Positive Theory Research Articles

A Necessary and Sufficient Condition for Stability of a Class of Planar Positive Nonlinear Systems

In this letter, the stability problem of a class of planar positive nonlinear systems is investigated. Based on homogeneous nonlinear system theory and positive system theory, a necessary and sufficient condition for stability is established. To prove the necessity, a new method called special solution method is provided, and this method can be efficiently used to analyze instability. Three examples are provided to demonstrate the efficiency of the obtained results.

IMPLEMENTATION OF ISSUANCE OF BIRTHDATES OF CHILDREN OUT OF MARRIED AS CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE DEPARTMENT OF POPULATION AND CIVIL REGISTRATION OF MEDAN CITY

The management of birth certificates for legitimate children and children outside of marriage, at the Medan City Civil Registry Service is divided into 2 (two), namely birth certificates based on the age of birth from 0 to 60 days of age and 60 days of age and above. The procedure and terms of the birth certificate legitimate child is m engisi form and attach a photocopy of ID card of parents , family card , birth certificate , marriage certificate (Akt, a marriage) , KTP witnesses and to children outside the mating plus a statement of absolute liability on the truth of p a husband and wife and the correctness of birth data. The implementation of the requirements and procedures for issuing birth certificates for children outside of wedlock, if linked to the implementation theory of the content of policy put forward by Merilee S. Grindle, and connected with the theory of human rights, namely the positivist theory , is already dilaksanakan.Hambatan issuance of birth certificates of children outside the mating according to respondents in Dukcapil no barriers, but by the community respondents had hambatan.Mengatasi constraints, Department of Population and Civil Registration Medan city has a network of internet on line that most links in the whole Indonesia, and put up an information board. The conclusion is that the procedures and requirements for the issuance of birth certificates for legitimate and unmarried children as civil rights of children at the Medan City Civil Registry Office have been carried out in accordance with the Child Protection Law, Population Administration Law, Presidential Decree No. 12 of 1983, and Per p res No. 96 of 2018. Suggestions for the government should be to implement a policy not to charge fees and to simplify services in the management and issuance of birth certificates for children, especially children outside of wedlock, so that the civil rights of children outside of marriage to have birth certificates can be fulfilled. Keyword : Birth Certificates Excluding Married Children , Office of Population and Civil Registration Medan

On the Positive Theory of Groups Acting on Trees

Abstract In this paper, we study the positive theory of groups acting on trees and show that under the presence of weak small cancellation elements, the positive theory of the group is trivial, that is, coincides with the positive theory of a non-abelian free group. Our results apply to a wide class of groups, including non-virtually solvable fundamental groups of 3-manifold groups, generalised Baumslag–Solitar groups and almost all one-relator groups and graph products of groups. It follows that groups in the class satisfy a number of algebraic properties: for instance, their verbal subgroups have infinite width and, although some groups in the class are simple, they cannot be boundedly simple. In order to prove these results, we describe a uniform way for constructing (weak) small cancellation tuples from (weakly) stable elements. This result of interest in its own is fundamental to obtain corollaries of general nature such as a quantifier reduction for positive sentences or the preservation of the non-trivial positive theory under extensions of groups.

Describing a critical life event and its psychological consequences: The type of language used by patients suffering from depression and its relationship with personality development

Information on personality development (and its linguistic predictors) in the aftermath of a critical life event among depressive patients is relatively limited. The study’s aim was to verify two hypotheses: (1) Participants with depression will use concrete rather than abstract language to describe their most recent critical life event and its psychological consequences and (2) The more abstract the language used, the higher the level of personality development. 16 Cognitive Behavioral Therapy patients suffering from depression participated in the study (M = 34 years old; SD = 4.02). Their level of personality development was assessed qualitatively by two independent coders. The coding system was based on the Positive Disintegration Theory (Dąbrowski 1964). We used typology from the Linguistic Category Model (Semin and Fiedler 1991) to analyse the level of abstractness vs. concreteness. Depressed patients were classified as either abstract language speakers or concrete language speakers. There were equal numbers of both types of speakers. Moreover participants consistently used one type of language, regardless of whether they were describing the critical life event itself or its psychological consequences. As expected, using higher levels of language abstractness when speaking correlated with possessing higher levels of personality development. Our findings provide practitioners with useful knowledge on the benefits of using abstract language to improve supportive strategies when dealing with people in crisis and modify the psychotherapeutic protocols used to treat depression.

It just feels right: an account of expert intuition

One of the hallmarks of virtue is reliably acting well. Such reliable success presupposes that an agent (1) is able to recognize the morally salient features of a situation, and the appropriate response to those features and (2) is motivated to act on this knowledge without internal conflict. Furthermore, it is often claimed that the virtuous person can do this (3) in a spontaneous or intuitive manner. While these claims represent an ideal of what it is to have a virtue, it is less clear how to make good on them. That is, how is it actually possible to spontaneously and reliably act well? In this paper, we will lay out a framework for understanding how it is that one could reliably act well in an intuitive manner. We will do this by developing the concept of an action schema, which draws on the philosophical and psychological literature on skill acquisition and self-regulation. In short, we will give an account of how self-regulation, grounded in skillful structures, can allow for the accurate intuitions and flexible expertise required for virtue. While our primary goal in this paper is to provide a positive theory of how virtuous intuitions might be accounted for, we also take ourselves to be raising the bar for what counts as an explanation of reliable and intuitive action in general.

Seshadri constants and Okounkov bodies revisited

In recent years, the interaction between the local positivity of divisors and Okounkov bodies has attracted considerable attention, and there have been attempts to find a satisfactory theory of positivity of divisors in terms of convex geometry of Okounkov bodies. Many interesting results in this direction have been established by Choi–Hyun–Park–Won [4] and Küronya–Lozovanu [17–19] separately. The first aim of this paper is to give uniform proofs of these results. Our approach provides not only a simple new outlook on the theory but also proofs for positive characteristic in the most important cases. Furthermore, we extend the theorems on Seshadri constants to graded linear series setting. Finally, we introduce the integrated volume function to investigate the relation between Seshadri constants and filtered Okounkov bodies introduced by Boucksom–Chen [3].

INVESTIGATION OF "CONSUMPTION SOCIETY" CONCEPT WITH POSITIVE, CRITICAL, INTERPRETATIVE APPROACHES

Bu çalışmada, tüketim toplumu kavramı üzerinden hareketle pozitivist, eleştirel ve yorumsamacı yaklaşımlar ela alındı. Bu yaklaşımlardan pozitivizmin 20. ve 21. yüzyılda ne tür sorunsalın ortaya çıkmasına sebep olduğu hususları irdelendi. Kapitalizmin pozitif bir akılla sosyal olguyu analiz ederek yanlış ve eksik teşhis ve tedaviler uyguladığı realitesine açıklık getirilmiştir. İnsanın bir deney tüpü olmadığı, deneysel yöntemle toplumsal yapının anlaşılamayacı sorunsalı açıklığa kavuşturulmuştur. Pozitif bir yaklaşımla veya gözlemle sosyal sistem çözümlenmeye kalkışıldığında toplumsal hastalıkların baş göstereceği vurgulanmıştır. 18.ve 19. yüzyılda sosyal belirlenimlerin analizinde önemli bir yer teşkil eden materyalist yaklaşımın, gözün ve aklın göremediği insan eylemlerini göz ardı ettiği anlaşılmaktadır. Bu nedenle sosyal analizlerde yorumlamacı ve eleşitirel metodolojinin öne alınması toplumsal hayatın anlaşılmasında sağlıklı yöntem nazarıyla bakılmaktadır. Aklı göze indirerek ampirik yöntemlerle insan davranışlarının anlaşılmaya çalışılması teşhis ve tedavilerin eksik ve yanlış olarak uygulandığı bir imaj ortaya çıkabilir. Bu nedenle görünenin altında görünmeyen sosyolojik eylemlerin anlaşılması önem arz etmektedir. Aksi taktirde toplum, pozitivist nazariyenin kurbanı olan tüketim çılgınlığı, cinsel haz, anomi vb. semptomlar gösteren bir görüntüyle karşı karşıya kalabilir. Sonuç olarak sadece maddeci, pozitivist anlayışa sahip olan kapitalizm, yorumsamacı ve eleştirel yaklaşımların rehberliğinde de yol alması gerekmektedir. İnsan sadece göz ve cesedi beslenerek yol alınabilecek bir varlık olmadığından, ideoloji bağlamında değerlerin de beşer hayatında var olması gerçeği gözler önüne serildi. Böylelikle hem aklın rehberliği hem de toplumun kültürünü önemseyen değerler çerçevesinde yol alan ideolojiler sosyal yapıda yol gösterici olduğu görülmektedir.

The Inevitable Social Contract

The mark of ‘the political’, according to Bernard Williams, lies in a society finding an answer to the ‘first political question’—the ‘Hobbesian’ question of how to secure ‘order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation’. It is first because ‘solving it is the condition of solving, indeed posing, any others’. Williams also argues that a political order differs from an ‘unmediated coercive’ order in that it seeks to satisfy the ‘Basic Legitimation Demand’ (BLD) that every legitimate state must satisfy if it is to show that it wields authority over those subject to its rule. To meet that demand the state ‘has to be able to offer a justification of its power to each subject whom by its own lights it can rightfully coerce under its laws and institutions’. My paper argues that this set of issues is the central concern of legal theory and that, suprisingly, it is resources in the legal positivist theories of Hans Kelsen, H. L. A. Hart and Joseph Raz that can help us to see how a political order has to be constituted as a legal order before it becomes capable of answering the BLD. The argument is that the idea of acceptance in positivist legal theory imports the main components of the social contract tradition, which are necessary if law is to be understood as a matter of authority. Once imported, the central question for philosophy of law becomes the legal subject’s question, ‘But how can that be law for me?’

Limits of the Legal Regulation of Public Relations: Problems of Understanding, Classification and their Importance in the Mechanism of Legal Regulation

The paper deals with the problem of limits of legal regulation, analyzes the factors that determine the degree of influence of law on social relations, discusses the issues of dependence of understanding of the limits of legal regulation upon the type of legal consciousness. Special attention is paid to the classification of limits of the legal regulation. In the domestic and foreign legal science the problem of limits of legal regulation has not received an unequivocal resolution. There are many definitions of “limits of legal regulation.” In the most general form, the limits of legal regulation can be considered as a measure of permissible, necessary and sufficient influence of law on social relations exercised due to the presence of objective and subjective factors and carried out by means of specific legal instruments. First of all, understanding of the limits of legal regulation depends on what type of legal consciousness is applied to investigate the problem under consideration. In addition to the analysis of the limits of legal regulation in the framework of the theory of legal positivism, the paper also considers other approaches to this problem: the limits of legal regulation are investigated in the light of sociological, anthropological, discursive (R. Alexi), integral (R. Dvorkin), procedural (L. Fuller) theories of law. Special attention is paid to the classification of limits of the legal regulation. In addition to the traditionally allocated classification criteria on volitional basis and on the basis of direction of interests, it is proposed to classify the limits of legal regulation depending on modality and the extent of the relationship governed by law. In conclusion, the importance of limits of legal regulation is revealed.

Firms´ Accounting Misrepresentations - Reasons, Tools and Outcomes

The paper investigates and determines the profile of misrepresenting firms by suitable accounting ratios. It moreover measures the impact of the misrepresentation on the accounting characteristics. Unlike prior literature, it splits the dataset by the reason of the managers for conducting the misrepresentation. The reason is therefore hand-collected from SEC-investigation reports and verified by further sources. This allows to identify the characteristics and quantify the impact of the misrepresentation depending on the reason for the misrepresentation. The research is conducted with statistical tests for significance and a firth logistic regression (Firth 1993). The results show that there are indeed differences in the characteristics of misrepresenting firms depending on the reason for the misrepresentation. In total three different main categories of these reasons for misrepresentations could be identified. In one category are small well-performing firms. Here data shows that the main reason for the misrepresentation is the enrichment of the managers (greed) e.g. through bonusses. In another category are small almost bankrupt firms. Here data shows that the managers typically misrepresent to avoid bankruptcy. In the third category are bigger and established firms. Here data shows a misrepresentation to handle capital market pressure e.g. through analyst forecasts. Moreover, the results suggest that depending on the reason (and consequently the category) the misrepresentation was done through different accounting components (earnings, total assets, sales, current assets, current liabilities, inventory). The results are in general in line with the positive accounting theory as defined by Watts and Zimmerman (1986) since the results underline the importance of accounting in various contracting situations e.g. in negotiating managements’ remuneration system.

A Hartian Account of Genuine Theoretical Disagreement

In Law’s Empire, Ronald Dworkin raised what he called a new objection to Hart’s positivist theory of law. Dworkin contended that Hartian legal positivism cannot account for the genuine possibility of theoretical disagreement in the law, because, according to the positivists, law reduces to a question about social facts. This means that if there is a question about what the criteria of legal validity are, it must be resolved by answers to empirical questions, like how in fact the officials are acting, and not theoretical questions. In response, Leiter and Shapiro proffer ways of defusing the problem for the positivist. Leiter questions the face value of theoretical disagreements by showing that the prototypical examples of theoretical disagreement are disingenuous or erroneous. Shapiro shows that the positivist can account for theoretical disagreement, by looking at competing interpretive methodologies, but answering the question this way requires sacrificing the conventionality thesis of Hartian legal positivism. In this piece, I set forth a new response on behalf of the Hartian legal positivist. Specifically, I contend that the Hartian legal positivist can respond to the problem of theoretical disagreement in a way that both vindicates the face value of theoretical disagreement and maintains its critical commitments, specifically the separability thesis, the social facts thesis, and the conventionality thesis. To do so, I contend that we must attend to the role of inference and the norms of reasoning in legal discourse. Consistent with the Hartian picture, participants in a theoretical disagreement can agree about all the ground facts about the law, but disagree about the grounds of the law because they arrive at their positions by differing legal inferences and reasoning.

Potentiality, modality, and time

Barbara Vetter’s project in Potentiality is to articulate and defend a dispositionalist theory of modality based on potentialities. My focus is on the metaphysics of her positive theory. I consider one of Vetter’s main targets, David Lewis’s theory of possible worlds, and use it to distinguish what I call “de re first” approaches from “de dicto first” approaches. This way of framing the disagreement helps shed light on what their respective accounts can intuitively accomplish. In particular, I introduce objections to Vetter’s requirement that the grounds of de dicto modal truths must be routed through time. I also suggest an alternative de dicto first approach that Vetter does not consider, one which does not come saddled with Lewis’s ontology or with Vetter’s issues with de dicto modal truths. Rather, on incompatibilism, modality is grounded on second-order relations between (non-potentialist) properties, e.g. incompatibility or entailment. Defenders of de dicto first approaches, including incompatibilism, can better account for such de dicto modal truths, thus undermining some of the intuitive appeal of Vetter’s theory.

The legal historian Guido Kisch, a German of Jewish faith

ABSTRACT The German-Jewish legal historian Guido Kisch (1889–1985) was forced to leave Germany in 1935 and went into exile in the USA. His research on medieval German law, humanism and Jewish communities was widely known within the scientific community. Less is known about his Jewishness and the influence of traditional Jewish views on his scholarly work. It would seem that this is due to his belief that legal analyses and research should be kept separate from personal influences and interests – an opinion which appears to be based on Max Weber’s theory of positivism.

Faith conquers all? Demographic and psychological resources and their associations with academic performance among religious college students

ABSTRACT Evidence on the association of religiosity and academic attainment is consistent, thus suggesting additional factors intervene in this relationship. We proposed and tested a model with two concepts from the field of positive psychology: psychological capital and psychological resilience. We hypothesised that these mediate the association between religiosity, demographic variables and academic achievement. We tested the model in a sample of 119 senior students in a Catholic university in Poland. The results partially supported the model; both psychological capital and psychological resilience mediated the association between religiosity and academic attainment but in different directions. Among the demographic variables, only age associated directly with achievement. The results are discussed in light of the existing evidence and positive psychology theory.

Karakteristik Perusahaan dan Pemilihan Kebijakan Akuntansi

This research focuses on the relationship between firm characteristics and the choice of accounting policies by examining their accounting-policy disclosure Agroindustrial companies registered in Southeast Asia are represented by Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. This research uses positive accounting theory and agency theory. The research investigates managers’ decisions related to accounting methods using panel data from the year 2014-2018. This study uses a sample of Agro-industry companies in 3 countries in ASEAN during the 2014-2018 period.Thirty companies listed on Bursa Malaysia, Stock Exchange of Thailand and Bursa Efek Indonesia were analyzed by using random-effect model. The result shows that financial leverage and ownership concentration are significant determinants of accounting policy choice. However, this paper did not find a significant relationship between accounting policy choices and profitability, firm size, investment opportunity set, and assets-in-place. The results of the study were also influenced by global commodity market that is experiencing a decline in the last three years. Keywords: ASEAN; Accounting Policy Choices; Firm Characteristics; Income; Agroindustry; Earnings Management

On “simple” undecidable fragments of positive and elementary theories of free semigroups of finite or countable rank

We establish algorithmic undecidability of “simple” (with respect to the quantifier-prefix and the quantifier-free part of the formulas) fragments of positive theories of finitely generated semigroups and elementary theory of a free countably generated semigroup.

Quantale-valued dissimilarity

Inspired by the theory of apartness relations of Scott, we establish a positive theory of dissimilarity valued in an involutive quantale Q without the aid of negation. It is demonstrated that a set equipped with a Q-valued dissimilarity is precisely a symmetric category enriched in a subquantaloid of the quantaloid of back diagonals of Q. Interactions between Q-valued dissimilarities and Q-valued similarities (which are equivalent to Q-valued equalities in the sense of Höhle–Kubiak) are investigated with the help of lax functors. In particular, it is shown that similarities and dissimilarities are interdefinable if Q is a Girard quantale with a hermitian and cyclic dualizing element.

Norton's material theory of analogy

In his book, The Material Theory of Induction, Norton argues that the quest for a universal formal theory or ‘schema’ for analogical inference should be abandoned. In its place, he offers the “material theory of analogy”: each analogical inference is “powered” by a local fact of analogy rather than by any formal schema. His minimalist model promises a straightforward, fact-based approach to the evaluation and justification of analogical inferences. This paper argues that although the rejection of universal schemas is justified, Norton's positive theory is limited in scope: it works well only for a restricted class of analogical inferences. Both facts and quasi-formal criteria have roles to play in a theory of analogical reasoning.

International Legal Positivist Research Methods

This chapter looks at legal positivism and its methods. In international legal scholarship, we are confronted with a paradox: while most international lawyers would say they employ broadly ‘positivist’ methods to find out what the law prescribes, its methods are among the least reflected. Positivism is seldom practised in a manner that is coherent with the theory of legal positivism. This leads to a bifurcation: default positivism and theoretical positivism. Default positivism is not a deeply reflected theoretical approach, but rather the default solution. Fealty to the law is important, but not in an overly formalist and strict manner. Default international legal positivism is a result of processes of socialisation and adaption, founded on a largely subconscious culture of orthodoxy: a pragmatic mindset of submission to and accommodation of widely accepted practices and methods. Its methods reflect that mindset and I briefly analyse two: precedent-following and interpretation. On the one hand, the power of precedents in international law (acknowledged not to be a common law) is taken so seriously that arguing against the ICJ is virtually impossible – the ICJ cannot err on an important issue. On the other hand, the role which the Vienna rules on interpretation play is curiously formalistic and does not sit well with the idea of interpretation as finding out what a text means. Theoretical positivism, using the Pure Theory of Law as an example, is theory-laden and much less pragmatic. It is primarily a theory of how legal scholarship can stay true to the ideal of (legal-)‘scientific’ cognition. Its methods, in turn, are structural analysis and frame-determination. The analysis of the structure of the international legal order, the relationship of different norms and sources is central to any legal-scholarly enterprise and helps to avoid admixing it with ideological precepts. The frame-determination method of interpretation avoids the impossible task of eliminating the vagueness of natural languages and the inevitable freedom to decide. Scholarly interpretation is not an attempt to tell courts how to decide a case, it rather shows the (structural) limits of the law to be applied.

State law and legal pluralism: towards an appraisal

Is plurality within state law a case of legal pluralism? The traditional canon on legal pluralism cannot come to a consensus on the matter. Those who do not consider plurality within state law a case of legal pluralism argue that it yet privileges an ideology of legal centralism. This formalist and positivist legal theory is anathema to a realist conception of the law that privileges law’s complex social orderings beyond the state. This controversy has produced an analytical stalemate in the field and obscured our understanding of plural legal systems – a ubiquitous feature of legal administration across the world. Reviewing extant scholarship, this paper argues that literature on legal pluralism need to be more critical of the state and to develop an explicit legal theory of political process. This challenges the Austinian notion that state law is derived from an ultimate sovereign and to reveal how state law is a site of intense competition among multiple power brokers.