Third-Party Rights and Responsibilities

Although Roman law never developed a true theory of agency, it did find ways to make one person contractually responsible for the acts of another, by using the family (persons under the power of a paterfamilias), the structure of business operations (those operating a business on behalf of an owner), and the structure of estates (supervisors of all or part). These devices permitted limited development of more complex businesses that were not directly owner-operated. Roman law also allowed for some delegation and assignment of contract rights and duties. While these developments undoubtedly assisted Roman enterprises, they were limited in their scope and effectiveness.

A Theory of Contract Law: What Meaning and for What Purpose?

Each of the two parts of Peter Benson’s stimulating book raises an important epistemological question. In the first part, the aim is to search for the “true” theory of contract, the one that best explains the rules and doctrines of general contract law. In the second part, the author seeks to convince that his theory is the best one, in the sense that it is the one that provides the most appropriate moral basis in a liberal democratic society; in other words, the one that allows the greatest “justice” in transactions. A third formidable epistemological question then arises: whether “truth” and “justice” are identical.

Chance Debugged

A ‘Big Bad Bug’ threatens Lewis’s Humean metaphysics of chance (Lewis 1986a, p. XIV); his Principal Principle provides an intuitive link between chance and credence. Yet on the one hand, certain future developments are incompatible with the true theory of chance, but on the other hand, such future developments have a positive chance to occur. The combination of these two claims with the Principal Principle leads to inconsistent credences. I present a Humean solution to the Bug: chances are relative to a limited perspective. The perspective comprises facts available as evidence to an ideal cognizer at a point in space-time. As a consequence, the same future event can have different chances of occurring provided the perspective is different. I show how this dissolves the Bug.

The non-neutrality of money: a response to Dr. Humphrey

This article answers Dr. Humphrey contention on the similarities between monetarist and Austrian approaches to the neutrality of money. Monetarists at most only concentrate on short term non neutrality while Austrians base their analysis in short, medium and long term non neutrality. For the more, monetarists lack a true theory of capital that could let then understand thet even with flexible markets money would not be neutral in the short term. Key words: Economic cycles, neutrality of money, short and long term effects of money, capital theory. JEL Classification: B53, B49, D01, K13. Resumen: El presente artículo contesta la tesis del Dr. Humphrey según la cual las diferencias entre austriacos y monetaristas son ficticias pues algunos de éstos también reconocieron los efectos distorsionadores del crecimiento monetario sobre los precios relativos. El artículo demuestra que la teoría austriaca considera que el dinero no es neutral ni a corto, ni a medio ni a largo plazo y ello contrasta con el enfoque monetarista que solo reconoce la no neutralidad a corto plazo y por razones equivocadas al carecer de una verdadera teoría del capital. Palabras clave: Ciclo económico, neutralidad del dinero, corto plazo, largo plazo, teoría del capital. Clasificación JEL: B53, B49, D01, K13.

Multi-dimensional Interpretations of Presburger Arithmetic in Itself

Presburger arithmetic is the true theory of natural numbers with addition. We study interpretations of Presburger arithmetic in itself. The main result of this paper is that all self-interpretations are definably isomorphic to the trivial one. Here we consider interpretations that might be multi-dimensional. We note that this resolves a conjecture by Visser (1998, An overview of interpretability logic. Advances in Modal Logic, pp. 307–359). In order to prove the result, we show that all linear orderings that are interpretable in $({\mathbb{N}},+)$ are scattered orderings with the finite Hausdorff rank and that the ranks are bounded in the terms of the dimensions of the respective interpretations.

The Non-existence of Foundational Truths

This chapter discusses problems that arise from the assumption that there is a final, ultimately true theory of the world and considers a variety of arguments (connected with the coherence theory of truth, semantic contextualism, and the denial of absolutely general quantification) against it. From this it follows that if there cannot be an ultimately true theory then it also cannot be ultimately true that the world has a non-wellfounded structure. This leaves us with a problem, for it appears as if the theory of the non-existence of the real world we defend in the book as a whole cannot be a final theory either. The chapter closes with a discussion of this final problem, together with some reflections on what the implications of the denial of ultimately true theories are for the ontological or philosophical enterprise more generally.

The Non-Existence of the Real World

The book is concerned with the existence of the real world, that is, with the existence of a world of objects that exist independent of human interests, concerns, and cognitive activities. The main thesis defended is that we have good reason to deny the existence of such a world. The discussion is concerned with four main facets of assuming a real world: (a) the existence of an external world of physical objects in space and time; (b) the existence of an internal world, comprising various mental states congregated around a self; (c) the existence of an ontological foundation that grounds the existence of all the entities in the world; and (d) the existence of an ultimately true theory that provides a final account of all there is. I argue specifically that: (a) we should reject the postulation of an external world behind our representations; (b) the internal world is not as epistemically transparent as is usually assumed, and there is no substantial self acting as central unifier of our mental lives; (c) there are good reasons for adopting an anti-foundational account of ontological dependence; and (d) ontology, and philosophy more generally, must not be conceived of as providing an ultimately true theory of the world.

Methodology of the Analysis of Global Socio-Political Phenomena in Pitirim Sorokin's Creativity

Within the framework of sociological creativity of Pitirim Sorokin, special attention should be paid to the unique methodology by which this scientist carried out the analysis of large-scale social phenomena, including certainly wars and revolutions. The analysis of “an influence issue” of any global social phenomenon on the life of society is the cornerstone of this methodology. Within the framework of such an extensive problem, P. Sorokin singled out several important components of its issues, and then, for each of them, presented an overview of the accumulated knowledge, proven provisions and existing uncertainties. In general, P. Sorokin’s analysis of theories of wars and revolutions demonstrates that influences of wars and revolutions on society are complicated. Therefore, they cannot be precisely described by simple and unilateral formulas. True theory should explain when, why, under what conditions, and how any factor becomes the real cause of war and why, under what conditions, etc. it does not affect. P. Sorokin, in particular, applied this methodology to the analysis of revolutionary events in Russia in 1917.

Bayesian Rapid Optimal Adaptive Design (BROAD): Method and application distinguishing models of risky choice

Economic surveys and experiments usually present fixed questions to respondents. Rapid computation now allows adaptively optimized questions, based on previous responses, to maximize expected information. We describe a novel method of this type introduced in computer science, and apply it experimentally to six theories of risky choice. The EC2 method creates equivalence classes, each consisting of a true theory and its noisy-response perturbations, and chooses questions with the goal of distinguishing between equivalence classes by cutting edges connecting them. The edge-cutting information measure is adaptively submodular, which enables a provable performance bound and “lazy” evaluation which saves computation. The experimental data show that most subjects, making only 30 choices, can be reliably classified as choosing according to EV or two variants of prospect theory. We also show that it is difficult for subjects to manipulate by misreporting preferences, and find no evidence of manipulation.

Ramsey, Frank Plumpton (1903–30)

Before Ramsey died at the age of 26 he did an extraordinary amount of pioneering work, in economics and mathematics as well as in logic and philosophy. His major contributions to the latter are as follows. (1) He produced the definitive version of Bertrand Russell’s attempted reduction of mathematics to logic. (2) He produced the first quantitative theory of how we make decisions, for example about going to the station to catch a train. His theory shows how such decisions depend on the strengths of our beliefs (that the train will run) and desires (to catch it), and uses this dependence to define general measures of belief and desire. This theory also underpins his claim that what makes induction reasonable is its being a reliable way of forming true beliefs, and it underpins his equation of knowledge generally with reliably formed true beliefs. (3) He used the equivalence between believing a proposition and believing that it is true to define truth in terms of beliefs. These in turn he proposed to define by how they affect our actions and whether those actions fulfil our desires. (4) He produced two theories of laws of nature. On the first of these, laws are the generalizations that would be axioms and theorems in the simplest true theory of everything. On the second, they are generalizations that lack exceptions and would if known be used to support predictions (‘I’ll starve if I don’t eat’) and hence decisions (‘I’ll eat’). (5) He showed how established, for example optical, phenomena can be explained by theories using previously unknown terms, like ‘photon’, which they introduce. (6) He showed why no grammatical distinction between subjects like ‘Socrates’ and predicates like ‘is wise’ entails any intrinsic difference between particulars and universals.