abstract: Without scientific expertise, society may make catastrophically poor choices when faced with problems such as climate change. However, scientists who engage society with normative questions face tension between advocacy and the social norms of science that call for objectivity and neutrality. Policy established in 2011 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) required their communication to be objective and neutral and this research comprised a qualitative analysis of IPCC reports to consider how much of their communication is strictly factual (Objective), and value-free (Neutral), and to consider how their communication had changed from 1990 to 2013. Further research comprised a qualitative analysis of structured interviews with scientists and non-scientists who were professionally engaged in climate science communication, to consider practitioner views on advocacy. The literature and the structured interviews revealed a conflicting range of definitions for advocacy versus objectivity and neutrality. The practitioners that were interviewed struggled to separate objective and neutral science from attempts to persuade, and the IPCC reports contained a substantial amount of communication that was not strictly factual and value-free. This research found that science communication often blurred the distinction between facts and values, imbuing the subjective with the authority and credibility of science, and thereby damaging the foundation for scientific credibility. This research proposes a strict definition for factual and value-free as a means to separate science from advocacy, to better protect the credibility of science, and better prepare scientists to negotiate contentious science-based policy issues. The normative dimension of sustainability will likely entangle scientists in advocacy or the appearance of it, and this research may be generalizable to sustainability. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Sustainability 2015

This study analyses the Swedish state and private actors’ efforts to establish trade with the communist government in China, between the years 1949–1964. By examining how the actor’ cooperated through the theory of economic diplomacy the purpose is to establish who was the driving force and how the actor’ argued concerning the establishment of trade relations between the nations. This in relation to the Swedish neutrality and the Swedish dependency on the western market that it relied heavily upon in the postwar economy.The study finds that Sweden was heavily influenced by the western nations in how it developed its trade with China. The state, but also the private actors’ in some instances, feared a retaliation from the USA that would hinder them access to western market. In 1957 Sweden established a trade deal with China, but only after western Europe allowed it. After 1958 the private actor’s abandoned China because of difficulties in trade and left the state in a process of trying to reestablish it. The trade between the nations nearly collapsed but resumed in 1964. The conclusion is that the Swedish state considered the political consequences heavily when evaluating the trade with China and became the driving force in 1955. This was done because the state evaluated that the retaliation wouldn’t be to vigorous, while most of the private actors considered commercial gains instead of political consequences concerning trade with China.

A Justiça como Imparcialidade de Brian Barry propõe uma teoria de justiça imparcial como única solução legítima para uma sociedade encontrar princípios com os quais todos possam consentir. Essa concepção de justiça não pode impor aos indivíduos um comportamento de primeira-ordem. Ao contrário, deve se referir unicamente às instituições e estas devem acomodar as diversas concepções de Bem da sociedade. Se a sociedade for capaz de encontrar tais princípios, então será possível a vida em sociedade com tolerância mútua. Esta dissertação explora as razões de Barry para escolha dessa abordagem e aponta possíveis desafios não resolvidos por sua teoria. / Brian Barrys Justice as Impartiality conceives a theory of impartial justice as the only legitimated solution to a society who wants to find principles according to those everybody might consent. This theory should not impose a first-order behavior to individuals. Moreover, such concept of justice must be impartial in regard to individuals conceptions of good. This dissertation explores the reasons that led Barry to choose this approach, and suggests possible challenges unsolved by his theory.

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / A tese pretende estabelecer o que estaria o mais próximo possível de uma lógica da descoberta para as ciências sociais. A narrativa dessas disciplinas não seria neutra nem objetiva, mas procuraria produzir, retoricamente, os efeitos de neutralidade e objetividade, evitando a heroicização, a vilanização e a vitimização dos agentes. Isso decorreria da necessidade de o cientista social validar sua narrativa perante um auditório ideal ou potencialmente universal, abrigando, em princípio, todo o tipo de valores. Essa pluralidade de visões de mundo não permite que os agentes sejam ingenuamente tratados como heróis, vilões ou vítimas. Com isso, o autor do texto de ciências sociais procuraria simular um ponto de vista de Deus, como ironista supremo, que tudo vê, acima dos participantes imperceptivos de seu relato. Foi feito um estudo de caso a partir do debate sobre populismo no Brasil, no qual foram identificados quatro pontos básicos em torno dos quais girou a controvérsia: o das estruturas prototípicas, o da estruturação imaginária, o da estrutura intersubjetiva e a dinâmica da relação entre grande teoria e pesquisa empírica. / The aim of this thesis is to get as close as possible to a logic of discovery for the social sciences. Those disciplines do not have a neutral and objective narrative, but try to achieve, rhetorically, neutrality and objectivity effects, avoiding to portrait agents as heroes, villains or victims. It follows from the need to validate scientific narratives in face of an ideally or potentially universal auditory, withholding, in principle, all kinds of values. Such plurality of world visions makes it difficult to naively treat agents as heroes, villains, or victims. As a consequence, the social scientist simulates a Gods Eye view, placing himself in a Supreme Ironist perspective, who sees everything from above, whose vision reaches beyond what nonperceptive agents can see. To make my point, I took as case study the Brazilian controversy over populism. Based on it, four main topics of development were identified: one refered to the prototypical theoretic structures, other to its imaginary structuration, another to its intersubjective structure, and a last one to the relationship of empirical research to grand theory.

A presente dissertação busca trabalhar o problema do debate liberal-comunitarista, tomando por base a filosofia política de Charles Taylor. A proposta é a de explicitar alguns dos termos do debate, no tocante à situação do patriotismo, ou virtude republicana, na sociedade moderna e no Estado Liberal dito "neutro". Partindo da filosofia do self de Charles Taylor, a dissertação busca esquematizar as características do self moderno. Esse self, advoga-se, é próprio de um determinado Estado: o Estado Liberal dito "neutro", isto é, "neutro" no sentido de negar privilégios a determinados estilos de vida em detrimento de outros. E esta mesma neutralidade, em contrapartida, seria um espelho das características desse self moderno. Analisa-se as relações desse self moderno com esse Estado liberal dito "neutro", e de como as teorias tipicamente liberais, ou procedimentalistas, segundo Charles Taylor, falham em reconhecer essas relações, levando a crer que o self moderno não contaria com nenhuma fonte moral que o mantivesse ligado à sociedade política, ao Estado liberal dito "neutro" que é, ao mesmo tempo, possibilitador e reflexo desse self moderno. O trabalho busca, por fim, com auxílio da filosofia de Charles Taylor, resgatar a noção de patriotismo, dentro da esfera das virtudes republicanas, a fim de sugerir uma resolução do conflito, reestabelecendo a integridade das relações entre o self moderno e o Estado liberal dito "neutro". Para tanto, foi desenvolvida uma pesquisa bibliográfica com ênfase nas obras de Charles Taylor "Argumentos Filosóficos", "Fontes do Self" e "A Secular Age", com auxílio de outras. Examinou-se profundamente a bibliografia de Charles Taylor a fim de identificar seu método com clareza, para utilizá-lo no presente trabalho. / This dissertation seeks to address the problem of the liberal-communitarian debate, based on the political philosophy of Charles Taylor. The proposal is to clarify some of the terms of the debate regarding the situation of patriotism and the republican virtues in the modern society and the supposedly "neutral" liberal State. Based on the philosophy of self Charles Taylor, the dissertation outlines the characteristics of the modern self. This self, this dissertation advocates, is proper of a particular state: the supposedly "neutral" liberal State, ie, "neutral" in the sense of denying privileges to certain lifestyles over others. And this same neutrality, in contrast, would be a mirror of the characteristics of modern self. The dissertation analyses the relationship of self with that modern liberal state called "neutral", and how typically liberal theories, or proceduralists, according to Charles Taylor, fail to recognize these relationships, leading to the belief that the modern self would not count on any source moral to keep it connected to the political society, the supposedly "neutral" liberal State which is at the same time, enabler and a reflection of modern self. The job search, finally, with the aid of the philosophy of Charles Taylor, to rescue the notion of patriotism, within the sphere of republican virtues, in order to suggest a resolution of the conflict, reestablishing the integrity of relationships between the self and the supposedly "neutral" liberal State. To that end, a bibliographical references research with emphasis on the works of Charles Taylor "Philosophical Arguments", "Sources of the Self" and "A Secular Age" has been developed, with the addition of some others. The works of Charles Taylor have been researched deeply in order to identify clearly his method, to put it in use it in this work.

Esta tese aborda diversos temas em evolução molecular, usando extensivamente o formalismo de funções geratrizes para obter resultados analíticos sempre que possível. Em primeiro lugar, apresenta-se a solução exata para o comportamento dinâmico de uma população infinita de seqüências infinitamente longas (não há mutações reversas) evoluindo sob a ação de mutações deletérias em um relevo adaptativo multiplicativo ou truncado. Além disso, foi estudado o comportamento de uma população submetida a sucessivas diluições de intensidades arbitrárias, como ocorre em alguns protocolos de evolução experimental. Foram obtidas expressões matemáticas que, em princípio, podem ser úteis na caracterização de populações reais de microorganismos. Demonstrou-se também que um processo estocástico de ramificação multidimensional generalizado é uma excelente ferramenta para analisar numericamente os efeitos da degeneração mutacional (especificamente, de um fenômeno denominado catraca de Muller) em populações sob variadas condições de crescimento exponencial. Finalmente, simulações foram extensivamente utilizadas para analisar a história evolutiva de populações finitas e averiguar a possibilidade de certas grandezas, como certas medidas da topologia de árvores genealógicas, serem empregadas na elaboração de testes estatísticos capazes de detectar as marcas deixadas pela seleção natural. / This thesis discusses some topics of molecular evolution, extensively using generating function methods to find analytical results whenever possible. In first place, it gives the exact solution for the dynamics of an infinite population of infinitely long sequences (no back mutations) evolving under the action of deleterious mutations on either multiplicative or truncated fitness landscapes. In addition, the behavior of a population subject to successive dilutions of arbitrary intensity, just like some experimental evolution protocols, is found. The mathematical expressions, in principle, may prove useful in characterizing real populations of microor¬ganisms. It was also demonstrated that a generalized multidimensional branching process is a nice tool in numerically studying mutational degeneration effects (specifically a pheno¬menon called Muller\'s ratchet) in populations under a wide variety of exponential growth settings. Finally, the evolutionary history of finite populations was studied by simulations to probe the viability of certain statistic, like some topological measures in genealogical trees, being incorporated in statistical tests to detect the fingerprints of natural selection.

As bases moleculares da diversidade fenotipica dentro de espécies são de grande interesse aos biólogos evolutivos porque a evolução morfológica adaptival depende da seleção de variantes genéticas. Entretanto, há poucos exemplos da variação fenotípica cuja a base molecular é compreendida, especialmente entre animais vertebrados. Biólogos em geral concordam que o processo da seleção natural é a fonte predominante de diversificação morfológica. Tem sido documentado previamente que existe diversificação adaptativa da morfologia craniana entre os taxa mais elevados de Platyrrhini e também em espécies e em muitos géneros, que aparentemente diversificaram na morfologia do crânio por seleção natural. O hormônio de crescimento (GH) é um hormônio multifunctional, produzido principalmente pela glândula pituitária de todos os animais vertebrados para regular o metabolismo e para promover o crescimento pos-natal linear. A evolução molecular do GH foi estudada extensivamente em um grande número espécies de vertebrados, incluindo primatas. A evolução rápida do gene do GH em primatas, especiamente em regiões funcionalmente importantes, sugere a seleção darwiniana positiva. Entretanto, o relaxamento da seleção purificadora depois de múltiplas duplicações do locus GH não podem ser descartadas. O objetivo deste estudo era investigar a evolução molecular do gene do GH em primatas neotropicais, tentando identificar diferenças potenciais e funcionais entre taxa. As análises de máxima verossimilhança deste trabalho mostraram que a relação dN/dS no gene GH1 de primatas de Neotropicais é diferente entre gêneros, demonstrando que a evolução do GH1 no Platyrrhini não é compatível com o modelo neutro da evolução molecular. Estes resultados sugerem que o gene GH1 está sobre seleção positiva em alguns sítios na proteína durante o processo de diversificação dos primatas de Neotropical. / The molecular bases of phenotipic diversity within and between species are of great interest to evolutionary biologists because the adaptive morphological evolution depends on the selection of genetics variants. However, there are few examples of phenotypic variation whose molecular basis is understood, especially among vertebrates, while most biologists agree that the natural selection process is the predominant source of morphological diversification. Is has been previously documented that there is adaptive diversification of cranial morphology among the higher taxa of Platyrrhini and also in species in most genera that apparently diversified in skull morphology by natural selection. The Growth Hormone (GH) is a multifunctional hormone, mainly produced by the pituitary gland of all vertebrates to modulate the metabolism and promote linear postnatal growth. The molecular evolution of GH has been extensively studied in a large number of vertebrate species, including primates. The rapid GH gene evolution on primates, especially on sites that are functionally important, suggest positive Darwinian selection. However, the hypothesis of purifying selection relaxation after multiple duplications of the GH locus cannot be ruled out either. The aim of this study was to investigate the molecular evolution of the GH gene on neotropical primates, trying to identify potential and functional differences between taxa. The analyses of Maximum likelihood of this work has shown that the ratio dN/dS in the GH1 gene of Neotropical primates are different among genera, demonstrating that the evolution of the GH1 in the Platyrrhini is not compatible with the neutral model of molecular evolution. These results suggest that the GH1 gene suffered positive selection at some sites inside the protein during the process of diversification of the Neotropical primates.

A presente dissertação busca trabalhar o problema do debate liberal-comunitarista, tomando por base a filosofia política de Charles Taylor. A proposta é a de explicitar alguns dos termos do debate, no tocante à situação do patriotismo, ou virtude republicana, na sociedade moderna e no Estado Liberal dito "neutro". Partindo da filosofia do self de Charles Taylor, a dissertação busca esquematizar as características do self moderno. Esse self, advoga-se, é próprio de um determinado Estado: o Estado Liberal dito "neutro", isto é, "neutro" no sentido de negar privilégios a determinados estilos de vida em detrimento de outros. E esta mesma neutralidade, em contrapartida, seria um espelho das características desse self moderno. Analisa-se as relações desse self moderno com esse Estado liberal dito "neutro", e de como as teorias tipicamente liberais, ou procedimentalistas, segundo Charles Taylor, falham em reconhecer essas relações, levando a crer que o self moderno não contaria com nenhuma fonte moral que o mantivesse ligado à sociedade política, ao Estado liberal dito "neutro" que é, ao mesmo tempo, possibilitador e reflexo desse self moderno. O trabalho busca, por fim, com auxílio da filosofia de Charles Taylor, resgatar a noção de patriotismo, dentro da esfera das virtudes republicanas, a fim de sugerir uma resolução do conflito, reestabelecendo a integridade das relações entre o self moderno e o Estado liberal dito "neutro". Para tanto, foi desenvolvida uma pesquisa bibliográfica com ênfase nas obras de Charles Taylor "Argumentos Filosóficos", "Fontes do Self" e "A Secular Age", com auxílio de outras. Examinou-se profundamente a bibliografia de Charles Taylor a fim de identificar seu método com clareza, para utilizá-lo no presente trabalho. / This dissertation seeks to address the problem of the liberal-communitarian debate, based on the political philosophy of Charles Taylor. The proposal is to clarify some of the terms of the debate regarding the situation of patriotism and the republican virtues in the modern society and the supposedly "neutral" liberal State. Based on the philosophy of self Charles Taylor, the dissertation outlines the characteristics of the modern self. This self, this dissertation advocates, is proper of a particular state: the supposedly "neutral" liberal State, ie, "neutral" in the sense of denying privileges to certain lifestyles over others. And this same neutrality, in contrast, would be a mirror of the characteristics of modern self. The dissertation analyses the relationship of self with that modern liberal state called "neutral", and how typically liberal theories, or proceduralists, according to Charles Taylor, fail to recognize these relationships, leading to the belief that the modern self would not count on any source moral to keep it connected to the political society, the supposedly "neutral" liberal State which is at the same time, enabler and a reflection of modern self. The job search, finally, with the aid of the philosophy of Charles Taylor, to rescue the notion of patriotism, within the sphere of republican virtues, in order to suggest a resolution of the conflict, reestablishing the integrity of relationships between the self and the supposedly "neutral" liberal State. To that end, a bibliographical references research with emphasis on the works of Charles Taylor "Philosophical Arguments", "Sources of the Self" and "A Secular Age" has been developed, with the addition of some others. The works of Charles Taylor have been researched deeply in order to identify clearly his method, to put it in use it in this work.

O exercício do poder de tributar pela União, Estados-Membros, Municípios e o Distrito Federal, dentro dos limites das competências que lhes foram outorgadas pelo Legislador Constituinte Originário, pode implicar em distúrbios na concorrência. Assim, com fundamento nos princípios da livre iniciativa e da livre concorrência, partindo-se da análise da estrutura dos mercados e as distorções a eles inerentes, das formas de intervenção do Estado no domínio econômico, bem como em razão de expressa disposição constitucional no sentido de que o Estado deve manter uma posição de neutralidade tributária em relação à concorrência, conforme preconiza o artigo 146-A da Carta Magna, busca-se analisar alguns dos efeitos produzidos pela tributação, tais como os impactos da guerra fiscal entre estados da federação, as implicações das decisões judiciais em matéria tributária e questões relacionadas à imposição de deveres instrumentais (obrigações tributárias acessórias), sobre a concorrência. / Exercise of the taxing power by the Brazilian Federal, State and Local government levels, within the scope of their jurisdictions as granted by the Original Constitutional Legislature, may imply competitive disturbances. Therefore, based on the principles of free enterprise and free competition, and based on an analysis of market structures their inherent distortions; of forms of State intervention in the economic domain; and also as a result of an explicit constitutional provision in the sense that the State must maintain tax neutrality vis-à-vis competition, as per Article 146-A of the Brazilian Constitution; we analyze some of the effects of taxation, such as the impacts of interstate tax warfare, the implications of tax-related court decisions, and aspects associated with the imposition of instrumental duties (ancillary tax obligations) on competition.

In political philosophy, perfectionism is the view that it is the job of the state to best enable its citizens to live good or flourishing lives. It claims that certain lives can be judged to be sound, and thus instructs governments to promote those lives using state institutions etc. Anti-perfectionism denies this. It says that it is not the job of the state to promote good lives. Instead it should restrict itself to securing basic rights and duties, a threshold level of resources and so on. Citizens should be left to adopt pursuits however they see fit. For some anti-perfectionists, this is precisely because we cannot judge any putative life to be sound. However, many are not sceptics, and justify state neutrality for other reasons. All accounts of anti-perfectionism must overcome what has been called the asymmetry objection: what justifies the imbalance inherent in anti-perfectionism? Why believe that the state is permitted to act on judgements about justice, but not on judgements about flourishing? My thesis argues that attempts to respond to the asymmetry objection have failed thus far. Further, I offer an account of political morality that can overcome the problem. The first four chapters of the thesis clarify the debate between perfectionists and anti-perfectionists, narrowing the former down into its most plausible form. Chapters five and six focus on two failed attempts to vindicate anti-perfectionism – Brian Barry's argument from scepticism and Jonathan Quong's Rawlsian approach. In the final chapter I put forward a much more promising argument in favour of anti-perfectionism – justice as a set of constraints.