Esta tese tem como objetivo estudar a paraconsistentização de lógicas, que consiste em encontrar, para uma dada lógica, sua contraparte paraconsistente. A estratégia geral utilizada para tal tarefa é: ao encontrar premissas inconsistentes, faça inferências a partir de seus subconjuntos consistentes. Para isso, foram desenvolvidos dois métodos de paraconsistentização. O primeiro consiste na utilização do arcabouço teórico da Teoria de Categorias, enquanto que o segundo faz uso da teoria da prova e da noção de estruturas valorativas. Após a apresentação dos métodos, algumas propriedades formais de ambas as propostas foram investigadas. Em particular, provou-se que a paraconsistentização preserva correção e completude, isto é, se a lógica inicial for correta e completa, sua contraparte paraconsistente também o será. Também foram estabelecidas as condições suficientes que uma lógica deve satisfazer para poder ser paraconsistentizada. A partir destes resultados, os dois métodos propostos foram comparados com outras abordagens desenvolvidas para raciocinar a partir de conjuntos inconsistentes. Por fim, a tese analisa o debate entre pluralismo e monismo lógico investigando, especificamente, as contribuições da paraconsistentização para tal discussão. / This thesis aims to study the paraconsistentization of logics, which consists in finding, for a given logic, its paraconsistent counterpart. The general strategy used for this task is the following: when finding inconsistent premises, one must draw inferences from its consistent subsets. For this, two methods of paraconsistentization were developed. The first consists in using the framework of Category Theory, while the second one makes use of proof theory and the notion of valuation structure. After their presentation, some formal properties of both proposals were investigated. In particular, it was proved that paraconsistentization preserves soundness and completeness, that is, if the initial logic is sound and complete, its paraconsistent counterpart will also be. The sufficient conditions that a logic must satisfy in order for it to be paraconsistentized were also established. From these results, the two proposed methods were compared with other approaches developed to reason from inconsistent sets. Finally, the thesis analyses the debate between pluralism and logical monism investigating, specifically, the contributions of paraconsistentization to this discussion.

Software maintenance and evolution is arguably a lengthy and expensive phase in the life cycle of a software system. A critical issue at this phase is change propagation: given a set of primary changes that have been made to software, what additional secondary changes are needed to maintain consistency between software artefacts? Although many approaches have been proposed, automated change propagation is still a significant technical challenge in software maintenance and evolution. Our objective is to provide tool support for assisting designers in propagating changes during the process of maintaining and evolving models. We propose a novel, agent-oriented, approach that works by repairing violations of desired consistency rules in a design model. Such consistency constraints are specified using the Object Constraint Language (OCL) and the Unified Modelling Language (UML) metamodel, which form the key inputs to our change propagation framework. The underlying change propagation mechanism of our framework is based on the well-known Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) agent architecture. Our approach represents change options for repairing inconsistencies using event-triggered plans, as is done in BDI agent platforms. This naturally reflects the cascading nature of change propagation, where each change (primary or secondary) can require further changes to be made. We also propose a new method for generating repair plans from OCL consistency constraints. Furthermore, a given inconsistency will typically have a number of repair plans that could be used to restore consistency, and we propose a mechanism for semi-automatically selecting between alternative repair plans. This mechanism, which is based on a notion of cost, takes into account cascades (where fixing the violation of a constraint breaks another constraint), and synergies between constraints (where fixing the violation of a constraint also fixes another violated constraint). Finally, we report on an evaluation of the approach, covering both effectiveness and efficiency.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Philosophy, Interpretation and Culture Program, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

<p>This thesis consists of three self-contained essays. The first two essays address the consumption of culture and are closely related in terms of the theoretical framework used. The third essay is a separate analysis of international trade and competition.</p><p>The studies of culture are motivated by the special treatment of culture consumption in most modern societies: there are usually large, government-provided subsidies, the aim of which is to stimulate both the production and the consumption of culture. The purpose of the present work is to explore reasons for this special treatment. Using a stylized theoretical framework, the essays contrast culture with another, generic, good or activity. Culture is thus regarded as an "experience good": previous consumption of the good enhances the current appreciation of the good. The generic good is one where experience is assumed not to be at all relevant for the appreciation of the good. For experience goods, decisions made today will influence future utility and future choices. This makes the intertemporal preferences essential. If, in particular, consumers have time-inconsistent preferences of the type that can be characterized as a present-bias---modeled with "multiple selves" using quasi-geometric discounting---as opposed to standard, time-consistent preferences, there will be a case for government subsidies. The first essay explores this possibility in detail in a framework where experience is mainly of importance in the short run. The second essay then studies cases where experience is more potent and can cause persistent diversity in culture consumption across individuals.</p><p>"Culture and Control: Should There Be Large Subsidies to Culture?" studies the circumstances under which public support for culture is warranted. A policy example is designed to illustrate important aspects of public support systems currently in place, and is calibrated to Swedish data. The essay concludes that, given present-biased agents with self-control problems, public support of culture can work as a commitment device and improve long-run welfare. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that welfare-maximizing subsidies to culture can be substantial if the present-bias is profound and the taste-cultivation property of culture consumption is pronounced.</p><p>"Origins of the Diversity of Culture Consumption" analyzes the diversity of culture consumption among individuals. If the culture good and the generic good are sufficiently close substitutes in a static sense, very large and persistent differences in the consumption of highbrow culture across consumers can be explained by differences in initial experience levels alone. Moreover, slight differences in preferences and time endowments can cause significant diversity between individuals, both in the long- and short-run levels of culture consumption. In addition, if consumers have time-inconsistent preferences, further diversity can be rationalized. If there is a present-bias, there may also be Pareto-ranked multiple equilibria with "optimism" and "pessimism": high (low) culture consumption of the current self is rationalized, based on the belief that future culture consumption will be high (low).</p><p>"Has international competition increased? Estimates of residual demand elasticities in export markets" studies the impact of the last decades of intense economic integration on the competitive conduct of Swedish export industries. The functional relationship between the inverted residual demand elasticity and the Lerner index is used to estimate markups in eight industries. The econometric evidence suggests a deviation from competitive behavior in all industries. Moreover, the results demonstrate a trend of decreasing market power.</p>

This thesis consists of three self-contained essays. The first two essays address the consumption of culture and are closely related in terms of the theoretical framework used. The third essay is a separate analysis of international trade and competition. The studies of culture are motivated by the special treatment of culture consumption in most modern societies: there are usually large, government-provided subsidies, the aim of which is to stimulate both the production and the consumption of culture. The purpose of the present work is to explore reasons for this special treatment. Using a stylized theoretical framework, the essays contrast culture with another, generic, good or activity. Culture is thus regarded as an "experience good": previous consumption of the good enhances the current appreciation of the good. The generic good is one where experience is assumed not to be at all relevant for the appreciation of the good. For experience goods, decisions made today will influence future utility and future choices. This makes the intertemporal preferences essential. If, in particular, consumers have time-inconsistent preferences of the type that can be characterized as a present-bias---modeled with "multiple selves" using quasi-geometric discounting---as opposed to standard, time-consistent preferences, there will be a case for government subsidies. The first essay explores this possibility in detail in a framework where experience is mainly of importance in the short run. The second essay then studies cases where experience is more potent and can cause persistent diversity in culture consumption across individuals. "Culture and Control: Should There Be Large Subsidies to Culture?" studies the circumstances under which public support for culture is warranted. A policy example is designed to illustrate important aspects of public support systems currently in place, and is calibrated to Swedish data. The essay concludes that, given present-biased agents with self-control problems, public support of culture can work as a commitment device and improve long-run welfare. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that welfare-maximizing subsidies to culture can be substantial if the present-bias is profound and the taste-cultivation property of culture consumption is pronounced. "Origins of the Diversity of Culture Consumption" analyzes the diversity of culture consumption among individuals. If the culture good and the generic good are sufficiently close substitutes in a static sense, very large and persistent differences in the consumption of highbrow culture across consumers can be explained by differences in initial experience levels alone. Moreover, slight differences in preferences and time endowments can cause significant diversity between individuals, both in the long- and short-run levels of culture consumption. In addition, if consumers have time-inconsistent preferences, further diversity can be rationalized. If there is a present-bias, there may also be Pareto-ranked multiple equilibria with "optimism" and "pessimism": high (low) culture consumption of the current self is rationalized, based on the belief that future culture consumption will be high (low). "Has international competition increased? Estimates of residual demand elasticities in export markets" studies the impact of the last decades of intense economic integration on the competitive conduct of Swedish export industries. The functional relationship between the inverted residual demand elasticity and the Lerner index is used to estimate markups in eight industries. The econometric evidence suggests a deviation from competitive behavior in all industries. Moreover, the results demonstrate a trend of decreasing market power.

Measuring public opinion on abortion is an ongoing concern for political scientists, mainly because the public does not always exhibit fixed attitudes on such topics. Most citizens express a centrist viewpoint between the pro choice and pro life extremes. These include a small group whose answers to abortion questions are so inconsistent that they give public officials an inaccurate measure of public opinion on this important issue. Inconsistent responses may result from context effects, such as the order in which the questions are asked or the way they are asked. Usually, researchers ask a battery of questions in which respondents say whether they approve of abortion generally and under a variety of circumstances, citing the reasons for which a woman might seek an abortion. This project includes an independent national survey using questions adopted from the General Social Survey. The sample is divided into four experimental groups with different question orders. Based on these findings, the recommended question order would be the one with the general question last and the remaining specific questions in a somewhat random pattern alternating between the so-called “hard” and “easy” individual abortion situations. One of the more surprising findings is that people didn’t recognize themselves as subtracting the specific situations from the general question when it was asked first; hardly any said that was what they were doing when they gave inconsistent answers. Otherwise, about an equal number of respondents admitted answering the questions off the top of their heads as those who showed ambivalence by claiming they were deeply committed to their inconsistent responses. The study found most people who inconsistent on abortion are moderates leaning towards pro choice. Also, politically conservative regular church-goers can be just as inconsistent on abortion as the non-religious, non-political, low-educated non-church goers, especially if they are basically pro choice. Without a full understanding of who is generating inconsistent answers on abortion, some researchers may be tempted to eliminate these respondents from their sample. This research should allow them to understand these respondents better and develop better question wording and question orders to reduce their numbers.

This dissertation consists of three empirical essays on distortions in labor market outcomes in developing countries. Chapter 1 tests for downward nominal wage rigidity in markets for casual daily agricultural labor. It examines responses to rainfall shocks in 500 Indian districts from 1956-2008. First, nominal wages rise in response to positive shocks but do not fall during droughts. Second, after transitory positive shocks have dissipated, nominal wages do not fall back down. Third, inflation moderates these effects. Fourth, rigidities lower employment: landless laborers experience a 6% reduction in employment in the year after positive shocks. Fifth, consistent with separation failures, rationing leads to increased labor supply to small farms. New survey evidence suggests that agricultural workers and employers view nominal wage cuts as unfair and believe that they reduce effort. Chapter 2 (with Michael Kremer and Sendhil Mullainathan) describes the results of a field experiment that tests for self-control problems in labor supply. First, we find that workers will choose dominated contracts—which pay less for every output level but have a steeper slope—to motivate themselves. Second, effort increases significantly as workers’ (randomly assigned) payday gets closer. Third, the demand for dominated contracts (and their benefits) is concentrated amongst those with the highest payday effects. Finally, as workers gain experience, they appear to learn about their self control problems: the correlation between the payday effect and the demand for the dominated contract grows with experience. These results together suggest that self-control, in this context at least, meaningfully alters the firm’s contracting problem. Chapter 3 empirically examines the impact of multiple market failures on allocative efficiency in farm production in poor countries. In years when labor rationing is more likely in villages (due to wage rigidity), there is a 63% increase in sharecropped and leased land by small farmers. This is consistent with the prediction that distortions from a failure in one market can be reduced by reallocating other factors of production. In areas with worse credit access, there is less land adjustment in response to labor rationing. These results provide evidence for separation failures resulting from multiple missing markets.

For many decisions validation of their outcomes is invariably problematic to objectively assess. Therefore to aid analysis and validation of decision outcomes, approaches which provide improved traceability and more semantically meaningful measurements of the decision process are required. Hence, this research investigates traceability, transparency, interactivity and auditability to improve the decision making process. Approaches and evaluation measures are proposed to facilitate a richer decision making experience. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) seeks to determine the suitability of alternatives of a goal with respect to multiple criteria. A key component of prominent MCDA methods is the concept of pairwise comparison. For a set of elements, pairwise comparison enables an accurate and transparent extraction and codification of a decision maker’s preferences, though facilitating a separation of concerns. From a set of pairwise comparisons, a ranking of the elements under consideration can be calculated. There are scenarios when a set of pairwise comparisons undergo alteration, both for individual and multiple decision makers. A set of measures of compromise are proposed to quantify the alteration that a set of pairwise comparisons undergo in such scenarios. The measures seek to provide a decision maker with meaningful knowledge regarding how their views have altered. A set of pairwise comparisons may be inconsistent. When inconsistency is present it adversely affects a ranking of the elements derived from the comparisons. Moreover inconsistency within pairwise comparisons used for consideration of more than a handful of elements is almost inevitable. Existing approaches that seek to alter a set of comparisons to reduce inconsistency lack traceability, flexibility, and specific consideration of alteration to the judgments in a way that is meaningful to a decision maker. An approach to inconsistency reduction is proposed that seeks to address these issues. For many decisions the opinions of multiple decision makers are utilized, either to avail of their combined expertise or to incorporate conflicting views. Aggregation of multiple decision makers’ pairwise companions seek to combine the views of the group into a single representation of views. An approach to group aggregation of pairwise comparisons is proposed that models compromise between the decision makers, facilitates decision maker constraints, considers inconsistency reduction during aggregation and dynamically incorporates decision maker weights of importance. With internet access becoming widespread being able to garner the views of a large group of decision makers’ views has become feasible. An approach to the aggregation of a large group of decision makers’ preferences is proposed. The approach facilitates understanding regarding both the agreement and conflict within the group during calculation of an overall group consensus. A Multi-Objective Optimisation Decision Software (MOODS) prototype tool has been developed that implements both the new measures of compromise and the proposed approaches to inconsistency reduction and group aggregation.

Jus cogens is a mysterious body of international law. It comprises legal standards which are thought to be superior to those in ordinary international law, namely, international treaties, customary international law, and general principles of law. The title of this study 'Conflicts with Jus Cogens in International Lawa' condenses its main aims. The study examines conflict-situations between jus cogens rules and rules of ordinary international law. The study is divided into four Parts. Part I clarifies what jus cogens status means and how jus cogens rules are made. Part II analyses some of the different ways in which legal rules come into conflict with each other. I seek to push the boundaries of our understanding of legal conflict, and I also construct a typology of legal conflict. In Part III, I apply the analysis of conflict in Part II to the jus cogens context by identifying and classifying situations where rules of ordinary international conflict with jus cogens rules. Finally, Part IV explores the consequences of the conflicts with jus cogens which were identified in Part III. What we see is that the consequences of these conflicts are varied. Most strikingly, however, we find that in some cases jus cogens rules are being defeated by rules of ordinary international law. This challenges the orthodox thinking that jus cogens rules are straightforwardly superior to ordinary international law, in the sense that they always prevail in conflict-situations. But while the conclusion of the study may seem radical, it is informed by theoretical writing about law and about how rules conflict. Ultimately, the study seeks to improve our understanding of jus cogens rules in international law, as well as the more general problem of how legal rules conflict with each other.

Les ontologies sont utilisées pour la représentation et l’interrogation de connaissances d’un domaine précis et peuvent être représentées en partie à l’aide des logiques de description légères. Ces ontologies peuvent être issues de plusieurs sources dont les données sont plus ou moins complétés, ainsi certaines données peuvent être incomplètes ou incohérentes empêchant la déduction d’autres données. L’Answer Set Programming (ASP) est un langage de programmation logique non-monotone à base de règles permettant de représenter des données incomplètes mais il ne permet pas de représenter les logiques de description légères. Les règles existentielles généralisent les logiques de description légères et forment aussi un langage de programmation logique mais ne permettant pas la définition d’exceptions. A partir d’une étude théorique d’ASP et des règles existentielles nous proposons de regrouper en un seul formalisme ces deux langages, nous définissons le formalisme des programmes non-monotones existentiels permettant de traiter un programme provenant d’une ontologie avec exceptions. Cette extension a pour but de généraliser à la fois ASP et les règles existentielles et d’utiliser la puissance des solveurs ASP pour raisonner sur des ontologies avec exceptions. Cette étude propose d’approfondir les travaux sur la décidabilité d’un programme avec l’extension aux programmes non-monotones existentiels. Nous proposons aussi d’améliorer les résultats lies à l’interrogation d’un programme ASP ainsi qu’une implémentation d’une extension du solveur ASPeRiX pour traiter les programmes non-monotones existentiels. / Ontologies are meant to represent or to queryknowledge from a precise domain and can berepresented, in part, by logic formalisms such thatdescription logics. These ontologies can be providedby several sources where knowledge is more or lesscomplete, hence some data can be incomplete orincoherent preventing the deduction of other data.Answer Set Programming (ASP) formalism is anon-monotonic logic programming language based onrules, often used in knowledge representation, whichhas the feature to represent incomplete data.However, it’s impossible to represent lite descriptionlogics in ASP, because of existential variables in rules.Existential rules generalize lite description logics andalso form a programmation logic language that butdoesn’t offer the possibility to represent exceptions.Based on a theoritical study of ASP and existentialrules, we propose to gather both languages in aunique formalism, we define non-monotonic existentialprogram allowing to deal with ontology withexceptions. This extension aims to generalize bothASP and existential rules program and to use theefficiency of ASP solvers to reason on ontologies withexceptions. This thesis propose to deepen worksabout entailment and decidability of a non-monotonicexistential program. Another result from this study isthe improvement of interrogation in ASP and theimplementation of an extension of the ASPeRiX solverto deal with non-monotonic existential programs.