Mutual Account Research Articles

Optimal Tax Trajectory of a Commercial Organisation: Economic and Mathematical Approach

The aim of this study is to form a new concept of tax burden calculation—optimal tax trajectory, which meets the needs of economic entities in view of the optimisation of tax payments and state authorities in terms of budget replenishment and subsequent efficient spending of state resources. The presented concept is developed on the basis of mathematical modelling of related economic processes. The model is based on the differential equation. An attempt is made to analyse the impact of building an optimal tax trajectory on the efficiency of the organisation’s activity. It shows that it is possible to increase the tax burden on economic entities in order to replenish the revenue part of the budget, which does not affect their financial situation. The proposed approach expands the instrumental apparatus for calculating tax payments from the position of taxpayers and fiscal authorities. The construction of the optimal tax trajectory facilitates the adoption of point decisions concerning the increase or decrease of the tax burden of an economic entity in mutual account with the factors of the macroeconomic conjuncture. This approach allows for managing the revenue part of the budget and redistributing it later to solve social problems or overcome business downturns.

Evolution of the Concept of <i>Barbarism</i> within the Context of the Franco-German Confrontation in the 1870s–1910s

Intolerance, demonization and hate speech used to be an integral part of Franco-German relations in the 19th century. The paper is devoted to the analysis of the image of barbarians within the context of the confrontation between France and Germany in 1870s–1910s. Creation and transformation of political myths is viewed through the lens of cultural artefacts. The study is topical because it allows for the analysis of the universal development of cultural confrontation on a specific example. The prime goal of the article is to identify the patterns of mutual stigmatization and account for their seeming anomalies or exceptions to these patterns: the German simultaneously viewed as well-educated and barbarian; common origins of barbarian and classical antique cultures resulting in opposing identities, etc. The aims of the study include: 1) to systematize empirical sources; 2) to assess the impact of historical and cultural context on the formation of the conceptual images of barbaric and civilized; 3) to single out basic dichotomies of the barbaric vs civilized opposition. The study was based on various cultural texts of the period, ranging from speeches, essays, and memoirs to posters and monuments. Methods used included comparative, semiotic, and imagological approaches, corpus, discourse, and content analyses. French newspaper clichés are compared to the Europe-wide opinions about Prussian militarism. As it turns out, the German way of thinking about the heroes of the past contributed to political stigmatization of Germany. Another finding, based on French literature, is the unobvious correlation between decadent world perception and political turmoil in France. Modernist poetry, literature and journalism compared the fall of the French Empire to the collapse of the Roman Empire and thus contributed to the conceptualizing of the German as barbarians. At the same time German propaganda attempted to defend itself by finding barbarians on the east and ironically quoting French sources to speak about actual war crimes. The results of the study show that seemingly chaotic hate speech and confrontation are determined on the basis of the specific rules related to age-old non-political traditions and current political circumstances marking the dichotomy between oneself and the other, friend or foe.

Two Conceptions of Solidarity in Health Care

In this paper, I distinguish two conceptions of solidarity, which I call solidarity as beneficence and solidarity as mutual advantage. I argue that only the latter is capable of providing a complete foundation for national universal health care programs. On the mutual advantage account, the rationale for universal insurance is parallel to the rationale for a labor union’s “closed shop” policy. In both cases, mandatory participation is necessary in order to stop individuals free-riding on an ongoing system of mutually advantageous cooperation.

Robbers, pickpockets and average mutual firmness

Abstract Mark Siebel (2004) has presented a compelling argument against Branden Fitelson’s (2003) probabilistic measure of coherence. The present paper shows how Siebel’s argument can be strengthened and thereby extended to an argument against a huge class of coherence measures from the literature including William Roche’s (2013) average mutual firmness account, which has not been challenged up to now.

Constitutive Relevance in Interlevel Experiments

One reason for the popularity of Craver's mutual manipulability account of constitutive relevance (MM) is that it seems to make good sense of the experimental practices and constitutive reasoning in the life sciences. Two recent papers (Baumgartner and Gebharter [2016]; Baumgartner and Casini [2017]) propose a theoretical alternative to (MM) in light of several important conceptual objections. Their alternative approach, the No De-Coupling (NDC) account conceives of constitution as a dependence relation which, once postulated, provides the best explanation of the impossibility of breaking the common cause coupling of a macro-level mechanism and its micro-level components. This entails an abductive view of constitutive inference. Proponents of the NDC or abductive account recognize that their discussion leaves open a big question concerning the practical dimension of the notion of constitutive relevance: Is it possible to faithfully reconstruct constitutional reasoning in science in terms of a failure to de-couple, via interlevel experiments, phenomena from their mechanistic constituents? Focusing on the field of memory and LTP research, this paper argues that the abductive account provides a more adequate description of interlevel experiments in neuroscience. We also suggest that the account highlights some significant practical recommendations of how to interpret the findings of interlevel experiments.

Saving the mutual manipulability account of constitutive relevance

Constitutive mechanistic explanations are said to refer to mechanisms that constitute the phenomenon-to-be-explained. The most prominent approach of how to understand this relation is Carl Craver's mutual manipulability approach (MM) to constitutive relevance. Recently, MM has come under attack (Baumgartner and Casini 2017; Baumgartner and Gebharter 2015; Harinen 2014; Kästner 2017; Leuridan 2012; Romero 2015). It is argued that MM is inconsistent because, roughly, it is spelled out in terms of interventionism (which is an approach to causation), whereas constitutive relevance is said to be a non-causal relation. In this paper, I will discuss a strategy of how to resolve this inconsistency—so-called fat-handedness approaches (Baumgartner and Casini 2017; Baumgartner and Gebharter 2015; Romero 2015). I will argue that these approaches are problematic. I will present a novel suggestion for how to consistently define constitutive relevance in terms of interventionism. My approach is based on a causal interpretation of manipulability in terms of causal relations between the mechanism's components and what I will call temporal EIO-parts of the phenomenon. Still, this interpretation accounts for the fundamental difference between constitutive relevance and causal relevance.

Is it possible to experimentally determine the extension of cognition?

Various analytical tools originally developed for theories of mechanistic explanation have recently been imported into the ongoing debate on the hypothesis of (extracerebrally) extended cognition (HEC). One such tool that appears particularly relevant to that debate is Craver’s mutual manipulability account of constitution (MM), most of all because it promises to settle the debate on experimental grounds. This paper investigates whether it is possible to deliver on that promise. We first find that, far from grounding an experimental evaluation of HEC, MM is conceptually incompatible with both internalist and externalist accounts of cognition. Next, we propose a suitable modification of MM, MM*, but it turns out that MM* presupposes rather than produces clarity on the extension of cognition. Moreover, subject to MM* the inference to constitution is radically empirically underdetermined. Finally, we argue that our results can be generalized and conclude that, for principled reasons, it is impossible to experimentally determine whether cognitive processes have extracerebral constituents. Determining the extension of cognition is an inherently pragmatic matter.

Politics of Central Asia: Water and Energy Aspect

This article analyzes the situation regarding the water resources of the transboundary rivers that developed in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union when the previous mechanism of mutual account of the interests of all the Central Asian republics broke down. Particular attention is given to the factors that have an impact on the formation and implementation of Central Asian politics regarding water use. A comparison is made of the international legal base that regulates conflicts involving the water resources of transboundary rivers and the legal documents of the Central Asian states. The paper analyzes the reasons for the failure to create a multisided mechanism for resolving the disputes that arise among the Central Asian countries with respect to water use of the transboundary rivers.

Mechanistic explanation, cognitive systems demarcation, and extended cognition

Approaches to the Internalism–Externalism controversy in the philosophy of mind often involve both (broadly) metaphysical and explanatory considerations. Whereas originally most emphasis seems to have been placed on metaphysical concerns, recently the explanation angle is getting more attention. Explanatory considerations promise to offer more neutral grounds for cognitive systems demarcation than (broadly) metaphysical ones. However, it has been argued that explanation-based approaches are incapable of determining the plausibility of internalist-based conceptions of cognition vis-à-vis externalist ones. On this perspective, improved metaphysics is the route along which to solve the Internalist–Externalist stalemate. In this paper we challenge this claim. Although we agree that explanation-orientated approaches have indeed so far failed to deliver solid means for cognitive system demarcation, we elaborate a more promising explanation-oriented framework to address this issue. We argue that the mutual manipulability account of constitutive relevance in mechanisms, extended with the criterion of ‘fat-handedness’, is capable of plausibly addressing the cognitive systems demarcation problem, and thus able to decide on the explanatory traction of Internalist vs. Externalist conceptions, on a case-by-case basis. Our analysis also highlights why some other recent mechanistic takes on the problem of cognitive systems demarcation have been unsuccessful. We illustrate our claims with a case on gestures and learning.

Examination of the importance of age of onset, callous-unemotional traits and anger dysregulation in youths with antisocial behaviors.

Age of onset, callous-unemotional (CU) traits and anger dysregulation have separately been proposed as relevant factors in explaining the heterogeneity of antisocial behaviour (ASB). Taking a dimensional perspective, this study examined the specific contributions and the mutual influences (i.e., interactions) of these three characteristics on specific dimensions of ASB (i.e., criminal behaviours and externalizing symptoms). Assessments were conducted on 536 youths from institutions with the youth psychopathic traits inventory (CU traits), the Massachusetts youth screening instrument-second version (anger dysregulation), the criminology questionnaire (criminal behaviours) and the child behavior checklist (externalizing symptoms), rated by both the youths and their carers. Using Bayes as estimators, the results revealed that the number and frequency of crimes (and, more specifically, damage to property, property offenses and media crimes) were explained by a specific contribution of each factor (age of onset, CU traits and anger dysregulation). Additionally, the interactions between age of onset and CU traits or anger dysregulation were relevant predictors of some types of crimes (i.e., damage to property, property offences and media crimes). Furthermore, when rated by youths, externalizing symptoms were explained by CU traits and anger dysregulation. However, when rated by the carer, anger dysregulation was more important in explaining externalizing symptoms. This study highlights the importance of considering these factors altogether and the value of using a dimensional perspective when examining the structure of ASB in youths. Consequently, future classifications should take into account the mutual account of these characteristics, which were previously studied separately.

Why there isn’t inter-level causation in mechanisms

The experimental interventions that provide evidence of causal relations are notably similar to those that provide evidence of constitutive relevance relations. In the first two sections, I show that this similarity creates a tension: there is an inconsistent triad between (1) Woodward’s popular interventionist theory of causation, (2) Craver’s mutual manipulability account of constitutive relevance in mechanisms, and a variety of arguments for (3) the incoherence of inter-level causation. I argue for an interpretation of the views in which the tension is merely apparent. I propose to explain inter-level relations without inter-level causation by appealing to the notion of fat-handed interventions, and an argument against inter-level causation which dissolves the problem.

Constitutive Relevance, Mutual Manipulability, and Fat-Handedness

AbstractThe first part of this article argues that if Craver’s ([2007a], [2007b]) popular mutual manipulability account (MM) of mechanistic constitution is embedded within Woodward’s ([2003]) inter...

How to demarcate the boundaries of cognition

Advocates of extended cognition argue that the boundaries of cognition span brain, body, and environment. Critics maintain that cognitive processes are confined to a boundary centered on the individual. All participants to this debate require a criterion for distinguishing what is internal to cognition from what is external. Yet none of the available proposals are completely successful. I offer a new account, the mutual manipulability account, according to which cognitive boundaries are determined by relationships of mutual manipulability between the properties and activities of putative components and the overall behavior of the cognitive mechanism in which they figure. Among its main advantages, this criterion is capable of (a) distinguishing components of cognition from causal background conditions and lower-level correlates, and (b) showing how the core hypothesis of extended cognition can serve as a legitimate empirical hypothesis amenable to experimental test and confirmation. Conceiving the debate in these terms transforms the current clash over extended cognition into a substantive empirical debate resolvable on the basis of evidence from cognitive science and neuroscience.

Three Problems for the Mutual Manipulability Account of Constitutive Relevance in Mechanisms

In this article, I present two conceptual problems for Craver’s mutual manipulability account of constitutive relevance in mechanisms. First, constitutive relevance threatens to imply causal relevance despite Craver (and Bechtel)’s claim that they are strictly distinct. Second, if (as is intuitively appealing) parthood is defined in terms of spatio-temporal inclusion, then the mutual manipulability account is prone to counterexamples, as I show by a case of endosymbiosis. I also present a methodological problem (a case of experimental underdetermination) and formulate two partial, but fallible solutions based on the notions of parthood and synchronicity.

The Implications of Treaty Application for a Netherlands Closed Fund for Mutual Account

This article examines how the Netherlands has implemented the suggestions in the Commentary on Article 1 of the OECD Model (2010) regarding collective investment vehicles in respect of the Netherlands closed fund for mutual account in its tax treaties and competent authority agreements.

The Implications of Treaty Application for a Netherlands Closed Fund for Mutual Account

This article examines how the Netherlands has implemented the suggestions in the Commentary on Article 1 of the OECD Model (2010) regarding collective investment vehicles in respect of the Netherlands closed fund for mutual account in its tax treaties and competent authority agreements.

GMO versus Vanguard: Assessing the Performance of Comparable Funds

GMO is a well known mutual fund company that serves wealthy clients. The minimum investment for a mutual fund account is 10 million dollars. GMO’s web site is a font of useful and entertaining information. Should the Vanguard investor who can’t afford to invest with GMO be envious of the wealthy who have access to GMO funds? This paper asks whether the GMO funds that have similar Vanguard counterparts over‐return or under‐return their Vanguard counterparts, and by how much. Some of the Vanguard counterparts are indexed. Thus, this paper also provides evidence on whether stock pickers can beat indexers.

Technology and the politics of change at work: the case of Dalebake Bakeries

A processual perspective is advocated in this article that develops a mutual shaping account of the relationship between technology and organization; and the case of Dalebake Bakeries is used to illustrate the importance of power and politics in understanding processes of change in the local reconfiguration of new technology at work.

Mutual Funds and the U.S. Equity Market

Mutual funds have become an important intermediary between households and financial markets, especially the equity market. About half of all households have a mutual fund account, and mutual funds hold about one-fifth of household financial assets. Because households have favored equity investments in their mutual fund accounts, mutual funds currently hold about one-fifth of all publicly traded U.S. equities. In addition to discussing the recent growth of mutual funds and their role in household finances, this article analyzes the relationship between households' investment decisions in equity mutual funds and equity market prices.

Factor prices under integrated markets for risky capital

When returns to domestic and foreign capital are random and imperfectly correlated, risk averse savers will generally diversify their portfolios if permitted to do so. In such a setting free trade in capital is inconsistent with factor-price equalization so long as countries differ. Returns to capital are likely to be higher in economies which are more cyclical, which are generally more efficient, which have a larger labor force, or whose citizens tend to save less. When countries differ along any of these dimensions their mutual current account balance is also unlikely to tend towards zero.