The search for living (relevant and significant) values in societies has become increasingly widespread and institutionalized through the last decades. The paper argues that there are serious theoretical limitations (biases) inherent in the most widespread survey techniques, which jeopardize their very reason for existence: to foresee directions of social and political change. In fact the predictions made on the basis of these techniques manage to reach partial confirmation, but none are uncontested on theoretical and/or empirical grounds. Starting from the statement that empirical value inquiry continues to be very fragmented, the paper proceeds from critiques formulated on the basis of a hermeneutic analysis of survey methods to a comparison of these critiques with other attempts in the social sciences to treat the phenomenon of value. The third section of the paper relates the moral outlook of these surveys to another moral outlook seemingly operative nowadays: a global ethical vision. The section concludes that the value surveys fail to grasp both the ways values are organized and their dynamic because of their bias toward a Developmentalist ideology of world progress.

This paper discusses the meaning of expressed preference statements. A holistic explanation of preferences is proposed: preference relations between propositions are explained by preference relations over worlds. Only those world-preferences function as explanans which are maximally similar to the actual world, and which are maximally similar to each other. The concept of similarity as intuitive is rejected, and is interpreted instead with reference to causal structure: 'closest to the actual world' is interpreted as compatible with the causal structure of the actual world, and 'most similar to each other' as sharing the same causal background conditions.

Pour l'economiste le plus celebre et le plus influent du vingtieme siecle, John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), l'economie devrait occuper une place secondaire dans la vie humaine et sociale. La politique et surtout l'ethique devraient etre au poste de commande. L'oeuvre de Keynes, penseur multidimensionnel, s'appuyait sur un socle philosophique, ethique et epistemologique, qui en eclaire tous les aspects. Notre communication souligne en particulier l'influence determinante, dans la vision keynesienne, des Principia Ethica de Moore. A partir de ce livre, et des Principles of Mathematics de Russell, Keynes a engage une reflexion philosophique qui a abouti ä la publication, en 1921, du Treatise on Probability, qui pose le probleme de Taction en contexte d'incertitude radicale, ce qui est le cas de Taction economique. C'est done sur la base d'une reflexion philosophique, encore peu connue, que Keynes condamne le laisser-faire et prone un interventionnisme indispensable pour eviter Tecroulement d'une civilisation menacee par les extremismes.

On a general level, this paper proposes a critical analysis of one of the attempts to make bridges between economics and moral and political philosophy. A priori, we may expect that formal methods may lead to clearer and more rigorous arguments, and may facilitate practical applications. However, this paper illustrates how precision is bought at the price of becoming tautological. Therefore, the statement that "it is already widely recognized that formal methods derived from economics can contribute to ethics" (Broome 1989: ix) seems hasty. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 discusses some philosophical background assumptions which underlie a decision theoretic argument in favour of utilitarianism. Section 3 recalls briefly John Harsanyi's decision theoretic arguments in favour of utilitarianism. It then focuses on the crucial assumption of separability in order to show that separability can always be saved as an assumption if one applies the strategy of dispersion. Section 4, finally, shows how the theorem may indeed reconcile the concern for equality and utilitarianism, at the price of becoming futile.

National economies have developed self-reinforcing tendencies and detached themselves from real economic life. In order to understand this phenomenon and find political instruments to control it, systems of national economies can be conceived as virtual realities. This requires a new comprehension of reality. The author suggests different ontological classes, which can be described in terms of the relations among them.

This paper discusses the recent trend in economics to reintroduce consideration of happiness or subjective well-being. The concept of happiness is discussed and a number of uses of "happiness" are distinguished. Several theories regarding the life use of "happiness" are identified. Some of the ways in which happiness is characterized in recent economic literature are discussed and critiqued. Helpful implications of a richer conception of happiness in understanding significant findings in recent studies, as well as the "paradoxes of happiness," are noted.

The concept of merit good is a problematic concept in economic theory. The concept was introduced in 1956 by Richard Musgrave. In 1990, on the occasion of an international conference on the concept of merit good, John Head wrote that the concept of merit good raises methodologically difficult and controversial issues. The concept raises doubt about the ultimate normative authority of the consumer sovereignty principle. I will demonstrate that the concept deserves the attention of the philosophical profession for multiple reasons.

The authors delineate the nature and neglect of integrity capacity and global business citizenship by world business leaders. They discuss how the philosophical analysis of moral and economic complexity enhances judgment integrity capacity and global business citizenship. Finally, the authors recommend positive action steps to improve global business citizenship and leadership integrity capacity through a balanced and inclusive pluralistic economic philosophy.

La teoria de los derechos de Robert Nozick se funda en los derechos de autopropiedad que cada persona tiene sobre si misma. Esos derechos legitiman que haya una apropiaciön desigual de bienes externos. El Estado debe garantizar las condiciones para transferencia legitima de toda propiedad privada, incluido uno mismo, mediante el mercado. La teoria de Nozick permite que alguien pueda venderse a si mismo como esclavo. A su vez, el modelo de equilibrio general competitivo de la teoria econömica neocläsica no opone ningün argumento contra el contrato de esclavitud entre humanos. AI tratar el factor trabajo como un factor mäs, cualquier restricciön a la libre venta de los servicios futuros llevaria a una situaciön suböptima. Pero ocurre que la esclavizaciön voluntaria es ilegal, y lo es porque el ejercicio del derecho de autopropiedad irrestricto no otorga mäs autonomia substancial, sino menos. Para que las personas puedan ser autönomas deben gozar de derechos de existencia (de ciudadarria, econömicos y demäs) inalienables. La teoria de Nozick y el modelo del equilibrio general competitivo no respetan esta condiciön esencial, lo cual las convierte en normativamente indeseables.