Intentionality in Nature. Against an All-Encompassing Evolutionary Paradigm: Evolutionary and Cognitive Processes are not Instances of the Same Process

Three examples of theoretical analysis of evolutionary processes are presented. It is shown that the mechanisms involved have little to do with cognitive processes except for superficial and formal analogies. That is the case not only for classical models of adaptive evolution (example I), but also for more recent ones (exanples II and HI) making use of neural network computation and self-organization theories.
Recent works on functional self-organization exhibiting some features of intentionality are discussed in this context. It is argued that Dennett's (or other) intentional stance cannot be used as a theoretical framework common to human prepositional attitudes, animal behaviour and adaptive (or non-adaptive) evolution. Indeed, a physical theory of intentionality could account, at least in principle, for the production of intentional self-organizing systems. However, except for a renewed theological "argument from design", there is no justification to attribute intentionality to evolutionary processes and "Mother Nature", for the reason that they have produced organisms endowed with intentional psycholinguistic capabilities.     

Can Multinational Corporations Afford to Ignore the Global Common Good?1

Contemporary advances in the fields of globalization and technologies raise the question of the relationship between international business and the global common good. Half of the hundred biggest economies in the world are now corporations. Nation‐states were traditionally viewed as the guarantors of the common good; however, the current historical stage is marked by the waning of the role of government, and reveals an emerging situation characterized by a co‐responsibility of multiple agents in this respect. Three major evolutions are likely to induce multinational corporations (MNCs) to take the global common good into account: the imperative of the preservation of our biosphere, the rise of an anti‐globalization sentiment with all its potential consequences, and the necessity to design a global social contract. Besides, these three phenomena are interconnected, which adds to the pressure on MNCs to change their policies.     

PRICE-QUANTITY ADJUSTMENTS IN A MACRO-DISEQUILIBRIUM MODEL

This paper studies the dynamic properties of a simple macro-economic model where exchange takes place outside equilibrium. It introduces an explicit treatment of the way the economic agents form sales expectations over time and specifies price and wages adjustments. This allows an analysis of the price-quantity dynamics of an ongoing Neo-Keynesian economy. The global stability properties of the full employment equilibrium are established although Keynesian results characterize the short run. Unemployment equilibria can only occur when extreme cases of pessimistic expectations are considered.