Extension of the Zorn lemma to general nontransitive binary relations

Let be an irreflexive (strict) binary relation on a nonempty setX. Denote the completion of by , i.e.,yx ifxy does not hold. An elementx ^* X is said to be a maximal element of onX ifx ^* x, xX. In this paper, an extension of the Zorn lemma to general nontrasitive binary relations (may lack antisymmetry) is established and is applied to prove existence of maximal elements for general nontrasitive (reflexive or irreflexive) binary relations on nonempty sets without assuming any topological conditions or linear structures. A necessary and sufficient condition has been also established to completely characterize the existence of maximal elements for general irreflexive nontrasitive binary relations. This is the first such result available in the literature to the best of our knowledge. Many recent known existence sults in the literature for vector optimization are shown to be special cases of our result.This work was supported in part by AFSOR Grant 91-0097.The author is grateful to the referees and Professor P. L. Yu for their comments and suggestions that led to this improved paper.