Structuring and simulating negotiation: An approach and an example

Negotiation is a complex and dynamic decision process during which parties perceptions, preferences, and roles may change. Modelling such a process requires flexible and powerful tools. The use of rule-based formalism is therefore expanded from its traditional expert system type technique, to structuring and restructuring non-trivial processes like negotiation. Using rules we build a model of a negotiation problem. Some rules are used to infer positions and reactions of the parties, other rules are used to modify problem representation when such a modification is necessary. We illustrate the approach with a contract negotiation case between two large companies. We also show how this approach could help one party to realize that negotiations are being carried on against their assumptions and expectations.     

A new axiomatic foundation of partial comparability

The paper presents some results obtained in searching for a new axiomatic foundation for partial comparability (PC) in the frame of non-conventional preference modeling. The basic idea is to define an extended preference structure able to represent lack of information, uncertainty, ambiguity, multidimensional and conflicting preferences, using formal logic as the basic formalism.A four-valued paraconsistent logic is therefore described in the paper as a more suitable language for the purposes of the research. The concepts of partition, general binary relations properties, fundamental relational system of preferences (f.r.s.p.), maximal f.r.s.p. and well founded f.r.s.p. are then introduced and some theorems are demonstrated in order to provide the axiomatic foundation of PC. The main result obtained is a preference structure that is a maximal well founded f.r.s.p. This preference structure facilitates a more flexible, reliable and robust preference modeling. Moreover it can be viewed as a generalization of the conventional approach, so that all the results obtained until now can be used under it.Two examples are provided at the end of the paper in order to give an account of the operational potentialities of the new theory, mainly in the area of multicriteria decision aid and social choice theory. Further research directions conclude the paper.This research has been done while the first author was in the Université Libre de Bruxelles under the Research in Brussels actions.     

科举、商品化与社会平等:清代广西土司社会的“文明化”

本文探讨了清代中央王朝在广西土司地区推行科举以及该地方社会因应这一政策而逐步“文明化”的过程。文章首先描述了广西土司地区依据土地的占有与使用而建构起来的社会结构与身份体系，继而梳理了清初以来中央王朝在该地区推行科举的历史进程，并说明清政府的科举政策如何与地方社会进行互动，进一步导致了土司社会的重构。在此基础上，本文利用地方文书材料，探讨了地方社会群体如何通过商品化手段转变身份，进而追求社会平等与自由的“文明化”过程。     

Self enforceable paths in extensive form games

This paper explores the idea of forward induction for extensive games. It interprets this idea as a general behavioral principle the technical details of which have to be worked out in each specific case. Because of its cooperative ingredient, this approach should be contrasted with the usual approaches of non-cooperative game theory which are rooted in individual rationality.     

诸神之争的再阐释:一个社会学的结构视角

世俗化及逆世俗化范式的对立其实蕴含着更大的连续性,即如何理解宗教多元主义背后的诸神之争,总的来说,韦伯之后那些解释宗教变迁的理论范式均未突破韦伯对宗教的比较研究范畴,难以在当前复杂而多元的文化环境下为个人提供总体指导,但是二者共同揭露了诸神之争条件下西方宗教工具理性和价值理性交互作用所促成的理性化的动力机制,即西方宗教维护自身价值理性的方式从中世纪教会主导的政治性垄断过渡到现代性条件下宗教多元主义的市场化竞争。     

Practical reason or metapreferences? an undogmatic defense of kantian morality

This article presents the thesis that a critique of decisions is not necessarily (except in the trivial sense) a critique of preferences. This thesis runs contrary to the fundamental assumption in economic theory that a critique of decisions will always simultaneously be a critique of (subjective) preferences, since decision behavior is after all a manifestation of preferences. If this thesis is right, then the paradigm of so-called instrumental rationality is in serious trouble, not for external reasons but because of imminent inconsistencies. The thesis is developed in five parts: I. A preliminary remark to the economic theory of rationality in general. II. The cooperation problem as a challenge to the economic theory of rationality. III. An account of the most interesting attempt to save the theory. IV. A critique of that attempt. V. And the conclusion: practical reason is concerned with actions and not with preferences.     

Hidden Assumptions in the Dutch Book Argument

Probabilistic theories of rationality claim that degrees of belief have to satisfy the probability axioms in order to be rational. A standard argument to support this claim is the Dutch Book argument. This paper tries to show that, in spite of its popularity, the Dutch Book argument does not provide a foundation for normative theories of rationality. After a presentation of the argument and some of its criticisms a problem is pointed out: the Dutch Book argument applies only to situations with a specific formal structure. Several attempts to justify the argument for more general situations are considered and rejected. The only way to remedy the shortcoming, it is argued, seems to be the acceptance of a far-reaching and highly implausible empirical hypothesis.     

The Elements of Rationality and Chance in the Choice of Human Action

The focus in this paper is on deliberate human action. The central questions addressed are: whether purely rational choice is possible; whether choices may be induced by chance alone; or whether there is always a mixture of rationality and chance, as well as other factors such as habit, emotion, imitation and irrationality. The approach is a factualist one, upholding the view that, although human action can be explained by its antecedents, this is not incompatible with the notion of "free choice". It is the actual choosing process that determines the final choice of action. Whatever the sources of the elements involved in the choosing process, the choice of action is a specific outcome created by the acting agent. It is in this choosing process and decision making that both rationality and chance enter. The conclusion is that rationality is the element which links intentionality with goal seeking and attainment, but that the actual choice is determined by a complex interactive process in which both logic and chance play a part.     

Specific Organizational Citizenship Behaviours and Organizational Effectiveness: The Development of a Conceptual Heuristic Device

Organizational citizenship behaviour has generally been associated with organizational effectiveness. However, recent research has shown that this may not always be the case and that certain types of organizational citizenship behaviour such as compulsory citizenship behaviour, may be inimical to the fulfillment of formal goals and organizational effectiveness. Using military historical and business organizational secondary data, the paper maintains that extreme variance in either organizational (task) or personal (social psychological) support organizational citizenship behaviour generates entropic citizenship behaviour which derails completely the effective accomplishment of formal organizational goals. A general model of organizational citizenship behaviour with entropic citizenship behavior as its novel conceptual boundary is developed in the paper, and four specific propositions with implications for future empirical research are delineated.     

慈善概念的移植何以未完成:一个政策过程的分析

寻求法律移植与习俗的有机统一无疑是中国法律现代化最为重要的问题。由于缺乏微观政策过程的分析,对这一问题的探讨大多停留在宏观层面。本文从法律现代化和法律多元主义的理论视角出发,以《慈善法》中“慈善”概念的形成为例,探讨了法律移植与习俗如何通过立法体制影响法律的形成。研究发现,习俗通过回应性立法的制度安排以及立法者的双重身份被纳入到决策中。法律移植的慈善概念则通过法律专家与立法者的深度互动产生作用。然而,立法过程中提案与审议的分离以及政治官僚制的决策模式使得形式理性法律的建构面临双重消解。因此,促进立法体制的优化才能实现立法中形式理性与价值理性的有效融合。     

An Experiment on Rational Insurance Decisions

We describe the results of an experiment on decision making in an insurance context. The experiment was designed to test for the underlying rationality of insurance consumers, where rationality is understood in usual economic terms. In particular, using expected utility as the preference function, we test for positive marginal utility, risk aversion, and decreasing absolute risk aversion, all of which are normal postulates for any microeconomic decision context under uncertainty or risk. We find that there the discrepancy from rational decision making increases with the sophistication of the rationality criteria, that irrationality concerning fair premium contracts is uncharacteristically high, and that the slope of absolute risk aversion seems to depend on the format of the insurance contract. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Representing the negotiation process with a rule-based formalism

The objective of this paper is to introduce a flexible approach to the structuring of negotiations. The process of negotiations with its intricacies is discussed, and drawbacks of quantitative methods are analyzed. The decomposition of the negotiation process into a certain hierarchical structure is presented. This structure is represented with and/or trees used for knowledge representation in artificial intelligence. The definitions of flexibility and reactions to the opponent's moves are introduced with the help of a rule-based formalism. The implications of these definitions for the analysis of the negotiation process are presented. The approach is illustrated with a set of hypothetical examples.     

Semantic Analysis of the Theoretical Foundations of Biology

生物学理论作为科学哲学研究中的一个另类一直受到关注。它与传统科学模式间的差异是造成这种现象的原因之一。解读这种差异的根源，需要对生物学的理论基础以及理论结构给予充分的关注。生物学特有理论结构所表现出的多元语境与语义结构的复杂性，决定了对生物学理论基础的研究应当重视语义分析的方法，尤其是对理论本身进行语义分解并研究其中的语义关联问题，从而解读生物学模式作为一种不同于理化科学的特殊科学解释观的合理性。     

Arbitrage,rationality, and equilibrium

No-arbitrage is the fundamental principle of economic rationality which unifies normative decision theory, game theory, and market theory. In economic environments where money is available as a medium of measurement and exchange, no-arbitrage is synonymous with subjective expected utility maximization in personal decisions, competitive equilibria in capital markets and exchange economies, and correlated equilibria in noncooperative games. The arbitrage principle directly characterizes rationality at the market level; the appearance of deliberate optimization by individual agents is a consequence of their adaptation to the market. Concepts of equilibrium behavior in games and markets can thus be reconciled with the ideas that individual rationality is bounded, that agents use evolutionarily-shaped decision rules rather than numerical optimization algorithms, and that personal probabilities and utilities are inseparable and to some extent indeterminate. Risk-neutral probability distributions, interpretable as products of probabilities and marginal utilities, play a central role as observable quantities in economic systems.     

马克思主义中国化理论创新范式历史形态及其当代实践

马克思主义中国化理论创新范式研究对象主要是党领导人民群众在推进马克思主义理论创新过程中所坚持和发展的理论创新方法、原则、路径、标准、信念、价值观等概念和范畴。理论创新范式具有科学性与革命性、价值理性与工具理性、一脉相承与继承创新的辩证统一性。理论创新范式的历史形态可以从理论创新主题转换、主体思维状态、问题出场逻辑、马克思主义发展史等视角进行梳理和分类研究。     

Challenging the abuse decision: a comparison of American and British perspectives on complaints and appeals

The conclusion by child protection services that a child has been abused and the decision to make a formal record of that conclusion involves a process called'registration' in both the United Kingdom and the United States. This is an administrative process rather than a judicial one and is instituted by public officials not lawyers, but it can have as significant an effect on the families involved as the findings of a court Yet, despite this significance, families have found it very difficult to challenge the decision to register a case of abuse, particularly in the UK. This papers offers a critique of registration processes in the UK and in the USA and suggests ways in which these processes might be improved to protect individual rights.     

Financial access and household’s borrowing: Policy perspectives of an emerging economy

This paper analyzes access to finance based on the usage of financial services by Indian households. Based on two rounds of nationally representative All India Debt and Investment Survey (AIDIS) for 2002 and 2012, we examine how access to credit is associated with a household's socioeconomic and demographic characteristics using Heckman’s two-step approach procedure. Our results show that belonging to higher asset quintile groups has a statistically significant positive effect on the household's decision to take loans only from the formal sector in both rounds and significant negative effects on taking a loan only from the informal sector. Similarly, social and religious groups play a significant role in the decision of the household to take a loan. Households with more educated adults are more likely to take a loan. Households involved in regular wage-earning occupations in urban areas are more likely to take a loan from formal sources. Thus, the importance of policy placing greater emphasis on demand-side barriers rather than on improving the physical availability of formal financial services to promote financial inclusion in India.     

改革开放以来的中国民法

改革开放以来，中国民法在价值与体系方面均取得进步，具体表现为人的私法主体地位的逐步确立、私法自治基石性地位的奠定、私人利益与私人权利得以确立并获确实保障、民法的科学性得到长足发展等。不过，现行民法在形式理性化的程度上仍有改进的空间。对中国社会而言，坚持民法的自主性、形式化、理性化发展方向具有特别重要的意义。同时，也必须通过保持民法一定程度的开放性来克服形式理性法的某些内在缺陷。     

A note on the information content of a consistent pairwise comparison judgment matrix of an AHP decision maker

A decision maker using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) could be consistent, and still provide no information in the resulting vector of priorities. An extreme example would be a pairwise comparison judgment matrix filled with 1s which is totally consistent under the various definitions of consistency, but has provided no information about the prioritization of alternatives resulting from the decision maker's judgments. In this paper, the quality of a consistent decision maker's judgments using the Analytic Hierarchy Process is placed in the context of the entropy of the resulting vector of priorities. Indeed, it is the purpose of this paper to provide a formal definition of this notion ofentropy of a priority vector, and to provide a framework for a quantitative measurement of the information content of consistent pairwise comparison judgment matrices of a decision maker who is using the Analytic Hierarchy Process. We will prove that the entropy of the vector of priorities for consistent matrices follows a normal distribution and discuss some general considerations of this result.