General equilibrium analysis is a theoretical structure which focuses research in economics. On this point economists and philosophers agree. Yet studies in general equilibrium analyses are not well understood in the sense that, though their importance is recognized, their role in the growth of economic knowledge is a subject of some controversy. Several questions organize an appraisal of general equilibrium analysis. These questions have been variously posed by philosophers of science, economic methodologists, and historians of economic thought. Is general equilibrium (...) analysis a theory, a paradigm, a scientific research program, or a set of interrelated theories? Is it not any of these but rather a branch of applied mathematics? Is GE analysis associated with the growth of knowledge, or does it waste intellectual resources? How is it related to other work in economics? Is it connected to, or is it apart from, the concerns of applied economists? (shrink)

A comprehensive model for describing various forms of developments in science is defined in precise, set-theoretic terms, and in the spirit of the structuralist approach in the philosophy of science. The model emends previous accounts in centering on single systems in a homogenous way, eliminating notions which essentially refer to sets of systems. This is achieved by eliminating the distinction between theoretical and non-theoretical terms as a primitive, and by introducing the notion of intended links. The force of the model (...) is demonstrated by formally incorporating many of the important, precise meta-theoretic concepts occurring in the literature. (shrink)

I propose a modal logic that enables to reason about self-regarding and otherregarding motivations in strategic games. This logic integrates the concepts of joint action, belief, individual and group payoff. The first part of the article is focused on self-regarding agents. A self-regarding agent decides to perform a certain action only if he believes that this action maximizes his own personal benefit. The second part of the article explores different kinds of other-regarding motivations such as fairness and reciprocity. Differently from (...) self-regarding agents, other-regarding agents also consider the benefits of their choices for the group. Moreover, their decisions can be affected by their beliefs about other agents' willingness to act for the well-being of the group. The analysis also considers team-directed reasoning, i.e. the mode of reasoning that people use when they take themselves to be acting as members of a group or a team. (shrink)

In this paper the general notion of Bourbaki structures, interpreted in terms of Suppes predicates, will be used to axiomatize a system of meta-rankings in the sense introduced by A. K. Sen. It will be argued that this axiomatization must take place in a Kantian-ruled world in order to provide a link between meta-rankings and individual actions.Dedicated to Prof. Francisco A. Doria on his 50th birthday.