In their book, Gigerenzer and Selten (2001) described human being as an organism that adaptively reacts to its environment by selecting ecologically rational heuristics that are contingent on task demands; that is, adaptivity assumption. Empirical evidence of the adaptivity assumption is, however, mixed. In this paper, I review prior experiments related to testing the adaptivity assumption and criticize some of the past findings. From this criticism, the research questions are formed. The research objective of this paper is to test whether or not people choose their decision strategy as a reaction to environmental conditions. In this dissertation, the use of the take-the-best (TTB) heuristic is investigated for different treatments, which are information structure, information cost, and social rationality. Participants go through 180 trials of a pair comparison task. Using the proportion of TTB trials as a dependent variable, three hypotheses regarding the effects of three treatments are tested. The results of the experiments indicate that only the social rationality is a significant factor in promoting the TTB heuristic. Besides the test of the hypothesis, an exploratory analysis of participants’ data is presented.

Background and Objectives: Tendencies in Drug Use (DU) of highly toxic drugs-such as aminoglycosides and vancomycin and level of Rational Drug Use (RDU) is unknown in Lithuania. Our goal was to evaluate the first experiences in serum concentration measurements (Sc) of vancomycin & gentamicin, monitor patients receiving these antimicrobials and explore the practicality of using defined daily dose (DDD) in measuring their consumption tendencies. Design: DU study based on hospital pharmacy and hospital administrative databases; consumption in DDD per 100 occupied bed daily (100OBD) during 2004-6 and highest consumers of aminoclycosides and vancomycin in 2006. Evaluation of Sc in 2006. Monitoring assessment of 17 patients over 7 months. Data were processed with SPSS 16.0 using descriptive and comparative statistics for nonparametric values (Mann-Whitney test). Main outcomes measures: Annual consumptions of gentamicin, amikacin, tobramycin and vancomycin according to DDD/100OBD; intensity of gentamicin & vancomycin monitoring (as per number of DDDs) and proportions of abnormal Sc; Evaluation of the rationality level of antimicrobial’s therapy in a cohort of 17 patients. Results: Mean (±SE) DDD/100OBD values of gentamicin (240mg) were 3.67±0.69 (median 1.31; CI95% 2.29-5.06) in 2004; 4.53±1.87 (median 0.86; CI 95% 0.79-8.27) in 2005, and 4.24±0.82 (median 1.05; CI95%2.60-5.88) in 2006. Mean (±SE) DDD/100OBD values of amikacin (1000mg) were 0.55±0.17 (median 1.22; CI95% 0.23-0... [to full text] / Toksiškų vaistų, tokių kaip aminoglikozidų ir vankomicino, bei racionalus vaistų vartojimo tendencijos Lietuvoje dar nėra pakankamai žinomos. Mūsų darbo tikslas buvo nustatyti ir įvertinti aminoglikozidų ir vankomicino suvartojimo KMU klinikose tendencijas , gentamicino ir vankomicino koncentracijas kraujo serume (KKS), bei įvertinti 17 stebėtų pacientų gydymo šiais antibiotikais atvejus. Vaistų suvartojimo duomenys buvo gauti iš ligoninės vaistinės ir jos administracijos. Apskaičiuotos DDD šimtui lovadienių per paskutinius trejus metus (2004 – 2006), nustatyti daugiausia 2006 metais aminoglikozidų ir vankomicino suvartoję KMU klinikų skyriai. Įvertintos 2006 m. antibiotikų KKS. 17 pacientų, gavę šiuos antibiotikus, buvo stebimi 7 mėnesius. Duomenų statistinė analizė buvo atlikta naudojant SPSS 16.0 statistinę duomenų apdorojimo programą, kokybinių duomenų įvertinimui atliktas Mann-Whitney testas neparametriniams kriterijams. Vidutinis gentamicino (240mg) suvartojimas 2004m. (±SE) DDD/100OBD buvo 3.67±0.69 (median 1.31; CI95% 2.29-5.06); 2005m. 4.53±1.87 (median 0.86; CI 95% 0.79-8.27); 2006m. 4.24±0.82 (median 1.05; CI95%2.60-5.88). Amikacino (1000mg) buvo 0.55±0.17 (median 1.22; CI95% 0.23-0.88) 2004m.; 2005m. 0.44±0.13 (median 1.03; CI 95% 0.18-0.69), ir 0.52±0.13 (median 1.08; CI95%0.27-0.78) 2006m. Tobramicino (240mg) buvo 0.03±0.02 (median 0.14; CI95% 0.00-0.07) 2004m, 0.006±0.003 (median 0.03; CI95% 0.00-0.01) 2005m. Vancomicino (2000mg) buvo 0.55±0.17... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

Išanalizuoti 100 hemodialize gydomų pacientų duomenys per 2007 metus. Išskirti pacientai, kuriems tiriamuoju laikotarpiu buvo skirta antibiotikoterapija. Darbo tikslas- apžvelgti racionalios antibiotikoterapijos principus ir įvertinti racionalumo lygį bei jo pokytį po intervencijos KMUK nefrologijos skyriuje 2007 metais. Kiekvienam pacientui, gydytam antimikrobiniais vaistais, užpildytas tam tikras protokolas. Antimikrobinio vaisto skyrimo racionalumas vertintas pagal atitikimą 2004 metais išleistoms „Racionalaus antimikrobinių vaistų vartojimo“ metodinėms rekomendacijoms. Gauti rezultatai parodė, kad 2006 metų pabaigoje atlikta intervencija dėl racionalaus antimikrobinių vaistų vartojimo nefrologijos skyriuje pasiteisino - neatitinkančių rekomendacijų antibiotikų skyrimo atvejų sumažėjo beveik dvigubai (2006 metais – 17,4 proc., 2007 metais – 9,9 proc.). Pagal Pirsono χ2 kriterijų, skirtumas yra statistiškai patikimas (χ2 > 9,488; p < 0,05). Racionalumo lygis padidėjo dėl racionaliau gydomų šlapimo takų ir kvėpavimo takų infekcijų bei dažniau atliekant bakteriologinius testus. / We analyzed data of 100 hemodialysis patients during 2007 year and excluded cases of antibioticotherapy. The aim of the study was to review the principles of rational antibioticotherapy and to investigate level of non-adherence of the prescribed antimicrobial drugs to nationally available guidelines and its change after intervention in nephrology department in 2007. The evaluation of adherence to national recommendation was estimated using “Rational use of antimicrobial preparations: recommendations for microbiological diagnostics, treatment, and propylaxis of infectious diseases” (Vilnius, 2004). The results showed, that the level of non - rationality in using antimicrobials decreased from 17.4% in 2006 till 9.9% in 2007. This is statistically significant (χ2 > 9.488; p < 0.05).

No description available.

Normal human limitations mean that when people decide how to act, they often have to base their decisions on flawed information or reasoning. Even when agents reason to the best of their ability, and form intentions consistent with that reasoning, they sometimes get things wrong. Dominant theories about reasons for action argue that all good, or ‘normative’, reasons for acting are objective normative reasons. But objective normative reasons for action are derived from facts about the world that ignore certain facts about human agents. On these accounts of reasons, real human agents can be unable to learn what they have normative reason to do. A common response to this problem is to say that in such situations people act in a praiseworthy way, but their actions are based on false beliefs, and false beliefs cannot be good reasons. I argue that when agents reason to the best of their ability and form intentions consistent with that reasoning, agents act appropriately in response to states of the world that are normative reasons for action. To support my claim, I develop an account of what I call ‘justifiable reasons’, normative reasons for action that human agents can always use as a basis for action, and the form of reason that underpins rationality. I discuss the similarities and differences between my account of justifiable reasons and several approaches to reasons that resemble my account. I show that, in spite of objections, justifiable reasons are normative reasons, not motivating reasons. Accounts of subjective normative reasons are based on examples that look similar to mine. So, I explain why justifiable reasons are not subjective normative reasons. Some features of internal reasons also resemble features of justifiable reasons. But, I show that there is nothing about justifiable reasons that entails that they must be internal or external reasons. I take it that justifiable and objective normative reasons serve different purposes, so I explain these different purposes. Finally, I argue in support of my claim that to be rational, agents must act appropriately in response to justifiable reasons.

In this paper we study the behavior of boundedly rational agents in a two good economy where trading is costly with respect to time. All individuals have a fixed time budget and may spend time for the production of good one, the production of good two and trading. They update their strategies, which determine their time allocation, according to a simple imitation type learning rule with noise. In a setup with two different type of agents with different production technologies we show by the means of simulations that both direct trade and trade via mediators who specialize in trading can emerge. We can also observe the transition from a pure production economy via direct trade to an economy with mediated trade. (author's abstract) / Series: Report Series SFB "Adaptive Information Systems and Modelling in Economics and Management Science"

In this thesis, I apply teleofunctionalism to a current debate concerning the normativity of practical rationality. Assuming teleofunctionalism is the correct theory of mental phenomena, I argue that it can provide a promising account of the normativity of practical rationality. This claim is motivated by the idea that a capacity to represent internal states, external states, and relations between these states as reasons for action has a teleofunction, and is thus a source of normativity. This teleofunction is marked by a distinctive causal role that reason-representation plays in action. Although I argue that this capacity developed out of processes of biological natural selection, the content of representations of reasons for action produced by the mechanisms underlying this capacity need not be determined solely by biological selection. In an effort to naturalize normativity in this way, I discuss the relation between biological-functional normativity and the normativity of rationality itself.

Adaptive agent models are supposed to result in the same limit behavior as models with perfectly rational agents. In this article we show that this claim cannot by accepted in general, even in a simple capital market model, where the agents apply sample autocorrelation learning to perform their forecasts. By applying this learning algorithm, the agents use sample means, the sample autocorrelation coefficient, and the sample variances of prices to predict the future prices, and to determine the demand for the risky asset. Therefore, even if the agents are not perfectly rational, we require that the agents' forecasts are consistent with the underlying information. In this article a sufficient condition for convergence is derived analytically, and checked by means of simulations. The price sequence as well as the sequence of parameters - estimated by means of sample autocorrelation learning - converge, if the initial value of the price sequence is sufficiently close to the steady-state equilibrium, and a random variable derived from the dividend process is not too volatile to skip the price trajectory out of the attracting region. Therefore, the market price can even diverge, and the region of convergence could become very small depending on the underlying parameters. Thus, divergence of the price sequences is not a pathological example, since it possibly occurs over a wide range of parameters. Therefore, the often claimed coincidence of adaptive agents models and ration agent models cannot be observed even in a simple capital market model. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers SFB "Adaptive Information Systems and Modelling in Economics and Management Science"

C’est un fait certain que la compréhension contemporaine de la rationalité, en Occident, trouve l’une de ses sources dans la tradition grecque antique, et dans la manière dont les Grecs ont élaboré leur propre conception de la rationalité humaine, qu’ils ont exprimée de manière philosophique et conceptuelle, en s’éloignant d’une expression poétique jugée peut-être trop inadéquate à l’exercice de la philosophie. Cette source grecque est, certes, d’une importance capitale pour comprendre la rationalité moderne, mais elle n’en forme pas l’unique source ancienne. La Bible forme aussi une source majeure de notre civilisation, elle a contribué de manière essentielle à la constitution de nos modes de pensée, et de nos attitudes philosophiques, en proposant un modèle anthropologique de l’humain et de l’humanité, si l’on s’accorde à nommer l’anthropologie science de l’être humain, et dans la mesure où cette science ne fait pas abstraction de la dimension verticale des rapports entre l’être humain et le sacré, prenant ici le Visage d’un Dieu unique. Cependant la Bible tente aussi d’interpréter tous les champs de l’activité humaine, de telle sorte que cet agir humain soit pensé philosophiquement dans une langue très conceptuelle, l’hébreu, d’après le texte biblique lui-même, et selon une expression poétique qui semble ne pas être philosophique, mais qui forme cependant un système ouvert d’une pensée qui elle-même est philosophique, malgré l’apparence mythique que revêt au premier regard la Genèse notamment.En réalité, sous cet aspect mythique se donne à entendre une certaine compréhension de la rationalité, à laquelle nous sommes redevables, en fait, de toute une manière de comprendre tant le monde et l’univers, que l’humanité, la psyché, ses modes de raisonnements, et la rationalité qui en découle. Elle offre au lecteur, sous la forme d’une expression poétique, dans le langage, et contenue dans l’histoire des personnages et des figures elles-mêmes, le tableau d’une genèse de la rationalité. / It is certain that the contemporary understanding of rationality in the West have one of its sources in the ancient Greek tradition, and the manner in which the Greeks have thought and built their own design of human rationality, that they expressed in a philosophical and conceptual way, getting away from a poetic expression considered perhaps too inadequate to the philosophy’s exercise. This Greek source is certainly of vital importance to understand the modern rationality, but it is not the single ancient source: Celtic, Latin, Arab, but also Jewish’s sources are no less essential to our understanding of rationality as it unfolds now days, nor even to the construction of the so-called contemporary rationality.The Bible is a major source of our civilization, it has contributed in an essential manner to the constitution of our modes of thoughts and philosophical attitudes, by proposing a model that could be called anthropologic of human’s being and the humanity, if we define anthropology as a science of human being and to the extent, perhaps contradictory, where the science do not the economy of the vertical dimension of the relationship between human beings and the sacred, here taking the face of a single God. However also attempts to think all fields of human activity, so that this act human or philosophically thought in a very conceptual language, Hebrew, from the text biblical itself, and according to a poetic expression which does not seem to be philosophical, but which however is an open system of thought philosophical itself, despite the mythical appearance of the Genesis. In reality, this mythical aspect is to hear some understanding of rationality, to which we are indebted, in fact, a way of understanding both the world and the universe, humanity, the human psyche, its modes of reasoning, and rationality resulting. It offers the reader, in the form of a poetic, in the language, and expression contained in the history of the characters and figures themselves, a genesis of rationality.

« Quelle sociologie pour quelle démocratie ? Rationalité politique et émancipation » a pour ambition d’interroger les liens entre l’épistémologie, la théorie sociologique et la posture ou le type d’engagement du sociologue dans la cité. Il s’agit d’explorer les conditions de possibilité d’une théorie critique, non idéologique, mais fondée en raison sociologique.Une première partie, s’appuyant sur des recherches actions, s’intéresse à la question de la participation des citoyens. Un premier exemple, une sociologie du Théâtre de l’opprimé, montre comment ce type d’intervention peut être interprété comme un dispositif de subjectivation politique. Un deuxième exemple pose la question de la participation à partir d’une tout autre conception du social. A l’occasion de l’élaboration d’un dispositif de participation citoyenne sur le territoire de Feyzin, nous avons tenté d’articuler une sociologie particulière (théorie de l’acteur-réseau) et une conception de la raison pratique (avec Vincent Descombes) pour construire une Conférence riveraine. Dans ces deux cas ce sont les liens entre paradigme sociologique et modalités d’intervention démocratique qui sont examinés. Une seconde partie, plus épistémologique, s’intéresse au fonctionnement de la discipline sociologique et présente trois tentatives d’élaboration d’une posture qui vise à mettre en son centre la notion (et la pratique) d’espace de controverse. Le premier exemple fait retour sur la Querelle allemande des sciences sociales car cette querelle est exemplaire, à la fois d’une controverse qui tente d’explorer les différents arguments disponibles, à un moment donné, mais aussi, d’un point de vue plus substantiel, pose les fondements de deux interprétations du monde social qui sont toujours actives dans les débats contemporains. Le deuxième se situe à un niveau plus théorique, et, à partir d’un colloque qui réunissait différents auteurs partisans d’une théorie de l’activité pour penser le travail, tente de mettre au jour un point de vue de l’activité qui pourrait être commun à l’ensemble de ces auteurs. L’idée est assez simple : il s’agit de contribuer à construire une cumulativité et un point d’accord dont les auteurs pourraient se revendiquer (notamment dans une perspective politique). Enfin, le troisième prend le risque d’explorer ce que l’on appelle parfois un point de vue « postanthropocentré » (ou « désanthropocentré », les termes sont bien loin d’être stabilisés) en sciences sociales. Si l’on prend au sérieux la question d’un approfondissement de la démocratie, jusqu’où peut-on (doit-on) aller dans cette direction ? Que peut signifier pour la sociologie l’idée de prendre en compte les « non-humains » ? C’est ainsi, au moyen de ces multiples angles d’attaque, que ce travail propose de déployer notre interrogation sur les relations entre épistémologie, sociologie et politique. / " What sociology for which democracy? Political rationality and emancipation " has for ambition to question the links between the epistemology, the sociological theory and the posture or the kind of commitment of the sociologist in the city. It is a question of exploring the conditions of possibility of a critical, not ideological theory, but established in sociological reason. A first part, leaning on researches-actions, is interested in the question of the participation of the citizens. A first example, a sociology of the Theater of the oppressed, shows how this type of intervention can be interpreted as a device of political subjectivation. The second example raises the question of the participation from quite a different design of the social. On the occasion of the elaboration of a device of participation citizen on the territory of Feyzin, we tried to articulate a particular sociology (theory of the actor-network) and a design of the reason has a practice (with Vincent Descombes) to build a citizen Conference. In these two cases it is the links between sociological paradigm and modalities of democratic intervention that are examined. A more epistemological, second part, is interested in the functioning of the sociological discipline and presents three attempts of elaboration of a posture which aims at putting in its center the notion (and the practice) of « space of controversy ». The first example makes return on the German Quarrel of the social sciences because this quarrel is exemplary, at the same time of a controversy which tries to explore the various available arguments, at some point, but also, from a more substantial point of view, puts the foundations of two interpretations of the social world which are always active in the contemporary debates. The second is situated at a more theoretical level, and, from a colloquium which gathered various partisan authors of a theory of the activity to think of the work, of tent to bring to light a point of view of the activity which could be common to all these authors. The idea is rather simple : it is a question of contributing to build a cumulativity and a point all right the authors of which could claim to be (in particular in a political perspective). Finally, the third takes the risk of exploring what we sometimes call a point of view " postanthropocentric" (or " desanthropocentric ", the terms are far from being stabilized) in social sciences. If we take seriously the question of a deepening of the democracy, to where do we can go in this direction? What can mean for the sociology the idea to take into account the "non-human beings" ? It is so, by means of these multiple angles of attack, that this work suggests displaying our interrogation on the relations between epistemology, sociology and politics.