomic neuro-imaging techniques. New developments of computer-brain interfaces that attempt to interpret brain signals and enable completely paralyzed (locked-in) individuals to communicate or to control devices around them; and developments that attempt to control brain functions as for example the stimulation of the brain to control tremor in patients with Parkinson's disease. The third part contains five articles that discuss justice, social institutions, and neuroethics. This section deals with the legal, social, and ethical impacts of advances in neuroscience. One essay provides religious responses to neuro-scientific questions and the last article describes how movies and the media portray the human mind. The writing and tone of the book is quite philosophical and so not an easy read. The book covers a very wide range of topics related to research and practice and ethical implications of the field of neuroscience. The target audience would be neuroscientists, ethicists, practitioners in the fields related to brain function or dysfunction, and educators in these fields. The essays propose a large number of additional references for readers interested to pursue in depth a particular topic. Several interesting case studies are included, which can be useful for the purpose of teaching this subject. On the down-side, the font used throughout the book is small and even smaller for the case studies, which makes it quite tiring for the eyes. Also, several essays use the exclusive masculine gender, which is annoying in a 2005 publication.

Liberalism and the Communitarian Critique

Responsibility Incorporated

The Nonequivalence of the Earnings and Dividends Approaches to Equity Valuation

Scholars generally agree that Alexander of Aphrodisias' objections to Stoic determinism in De fato are unconvincing. I show that there is one argument, however, that is more successful than Alexander's other arguments. This argument is an innovative version of the so-called "Lazy Argument". Traditional versions of the Lazy Argument claim that actions and deliberations would not matter in a deterministic world and that for this reason Stoic determinism cannot be true. By contrast, Alexander's new version asserts that it is too risky to believe in Stoic determinism because it can give average rational agents good reasons to be lazy. Since we cannot know whether Stoic determinism is true, it is safer not to believe it.

In memory of Pierre Laberge The fundamental idea of the Social Contract tradition is that consent or agreement can justify basic social and political institutions: just societies are based on the consent of the governed, unjust societies are not. As is well known, the tradition has had many forms, notably in political philosophies of the early modern period and in the luxuriant variety of contemporary contractualisms. As is equally well known, a discouraging list of standard difficulties stands in the way of the thought that consent can justify fundamental political and social arrangements. One long-standing dispute is about the sort of consent needed for justification: should it be the actual consent of those involved, or the hypothetical consent that would be given by beings with a distinctive (e.g. reasoned, informed, disinterested) view of the matter? If actual consent is needed, should it be explicit or is tacit consent enough? Neither view of actual consent seems satisfactory for purposes of justification: we consent explicitly to too little, but (as it seems) tacitly to far too much. If, on the other hand, consent is only hypothetical, then it is quite obscure why it justifies. Why should the consent of hypothetical idealised rational agents, or of hypothetical beings in an ideal speech situation, or of persons in an artfully tailored hypothetical Original Position, justify the principles by which we are to live, who have never been any of these supposedly ideal beings, and probably cannot and do not aspire to become any of them? Moreover, even if hypothetical consent could justify, how should we choose among the many versions of hypothetical consent that have been proposed? And if there is a choice to be made, does not this very fact suggest that considerations other than consent are basic to justification? On the surface it seems that Kant too must encounter these difficulties. He is generally taken to be a Social Contract theorist, and a good one. In the most distinguished formulation of twentieth-century contractualism John Rawls writes that ‘My aim is to present a conception of justice which generalises and carries to a higher level of abstraction the familiar theory of the Social Contract as found, say, in Locke, Rousseau and Kant.’ Many knowledgeable writers on Kant's political philosophy during the eighties and nineties spoke confidently of him as a Social Contract theorist.

This book argues that equilibrium behaviors often coalesce from the interactions and experiences of many dispersed individuals acting with fragmentary knowledge of the world, rather than from the actions of fully rational agents with commonly held beliefs, as is often assumed in economic theory. The book presents a unified and rigorous account of how such “bottom-up” evolutionary processes work using recent advances in stochastic dynamical systems theory. The framework illuminates how social norms and institutions evolve, how social and technical innovations spread in society, and how these processes depend on adaptive learning behavior by human subjects. The theory also has important applications to the design of distributed systems of interacting components in computer science and engineering. The evolutionary framework described here has major ramifications across a wide range of academic disciplines, including economics, sociology, philosophy, biology, computer science, and engineering.

We tend to think of the future as a place full of new technology, but to many, only physical and software devices count as “technology.” However, economic growth results from innovation not only in physical and software devices, but also in social practices and institutions. Scholars in economics, finance, business, and law have long identified many simple changes to business and social practices that seem to improve efficiency, but that are rarely adopted, and that tend to generate little interest when explained to potential adoptees. For example, economists tend to consistently recommend charging non-zero prices for scarce resources like parking and road use, and recommend weakening import tariff s, immigration restrictions, rent control, mortgage subsidies, taxes on products where both supply and demand are elastic, and penalties for victimless crimes such as drug use or prostitution. While clever scholars can often invent auxiliary hypotheses to explain why these polices are useful, contrary to appearance, it is far from obvious that such hypotheses are the real reasons for disinterest in these policies. We have six reasons to expect ems to adopt such improvements more often than they are adopted today. First, the much larger em economy has more resources to explore and develop the many complementary adaptations usually required to make general good ideas effective in particular contexts. Second, a more competitive economy should less often reject cost-saving changes merely because they seem strange or repugnant. When efficiency gives a competitive advantage, more competition should lead to more efficiency. Third, as ems can more easily obtain trustworthy strategic advice on personal choices from their clan, their behavior should more closely approximate the rational agent models on which scholarly advice tends to be based. Fourth, as em clans will know their members very well, such clans can provide high levels of insurance to members while suffering much less from the usual disadvantages of insurance, such as insurance reducing incentives to be careful, and people with hidden higher risks buying more insurance. While today risk-aversion is often a barrier to institutional efficiency, riskaversion is much less of a barrier for ems.

Agent technology is a rapidly growing subdiscipline of computer science on the borderline of artificial intelligence and software engineering that studies the construction of intelligent systems. It is centered around the concept of an (intelligent/rational/autonomous) agent. An agent is a software entity that displays some degree of autonomy; it performs actions in its environment on behalf of its user but in a relatively independent way, taking initiatives to perform actions on its own by deliberating its options to achieve its goal(s). The field of agent technology emerged out of philosophical considerations about how to reason about courses of action, and human action, in particular. In analytical philosophy there is an area occupied with so-called practical reasoning, in which one studies so-called practical syllogisms, that constitute patterns of inference regarding actions. By way of an example, a practical syllogism may have the following form (Audi, 1999, p. 728): Would that I exercise. Jogging is exercise. Therefore, I shall go jogging. Although this has the form of a deductive syllogism in the familiar Aristotelian tradition of “theoretical reasoning,” on closer inspection it appears that this syllogism does not express a purely logical deduction. (The conclusion does not follow logically from the premises.) It rather constitutes a representation of a decision of the agent (going to jog), where this decision is based on mental attitudes of the agent, namely, his/her beliefs (“jogging is exercise”) and his/her desires or goals (“would that I exercise”). So, practical reasoning is “reasoning directed toward action—the process of figuring out what to do,” as Wooldridge (2000, p. 21) puts it. The process of reasoning about what to do next on the basis of mental states such as beliefs and desires is called deliberation (see Figure 1). The philosopher Michael Bratman has argued that humans (and more generally, resource-bounded agents) also use the notion of an intention when deliberating their next action (Bratman, 1987). An intention is a desire that the agent is committed to and will try to fulfill till it believes it has achieved it or has some other rational reason to abandon it. Thus, we could say that agents, given their beliefs and desires, choose some desire as their intention, and “go for it.” This philosophical theory has been formalized through several studies, in particular the work of Cohen and Levesque (1990); Rao and Georgeff (1991); and Van der Hoek, Van Linder, and Meyer (1998), and has led to the so-called Belief- Desire-Intention (BDI) model of intelligent or rational agents (Rao & Georgeff, 1991). Since the beginning of the 1990s researchers have turned to the problem of realizing artificial agents. We will return to this hereafter.