The question of human communication is a central one for Social Sciences : the problems raised by the notion of communication in general are interesting and important by themselves, but there maybe something more when the communication process takes place between entities of high cognitive level, which is typically the case when human communicates. Then, epistemological questions abound ; to me...

Some analysts have criticized Friedrich Hayek’s theory of cultural evolution for implying that the rules, customs, norms, and institutions that emerge from the evolutionary process are necessarily efficient or desirable in all cases. This charge is unfounded. The present article defends Hayek versus his critics in two ways: First, it restates Hayek’s own objections to the idea that cultural evo...

This paper describes a survey of normative agent-based social simulation models. These models are examined from the perspective of the foundations of social theory. Agent-based modelling contributes to the research program of methodological individualism. Norms are a central concept in the role theoretic concept of action in the tradition of Durkheim and Parsons. This paper investigates to what...

BACKGROUND Over the past decade, the World Health Organization (WHO) has implemented a standardized, evidence-informed guideline development process to assure technically sound and policy-relevant guidelines. This study is an independent evaluation of the adaptability of the guidelines produced by the Evidence and Programme Guidance unit, at the Department of Nutrition for Health and Developmen...

A variety of theories in the social science, as profound as they may seem, cannot break away from “either-or” dualism. In which, many of them assume dualistic substantialisms in terms of the dichotomies like: methodological individualism vs. methodological collectivism; positivistic sociology vs. intepretivist sociology; agency vs. structure, and so on. In addition to that, there is also anothe...

i agree entirely with nir eyal’s perspective that denying treatment to obese patients is morally wrong. however, the reasons for this belief differ in some ways from eyal’s analysis. in this commentary, i will try to explain the similarities and differences in our perspectives. my primary claim is that the denial of treatment to obese patients is wrong principally because (i) it eschews a whole...

while the conventional dea based production plans aim to minimize all the inputs consumption and maximize all the outputs production, there are many real world production systems may also generate undesirable by-products. one methodological difficulty associated with the previous dea-based production planning models is how to incorporate undesirable factors in the planning models, while the sim...

In the last two decades, a large number of national and international treatment guidelines have been developed, to assist practioners in making decisions based on available evidence. However, according to a survey of schizophrenia practice guidelines for example [1], the methodological quality of the most guidelines was at best moderate. Hence, national and international institutions attempted ...