Ensuring the trustworthiness of autonomous systems and artificial intelligence is an important interdisciplinary endeavour. In this position paper, we argue that this endeavour will benefit from technical advancements in capturing various forms of responsibility, and we present a comprehensive research agenda to achieve this. In particular, we argue that ensuring the reliability of autonomous system can take advantage of technical approaches for quantifying degrees of responsibility and for coordinating tasks based on that. Moreover, we deem that, in certifying the legality (...) of an AI system, formal and computationally implementable notions of _responsibility_, _blame_, _accountability_, and _liability_ are applicable for addressing potential responsibility gaps (i.e. situations in which a group is responsible, but individuals’ responsibility may be unclear). This is a call to enable AI systems themselves, as well as those involved in the design, monitoring, and governance of AI systems, to represent and reason about who can be seen as responsible in prospect (e.g. for completing a task in future) and who can be seen as responsible retrospectively (e.g. for a failure that has already occurred). To that end, in this work, we show that across all stages of the design, development, and deployment of trustworthy autonomous systems (TAS), responsibility reasoning should play a key role. This position paper is the first step towards establishing a road map and research agenda on how the notion of responsibility can provide novel solution concepts for ensuring the _reliability_ and _legality_ of TAS and, as a result, enables an effective embedding of AI technologies into society. (shrink)

This research explored the feasibility of using multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis in novel combination with other techniques to study comprehension of epistemic adverbs expressing doubt and certainty (e.g., evidently, obviously, probably ) as they relate to health communication in clinical settings. In Study 1, Australian English speakers performed a dissimilarity-rating task with sentence pairs containing the target stimuli, presented as “doctors' opinions.” Ratings were analyzed using a combination of cultural consensus analysis (factor analysis across participants), weighted-data classical-MDS, and cluster analysis. (...) Analyses revealed strong within-community consistency for a 3-dimensional semantic space solution that took into account individual differences, strong statistical acceptability of the MDS results in terms of stress and explained variance, and semantic configurations that were interpretable in terms of linguistic analyses of the target adverbs. The results confirmed the feasibility of using MDS in this context. Study 2 replicated the results with Canadian English speakers on the same task. Semantic analyses and stress decomposition analysis were performed on the Australian and Canadian data sets, revealing similarities and differences between the two groups. Overall, the results support using MDS to study comprehension of words critical for health communication, including in future studies, for example, second language speaking patients and/or practitioners. More broadly, the results indicate that the techniques described should be promising for comprehension studies in many communicative domains, in both clinical settings and beyond, and including those targeting other aspects of language and focusing on comparisons across different speech communities. (shrink)

This book uses an incidence approach to look at the economic repercussions of birth defects. The authors investigate eighteen of the most clinically significant birth defects affecting 35,000 newborns each year in our country. Their assessments suggest that the annual cost of these eighteen birth defects, together, is more than eight billion dollars . The authors describe in detail their methodology and data sources while providing thorough accounts of each of the eighteen birth defects. Waitzman, Scheffler, and Romano break new (...) ground by using reports from the California Birth Defects Monitoring Program in order to provide cost estimates. They illustrate to the reader how cost estimates of specific birth defects can be used to justify prevention interventions and strategies. In chapter seven, they provide an important example, showing cost-benefit analysis of a program of folate supplementation of food to prevent neutral tube defects. Contents: List of Tables; Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; The Application of Cost-of-Illness Methodology To Birth Defects; The Direct Medical Costs of Birth Defects; Nonmedical Direct Costs of Birth Defects: Developmental Services and Special Education; The Indirect Costs of Birth Defects; Premature Mortality and Heightened Morbidity; An Assessment of Total Costs and Policy Implications; Description of Birth Defects; Description of Major Data Sources; Index. (shrink)

When Did I Begin? investigates the theoretical, moral, and biological issues surrounding the debate over the beginning of human life. With the continuing controversy over the use of in vitro fertilization techniques and experimentation with human embryos, these issues have been forced into the arena of public debate. Following a detailed analysis of the history of the question, Reverend Ford argues that a human individual could not begin before definitive individuation occurs with the appearance of the primitive streak about two (...) weeks after fertilization. This, he argues, is when it becomes finally known whether one or more human individuals are to form from a single egg. Thus, he questions the idea that the fertilized egg itself could be regarded as the beginning of the development of the human individual. The author also differs sharply, however, from those who would delay the beginning of the human person until the brain is formed, or until birth or the onset of conscious states. (shrink)

Ford, Norman M Throughout history Catholics held the commonly accepted views of the times regarding human reproduction, and these views changed as advances were made in scientific knowledge. Hence, it would be best to begin with Aristotle's views on human reproduction.

Ford, Norman M Doctors and nurses understand the personal dignity of their patients and their natural desire to be healthy and happy. The aged with failing memories or mental impairments are persons whose dignity and moral worth remain intact. They also know patients differ in their personal circumstances, their faith, their stages of life's journey and their attitude to sickness and approach of death. This awareness enables them to adequately perform their valuable professional services from a subject centred perspective (...) as well as from an objective approach based on our shared rational human nature. All this needs to be re-affirmed for patients, especially the aged, those living with post coma unresponsiveness, Alzheimer's disease and any other unconscious state. (shrink)

_William of Sherwood's Treatise on Syncategorematic Words _was first published in 1968. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. This is the first translation of an important medieval work in philosophy, an advanced treatise by the thirteenth-century English logician William of Sherwood. The treatise draws on doctrines developed in Sherwood's _Introduction to Logic_,which has also been translated by Professor Kretzmann. William of Sherwood (...) is an important figure in the development of the _logica moderna_,the distinctively medieval contribution to logic and semantics. As Professor Kretzmann explains, the _logica moderna _ may have originally aimed only ad providing _ad hoc _rules regarding inferences that involve problematic locutions of ordinary discourse. But its principal aim soon became the development of a more or less general account of the ways in which words are used to stand for things or to affect the meanings of other words. In Sherwood's time the _logica moderna _ seems to have been thought of as having two branches, an account of the "properties of terms" and an account of the signification and function of "syncategorematic words." Sherwood deals with the first branch in his _Introduction to Logic _ and with the second branch in the treatise presented here. The translation is copiously annotated to supply the kind of explanatory material a twentieth-century reader may need for an understanding of a thirteenth-century discussion. As Professor Kretzmann points out, many of the problems dealt with in this treatise closely resemble the problems of twentieth-century philosophical logic and philosophy of language. (shrink)

In books on the calculus of probability, there have been many accounts as to what is the meaning of the term “probable.” We can readily divide them into three groups. The first sometimes defines probability in terms of the ratio between the number of cases favorable to an event and the number of equally possible cases. Sometimes probability is defined in some way other than this, but the above formulation, or one similar to it is used to describe the “measure (...) of probability.” This concept is what is called “the classical concept” of probability and was held by the great workers in the field of probability from the beginning of the eighteenth and opening of the nineteenth centuries, including James Bernoulli, Thomas Bayes, and the Marquis de Laplace. The second conceives of probability as a logical relation between hypothesis and evidence. Following this conception, one could identify “probability” with “degree of confirmation.” We will term this the “logical concept.” The third group identified probability with the relative frequency with which a property occurs in a specified class of elements. We will call this the “frequency concept.”. (shrink)

This is an advanced study of systems of propositional logic which offers a comprehensive account of a wide variety of logical systems and which encourages students to take a critical stance towards the subject. A great variety of systems and subsystems are defined and compared as regards their deductive power and relation to their model theory. Interesting features include a more refined treatment of modal logic and the special attention given to the weakenings of classical logic. Useful appendices provide a (...) topical bibliography and review of basic set theory. (shrink)

Problems related to the operator form of the generalized canonical momenta in quantum mechanics are resolved by use of the general quantum mechanical canonical point transformation method. This method can be applied to any general canonical point transformation irrespective of the relationship between the domains of the original and transformed variables. The differential representation of the original canonical momenta pi in the original coordinate space is −i $\begin{array}{*{20}c} / \\ h \\ \end{array}$ ∂/∂x i and of the transformed canonical momentap (...) i ′ in the transformed coordinate space is −i $\begin{array}{*{20}c} / \\ h \\ \end{array}$ ∂/∂x i ′. Relationships are derived between the eigenvalues of the original and transformed momenta in either space. The ordering problem for general point transformations is discussed and is shown to be solved. As an example of the generality of the method, it is demonstrated on the point transformation in three dimensions from Cartesian rectilinear to spherical rectilinear coordinates. (shrink)

Suppose it were known, by someone else, what you are going to choose to do tomorrow. Wouldn't that entail that tomorrow you must do what it was known in advance that you would do? In spite of your deliberating and planning, in the end, all is futile: you must choose exactly as it was earlier known that you would. The supposed exercise of your free will is ultimately an illusion. Historically, the tension between foreknowledge and the exercise of free will (...) was addressed in a religious context. According to orthodox views in the West, God was claimed to be omniscient (and hence in possession of perfect foreknowledge) and yet God was supposed to have given humankind free will. Attempts to solve the apparent contradiction often involved attributing to God special properties, e.g. being 'outside' of time. However, the trouble with such solutions is that they are generally unsatisfactory on their own terms. Even more serious is the fact that they leave untouched the problem posed not by God's foreknowledge but that of any human being. Do human beings have foreknowledge? Certainly, of at least some events and behaviors. Thus we have a secular counterpart of the original problem. A human being's foreknowledge, exactly as would God's, of another's choices would seem to preclude the exercise of human free will. Various ways of trying to solve the problem – e.g. by putting constraints on the truth-conditions for statements, or by 'tightening' the conditions necessary for knowledge – are examined and shown not to work. Ultimately the alleged incompatibility of foreknowledge and free will is shown to rest on a subtle logical error. When the error, a modal fallacy, is recognized, and remedied, the problem evaporates. (shrink)