Searle's Monadological Construction of Social Reality

A BSTRACT . One aim of this paper is to make visible the connection between Searle's views on social reality and his general ontology, and at the same time to show that some peculiar features of his analysis of social reality are a natural outcome of his general ontology. The paper contains five sections. In the first Searle's naturalism is philosophically situated and its differentia specifica explained. Then, Searle's view that intentional states exist only in brains is presented. One might say that, according to Searle, each mind is, although caused by a material brain, a Leibnizian monad. This view is related to an important, but neglected, distinction that Searle himself has made between requirement conditions of satisfaction and required conditions of satisfaction. In the third section, it is pointed out that, necessarily, sometimes there has to exist some kind of relation of satisfaction between the two kinds of conditions of satisfaction. Searle, however, has never really discussed what this satisfaction relation may look like. The upshot of all the remarks is that, fourth, Searle's general ontology automatically implies an ontology of social reality according to which a social fact can only exist as a scattered aggregate whose items exist in the brains of the people who constitute it. Finally and fifth, I try to think with Searle against Searle. His monadological view of social reality cannot, Searle notwithstanding, be regarded as being close to the direct realism of common sense. Searle's realism is an indirect realism. However, if Searle's view that intentional states exist only in brains is rejected, then the rest of his ontology has features that may take us closer to a direct realism. Such a move, which in one respect takes us closer to common sense, takes us in another respect away from common sense. The title of the last section is "Social Reality and the Impossibility of Common Sense."     

An introduction into Lundberg's theory of risk

Abstract

In this number of the journal a paper of Dr. Filip Lundberg is published, in which he thoroughly deals with certain problems of the theory of risk. As all the former works of Dr. Lundberg about the theory of risk with only one exception (the paper “Über die Theorie der Rückversicherung” in the transactions of the Congress of Actuaries in Wien 1909) are published in the Swedish language and consequently inaccessible to the international insurance world, a simultaneous report of some of the fundamental ideas in this former production perhaps will offer some interest. Though the latest paper follows a special line, the starting points and the manner of consideration are unaltered, and hence an aquaintance with the simpler problems which here will be dealt with will be rather illustrative.     

Convergence,Divergence or Stability – How do Politicians' and Bureaucrats' Attitudes Change During an Election Period?

Abstract

The possibility that administrators mould politicians into bureaucratic thinking has been a recurring theme in politics since the writings of Weber and von Mises. However, empirical studies of attitude change in the interface between politics and officials are scarce. This study, using data from thirty Norwegian municipalities, investigates whether political attitudes towards diverse political issues change during an election period, and whether any such change aligns politicians' attitudes with those of the administrative leaders in the municipalities. Attitudes were measured among both politicians and administrators in 2000 (six months after the election) and 2003 (six months before the election). In general, there are few signs that politicians' attitudes converged with those of the administrators in the period studied. When attitudinal change does occur, it appears to be parallel in both groups. The findings do not support the notion that politicians' attitudes become aligned to the attitudes of leading administrators. Different explanations are discussed.     

Nonlinearity in monetary policy: A reconsideration of the opportunistic approach to disinflation

The proponents of the ‘opportunistic’ approach to disinflation suggest that, when inflation is close to the target, the central bank should not counteract inflationary pressures. Orphanides and Wilcox (2002) formalize this idea through a simple policy rule that prescribes a nonlinear adjustment to a history-dependent target for inflation. This embodies a regime change in monetary policy, which reacts to inflation only when this is far from the inflation target. Here we study the opportunistic approach in a New-Keynesian model with sizeable nominal and real rigidites in the form of a positive money demand and adjustment costs for investment. We find that the welfare gains delivered by the opportunistic rule arise from the time-varying inflation target, when welfare is measured by a quadratic approximation of household utility. The nonlinear zone of inaction on inflation improves welfare outcomes only when a central bank loss function with the absolute value of the output gap is used, as proposed by Orphanides and Wilcox (2002).     

Trade and regional growth in Spain: panel cointegration in a small sample

In this article, we test for the existence of a relationship between per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and trade, for 15 Spanish Autonomous Communities between 1988 and 2004, using a panel cointegration methodology. In particular, we implement several panel unit root tests (Maddala and Wu, 1999; Levin et al., 2002; Im et al., 2003) and panel cointegration tests (Pedroni, 1999, 2004), with a special attention to their behaviour in a small sample. We also develop a Seemingly Unrelated Regression Estimation (SURE) residual based test, in order to explicitly take into account the cross regional correlation pattern. Appropriate confidence intervals are estimated with a sieve bootstrap designed for our small time sample, preserving the dependence structure among cross sectional units. Our cointegration tests reject the existence of a significant relationship between GDP per capita and exports. However, we do find some evidence of a significant relationship between GDP per capita and imports or with total trade.     

Litteraturanmälningar

Abstract

In 1977 Thorin introduced the class of generalized Γ-convolutions and proved that the Pareto distribution belongs to this class. In subsequent papers Thorin, Bondesson and others have shown that several important distributions are generalized Γ-convolutions.

The purpose of the present paper is to provide a very short proof of Thorin's result that the Pareto distribution is a generalized Γ-convolution. The proof is based on an old stability property of the Stieltjes cone due to Reuter (1956) and Itô (1974).     

Alignment of strategy and structure in local government

ABSTRACT

Strategic positioning and structural alignment in the public sector is a neglected area of research. This paper analyses the strategic positions of prospectors, defenders and reactors and structural alignment in Norwegian municipalities. Top managers responding to a survey perceived that the municipalities did align their organizational structures to the strategic positions for prospectors and defenders, but not for reactors, as hypothesized, but these relationships were modest. The top managers often found it difficult to provide consistent responses on their organizations’ choices of strategic positions.     

The dynamics of networked power in a concentrated business network

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamics of networked power in a concentrated business network. Power is a long standing theme in inter-organizational research, yet there is a paucity of studies about how power emerges and is constructed over time at the network level. The paper adopts process, systems and network theory to interpret a rich single case study from the food industry. Three power mechanisms are identified, gatekeeping, decoupling and resource allocation, which form the basis of a model of networked power dynamics. Empirically tracing the dynamics of networked power highlights the economic contents of interactions. The paper extends current understandings of power as ‘conflict and coercion’ to include influencing, leveraging and strategic maneuvering in the actual performance of networked power.