A convex approach for multicriteria decision making in hierarchical systems

In this paper hierarchical multicriteria optimization problems are addressed in a convex programming framework. It is assumed that the criteria are aggregated into a nonlinear function, which renders the problem nonseparable, in general. The projection of the problem onto the criteria space is used to obtain an equivalent separable problem, solved through a relaxation procedure implemented on basis of a multilevel structure. At the upper level of the structure, the decision making process involves the solution of a multicriteria problem formulated in the criteria space. The solution encountered at the upper level originates a lower level parametric optimization problem with separable structure that can be treated by standard coordination-decomposition techniques. The convergence of the overall procedure is ensured. The paper includes an application of the approach proposed for the control of dynamic systems with linear quadratic structure. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multi‐criteria minisum facility location problems

This paper deals with the multi‐criteria Weber (minisum) problem. Several new solution concepts are introduced, related to ideas of equilibrium between the different aspects covered by the objectives. Structural results are presented characterizing the proposed solution sets and showing the relationships existing with the efficient sets in the point objective location problem. Also, algorithms to solve this problem for the polyhedral norm case are developed. The proposed approach is more general than previously studied on multi‐criteria location problems and is particularly applicable in the real world when different scenarios must be compared. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

I—From Property Dualism to Substance Dualism

Property dualism is enjoying a slight resurgence in popularity, these days; substance dualism, not so much. But it is not as easy as one might think to be a property dualist and a substance materialist. The reasons for being a property dualist support the idea that some phenomenal properties (or qualia ) are as fundamental as the most basic physical properties; but what material objects could be the bearers of the qualia? If even some qualia require an adverbial construal (if they are modifications of the thing that is conscious because of them, not properties of something else to which the subject of consciousness is related), then the property dualist can be driven to speculative forms of materialism none of which, at this point, looks more likely to be true than the more modest versions of emergent dualism defended by contemporary substance dualists.     

MOTIVATIONAL INTERVENTION: THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN EMPLOYMENT COUNSELING

The function of employment counseling has benefitted from a problem analysis approach based on the concepts of vocational choice, change, and adjustment. Continued growth, however, might be facilitated by the development of a more positive point of view that includes an analysis of the motivational process that clients experience in their attempts to attain employment. If we perceive motivation as a series of stages, we can then provide ourselves with a tool by which we can explore various points where the counselor can intervene to help clients overcome resistance and frustration.     

A non-linear multi-criteria model for strategic fms selection decisions

The strategic decision of selecting an optimal flexible manufacturing system (FMS) configuration is a complicated question which involves evaluating trade-offs between a number of different, potentially conflicting criteria such as annual production volume, flexibility, production and investment costs and average throughput of the system. Recently, several structured multicriteria approaches have been proposed to aid management in the FMS selection process. While acknowledging the non-linear nature of a number of the relationships in the model, notably between batch size and the number of batches produced of each part, these studies used linear simplifications to illustrate the decision dynamics of the problem. These linear models were shown to offer useful analytical tools in the FMS pre-design process. Owing to the non-linearities of the true relationships, however, the trade-offs between the criteria could not fully be explored within the linear framework. This paper builds on the two-phase decision support framework proposed by Stam and Kuula (1991) and uses a modified non-linear multi-criteria formulation to solve the problem. The software used in the illustration can easily be implemented, is user-interactive and menu-driven. The methodology is applied to real data from a Finnish metal product company and the results are compared with those obtained in previous studies.     

Negotiating with Nonlinear Subjective Utilities: Why Some Concessions Are More Equal Than Others

An implicit but unnecessary assumption of the traditional logrolling approach to integrative negotiations is that disputants have linear subjective utility functions. The analysis of bargaining concessions described in this paper uses linear subjective utilities as a point of departure and explores the implications of non-linear subjective utilities for the process of valuing concessions and trade-offs in negotiation exchanges. Several apparent paradoxes are revealed and discussed. The analysis concludes by examining the implications of preference function mutability in light of non-linear subjective utility functions. Implications for negotiation theory and practice are discussed, including the possibility of a "concession evaluation heuristic" by which disputants confuse the relative importance of specific concessions with the relative importance of the issues on which those concessions are given and taken.     

On portfolio management with value at risk and uncertain returns via an artificial neural network scheme

This paper focuses on the computation issue of portfolio optimization with scenario-based Value-at-Risk. The main idea is to replace the portfolio selection models with linear programming problems. According to the convex optimization theory and some concepts of ordinary differential equations, a neural network model for solving linear programming problems is presented. The equilibrium point of the proposed model is proved to be equivalent to the optimal solution of the original problem. It is also shown that the proposed neural network model is stable in the sense of Lyapunov and it is globally convergent to an exact optimal solution of the portfolio selection problem with uncertain returns. Several illustrative examples are provided to show the feasibility and the efficiency of the proposed method in this paper.     

Animal cognition + optimal choice = behavior: A review of adaptive behavior and learning, 2nd Ed., by J. E. R. Staddon

Staddon discusses a vast array of topics in comparative psychology in this book. His view is that adaptive behavior in most cases is the result of optimal choice acting on an animal's knowledge about the world. Staddon refers to this as a functional teleonomic approach inasmuch as it attempts to understand an animal's behavior in terms of goals. He builds mathematical models based on this idea that are designed to reproduce specific sets of empirical observations, usually qualitatively. A natural consequence of Staddon's approach is that many models are developed, each of which applies to a specific set of observations. An alternative to functional teleonomy is a functional approach that builds on prior principles. In most cases, this approach favors a single‐theory account of behavior. Prior principles can be understood as functional stand‐ins for antecedent material causes, which means that these accounts are closer to mechanistic theories than are goal‐based teleonomic accounts. An ontological perspective, referred to as supervenient realism, is a means of understanding the relationship between functional theories and the material world. According to this perspective, the algorithmic operation of a successful functional theory may be understood to supervene on the material operation of the nervous system.     

Practical Possibilities

Abstract: That inferences of the form "If M then S and possibly M, therefore possibly S" are invalid in possible worlds modal logics can be viewed as another fallacy of material implication. However, this paper argues that properly analyzing this and related inferences requires treating the possibility involved as a practical modality. Specifically, ordinary language propositions of the form "It is possible that M" must be understood to mean that there is a non-negligible probability of M being the case. But this entails reexamining the very idea of logical validity.     

Permissible Epistemic Trade-Offs

Recent rejections of epistemic consequentialism, like those from Firth, Jenkins, Berker, and Greaves, have argued that consequentialism is committed to objectionable trade-offs and suggest that consequentialism's propensity for trade-offs hints at a larger problem. Here I argue that sanctioning trade-offs isn't a fault of a theory of epistemic normativity, because there are permissible epistemic trade-offs. I give examples of permissible epistemic trade-offs in pedagogy, in changes of worldview, and in indirect epistemic decisions. I also show that views that sanction trade-offs have an easier time than their rivals in explaining both why we ought to be open-minded and how arguments with suppositions get their argumentative force. These considerations don't eliminate the consequentialist's burden to respond to the objectionable cases, but they do undermine the idea that no correct theory of epistemic normativity properly sanctions trade-offs.     

Response to Aron and Atlas: Cooking Up a Storm—Together

The author agrees with the approach taken by Aron and Atlas in which they utilize the idea of the prospective function to emphasize the positive aspects of enactment that can be understood to promote symbolization much as dream work does. She welcomes their appeal to the future as an important aspect of intersubjectivity. The commentary on the case of Sophie aims to show the importance of the patient’s activity in collaborating with the analyst as another way that mutuality and play expand the notion of the creative illusion first offered by Winnicott. She also shows how this approach fosters a different idea of the Third than that used by neo-Kleinians, a point first made by this author and Aron. Finally, she suggests ways this idea of the prospective function can be integrated into our understanding of the Third.     

Creative Thinking From An Information Processing Perspective: A New Approach To Mednick's Theory Of Associative Hierarchies

Mednick (1962) proposed a theory of the creative thinking process which asserts that in generating associative responses to a stimulus, creative individuals are characterized by a flatter associative hierarchy than are less creative individuals. In order to assess this idea, an associative priming paradigm was used to measure latencies to lexical decisions primed by associations of low, medium, or high strength. Mednick's theory was not supported. However, it was found that the responses of creative subjects were uniformly less facilitated at all levels of associative strength. The set of associative strengths employed in the experiment may not have ranged low enough to provide a realistic test of creative processes. If so, then the obtained findings may be consistent with Mednick's theory as it applies to the upper end of the associative continuum.     

Whenis category learning holistic?

Ward and Scott (1987) recently provided evidence consistent with the idea that category learning can occur analytically whether that learning takes place under intentional or incidental conditions and whether the learner is an adult or a young child. Kemler Nelson (1988) raised concerns about Ward and Scott’s conclusions as well as about the logic of some of their arguments. Kemler Nelson also attempted to strengthen the argument that incidental learning conditions induce a less strategic approach to tasks, which necessarily results in a holistic mode of processing. The present paper answers Kemler Nelson’s concerns. It also presents arguments in favor of the idea that incidental learning is neither necessarily holistic nor necessarily analytic. It is argued that tasks, whether intentional or incidental, encourage the participant to process particular types of information. If the task encourages or demands the processing of separate features, then that type of information will be stored whether or not the participant was explicitly asked to learn the category membership of presented items. There are varieties of both intentional and incidental category learning, and what the learner does with the presented material is more important than his/her intent to learn. Furthermore, it is argued that the apparently discrepant results discussed by Kemler Nelson and Ward and Scott are all interpretable as specific cases within a more general episodic trace model of processing.     

Proportionality,Contrast and Explanation

If counterfactual dependence is sufficient for causation and if omissions can be causes, then all events have many more causes than common sense tends to recognize. This problem is standardly addressed by appeal to pragmatics. However, Carolina Sartorio [2010] has recently raised what I shall argue is a more interesting problem concerning omissions for counterfactual theories of causation—more interesting because it demands a more subtle pragmatic solution. I discuss the relationship between the idea that causes are proportional to their effects, the idea that causation is contrastive, and the question of the dimensions along which causal explanations should be evaluated with respect to one another.     

Moral relativism and deontic logic

If a native of India asserts “Killing cattle is wrong” and a Nebraskan asserts “Killing cattle is not wrong”, and both judgments agree with their respective moralities and both moralities are internally consistent, then the moral relativist says both judgments are fully correct. At this point relativism bifurcates. One branch which we call content relativism denies that the two people are contradicting each other. The idea is that the content of a moral judgment is a function of the overall moral point of view from which it proceeds. The second branch which we call truth value relativism affirms that the two judgments are contradictory. Truth value relativism appears to be logically incoherent. How can contradictory judgments be fully correct? For though there will be a sense of correctness in which each judgment is correct — namely by that of being correct relative to the morality relative to which each was expressed — if contradictory, the judgments cannot both be true, and thus cannot both be correct in this most basic sense of correctness. We defend truth value relativism against this sort of charge of logical incoherence by showing it can be accommodated by the existing semantical metatheories of deontic logic. Having done this we go on to argue that truth value relativism is the best version of relativism.     

Recognition and personhood: A critique of Bernstein's account of the wrongfulness of torture

J. M. Bernstein argues that to capture the depths of the harm of torture, we need to do away with the idea that we possess intrinsic and inviolable worth. If personhood is inviolable, then torture can inflict only apparent harm on our standing as persons. Bernstein claims that torture is a paradigm of moral injury because it causes what he calls “devastation”: The victim experiences an actual degradation of his or her personhood. Bernstein argues that our value is given to us through mutual recognition and hence can be lost. In this paper, I argue that if our human value can be lost, then it first must be built up. If it must be built up, then the question of our status before the building begins must be answered. Bernstein faces a problem of human beings who fall outside relations of mutual recognition and hence are valueless. His best option for answering this problem is to point to the centrality of the body in his account of recognition, but doing so reveals a notion of intrinsic worth implicit in his account. I call for a revision of Bernstein's account that can hold on to devastation without eschewing intrinsic worth.     

Symbols and symbolization in clinical practice and in Elisabeth Marton's film My Name was Sabina Spielrein

If symbolization can be defined, in a general way, as the operation of substitution by which something can represent something else for someone, the Freudian discovery of the unconscious introduced the idea of a process of work whereby the subject is differentiated from the object. As a consequence, the vicissitudes of symbolization are related to the vicissitudes of the drive. The clinical case of a psychotic patient treated in individual psychoanalytic psychodrama shows the possibility of overcoming violence and destructivity thanks to the work of representation and symbolization of the denied and split psychic movements. Thanks to the third party function of the leader and of the analytic setting, the individual psychoanalytical psychodrama favours psychic change. Elisabeth Marton's film illustrates this issue in so far as the destructive passion between Sabina Spielrein and Jung was partly transformed into a creative work with Freud's role as a third party.     

Aquinas on Biological Individuals: An Essay in Analytical Thomism

This paper presents a version of analytical Thomism that brings the principles of Aquinas into systematic and sustained contact with the sciences as opposed to contemporary philosophy. The leading idea of this version of analytical Thomism is to test the viability of scholastic principles by seeing if they provide the resources to cope with problems emerging from the natural and social sciences. If they do, then Thomism vindicates itself in the marketplace of ideas. If not, then the analytical Thomist knows where the perennial philosophy needs further development and perhaps revision. The first part of the paper sets out the rationale for this project. The remainder of the paper illustrates this approach by examining a problem emerging from evolutionary biology, namely, the provision of a theory of individuation for living entities.     

The paradox of decrease and dependent parts

This paper is concerned with the paradox of decrease. Its aim is to defend the answer to this puzzle that was propounded by its originator, namely, the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus. The main trouble with this answer to the paradox is that it has the seemingly problematic implication that a material thing could perish due merely to extrinsic change. (For, intuitively, it is not possible for a mere extrinsic change to cause a material thing to cease to be.) It follows that in order to defend Chrysippus’ answer to the paradox, one has to explain how it could be that Theon is destroyed by the amputation without changing intrinsically. In this paper, I shall answer this challenge by appealing to the broadly Aristotelian idea that at least some of the proper parts of a material substance are ontologically dependent on that substance. I will also appeal to this idea in order to offer a new solution to the structurally similar paradox of increase. In this way, we will end up with a unified solution to two structurally similar paradoxes.