Dans cette thèse, nous défendons l'idée que la motivation à se distinguer d'autrui (et plus précisément, le besoin d'unicité) pourrait favoriser l'adoption et l'augmentation des croyances aux théories du complot. Cette relation s'expliquerait par le fait que les individus ayant un fort besoin d'unicité auraient davantage tendance à être attirés par ce qui rare ou inaccessible, et nous argumentons que c'est justement ce qui caractérise les récits conspirationnistes (e.g., impression de détenir des informations secrètes). Nous présenterons 12 études ayant pour but de tester empiriquement cette hypothèse.Parmi les principaux résultats, nous avons montré que les individus disposant d'un niveau de croyances aux théories du complot supérieur à la moyenne pensent avoir un niveau de croyances à ces théories supérieur à celui attribué aux autres (Etudes 4, 5 et 6), ce qui correspond à un prérequis nécessaire à la formulation de notre hypothèse. Nous avons ensuite mis en évidence que plus les personnes possèdent un fort besoin d'unicité, plus elles croient aux théories du complot (Etude 8). Conformément à notre hypothèse, nous avons également démontré que les personnes qui croient aux théories du complot ont plus tendance à penser détenir des informations rares et secrètes à propos de divers complots (Etude 9). Une méta-analyse conduite sur deux études testant le rôle causal du besoin d'unicité sur les croyances aux théories du complot (Etudes 11 et 12) suggère enfin qu'une hausse situationnelle du besoin d'unicité favoriserait la formation des croyances aux théories du complot.Dans l'ensemble, il semblerait donc que le besoin d'unicité intervienne dans l'adoption des croyances aux théories du complot, même si cet effet semble de taille relativement modeste. En conclusion, cette thèse fait partie des rares travaux soulignant le rôle des explications motivationnelles dans l'adhésion aux théories du complot. / In this thesis, we argue that the desire to be different from others (i.e., the need for uniqueness) would foster the adoption and increase of conspiracy beliefs. This relationship may be due to the fact that people with high need for uniqueness are more likely to be attracted by what is scarce and unavailable. We argue that scarcity and unavailability specifically characterizes conspiracy narratives (e.g., the conviction to hold secret information). We present 12 studies testing empirically this hypothesis.Among our main results, we show that people with high level of beliefs in conspiracy theories think that they have a higher level of beliefs in these theories compared to others (Studies 4, 5 and 6), that is a necessary prerequisite to our hypothesis. Then, we highlighted that people with a high need for uniqueness believe more in conspiracy theories (Study 8). According to our hypothesis, we also demonstrate that high believers in conspiracy theories are more likely to think that they possess secret information about various conspiracies (Study 9). A meta-analysis conducted on two studies testing the causal role of need for uniqueness on conspiracy beliefs (Studies 11 and 12) suggests that a situation in which need for uniqueness is enhanced increases people's conspiracy beliefs.Taken together, these studies suggest that the need for uniqueness plays a role in the endorsement of conspiracy theories, although the effect size seems relatively modest. To conclude, this thesis is one of the few works devoted to exploring the role of motivational explanations for conspiracy beliefs.

abstract: This dissertation consists of three essays, each of which closely relates to epistemic norms for rational doxastic states. The central issue is whether epistemic rationality is impermissive or not: For any total evidence E, is there a unique doxastic state that any possible agent with that total evidence E should take (Uniqueness), or not (Permissivism)? “Conservatism and Uniqueness”: Conservatism is the idea that an agent’s beliefs should be stable as far as possible when she undergoes a learning experience. Uniqueness is the idea that any given body of total evidence uniquely determines what it is rational to believe. Epistemic Impartiality is the idea that you should not give special treatment to your beliefs solely because they are yours. I construe Epistemic Impartiality as a meta-principle governing epistemic norms, and argue that it is compatible with Conservatism. Then I show that if Epistemic Impartiality is correct, Conservatism and Uniqueness go together; each implies the other. “Cognitive Decision Theory and Permissive Rationality”: In recent epistemology, philosophers have deployed a decision theoretic approach to justify various epistemic norms. A family of such accounts is known as Cognitive Decision Theory. According to Cognitive Decision Theory, rational beliefs are those with maximum expected epistemic value. How does Cognitive Decision Theory relate to the debate over permissive rationality? As one way of addressing this question, I present and assess an argument against Cognitive Decision Theory. “Steadfastness, Deference, and Permissive Rationality”: Recently, Benjamin Levinstein has offered two interesting arguments concerning epistemic norms and epistemic peer disagreement. In his first argument, Levinstein claims that a tension between Permissivism and steadfast attitudes in the face of epistemic peer disagreement generally leads us to conciliatory attitudes; in his second argument, he argues that, given an ‘extremely weak version of a deference principle,’ Permissivism collapses into Uniqueness. However, in this chapter, I show that both arguments fail. This result supports the following claim: we should treat steadfast attitudes and at least some versions of a deference principle as viable positions in the discussion about several types of Permissivism, because they are compatible with any type of Permissivism. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Philosophy 2016

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-15T11:46:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 425597 bytes, checksum: 2cb5c42e376ba77764139fbc3fcdaf15 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-07-02 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / We consider the semilinear heat equation involving gradient terms in a bounded domain of Rn. It is assumed the non-linearity is globally Lipschitz. We prove that the system is approximately controllable when the control acts on a bounded subset of the domain. The proof uses a variant of a classical fixed point method and is a simpler alternative to the earlier proof existing in the literature by means of the penalization of an optimal control problem. We also prove that the control may be built so that, in addition to the approximate controllability requirement, it ensures that the state reaches exactly a finite number of constraints. / Consideremos a equação do calor semilinear envolvendo termos do gradiente em um domínio limitado do Rn. Assumimos que a não-linearidade é globalmente Lipschtz. Usando o método do ponto fixo, provamos que o sistema é finito-aproximadamente controlável e nulamente controlável, quando o controle age em um subconjunto não vazio do domínio.

Cremos poder propor algumas articulações no campo político da filosofia espinosana a partir de uma análise aprofundada do conceito de indivíduo e de sua realidade nesta filosofia. Salientaremos o papel fulcral desse conceito na compreensão da natureza necessária da totalidade, enquanto produção pela substância de infinitas coisas que expressam de infinitos modos a sua potência infinita. Nessa articulação, enfrentaremos problemas referentes à real unidade do indivíduo, da perspectiva de sua natureza relacional, natureza esta que nos permite compreender melhor a formação do campo político em Espinosa e porque a realidade individual neste campo possibilita a ele superar algumas análises que afirmam, explicíta ou implicitamente, alguma ruptura intrínseca à formação social e a descontinuidade da causalidade eficiente individual, justamente por tais análises não levarem tão longe a realidade do indivíduo. / We believe we can propose some joints in the political philosophy Espinoza from a thorough analysis of the concept of the individual and their reality in this philosophy. Salientaremos the central role of this concept in understanding the nature of the required total, while production of the substance of infinite things in infinite ways to express their infinite power. In this connection, we face problems relating to the real unity of the individual, the prospect of its relational nature, nature that allows us to better understand the formation of the political field in Spinoza and because the individual reality in this field enables him to overcome some analyzes that claim, the explicit or implicitly, some disruption to the social formation and the intrinsic discontinuity of efficient causality individual, precisely because such analyzes do not take so far the reality of the individual.

Orientador: Marcelo Martins dos Santos / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Matematica, Estatistica e Computação Cientifica / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-13T14:33:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Entringer_ArianePiovezan_M.pdf: 25485247 bytes, checksum: 0f3ef257e85aae26b1d7bbc1ef29bcc2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / Resumo: Este trabalho consiste de uma exposição detalhada do resultado provado no artigo Uniqueness of Weak Solutions of the Navier-Stokes Equations of Multidimensional, Compressible Flow de D. Hoff (SIAM J. Math. Anal - 2006) sobre a unicidade de solução fraca e a dependência contínua da solução fraca nos dados iniciais para as equações de Navier-Stokes para fluídos compressíveis...Observação: O resumo, na integra, podera ser visualizado no texto completo da tese digital / Abstract: Uniqueness of Weak Solutions of the Navier-Stokes Equations of Multidimensional, Compressible Flow of D. Hoff (SIAM J. Math. Anal - 2006) about uniqueness and continuous dependence on initial data of weak solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations of compressible flow...Note: The complete abstract is available with the full electronic digital thesis or dissertations / Mestrado / Mestre em Matemática

Alors que disparaissent les témoins des événements qui ont marqué le XXe siècle, les récits de mémoire contemporains prétendent pallier la menace d’oubli de la violence passée. Ils ne veulent cependant pas se substituer aux récits des disparus, ni simplement transmettre la mémoire des atrocités commises durant les guerres et au sein des camps de concentration : la transmission de la transmissibilité de l’expérience passée demeure leur véritable enjeu. Ces témoignages littéraires, écrits à distance des événements, par des survivants (M.Rigoni Stern, J.Semprun, I.Kertész) ou par des témoins de seconde génération (A.Tabucchi), imposent au genre du témoignage de se retourner sur sa forme et ses ambitions. Le rejet de la violence, jugée inhumaine, se révélant inséparable du devoir de mémoire, ils interrogent les modalités de prise en charge de l’héritage laissé par ce passé récent, et affrontent l’impossible reniement de la violence en l’homme. En dévoilant les limites imposées à la représentation du passé, les témoignages contemporains réévaluent et interrogent le mystère de la distinction posée entre humanité et inhumanité. Le travail de mémoire se révèle ainsi indissociable de la quête d’une donnée permanente sur laquelle la notion d’homme puisse se fonder. Le choix de la fiction pour témoigner, donne une chance d’atteindre une définition de la spécificité humaine par la représentation d’une expérience passée. Facteur d’appropriation de l’héritage, elle autorise la prise en charge de la nature contradictoire de l’homme. Double de l’éthique, elle manifeste le désir humain de donner forme à son existence : l’homme demeurant inlassablement en quête de lui-même. / While the witnesses of the events which have shaped the twentieth century have been disappearing, the contemporary memory’s relations pretend speaking against past violence’s forgetfulness. Although, they aim neither at replacing the missing ones’ relations, nor simply at handing down atrocities’ memory committed during the wars and in concentration camps: the transmission of past experience’s transmissibility is the real stake. These literary statements, written a long time after the happenings, by survivors (M.Rigoni Stern, J.Semprun, I.Kertész) or by second generation’s witnesses (A.Tabucchi), compel statement’s style to rethink its form and its ambitions. The rejection of violence, judged inhuman, appearing tightly bounded to the obligation of remembrance, they question the ownership modalities of this recent past legacy, and confront the impossible denial of violence in human. Also, by revealing the frame imposed to the representation of past, the contemporary testimonials reappraise and question the mystery of the edge between humanity and inhumanity. Memory work therefore proves to be inseparable from the quest for an everlasting base to found the notion of human. Choosing fiction to testimony grants a chance to reach a definition of humanity’s specificity through representation of a past experience. Enabling self-appropriation of the legacy, it allows consideration of the contradictory nature of man. As ethics, it expresses the will in human to shape his being: man remaining relentlessly chasing for himself.

The inverse eigenvalue problem for a given operator is to determine the coefficients by using knowledge of its eigenfunctions and eigenvalues. These are determined by the behavior of the solutions on the domain boundaries. In our problem, the Schrödinger operator acting on functions defined on the unit ball of $\mathbb{R}^3$ has a radial potential taken from $L^2_{\mathbb{R}}[0,1].$ Hence the set of the eigenvalues of this problem is the union of the eigenvalues of infinitely many Sturm-Liouville operators on $[0,1]$ with the Dirichlet boundary conditions. Each Sturm-Liouville operator corresponds to an angular momentum $l =0,1,2....$. In this research we focus on the uniqueness property. This is, if two potentials $p,q \in L^2_{\mathbb{R}}[0,1]$ have the same set of eigenvalues then $p=q.$ An early result of P\"oschel and Trubowitz is that the uniqueness of the potential holds when the potentials are restricted to the subspace of the even functions of $L_{\mathbb{R}}^2[0,1]$ in the $l=0$ case. Similarly when $l=0$, by using their method we proved that two potentials $p,q \in L^2_{\mathbb{R}}[0,1]$ are equal if their even extension on $[-1,1]$ have the same eigenvalues. Also we expect to prove the uniqueness if $p$ and $q$ have the same eigenvalues for finitely many $l.$ For this idea we handle the problem by focusing on some geometric properties of the isospectral sets and trying to use these properties to prove the uniqueness of the radial potential by using finitely many of the angular momentum.

Orientador: Marta Cilene Gadotti / Resumo: Este trabalho tem por objetivo o estudo da teoria básica sobre as Equações Diferenciais Funcionais com Retardamento. Enunciaremos e provaremos os resultados clássicos sobre existência e unicidade de solução. E iremos estudar a existência de soluções oscilatórias para equações autônomas escalares. / Abstract: This paper aims to study the basic theory about the Delay Differential Equations. We will enunciate and prove the classic results on existence and uniqueness of solution. And we will study the existence of oscillatory solutions for scalar autonomous equations. / Mestre

MSc (Mathematics) / Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics / See the attached abstract below

The investigation of positive steady states to reaction diffusion models in bounded domains with Dirichlet boundary conditions has been of great interest since the 1960’s. We study reaction diffusion models where the reaction term is negative at the origin. In the literature, such problems are referred to as semipositone problems and have been studied for the last 30 years. In this dissertation, we extend the theory of semipositone problems to classes of singular semipositone problems where the reaction term has singularities at certain locations in the domain. In particular, we consider problems where the reaction term approaches negative infinity at these locations. We establish several existence results when the domain is a smooth bounded region or an exterior domain. Some uniqueness results are also obtained. Our existence results are achieved by the method of sub and super solutions, while our uniqueness results are proved by establishing a priori estimates and analyzing structural properties of the solution. We also extend many of our results to systems.