abstract: This thesis seeks to defend transitivity as a rational constraint on preferences against two putative counterexamples to transitivity. This thesis is divided into three sections. In the first section, I consider two famous and popular arguments in defense of transitivity and argue they are insufficient to adequately defend transitivity. I then outline a desiderata for successful arguments in defense of transitivity and identify some basic assumptions I will be making throughout the thesis. In section two, I consider the first putative counterexample to transitivity: Quinn’s Puzzle of the Self-Torturer. I offer two plausible interpretations of Quinn’s puzzle and argue that both fail. One because it does not genuinely induce intransitive preferences, and the other because the situation it requires is logically impossible. I conclude this section by defending my arguments against known objections in the literature. Finally, in the third section, I consider a counterexample to transitivity from Larry Temkin that has received little attention in the literature. I argue that while the initial counterexample is unpersuasive it can be augmented and made into a more forceful argument. I then argue that this improved counterexample fails due to some erroneous assumptions prevalent in the literature on incomparability. I conclude the thesis with a brief summary and some closing remarks. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Philosophy 2015

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:27:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2010-08-26Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:16:44Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 borges_ma_me_botfm.pdf: 1336713 bytes, checksum: 635aca89cd104b946aef9b0c6e4153d7 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Apesar do reconhecimento da importância da participação do doente na tomada de decisões médicas, apenas recentemente os profissionais de saúde vem se conscientizando da necessidade de informá-los sobre as opções de tratamento e da necessidade de encorajá-los a participar de tais decisões. É escasso o conhecimento sobre o processo de tomada de decisão, sobre as preferências dos pacientes e de como melhorar a comunicação com pacientes, cuidadores e familiares. Os objetivos do presente estudo foram: avaliar as possíveis diferenças entre as preferências no processo de tomada de decisão pelos pacientes, cuidadores e médicos; e avaliar se as preferências dos pacientes durante a tomada de decisões estão relacionadas às variações demográfico-sócio-econômico-culturais. Foi elaborado protocolo de pesquisa, utilizando-se instrumentos validados, para ser empregado nas entrevistas com doentes, cuidadores e médicos. Os pacientes preferem compartilhar a decisão de tratamento com a família em 57,5% dos casos e preferem que o médico decida seu tratamento em 62% das vezes. Há concordância em informar o diagnóstico para 94,5% dos doentes, 95% dos familiares e 92,5% dos médicos. Também há aceitação de que o doente deva ser informado do prognóstico para 65% dos pacientes, 72,5% dos familiares e 82,5% dos médicos. O grau de concordância sobre as preferências de tratamento entre as respostas fornecidas pelo paciente e as respostas fornecidas pelo médico resultou em Kappa = 0,0227, o que significa baixa concordância. As variáveis demográfico-sócio-econômico-culturais não influenciaram as preferências do paciente frente ao papel da família. As preferências em relação à escolha do tratamento por parte do doente, do familiar e do médico revelam percepções diferentes, e estes são incapazes de predizer as preferências do doente. No presente estudo não se... / Despite what is known about the importance for patients to participate in the decision-making process, just in recent times health professionals are becoming aware of the need to inform patients about the treatment options and also encourage them to take the lead in medical decisions. The decision-making process concerning patient participation and how to improve communication among patients, caregivers and family members is scarce. The aim of this study was: to evaluate possible differences among the decision-making process comparing patients, caregivers and physicians choices and evaluate whether patients preferences during the decisionmaking process are related to variations in demographic, socio-economic and cultural levels. A research protocol was created, using validated instruments to be used in interviews with patients, caregivers and physicians. Patients prefer to share treatment decision with the family in 57.5% of cases and prefer that the doctor decides for the treatment in 62% of the situations. There is an agreement that the diagnosis must be informed for 94.5% of the patients, 95% of the families and 92.5% of the doctors. There is also acceptance that the patient should be informed of the prognosis for 65% of the patients, 72.5% of the families and 82.5% of the physicians. The agreement level between the answers given by the patients and the answers given by their doctors about treatment preferences resulted in Kappa = 0.0227, which means low agreement. The demographic and socio-economic variables did not influenced the patient preferences towards the family. Preferences regarding the choice of treatment by patient, family and physician showed different perceptions, and physicians are unable to predict the preferences of the patient. This study showed no correlation in the preferences of the patient, the caregiver and the physician in the decision-making process. Likewisi, ... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)

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A assimetria nas preferências dos Bancos Centrais é um assunto que vem sendo muito discutido no meio acadêmico, mas até o momento essa polêmica tem se restringido a economias desenvolvidas como a canadense e inglesa. O que o texto a seguir se propõe é, em parte, tentar trazer essa discussão para o campo dos países emergentes, tomando como centro da análise a economia brasileira. Preferências assimétricas consistem num comportamento por parte da autoridade monetária que atribui perdas diferentes a desvios da taxa de inflação observada em relação à meta definida, que embora sejam de mesma magnitude apresentam sinais opostos. Replicando os testes já usados em outros estudos, o regime de Metas de Inflação é aqui abordado, iniciando sua análise sob uma ótica mais geral e depois o particularizando para a economia brasileira, desde sua concepção (em 1999 após a crise cambial de janeiro desse ano) até os dias atuais. Este comportamento assimétrico parece, ainda, ocasionar um viés inflacionário diferente daquele proposto pelo modelo KPBG (Kydland-Prescott-Barro-Gordon) que surge da ambição do Banco Central em estabelecer uma taxa de desemprego que esteja abaixo da taxa natural, num ambiente no qual as preferências, ao contrário do proposto, são quadráticas. Infelizmente, os dados brasileiros ainda não apontam na direção da assimetria, talvez por causa do tempo de implantação do regime no Brasil, talvez devido às turbulências que a economia brasileira sofreu decorrentes de crises internacionais e de suas conseqüências sobre o desempenho da política de Metas de Inflação que gerou inúmeros insucessos. No entanto, o histórico de hiperinflações e sua influência sobre as expectativas e os comportamentos dos agentes econômicos nos faz suspeitar de que dentro em breve a assimetria será não só detectada em nossa economia como também será fruto de estudos para o desenho e direcionamento da política monetária. / Central Banks preferences asymmetry is a subject that has been discussed for quite some time in academic publications. However, such controversy has been restricted to developed economies, such as the English and Canadian ones, so far. The following text intends to bring about the discussion to emerging countries, using the brazilian economy as the focus of the analysis. Asymmetric preferences can be defined as a particular behaviour of the monetary authorities that weigh differently their losses concerning inflation deviations from its predetermined target that have the same magnitude but different signs. The main tests used in other studies have been repeated here and the inflation target regime is approached, initially from a broader outlook and then specifically to the brazilian case, ever since its conception in 1999 (after the exchange rate crash in the same year) to the present day. The asymmetric behaviour seems to cause an inflationary bias different from the one proposed by the KPBG model (Kydland-Prescott-Barro-Gordon) which derives from the Central Bank ambition to establish an unemployment rate lower than its natural rate, in an environment in which preferences are quadratic. Unfortunately, brazilian data do not suggest asymmetry yet, maybe because the inflation target regime has been installed for too little time, or because of all the turmoil in the brazilian economy in recent international crisis and their consequences on the regime performance, that has been usually compromised. Nevertheless, the history of hyperinflations and their impacts on expectations and the agents behaviour raises suspicions that soon not only will asymmetry be found in our economy but it will also be studied to design monetary policy directives.

abstract: The current research seeks to examine whether individuals display or downplay intelligence in various mating contexts. I hypothesized that both men and women should display fluid intelligence when attempting to attract a potential long-term partner, and that only men should display fluid intelligence when attempting to attract a potential short-term partner. Contrary to predictions, I find that men perform worse at a fluid intelligence test when motivated to attract a long-term partner. With respect to crystallized intelligence, I predicted that both men and women should display crystallized intelligence when attempting to attract a potential long-term partner, but women should downplay crystallized intelligence when attempting to attract a potential short-term partner. However, there were no effects of mating contexts on displays of crystallized intelligence. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Psychology 2013

abstract: Branding and brand management have been top management priorities in the hotel industry. Some researchers have concluded that strong branding would be an efficient way for hotels and hotel chains to differentiate themselves from each other. Recent studies have focused on the establishment of a brand equity model and the relevant causal relationships of the model. Most of these studies have used types of desirability scales examining the importance of individual factors in measuring brand equity. However, they ignore the trade-offs that affect and characterize choice. Particularly, the personal decision process implied by the hierarchical brand equity model is absent. This study proposed two alternative measures of brand equity, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and conjoint analysis (CA), to address these limitations. The AHP and the CA were compared using several validity measures to aid in selecting efficient methods. This study examined the validity of AHP and CA under two data collection methods applied to hotel branding: paper-based survey and online survey. Result showed that the AHP data collection methods were easier, as well as with respect to saving time and costs. Results also indicated that the AHP is equivalent to the CA with respect to predictive accuracy. Practical differences for hotel branding in attribute preferences were clearly observed between the AHP and the CA. The AHP results were consistent with previous studies by awarding high importance to perceived quality and brand loyalty and lower importance to brand awareness and brand image. Managerial implications were provided for results. In terms of practicality in data collection, the study results revealed that the data gathered online leads to a slightly lower internal and predictive validity. A limitation of this study was that the two methods were not perfectly comparable. Nevertheless, the validity of both AHP and CA seems satisfactory for both methods. The study results also offer useful perspectives to consider when choosing between the two methods, as well as between AHP and CA. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Community Resources and Development 2014

abstract: Current work in planning assumes that user preferences and/or domain dynamics are completely specified in advance, and aims to search for a single solution plan to satisfy these. In many real world scenarios, however, providing a complete specification of user preferences and domain dynamics becomes a time-consuming and error-prone task. More often than not, a user may provide no knowledge or at best partial knowledge of her preferences with respect to a desired plan. Similarly, a domain writer may only be able to determine certain parts, not all, of the model of some actions in a domain. Such modeling issues requires new concepts on what a solution should be, and novel techniques in solving the problem. When user preferences are incomplete, rather than presenting a single plan, the planner must instead provide a set of plans containing one or more plans that are similar to the one that the user prefers. This research first proposes the usage of different measures to capture the quality of such plan sets. These are domain-independent distance measures based on plan elements if no knowledge of the user preferences is given, or the Integrated Preference Function measure in case incomplete knowledge of such preferences is provided. It then investigates various heuristic approaches to generate plan sets in accordance with these measures, and presents empirical results demonstrating the promise of the methods. The second part of this research addresses planning problems with incomplete domain models, specifically those annotated with possible preconditions and effects of actions. It formalizes the notion of plan robustness capturing the probability of success for plans during execution. A method of assessing plan robustness based on the weighted model counting approach is proposed. Two approaches for synthesizing robust plans are introduced. The first one compiles the robust plan synthesis problems to the conformant probabilistic planning problems. The second approximates the robustness measure with lower and upper bounds, incorporating them into a stochastic local search for estimating distance heuristic to a goal state. The resulting planner outperforms a state-of-the-art planner that can handle incomplete domain models in both plan quality and planning time. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Computer Science 2014

A assimetria nas preferências dos Bancos Centrais é um assunto que vem sendo muito discutido no meio acadêmico, mas até o momento essa polêmica tem se restringido a economias desenvolvidas como a canadense e inglesa. O que o texto a seguir se propõe é, em parte, tentar trazer essa discussão para o campo dos países emergentes, tomando como centro da análise a economia brasileira. Preferências assimétricas consistem num comportamento por parte da autoridade monetária que atribui perdas diferentes a desvios da taxa de inflação observada em relação à meta definida, que embora sejam de mesma magnitude apresentam sinais opostos. Replicando os testes já usados em outros estudos, o regime de Metas de Inflação é aqui abordado, iniciando sua análise sob uma ótica mais geral e depois o particularizando para a economia brasileira, desde sua concepção (em 1999 após a crise cambial de janeiro desse ano) até os dias atuais. Este comportamento assimétrico parece, ainda, ocasionar um viés inflacionário diferente daquele proposto pelo modelo KPBG (Kydland-Prescott-Barro-Gordon) que surge da ambição do Banco Central em estabelecer uma taxa de desemprego que esteja abaixo da taxa natural, num ambiente no qual as preferências, ao contrário do proposto, são quadráticas. Infelizmente, os dados brasileiros ainda não apontam na direção da assimetria, talvez por causa do tempo de implantação do regime no Brasil, talvez devido às turbulências que a economia brasileira sofreu decorrentes de crises internacionais e de suas conseqüências sobre o desempenho da política de Metas de Inflação que gerou inúmeros insucessos. No entanto, o histórico de hiperinflações e sua influência sobre as expectativas e os comportamentos dos agentes econômicos nos faz suspeitar de que dentro em breve a assimetria será não só detectada em nossa economia como também será fruto de estudos para o desenho e direcionamento da política monetária. / Central Banks preferences asymmetry is a subject that has been discussed for quite some time in academic publications. However, such controversy has been restricted to developed economies, such as the English and Canadian ones, so far. The following text intends to bring about the discussion to emerging countries, using the brazilian economy as the focus of the analysis. Asymmetric preferences can be defined as a particular behaviour of the monetary authorities that weigh differently their losses concerning inflation deviations from its predetermined target that have the same magnitude but different signs. The main tests used in other studies have been repeated here and the inflation target regime is approached, initially from a broader outlook and then specifically to the brazilian case, ever since its conception in 1999 (after the exchange rate crash in the same year) to the present day. The asymmetric behaviour seems to cause an inflationary bias different from the one proposed by the KPBG model (Kydland-Prescott-Barro-Gordon) which derives from the Central Bank ambition to establish an unemployment rate lower than its natural rate, in an environment in which preferences are quadratic. Unfortunately, brazilian data do not suggest asymmetry yet, maybe because the inflation target regime has been installed for too little time, or because of all the turmoil in the brazilian economy in recent international crisis and their consequences on the regime performance, that has been usually compromised. Nevertheless, the history of hyperinflations and their impacts on expectations and the agents behaviour raises suspicions that soon not only will asymmetry be found in our economy but it will also be studied to design monetary policy directives.

Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2017-08-21T15:35:24Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 811 bytes, checksum: e39d27027a6cc9cb039ad269a5db8e34 (MD5) Dissertação Mestrado Ciencia Politica 2016 Manuela Souza.pdf: 3241380 bytes, checksum: 46e022e0cbe84816270b2853fc259a21 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-08-21T15:35:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 811 bytes, checksum: e39d27027a6cc9cb039ad269a5db8e34 (MD5) Dissertação Mestrado Ciencia Politica 2016 Manuela Souza.pdf: 3241380 bytes, checksum: 46e022e0cbe84816270b2853fc259a21 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-02-26 / CAPES / A percepção da renda pelos indivíduos influencia suas preferências redistributivas? Proponho verificar se a percepção do nível de renda importa na formação de preferências redistributivas, a partir da análise dos dados disponibilizados no World Values Surveys (2010-2014). O argumento teórico tradicional na Ciência Política caracteriza a relação entre a renda real e a formação de preferências redistributivas como um questionamento central na demanda por redistribuição em governos democráticos. Apesar dessa questão de pesquisa já ser tradicional, proponho que as preferências dos indivíduos, quanto ao papel redistributivo do estado, são pautadas na percepção da desigualdade. Empiricamente, pretendo testar a hipótese de que quanto maior o nível de renda percebida, menor serão as preferências redistributivas com dados para América Latina. Esse trabalho testa a hipótese apresentada através da combinação de estatística descritiva e um modelo de regressão logística ordenada. Os resultados encontrados corroboram com a expectativa da literatura existente de uma relação negativa entre percepção do nível de renda e preferências redistributivas. A probabilidade de ter um apoio a preferências redistributivas é maior entre aqueles que afirmam que o nível de renda percebida é baixo. Não obstante, os efeitos marginais constatam que a probabilidade de ser favorável à redistribuição ainda é expressiva entre aqueles que possuem um nível de renda percebida elevado. / The perception of income by individuals influences their redistributive preferences? I propose to verify if the perception of income level matters in the formation of redistributive preferences, from the analysis of the data available on the World Values Surveys (2010-2014). Traditional Theoretical argument in political science characterizes the relationship between real income and the formation of redistributive preferences as a central question in the demand for redistribution in democratic governments. Although this research question is already traditional, I propose that the preferences of individuals, on the redistributive role of the state, are guided by the perception of inequality. Empirically, I intend to test the hypothesis that the higher the perceived level of income, the lower will be the redistributive preferences with data for Latin America. This work tests the hypothesis presented by combining descriptive statistics and logistic regression model ordered. The results corroborate the expectation of the literature of a negative relationship between perceived level of income and redistributive preferences. The probability of having a support for redistributive preference is higher among those who claim that the perceived income level is low. Nevertheless, the marginal effects find that the probability of being in favor of redistribution is still significant among those with a sense of high income level.

The purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship existed between olfactory preferences and sexual orientation in Heterosexual, Entire Life lesbian, and Adopted Lifestyle lesbian women. Research in the area of olfaction and sexual behavior was reviewed and, on the basis of the literature, it was hypothesized that Heterosexual women would prefer male odors, Entire Life lesbian women would prefer female odors, and Adopted Lifestyle lesbian women would prefer male odors more than Entire Life lesbians. The design involved having female subjects sniff male and female odors and indicate a preference for either the male or female odor. The odor samples were human apocrine gland secretions obtained by having odor donors wear gauze pads in their armpits. The odor collected on the pads was then stabilized through applications of alcohol and subsequent freezing.