"This book contains ideas to develop interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary views on economy and society. It aims to disseminate heterodox ideas on various subjects related to economics and global society. The book is organised in six parts. Part 1 contains the key lectures of Backhaus on the concept of state sciences and of Klamer on the importance of culture for economics. Parts 2- 6 contain successively contributions in the areas of economic paradigms and theories, population and society, corporate issues, environment, and (...) international relations. Examples of the content are: - the changes of family life cycles due to the rise of non-traditional households; - subjective and objective inflation rates after the introduction of the Euro; - the economics of genetic engineering; - the contribution of foreign direct investment to the economic development of host countries; - the inaccuracy of economic models applied in places characterized by extreme income disparities; - the improvement of political and corporate governance; - evolutionary thinking and emission trading; - freedom and order in the European Union; - the reform of social policy in Europe. The book provides interesting creative multi-disciplinary ideas with respect to various topical issues concerning the contemporary global society. It is highly recommended for economists and social scientists in search of broad views on social science and society.". (shrink)

This paper outlines the qualitative foundations of a “quasiclassical” theory in which particles are pictured as spatially extended periodic excitations of a universal background field, interacting with each other via nonlinearity in the equations of motion for that field, and undergoing collapse to a much smaller volume if and when they are detected. The theory is based as far as possible directly on experiment, rather than on the existing quantum mechanical formalism, and it offers simple physical interpretations of such concepts (...) as mass, 4-momentum, interaction, potentials, and quantization; it may lead directly to the standard equations of quantum theory, such as the multiparticle Schrödinger equation, without going through the conventional process of “quantizing” a classical theory. The theory also provides an alternative framework in which to discuss wave-particle duality and the quantum “measurement problem”; in particular, it is suggested that the unpredictability of quantum phenomena may arise from “deterministic chaos” in the behavior of the background field. (shrink)

In this paper an attempt is made to interpret inertial mass as a consequence of the invariant periodicity associated with physical de Broglie waves. In the case of a free particle, such waves, observed from an arbitrary reference frame, would exhibit the velocity-dependent wavelength given by de Broglie's relation; and it is conjectured that the inertial and additive properties of mass (or, more precisely, the conservation of momentum and energy) can be related to nonlinear interference effects occurring between the de (...) Broglie waves for different particles. This picture could throw light on the physical meaning of quantization and suggests the possibility of reformulating classical and quantum mechanics in terms of a “quasi-classical” nonlinear field theory in which both inertial and quantization effects result essentially from the periodicity of de Broglie waves. (shrink)

The author has recently proposed a “quasi-classical” theory of particles and interactions in which particles are pictured as extended periodic disturbances in a universal field χ(x, t), interacting with each other via nonlinearity in the equation of motion for χ. The present paper explores the relationship of this theory to nonrelativistic quantum mechanics; as a first step, it is shown how it is possible to construct from χ a configuration-space wave function Ψ(x 1,x 2,t), and that the theory requires that (...) Ψ satisfy the two-particle Schrödinger equation in the case where the two particles are well separated from each other. This suggests that the multiparticle Schrödinger equation can be obtained as a direct consequence of the quasi-classical theory without any use of the usual formalism (Hilbert space, quantization rules, etc.) of conventional quantum theory and in particular without using the classical canonical treatment of a system as a “crutch” theory which has subsequently to be “quantized.” The quasi-classical theory also suggests the existence of a preferred “absolute” gauge for the electromagnetic potentials. (shrink)

It is shown that an approach to quantum phenomena in which charged particles are treated as macroscopically extended periodic disturbances in a nonlinear c-number field, interacting with each other via massless excitations of that field, leads almost uniquely to the five basic equations of classical electrodynamics: the Lorentz force law and Maxwell's equations. The fundamental electromagnetic quantity in this approach is the 4-vector potential Aα—interpreted absolutely as a measure of the local shift of each particle off its mass shell—rather than (...) theE andB fields, and it thus provides a new viewpoint on the questions of Aharonov-Bohm phase shifts, the existence of magnetic monopoles, and the role of gauge invariance. (shrink)

When Fatal Strategies was first published in French in 1983, it represented a turning point for Jean Baudrillard: an utterly original, and for many readers, utterly bizarre book that offered a theory as proliferative, ecstatic, and hallucinatory as the postmodern world it endeavored to describe. Arguing against the predetermined outcomes of dialectical thought with his renowned, wry, ambivalent passion, with this volume Jean Baudrillard mounted an attack against the "false problems" posed by Western philosophy. If his Marxist days were firmly (...) behind him, Baudrillard here indicated that metaphysics had also gone the way of sociology and politics: the contemporary world demanded nothing less than Pataphysics, Alfred Jarry's absurdist philosphy that described the laws of the universe supplementary to this one. In effect, with Fatal Strategies, Baudrillard became Baudrillard. In his extrapolationist manner, Baudrillard sought to replace Western philosophy's circular arguments with a ritualistic Theater of Cruelty. Using this line of thought developed in Fatal Strategies, Baudrillard went on, throughout the 1980s, to find new and shatteringly accurate ways of discussing American corporatocracy, arms build-up, and hostage taking. Fatal Strategies asserts a profound critique of American politics, and it is an important step towards his examination of evil.Jean Baudrillard was a philosopher, sociologist, cultural critic, and theorist of postmodernity who challenged all existing theories of contemporary society with humor and precision. An outsider in the French intellectual establishment, he was internationally renowned as a twenty-first century visionary, reporter, and provocateur. His Simulations instantly became a cult classic and made him a controversial voice in the world of politics and art. (shrink)

While in principle probabilistic logics might be applied to solve a range of problems, in practice they are rarely applied at present. This is perhaps because they seem disparate, complicated, and computationally intractable. However, we shall argue in this programmatic paper that several approaches to probabilistic logic into a simple unifying framework: logically complex evidence can be used to associate probability intervals or probabilities with sentences.

The 2010 Nagoya Protocol is an international framework for access and benefit sharing (ABS) of the use of genetic and biological resources, with particular focus on indigenous communities. This is especially important in Africa, where local communities have a close reliance on environmental resources and ecosystems. However, national legislation and policies commonly lag behind international agreements, and this poses challenges for legal compliance as well as practical applications. This study reviews the academic literature on the Nagoya Protocol and ABS applications, (...) and then considers the implications of this analysis for research in Africa. Results show that there is uneven engagement with the principles of the Nagoya Protocol across different academic disciplines; local communities are sometimes sidelined in these studies; and only 8% of researchers in the literature analysed are located in Africa. Future developments should focus on ensuring national compliance with the Nagoya Protocol, and that researchers and industry work in partnership with local African communities on ABS issues. (shrink)

In the Netherlands, the legalization of assisted suicide for persons with a death wish without severe illness, often referred to as persons with “completed life” or “tiredness of life,” is intensel...

A recurrent issue in the vast amount of literature on reasoning models in ethics is the role and nature of moral intuitions. In this paper, we start from the view that people who work and live in a certain moral practice usually possess specific moral wisdom. If we manage to incorporate their moral intuitions in ethical reasoning, we can arrive at judgements and (modest) theories that grasp a moral experience that generally cannot be found outside the practice. Reflective equilibrium (RE) (...) provides a framework for balancing moral intuitions, ethical principles and general theories. Nevertheless, persisting problems associated with the use of intuitions need to be addressed. One is the objection that moral intuitions lack the credibility necessary to guide moral reasoning. Ethicists have tried to solve this problem by formulating criteria to separate the “bad” intuitions from the “good” ones at the beginning of the reasoning process. We call this the credible input-justified outcome strategy. An example is the appeal to the common morality by Beauchamp and Childress. We think this approach is unsuccessful. As an alternative, we outline the good reasoning-justified outcome strategy. It connects to a variant of RE in which intuitions from different sources are incorporated. We argue that the elements of RE have different levels of justificatory power at the start of reasoning. In our strategy, each element can gain or lose justificatory power when it is tested in a reasoning process that meets several criteria. (shrink)