The first issue of Artificial Intelligence and Law journal was published in 1992. This paper provides commentaries on nine significant papers drawn from the Journal’s second decade. Four of the papers relate to reasoning with legal cases, introducing contextual considerations, predicting outcomes on the basis of natural language descriptions of the cases, comparing different ways of representing cases, and formalising precedential reasoning. One introduces a method of analysing arguments that was to become very widely used in AI and Law, namely (...) argumentation schemes. Two relate to ontologies for the representation of legal concepts and two take advantage of the increasing availability of legal corpora in this decade, to automate document summarisation and for the mining of arguments. (shrink)

To commemorate 40 years since the founding of the Journal of Business Ethics, the editors in chief of the journal have invited the editors to provide commentaries on the future of business ethics. This essay comprises a selection of commentaries aimed at creating dialogue around the theme Ethics at the centre of global and local challenges. For much of the history of the Journal of Business Ethics, ethics was seen within the academy as a peripheral aspect of business. However, in (...) recent years, the stakes have risen dramatically, with global and local worlds destabilized by financial crisis, climate change, internet technologies and artificial intelligence, and global health crises. The authors of these commentaries address these grand challenges by placing business ethics at their centre. What if all grand challenges were framed as grand ethical challenges? Tanusree Jain, Arno Kourula and Suhaib Riaz posit that an ethical lens allows for a humble response, in which those with greater capacity take greater responsibility but remain inclusive and cognizant of different voices and experiences. Focussing on business ethics in connection to the grand challenge of environmental emergencies, Steffen Böhm introduces the deceptively simple yet radical position that business is nature, and nature is business. His quick but profound side-step from arguments against human–nature dualism to an ontological undoing of the business–nature dichotomy should have all business ethics scholars rethinking their “business and society” assumptions. Also, singularly concerned with the climate emergency, Boudewijn de Bruin posits a scenario where, 40 years from now, our field will be evaluated by its ability to have helped humanity emerge from this emergency. He contends that Milieudefensie v. Royal Dutch Shell illustrates how human rights take centre stage in climate change litigation, and how business ethics enters the courtroom. From a consumer ethics perspective, Deirdre Shaw, Michal Carrington and Louise Hassan argue that ecologically sustainable and socially just marketplace systems demand cultural change, a reconsideration of future interpretations of “consumer society”, a challenge to the dominant “growth logic” and stimulation of alternative ways to address our consumption needs. Still concerned with global issues, but turning attention to social inequalities, Nelarine Cornelius links the capability approach to global and corporate governance, arguing that CA will continue to lie at the foundation of human development policy, and, increasingly, CSR and corporate governance. Continuing debate on the grand challenges associated with justice and equality, Laurence Romani identifies a significant shift in the centrality of business ethics in debates on managing differences, positing that dialogue between diversity management and international management can ground future debate in business ethics. Finally, the essay concludes with a commentary by Charlotte Karam and Michelle Greenwood on the possibilities of feminist-inspired theories, methods, and positionality for many spheres of business ethics, not least stakeholder theory, to broaden and deepen its capacity for nuance, responsiveness, and transformation. In the words of our commentators, grand challenges must be addressed urgently, and the Journal of Business Ethics should be at the forefront of tackling them. (shrink)

Building on our diverse research traditions in the study of reasoning, language and communication, the Polish School of Argumentation integrates various disciplines and institutions across Poland in which scholars are dedicated to understanding the phenomenon of the force of argument. Our primary goal is to craft a methodological programme and establish organisational infrastructure: this is the first key step in facilitating and fostering our research movement, which joins people with a common research focus, complementary skills and an enthusiasm to work (...) together. This statement—the Manifesto—lays the foundations for the research programme of the Polish School of Argumentation. (shrink)

We present a theoretical view of the cellular foundations for network-level processes involved in producing our conscious experience. Inputs to apical synapses in layer 1 of a large subset of neocortical cells are summed at an integration zone near the top of their apical trunk. These inputs come from diverse sources and provide a context within which the transmission of information abstracted from sensory input to their basal and perisomatic synapses can be amplified when relevant. We argue that apical amplification (...) enables conscious perceptual experience and makes it more flexible, and thus more adaptive, by being sensitive to context. Apical amplification provides a possible mechanism for recurrent processing theory that avoids strong loops. It makes the broadcasting hypothesized by global neuronal workspace theories feasible while preserving the distinct contributions of the individual cells receiving the broadcast. It also provides mechanisms that contribute to the holistic aspects of integrated information theory. As apical amplification is highly dependent on cholinergic, aminergic, and other neuromodulators, it relates the specific contents of conscious experience to global mental states and to fluctuations in arousal when awake. We conclude that apical dendrites provide a cellular mechanism for the context-sensitive selective amplification that is a cardinal prerequisite of conscious perception. (shrink)

In response to crises, people sometimes prioritize fewer specific identifiable victims over many unspecified statistical victims. How other factors can explain this bias remains unclear. So two experiments investigated how complying with public health recommendations during the COVID19 pandemic depended on victim portrayal, reflection, and philosophical beliefs (Total N = 998). Only one experiment found that messaging about individual victims increased compliance compared to messaging about statistical victims—i.e., "flatten the curve" graphs—an effect that was undetected after controlling for other factors. (...) However, messaging about flu (vs. COVID19) indirectly reduced compliance by reducing perceived threat of the pandemic. Nevertheless, moral beliefs predicted compliance better than messaging and reflection in both experiments. The second experiment’s additional measures revealed that religiosity, political preferences, and beliefs about science also predicted compliance. This suggests that flouting public health recommendations may be less about ineffective messaging or reasoning than philosophical differences. (shrink)

Volume 16, Issue 4, September 2019, Page 381-388.

The characteristic asymmetry in the attribution of intentionality in causing side effects, known as the Knobe effect, is considered to be a stable model of human cognition. This article looks at whether the way of thinking and analysing one scenario may affect the other and whether the mutual relationship between the ways in which both scenarios are analysed may affect the stability of the Knobe effect. The theoretical analyses and empirical studies performed are based on a distinction between moral and (...) non-moral normativity possibly affecting the judgments passed in both scenarios. Therefore, an essential role in judgments about the intentionality of causing a side effect could be played by normative competences responsible for distinguishing between normative orders. (shrink)

The subject of this study are the argumentation strategies applied by the Polish and German apex courts competent in criminal matters, namely the Supreme Court and the Federal Court of Justice, respectively. The investigation encompasses a total of 200 rulings issued by the criminal panels of these bodies. Particular focus was put on examining which arguments both courts apply to solve interpretation problems, and secondly, how these courts systematize the interpretation process. Methodologically, the examination utilizes, inter alia, the principles of (...) qualitative research, without neglecting the legal dogmatic perspective. A crucial theoretical foundation underlying this study is the distinction between formalistic and substantive legal cultures. The examination reveals that neither the Polish nor the German legal culture is purely formalistic or value-oriented. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court of Poland shows greater affinity for formalistic arguments, whereas the substantive interpretation methods are more widespread in the judicature of the German Federal Court of Justice. In particular, the Polish Court prefers the linguistic interpretation, whereas the German Court favours the purposive approach. (shrink)

The essay examines Scholem's letter-confession on the Hebrew language addressed to Rosenzweig from two perspectives hitherto ignored in the ongoing interpretative consideration of this document: Scholem's repression of the literary space and his consequent exclusion of madness. The essay follows several threads in Derrida's own ‘internal’ reading of the letter, and leans on other Derridean writings such as The Monolingualism of the Other, Schibboleth: For Paul Celan and ‘Cogito and the History of Madness’ in order to suggest two distinct encounters (...) between Derrida and Scholem: In the first encounter, Scholem reads Derrida and proves to be deconstructing his own notions of secular and profane Hebrew, while fighting in vain for his sanity by clinging to liturgical practices against the grain of an ongoing ‘actualization’, politicization or else fictionalization of the sacred language. In the second encounter, it is Derrida who reads Scholem. By transforming the particular conditions of possibility of Hebrew into general conditions of possibility of every language contaminated by a theological-political tension, Derrida contributes some important insights for contemporary Hebrew speakers. (shrink)

We provide a retrospective of 25 years of the International Conference on AI and Law, which was first held in 1987. Fifty papers have been selected from the thirteen conferences and each of them is described in a short subsection individually written by one of the 24 authors. These subsections attempt to place the paper discussed in the context of the development of AI and Law, while often offering some personal reactions and reflections. As a whole, the subsections build into (...) a history of the last quarter century of the field, and provide some insights into where it has come from, where it is now, and where it might go. (shrink)

Research on intergroup emotions has largely focused on the experience of emotions and surprisingly little attention has been given to the expression of emotions. Drawing on the social-functional approach to emotions, we argue that in the context of intergroup conflicts, outgroup members’ expression of disappointment with one’s ingroup induces the complementary emotion of collective guilt and correspondingly a collective action protesting ingroup actions against the outgroup. In Study 1 conducted immediately after the 2014 Gaza war, Jewish-Israeli participants received information about (...) outgroup’s expression of emotions. As predicted, outgroup’s expression of disappointment increased collective guilt and willingness to participate in collective action, but only among those who saw the intergroup situation as illegitimate. Moreover, collective guilt mediated the relationship between disappointment expression and collective action, moderated, again, by legitimacy perception. In Study 2, we replicated these results in the context of racial tension between Black and White Americans in the US. We discuss the theoretical and applied implications of the findings. (shrink)

The problem of extended fusion and identification can be approached from a diachronic perspective. Based on our own research, as well as findings from the fields of social, political, and clinical psychology, we argue that the way contemporary emotional events shape local fusion is similar to the way in which historical experiences shape extended fusion. We propose a reciprocal process in which historical events shape contemporary identities, whereas contemporary identities shape interpretations of past traumas.

This paper addresses the black-box problem in artificial intelligence (AI), and the related problem of explainability of AI in the legal context. We argue, first, that the black box problem is, in fact, a superficial one as it results from an overlap of four different – albeit interconnected – issues: the opacity problem, the strangeness problem, the unpredictability problem, and the justification problem. Thus, we propose a framework for discussing both the black box problem and the explainability of AI. We (...) argue further that contrary to often defended claims the opacity issue is not a genuine problem. We also dismiss the justification problem. Further, we describe the tensions involved in the strangeness and unpredictability problems and suggest some ways to alleviate them. (shrink)

Aworkshop was held August 26–28, 2015, by the Earth- Life Science Institute (ELSI) Origins Network (EON, see Appendix I) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. This meeting gathered a diverse group of around 40 scholars researching the origins of life (OoL) from various perspectives with the intent to find common ground, identify key questions and investigations for progress, and guide EON by suggesting a roadmap of activities. Specific challenges that the attendees were encouraged to address included the following: What key (...) questions, ideas, and investigations should the OoL research community address in the near and long term? How can this community better organize itself and prioritize its efforts? What roles can particular subfields play, and what can ELSI and EON do to facilitate research progress? (See also Appendix II.) The present document is a product of that workshop; a white paper that serves as a record of the discussion that took place and a guide and stimulus to the solution of the most urgent and important issues in the study of the OoL. This paper is not intended to be comprehensive or a balanced representation of the opinions of the entire OoL research community. It is intended to present a number of important position statements that contain many aspirational goals and suggestions as to how progress can be made in understanding the OoL. The key role played in the field by current societies and recurring meetings over the past many decades is fully acknowledged, including the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL) and its official journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, as well as the International Society for Artificial Life (ISAL). (shrink)

In some patients with atrial fibrillation, the causative agent of attack is stress. In others, AF usually begins during relax or sleep. This study aimed to investigate the individual factors associated with the adrenergic or vagal type of AF. This study included 138 patients with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation. Sixty-eight patients reported that AF was frequently triggered by stress and 70 patients reported that AF usually began during relaxation or sleep. Gender, age, ejection fraction, and temperament were compared across the two (...) groups. Temperament was evaluated using the Formal Characteristics of Behaviour-Temperament Inventory. The groups differed only in temperament. Patients with sympathetic-type AF had a higher score for emotional reactivity and perseverance temperament traits and a lower score for endurance than patients with vagal-type AF and than the average in population. (shrink)

The article offers an analysis of Józef Bocheński's studies of the concept of nation. Bocheński acknowledges that there are difficulties in defining a nation. After that he claims that he will attempt to propose a definition of the Polish nation. Nation is a social group centered around some cultural ideal. The analysis shows that Bocheński did not avoid serious logical problems. First of all, he constantly falls into a circular reasoning. Furthermore, it is called into question if it makes sense (...) to refer to a cultural ideal or ideology while defining a nation. Is not such an attempt essentially bound to become circular? A doubt is also raised whether nowadays, in the face of constant migration of people and cultural ideals, one can continue to reasonably talk about nations. (shrink)

Species are considered the basic unit of biological classification and evolution. Hence, they are used as a benchmark in several fields, although the ontological status of such a category has always been a matter of debate. This paper aims to discuss the problem of the definition of species within the new mechanistic approach. Nevertheless, the boundary between entities, activities, and mechanisms remains difficult to establish and always requires an analysis of what is meant by explanation. As a case study, the (...) paper describes the debate concerning the species category by considering different kingdoms: Animals, Bacteria, and Fungi. The inherently biological differences between those groups prevent the use of a single, universally applicable concept of species that could fit the mechanisms responsible for the variability present in these kingdoms. The same issue is encountered within each group, as highlighted through a focus on mammals and microbes. This controversy has given rise to opposite approaches, namely: monism, which looks for a single definition that might account for all species, and pluralism, which admits that different groups of organisms require somewhat different definitions. In order to develop an adequate definition of species, we propose to apply a new mechanistic framework, which considers the ontic-epistemic dimensions of scientific explanation in close parallel. The apt correlation between epistemic and the ontic aspects highlights the way in which the concept of species and the reference to data are strictly co-determined. This suggests that the concept of species is better understandable within a dual ontic-epistemic approach. (shrink)

In order to be exercised meaningfully, political freedom requires the capacity to actually identify available policy options. To ensure this, society ought to engage in deliberation as a discussion oriented towards mutual learning. In order to highlight this issue, I define deliberation in terms of the participants’ openness to preference change, i.e. the deliberative stance. In the context of the systemic approach to deliberative theory, I find several factors causing the atrophy of such a deliberative stance. I note that this (...) state can occur not only when debaters are representatives or are in the presence of an audience, but also when they face the prospect of a binding decision. It is the latter effect that is a serious challenge to the micro-deliberative strategy, one that strives towards decisional powers being granted to deliberative minipublics. Presenting my findings, I propose—as an alternative to the power-oriented ‘ladder of participation’—a distinction between traditional co-decision and deliberative consultation, the latter one being an environment that is more conducive to deliberative stance. This new typology highlights factors that lead to preference petrification and allows for the appreciation of the non-decisional character of micro-deliberation. All of it leads to the conclusion that, in order to preserve their deliberative character in the systemic context, deliberative minipublics should not always be required to have decision-making powers. (shrink)

In recent decades, societal perceptions about sexuality have undergone immense changes, which in turn led to substantial reform of states’ criminal regulation of sexual misconduct. Traditional Angl...

Considering world’s social and ethical problems, it is unavoidable to omit the area of medical issues in which biological and therapeutic revolution took place. Pope John Paul II points out indirectly that doctor–patient relationship should be held with the respect for ethical and legal requirements because of human dignity, which is the principle, cause, goal and sense of all reality. In order to arrange the interrelation between the doctor and the patient in an appropriate way, it is necessary to build (...) bonds between them. Those bonds create patient’s and doctor’s participation in the process of medical treatment. The aim of this article is to present some aspects of Personalism by John Paul II (social doctrine of the Church) in patient–doctor relationship. The main reference point for considering aspects of patient–doctor relationship is the communitarian dimension of human being as a person in Karol Wojtyła’s philosophy. (shrink)

We predicted that short-term training of executive control would improve both cognitive control itself and general fluid intelligence. We randomly assigned 120 high school students to the experimental and control groups. The former underwent a 14-day training of four executive functions: interference resolution, response inhibition, task switching, and goal monitoring. The latter did not train anything. The training significantly improved cognitive control and IQ. The control group also improved their IQ scores but gained less than the experimental one. However, the (...) amount of IQ scores enhancement did not correlate with the majority of indices of the training effectiveness, thus justifying the supposition that such enhancement resulted from the general effect of participation in the training rather than from the improvement of executive functions underlying Gf. (shrink)

This paper investigates the phenomenon of judicial law-making in the practice of the highest courts dealing with criminal matters in Germany and Poland on the basis of 200 of their decisions. While German jurisprudence principally acknowledges the right of the judiciary to create new law, the Polish legal theory generally rejects this notion. Still, research indicates that, in practice, the differences in the frequency and intensity with which these courts pass creative rulings are not as substantial as the discrepancy in (...) the theoretical stance would suggest. Owing to circumstances, both the German Federal Court of Justice and the Polish Supreme Court are willing to create new legal norms, but the dimensions of judicial law-making presented by these bodies deviate from each other. In the research sample, the German Federal Court of Justice was more inclined to introduce legal institutions that were foreign to the statutes and rule against the will of the lawmaker explicitly stated in the preparatory works. On the other hand, the Polish Supreme Court used logical conclusions more often, but did not also refrain from passing rulings against the clear wording of the statutory law, and was just as willing to go beyond the wording of the law as was the German Federal Court of Justice. Notably, only the German apex court is willing to openly admit that it creates new legal norms, whereas the Polish Supreme Court does not concede in the reasons that its decisions are of a law-making nature, especially when it applies so-called “interpretation in the wider sense”—which is, in essence, a “concealed” way of creating new legal norms. (shrink)

In September 2018, the ArgDiaP association, along with colleagues from Germany and the UK, organised one of the longest and most interdisciplinary series of events ever dedicated to argumentation - Warsaw Argumentation Week, WAW 2018. The eleven-day ‘week’ featured a five day graduate school on computational and linguistic perspectives on argumentation (3rd SSA school); five workshops: on systems and algorithms for formal argumentation (2nd SAFA), argumentation in relation to society (1st ArgSoc), philosophical approaches to argumentation (1st ArgPhil), legal argumentation (2ndMET-ARG) (...) and argumentation in rhetoric (1st MET-RhET); and two conferences: on computational models of argumentation (7th COMMA conference) and on argumentation and corpus linguistics (16th ArgDiaP conference). WAW hosted twelve tutorials and eight invited talks as well as welcoming over 130 participants. All the conferences and workshops publish pre- or post-proceedings in the top journals and book series in the field. (shrink)

This paper describes the process of reception of Catholic Modernism in Poland as well as the Polish contribution to this movement. It shows the Polish antimodernist perspective on modernistic thought. The neglect of Polish modernism was caused by the nationalistic character of the Polish theology and has resulted in absence of historical studies of Polish Catholic Modernism. Based on the results of archival and literature research the paper presents a variety of Polish Catholic Modernists and non-Catholic supporters of the modernist (...) thought. A unique place among Polish modernists belongs to Marian Zdziechowski (1861–1938) who was the only Polish participant of the international intellectual debate on the “modernisation” of Roman Catholicism. The paper analyses the development of Zdziechowski’s thought and shows that his main demand throughout the modernist debates was to create a new, more efficient apologetics, which would be grounded in the religious experience of the individual. (shrink)

This paper describes the process of reception of Catholic Modernism in Poland as well as the Polish contribution to this movement. It shows the Polish antimodernist perspective on modernistic thought. The neglect of Polish modernism was caused by the nationalistic character of the Polish theology and has resulted in absence of historical studies of Polish Catholic Modernism. Based on the results of archival and literature research the paper presents a variety of Polish Catholic Modernists and non-Catholic supporters of the modernist (...) thought. A unique place among Polish modernists belongs to Marian Zdziechowski (1861–1938) who was the only Polish participant of the international intellectual debate on the “modernisation” of Roman Catholicism. The paper analyses the development of Zdziechowski’s thought and shows that his main demand throughout the modernist debates was to create a new, more efficient apologetics, which would be grounded in the religious experience of the individual. (shrink)

Thirty-Five Years of Research on Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP Research Data Base. State of the Art or Pseudoscientific Decoration? The huge popularity of Neuro-Linguistic Programming therapies and training has not been accompanied by knowledge of the empirical underpinnings of the concept. The article presents the concept of NLP in the light of empirical research in the Neuro-Linguistic Programming Research Data Base. From among 315 articles the author selected 63 studies published in journals from the Master Journal List of ISI. Out of (...) 33 studies, 18.2% show results supporting the tenets of NLP, 54.5% - results non-supportive of the NLP tenets and 27.3% brings uncertain results. The qualitative analysis indicates the greater weight of the non-supportive studies and their greater methodological worth against the ones supporting the tenets. Results contradict the claim of an empirical basis of NLP. (shrink)

Background In an effort to improve the quality of medical care, the philosophy of patient-centered care has become integrated into almost every aspect of the medical community. Despite its widespread acceptance, among patients and practitioners, there are concerns that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence may threaten elements of patient-centered care, such as personal relationships with care providers and patient-driven choices. This study explores the extent to which patients are confident in and comfortable with the use of these technologies when it (...) comes to their own individual care and identifies areas that may align with or threaten elements of patient-centered care. Methods An exploratory, mixed-method approach was used to analyze survey data from 600 US-based adults in the State of Florida. The survey was administered through a leading market research provider (August 10–21, 2023), and responses were collected to be representative of the state’s population based on age, gender, race/ethnicity, and political affiliation. Results Respondents were more comfortable with the use of AI in health-related tasks that were not associated with doctor-patient relationships, such as scheduling patient appointments or follow-ups (84.2%). Fear of losing the ‘human touch’ associated with doctors was a common theme within qualitative coding, suggesting a potential conflict between the implementation of AI and patient-centered care. In addition, decision self-efficacy was associated with higher levels of comfort with AI, but there were also concerns about losing decision-making control, workforce changes, and cost concerns. A small majority of participants mentioned that AI could be useful for doctors and lead to more equitable care but only when used within limits. Conclusion The application of AI in medical care is rapidly advancing, but oversight, regulation, and guidance addressing critical aspects of patient-centered care are lacking. While there is no evidence that AI will undermine patient-physician relationships at this time, there is concern on the part of patients regarding the application of AI within medical care and specifically as it relates to their interaction with physicians. Medical guidance on incorporating AI while adhering to the principles of patient-centered care is needed to clarify how AI will augment medical care. (shrink)