Trust and relational capital

Trust can be viewed at the same time as an instrument both for an agent selecting the right partners in order to achieve its own goals, and for an agent of being selected from other potential partners in order to establish with them a cooperation/collaboration and to take advantage from the accumulated trust. In this paper we will analyze trust as the agents’ relational capital. Starting from the classical dependence network with potential partners, we introduce the analysis of what it means for an agent to be trusted and how this condition could be strategically used from it for achieving its own goals, that is, why it represents a form of power. The idea of taking another agent’s point of view is especially important if we consider the amount of studies in social science that connect trust with social capital related issues. Although there is a big interest in literature about ‘social capital’ and its powerful effects on the wellbeing of both societies and individuals, often it is not clear enough what is it the object under analysis. Individual trust capital (relational capital) and collective trust capital not only should be disentangled, but their relations are quite complicated and even conflicting. To overcome this gap, we propose a study that first attempts to understand what trust is as capital of individuals. In which sense “trust” is a capital. How this capital is built, managed and saved. In particular, how this capital is the result of the others’ beliefs and goals. Then we aim to analytically study the cognitive dynamics of this object.     

Social Relationship and Transactional Marketing Policies—Maximizing Customer Lifetime Value

We present an analytic approach to address the problem of how sellers can establish and maintain a long-lasting relationship with a buyer and, at the same time, maximize customer lifetime value (CLV). To model the evolution of a relational exchange between a seller and a buyer, we extend a well-known mathematical model of “love dynamics.” The growth of each partner’s commitment to the relationship is a sum of negative and positive terms. The negative term describes each partner’s propensities for opportunism, while the positive terms describe each partner’s trust in the commitment of the other, and the reaction to marketing efforts. The seller controls the evolution of the relationship through social relationships and transactional marketing efforts. The main findings are as follows: (1) Loyal (committed) customers and long-term relationships do not always generate better cash flows, especially when buyers either look for superior current value in each purchase opportunity or are short-term oriented. (2) Without mutual trust between partners, the seller should treat old customers over time as new ones, making the reduction of retention costs impossible. (3) It is only cheaper to retain current customers rather than acquiring new ones if mutual trust between partners overcomes propensities for opportunism and the seller slightly discounts future cash flows.     

Arguing about social evaluations: From theory to experimentation

In open multiagent systems, agents depend on reputation and trust mechanisms to evaluate the behavior of potential partners. Often these evaluations are associated with a measure of reliability that the source agent computes. However, due to the subjectivity of reputation-related information, this can lead to serious problems when considering communicated social evaluations. In this paper, instead of considering only reliability measures computed from the sources, we provide a mechanism that allows the recipient decide whether the piece of information is reliable according to its own knowledge. We do it by allowing the agents engage in an argumentation-based dialog specifically designed for the exchange of social evaluations. We evaluate our framework through simulations. The results show that in most of the checked conditions, agents that use our dialog framework significantly improve (statistically) the accuracy of the evaluations, over the agents that do not use it. In particular, the simulations reveal that when there is a heterogeneity set of agents (not all the agents have the same goals) and agents base part of their inferences on third-party information, it is worth using our dialog protocol.     

Bar-On on Self-Knowledge and Expression

I critically discuss the account of self-knowledge presented in Dorit Bar-On’s Speaking My Mind (OUP 2004), focusing on Bar-On’s understanding of what makes our capacity for self-knowledge puzzling and on her ‘neo-expressivist’ solution to the puzzle. I argue that there is an important aspect of the problem of self-knowledge that Bar-On’s account does not sufficiently address. A satisfying account of self-knowledge must explain not merely how we are able to make accurate avowals about our own present mental states, but how we can reasonably regard ourselves as entitled to claim self-knowledge. Addressing this aspect of the problem of self-knowledge requires confronting questions about the metaphysical nature of mental states, questions that Bar-On’s approach seeks to avoid.     

Veber on knowledge and factuality

The article deals with the development of the philosophy of France Veber (1890–1975), the pupil of Meinong and a main Slovene philosopher. One of the most important threads of Veber’s philosophy is the consideration of knowledge and factuality, which may be seen as a driving force of its development. Veber’s philosophical development is usually divided into three phases: the object theory phase, the phase when he created his philosophy of a person as a creature at the crossing of the natural and the spiritual world, who as an active, not merely passive subject possesses her own causal powers, and the third phase, when he supplemented his earlier philosophy with the theory of a special side of our experience which he called hitting-upon-reality. It is a direct experience of reality, a special kind of intentionality, which is however fundamentally different from presentational intentionality, which alone is taken into account by object theory or phenomenology. The questions of knowledge and factuality are closely connected in Veber’s philosophy since, pace Veber, knowledge is a kind of, we may say, justified experience the object of which is a factual entity. Hence, if we want to understand what knowledge is, we must face the challenge of comprehending factuality. There are five stages to be noted in the development of his epistemology. The first two belong to his object theory phase, the third to his person phase, the fourth is characterised by his distinguishing and exploring truth and validity with regard to the thought about God, and the basis of the fifth phase lies in his theory of hitting-upon-reality. In Introduction to Philosophy and The System of Philosophy, that is in the year 1921, Veber believed that factuality (“truth,”) was a property of the object, which we do present, but we do not present the factuality of this factuality (that is why he distinguishes between the merely objective truths and truths that are in addition transcendental truths). In 1923, in The Problems of Contemporary Philosophy and in the work Science and Religion, he already rejected such a view. There is something that makes things factual, but that is a complete unknown X. Therefore we cannot even say what kind of an entity this factuality is. Some people would probably demand the following formulation: if X is an ultimate mystery, we should not claim even that it is an entity. In The Problems of Presentation Production (1928) Veber claimed that factuality is not a property since this would lead to a regressum ad infinitum. Philosophy (1930) related internally correct experience to personal will. In The Book about God (1934) he developed the thesis that factuality depends on the act of God. In The Question of Reality (1939) he importantly modified, developed and enriched the thesis that we do not present reality with his theory of immediate experience of (hitting upon) factuality.     

Expressing and Describing Experiences. A Case of Showing Versus Saying

Experiences are interpreted as conscious mental occurrences that are of phenomenal character. There is already a kind of (weak) intentionality involved with this phenomenal interpretation. A stricter conception of experiences distinguishes between purely phenomenal experiences and intentional experiences in a narrow sense. Wittgenstein’s account of psychological (experiential) verbs is taken over: Usually, expressing mental states verbally is not describing them. According to this, “I believe” can be seen as an expression of one’s own belief, but not as an expression of a belief about one’s belief. Hence, the utterance “I believe it is raining” shows that I believe that it is raining, although it is not said by these words that I believe that it is raining. Thinking thoughts such as “I believe it is raining, but it is not raining” (a variant of Moore’s paradox) is an absurdity between what is already said by silently uttering “It is not raining” and what is shown by silently uttering “I believe it is raining.” The paper agrees with a main result of Wittgenstein’s considerations of Moore’s paradox, namely the view that logical structure, deducibility, and consistency cannot be reduced solely to propositions—besides a logic of propositions, there is, for example, a logic of assertions and of imperatives, respectively.     

A genetic approach for strategic resource allocation planning

Enterprises often implement a measurement system to monitor their march towards their strategic goals. Although this way it is possible to assess the progress of each goal, there is no structured way to reconsider resource allocation to those goals and to plan an optimal (or near optimal) allocation scheme. In this study we propose a genetic approach to match each goal with an autonomous entity (agent) with a specific resource sharing behavior. The overall performance is evaluated through a set of functions and genetic algorithms are used to eventuate in approximate optimal behavior’s schemes. To outline the strategic goals of the enterprise we used the balanced scorecard method. Letting agents deploy their sharing behavior over simulation time, we measure the scorecard’s performance and detect distinguished behaviors, namely recommendations for resource allocation.     

Network formation under negative degree-based externalities

While a relationship in a social or business network should be mutually beneficial, it is ambiguous whether the relationship benefits or harms the rest of the network. This paper focuses on the situation where any new relationship imposes a negative externality on the rest of the network. We model this by assuming an agent’s payoff from a relationship is a decreasing function of the number of relationships the other agent maintains. We solve for the socially efficient and stable networks. While in general the two diverge, we demonstrate that they coincide when agents are able to make transfers to their partners.     

Black the libertarian

The most serious challenge to Frankfurt-type counterexamples to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP) comes in the form of a dilemma: either the counterexample presupposes determinism, in which case it begs the question; or it does not presuppose determinism, in which case it fails to deliver on its promise to eliminate all alternatives that might plausibly be thought to satisfy PAP. I respond to this challenge with a counterexample in whichconsidering an alternative course of action is anecessary condition fordeciding to act otherwise, and the agent does not in fact consider the alternative. I call this a “buffer case,” because the morally relevant alternative is “buffered” by the requirement that the agent first consider the alternative. Suppose further that the agent’s considering an alternative action—entering the buffer zone—is what would trigger the counterfactual intervener. Then it would appear that PAP-relevant alternatives are out of reach. I defend this counterexample to PAP against three objections: that considering an alternative isitself a morally relevant alternative; that buffer cases can be shown to containother alternatives that arguably satisfy PAP; and that even if the agent’spresent access to PAP-relevant alternatives were eliminated, PAP could still be satisfied in virtue ofearlier alternatives. I conclude that alternative possibilities are a normal symptom, but not an essential constituent, of moral agency.     

Qualitative criteria of admissibility for enforced agreements

It is desirable that artificial agents can help each other when they cannot achieve their goals, or when they profit from social exchanges. In this work we study coalition formation processes supported by enforced agreements and we define two qualitative criteria, the do-ut-des property and the composition property, that establish when a coalition is admissible to be formed. The do-ut-des property is based on a balance between the advantages and the burdens of an agent, when it agrees an enforced agreements. The composition property is a refinement of the do-ut-des property that takes into account also the costs and the risks deriving from the coalition formation process. Two relevant aspects distinguish our approach from the solution criteria developed in cooperative game theory. First, the do-ut-des property and the composition property are not based on an explicit utility function associated to the goals of an agent, and hance they can be used also in that cases in which the importance that agents give to their own goals is unknown. Second, a coalition has all the necessary information to establish if it satisfies the do-ut-des property or the composition property, therefore these two properties can be used in the case not all the space of possible coalitions is known. Luigi Sauro graduated in Physics at the University “Federico II” of Naples in 2001. From February 2002 to July 2002 he was collaborator at the SRA division of the IRST Institute (Trento). He got is Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Torino in February 2006. Currently he is member of the Natural Language Processing and Agents Group, directed by prof. Leonardo Lesmo. His research interests include social reasoning, coalition formation and coordination in multiagent systems.     

Distributed personnel scheduling—negotiation among scheduling agents

This paper introduces a model for Distributed Employee Timetabling Problems (DisETPs) and proposes a general architecture for solving DisETPs by using a Multi Agent System (MAS) paradigm. The architecture is composed of a set of autonomous software Scheduling Agents (SAs) that solve the Employee Timetabling Problems (ETP) for each department. Each agent has its own local ETP problem and its own goals. The Scheduling Agents must coordinate their local solution with the other agents in order to achieve a global solution for the whole organization that yields a better result with respect to the organization’s global targets. To achieve a coherent and consistent global solution, the SAs make use of a sophisticated negotiation protocol among scheduling agents that always ends in an agreement (not ensured to be optimal). The main functionalities of this protocol are agent to agent relation definition, a mechanism to approve a chain of Request for Changes and an electronic marketplace for bidding on preferred common time slots. Experimental analysis of the implemented Multi Agent System for the Soroka medical center is presented. The results of our study indicate that the proposed framework has the potential to reduce the cost of transportation for the nurses that traveling to and from the hospital.     

The influence of random interactions and decision heuristics on norm evolution in social networks

In this paper we explore the effect that random social interactions have on the emergence and evolution of social norms in a simulated population of agents. In our model agents observe the behaviour of others and update their norms based on these observations. An agent’s norm is influenced by both their own fixed social network plus a second random network that is composed of a subset of the remaining population. Random interactions are based on a weighted selection algorithm that uses an individual’s path distance on the network to determine their chance of meeting a stranger. This means that friends-of-friends are more likely to randomly interact with one another than agents with a higher degree of separation. We then contrast the cases where agents make highest utility based rational decisions about which norm to adopt versus using a Markov Decision process that associates a weight with the best choice. Finally we examine the effect that these random interactions have on the evolution of a more complex social norm as it propagates throughout the population. We discover that increasing the frequency and weighting of random interactions results in higher levels of norm convergence and in a quicker time when agents have the choice between two competing alternatives. This can be attributed to more information passing through the population thereby allowing for quicker convergence. When the norm is allowed to evolve we observe both global consensus formation and group splintering depending on the cognitive agent model used.     

More Problems for MaxCon: Contingent Particularity and Stuff-Thing Coincidence

Ned Markosian argues (Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76:213-228, 1998a; Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82:332-340, 2004a, The Monist 87:405-428, 2004b) that simples are ‘maximally continuous’ entities. This leads him to conclude that there could be non-particular ‘stuff’ in addition to things. I first show how an ensuing debate on this issue McDaniel (Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81(2):265-275, 2003); Markosian (Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82:332-340, 2004a) ended in deadlock. I attempt to break the deadlock. Markosian’s view entails stuff-thing coincidence, which I show is just as problematic as the more oft-discussed thing-thing coincidence. Also, the view entails that every particular is only contingently so. If there is a world W like our own, but with ether, then there would be only one object in W. But, since merely adding ether to a world does not destroy the entities in it, then W contains counterparts of all the entities in the actual world—they just are not things. Hence, if simples are maximally continuous, then every actual particular is only contingently so. This in turn entails the following disjunction: (i) identity is contingent or intransitive, or (ii) there are no things at all in the actual world, or (iii) the distinction between stuff and things is one without a difference. I recommend that we reject this stuff-thing dualism.     

Designing for Mathematical Abstraction

Our focus is on the design of systems (pedagogical, technical, social) that encourage mathematical abstraction, a process we refer to as designing for abstraction. In this paper, we draw on detailed design experiments from our research on children’s understanding about chance and distribution to re-present this work as a case study in designing for abstraction. Through the case study, we elaborate a number of design heuristics that we claim are also identifiable in the broader literature on designing for mathematical abstraction. Our previous work on the micro-evolution of mathematical knowledge indicated that new mathematical abstractions are routinely forged in activity with available tools and representations, coordinated with relatively na?ve unstructured knowledge. In this paper, we identify the role of design in steering the micro-evolution of knowledge towards the focus of the designer’s aspirations. A significant finding from the current analysis is the identification of a heuristic in designing for abstraction that requires the intentional blurring of the key mathematical concepts with the tools whose use might foster the construction of that abstraction. It is commonly recognized that meaningful design constructs emerge from careful analysis of children’s activity in relation to the designer’s own framework for mathematical abstraction. The case study in this paper emphasizes the insufficiency of such a model for the relationship between epistemology and design. In fact, the case study characterises the dialectic relationship between epistemological analysis and design, in which the theoretical foundations of designing for abstraction and for the micro-evolution of mathematical knowledge can co-emerge.     

A bilevel fuzzy principal-agent model for optimal nonlinear taxation problems

This paper presents a bilevel fuzzy principal-agent model for optimal nonlinear taxation problems with asymmetric information, in which the government and the monopolist are the principals, the consumer is their agent. Since the assessment of the government and the monopolist about the consumer’s taste is subjective, therefore, it is reasonable to characterize this assessment as a fuzzy variable. What’s more, a bilevel fuzzy optimal nonlinear taxation model is developed with the purpose of maximizing the expected social welfare and the monopolist’s expected welfare under the incentive feasible mechanism. The equivalent model for the bilevel fuzzy optimal nonlinear taxation model is presented and Pontryagin maximum principle is adopted to obtain the necessary conditions of the solutions for the fuzzy optimal nonlinear taxation problems. Finally, one numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed model, the results demonstrate that the consumer’s purchased quantity not only relates with the consumer’s taste, but also depends on the structure of the social welfare.     

The role of utility interdependence in public good experiments

A popular approach to explain over-contribution in public good games is based on the assumption that people care (either positively or negatively) about the utility of other participants. Over-contribution then is an outcome of utility maximization where utility depends on subjects’ own payoffs as well as on the payoffs of other players. In this paper, I study to what extent this assumption of utility interdependence is responsible for over-contribution. I design three treatments where subjects’ decisions cannot affect opponents’ payoffs and thus utility interdependence cannot explain cooperative behavior. The main result is that while average contribution in these treatments is below the benchmark it nonetheless stays well above zero. Even when no one benefits from subjects’ generosity the average contributions are as high as one third of the endowment and are only 25% below those in the benchmark level. This suggests that utility interdependence is not the main factor responsible for over-contribution. I would like to thank my dissertation advisor Shyam Sunder for his valuable suggestions that helped improve this paper. I am also grateful to Dan Levin, Ben Polak, Klaus Schmidt, Andrew Schotter, Anat Bracha, Danielle Catambay, Rodney Chan, two anonymous referees and the anonymous Associate Editor for their comments and suggestions. Participants of the 17th International Conference on Game Theory at Stony Brook University, 2006 ESA International Meeting and 10th Biennial Behavioral Decision Research in Management Conference provided a valuable feedback at earlier stages of the paper. Finally, I would like to thank the Whitebox Fellowship for its generous support of this study.     

The modality principle and work-relativity of modality

Davies argues that the ontology of artworks as performances offers a principled way of explaining work-relativity of modality. Object oriented contextualist ontologies of art (Levinson) cannot adequately address the problem of work-relativity of modal properties because they understand looseness in what counts as the same context as a view that slight differences in the work-constitutive features of provenance are work-relative. I argue that it is more in the spirit of contextualism to understand looseness as context-dependent. This points to the general problem—the context of appreciation is not robust enough to ground modal intuitions about objective entities. In general, when epistemology dictates ontology there is always a threat of anti-realism, scepticism and relativism. Davies also appeals to the modality principle—an entity’s essential properties are all and only its constitutive properties. Davies understands essentiality in a traditional way: a property P is an essential property of an object o iff o could not exist and lack P. Kit Fine has recently made a convincing case for the view that the notion of essence is not to be understood in modal terms. I explore some of the implications of this view for Davies’ modal argument for the performance theory.     

Asymmetric Information in a Capital Accumulation Differential Game with Spillover and Learning Effects

Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications - This paper considers a capital accumulation game where the installation costs of investments are lowered by the firm’s own capital stock...     

A new hybrid method for nonlinear complementarity problems

In this paper, a new hybrid method is proposed for solving nonlinear complementarity problems (NCP) with P ₀ function. In the new method, we combine a smoothing nonmonotone trust region method based on a conic model and line search techniques. We reformulate the NCP as a system of semismooth equations using the Fischer-Burmeister function. Using Kanzow’s smooth approximation function to construct the smooth operator, we propose a smoothing nonmonotone trust region algorithm of a conic model for solving the NCP with P ₀ functions. This is different from the classical trust region methods, in that when a trial step is not accepted, the method does not resolve the trust region subproblem but generates an iterative point whose steplength is defined by a line search. We prove that every accumulation point of the sequence generated by the algorithm is a solution of the NCP. Under a nonsingularity condition, the superlinear convergence of the algorithm is established without a strict complementarity condition.     

Reflective Luck and Belief Ownership

A belief is reflectively lucky if it is a matter of luck that the belief is true, given what a subject is aware of on reflection alone. Various epistemologists have argued that any adequate theory of knowledge should eliminate reflective luck, but doing so has proven difficult. This article distinguishes between two kinds of reflective luck arguments in the literature: local arguments and global arguments. It argues that local arguments are best interpreted as demanding, not that one be reflectively aware of the reliability of the sources of one’s beliefs, but that one’s beliefs be attributable to one as one’s own. The article then argues that global arguments make illegitimate demands, because they require that we be ultimately answerable for our beliefs. In the end, the article argues that epistemologists should shift their focus away from reflective luck and toward the conditions under which beliefs are attributable to cognitive agents.