This article aims to make public part of the research on the concept of ‘light’ in the theological and, above all, liturgical tradition of the Greek Orthodox Church, based on its representation of the concept of ‘hypostasis’. Taking as a point of departure the interpretation of the expression ‘light of light’ [φῶς ἐκ φωτός (phôs ek phōtos)] of the text of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Symbol, the article presents a proposal for the interpretation of the concept of ‘representation’ for this specific case, (...) based on the idea of apomímesis, and applies this concept to a reading of the place of ‘light’ in the Holy Scripture, in the Patrology and in the Greek Eastern Liturgies. (shrink)

Reasoning with cases has been a primary focus of those working in AI and law who have attempted to model legal reasoning. In this paper we put forward a formal model of reasoning with cases which captures many of the insights from that previous work. We begin by stating our view of reasoning with cases as a process of constructing, evaluating and applying a theory. Central to our model is a view of the relationship between cases, rules based on cases, (...) and the social values which justify those rules. Having given our view of these relationships, we present our formal model of them, and explain how theories can be constructed, compared and evaluated. We then show how previous work can be described in terms of our model, and discuss extensions to the basic model to accommodate particular features of previous work. We conclude by identifying some directions for future work. (shrink)

The Hyperuniverse Program is a new approach to set-theoretic truth which is based on justifiable principles and leads to the resolution of many questions independent from ZFC. The purpose of this paper is to present this program, to illustrate its mathematical content and implications, and to discuss its philosophical assumptions.

This paper describes one way in which a precise reason model of precedent could be developed, based on the general idea that courts are constrained to reach a decision that is consistent with the assessment of the balance of reasons made in relevant earlier decisions. The account provided here has the additional advantage of showing how this reason model can be reconciled with the traditional idea that precedential constraint involves rules, as long as these rules are taken to be defeasible. (...) The account presented is firmly based on a body of work that has emerged in AI and Law. This work is discussed, and there is a particular discussion of approaches based on theory construction, and how that work relates to the model described in this paper. (shrink)

This paper studies the use of hypothetical and value-based reasoning in US Supreme-Court cases concerning the United States Fourth Amendment. Drawing upon formal AI & Law models of legal argument a semi-formal reconstruction is given of parts of the Carney case, which has been studied previously in AI & law research on case-based reasoning. As part of the reconstruction, a semi-formal proposal is made for extending the formal AI & Law models with forms of metalevel reasoning in several argument schemes. (...) The result is compared with Rissland’s (1989) analysis in terms of dimensions and Ashley’s (2008) analysis in terms of his process model of legal argument with hypotheticals. (shrink)

The new industrial paradigm Industry 4.0, or smart industry, is at the core of contemporary debates. The public debate on Industry 4.0 typically offers two main perspectives: the technological one and the one about industrial policies. On the contrary, the discussion on the social and organizational effects of the new paradigm is still underdeveloped. The article specifically examines this aspect, and analyzes the change that workers are subject to, along with the work organization, smart digital factories. The study originates from (...) an empirical survey conducted by the author together with a multidisciplinary research group between 2014 and 2015 in some of the largest Italian factories.In particular, the article analyzes the links between digital society, digital culture and Industry 4.0, focusing on the issue of people’s participation in the process of change, within a specific case study from the railway sector.Many elements of the Industry 4.0 paradigm are widespread outside the factory, in society; they are not only technological elements but also cultural. One of the key aspects of the analysis is the question of participation and the “person-centered” culture. The subject is addressed critically by presenting both the RE-personalization processes and the new processes of DE personalization caused by digital automation. (shrink)

Alessandro Capone Franco Lo Piparo Marco Carapezza Editors Perspectives on Pragmatics and Philosophy Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology Volume 1 Editor-in-Cheif Alessandro. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy ...

Modelling reasoning with legal cases has been a central concern of AI and Law since the 1980s. The approach which represents cases as factors and dimensions has been a central part of that work. In this paper I consider how several varieties of the approach can be applied to the interesting case of Popov v Hayashi. After briefly reviewing some of the key landmarks of the approach, the case is represented in terms of factors and dimensions, and further explored using (...) theory construction and argumentation schemes approaches. (shrink)

This volume addresses the intriguing issue of indirect reports from an interdisciplinary perspective. The contributors include philosophers, theoretical linguists, socio-pragmaticians, and cognitive scientists. The book is divided into four sections following the provenance of the authors. Combining the voices from leading and emerging authors in the field, it offers a detailed picture of indirect reports in the world’s languages and their significance for theoretical linguistics. Building on the previous book on indirect reports in this series, this volume adds an empirical (...) and cross-linguistic approach that covers an impressive range of languages, such as Cantonese, Japanese, Hebrew, Persian, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan, Armenian, Italian, English, Hungarian, German, Rumanian, and Basque. (shrink)

In this paper, we attempt to de-naturalize the prevailing economistic imaginary of work that Max Weber and later commentators described as ‘protestant work ethic,’ epitomized in the figure of homo economicus. We do so by contrasting it with the imaginary of skillful work that can be found in vignettes about artisans in the Zhuangzi. We argue that there are interesting contrasts between these views concerning 1) direct goal achievement vs. indirect goal achievement through the cultivation of skills; 2) the hierarchization (...) of mental versus physical dimensions of work; 3) the crafting of non-dominating relationships between the working subject, their object, and their instruments of work, which leads to questions about the sustainability of these relationships; and 4) the relationship between work and well-being, which the Daoist texts conceptualize in a much more holistic, but also more presentist way than Western economic rationality. We conclude by pointing out the relevance of these differences for several contemporary debates about work, by denaturalizing a dominant imaginary of work, by distinguishing different forms of work, by suggesting a different relation between work and nature, and by raising questions about the desirability of the automation of work. (shrink)

In this paper we describe a method for the specification of computationalmodels of argument using dialogue games. The method, which consists ofsupplying a set of semantic definitions for the performatives making upthe game, together with a state transition diagram, is described in full.Its use is illustrated by some examples of varying complexity, includingtwo complete specifications of particular dialogue games, Mackenzie's DC,and the authors' own TDG. The latter is also illustrated by a fully workedexample illustrating all the features of the game.

This paper is an introduction to a virtual special issue of AI and Law exploring the legacy of the influential HYPO system of Rissland and Ashley. The papers included are: Arguments and cases: An inevitable intertwining, BankXX: Supporting legal arguments through heuristic retrieval, Modelling reasoning with precedents in a formal dialogue Game, A note on dimensions and factors, An empirical investigation of reasoning with legal cases through theory construction and application, Automatically classifying case texts and predicting outcomes, A factor-based definition (...) of precedential constraint and An improved factor based approach to precedential constraint. After describing HYPO, in this introduction to the special issue I look at various aspects of its influence on AI and Law: the developments led by Rissland at Amherst; the developments led by Ashley in Pittsburgh; the expression of these ideas in terms of rule based systems, and their subsequent formalisation; value based theories, which were inspired by a critique of HYPO; and contemporary approaches which revive the idea of dimensions. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a particular role for abductive reasoning in law by applying it in the context of an argumentation scheme for practical reasoning. We present a particular scheme, based on an established scheme for practical reasoning, that can be used to reason abductively about how an agent might have acted to reach a particular scenario, and the motivations for doing so. Plausibility here depends on a satisfactory explanation of why this particular agent followed these motivations in the (...) particular situation. The scheme is given a formal grounding in terms of action-based alternating transition systems and we illustrate the approach with a running legal example. (shrink)

There is an increasing need for norms to be embedded in technology as the widespread deployment of applications such as autonomous driving, warfare and big data analysis for crime fighting and counter-terrorism becomes ever closer. Current approaches to norms in multi-agent systems tend either to simply make prohibited actions unavailable, or to provide a set of rules which the agent is obliged to follow, either as part of its design or to avoid sanctions and punishments. In this paper we argue (...) for the position that agents should be equipped with the ability to reason about a system’s norms, by reasoning about the social and moral values that norms are designed to serve; that is, perform the sort of moral reasoning we expect of humans. In particular we highlight the need for such reasoning when circumstances are such that the rules should arguably be broken, so that the reasoning can guide agents in deciding whether to comply with the norms and, if violation is desirable, how best to violate them. One approach to enabling this is to make use of an argumentation scheme based on values and designed for practical reasoning: arguments for and against actions are generated using this scheme and agents choose between actions based on their preferences over these values. Moral reasoning then requires that agents have an acceptable set of values and an acceptable ordering on their values. We first discuss how this approach can be used to think about and justify norms in general, and then discuss how this reasoning can be used to think about when norms should be violated, and the form this violation should take. We illustrate how value based reasoning can be used to decide when and how to violate a norm using a road traffic example. We also briefly consider what makes an ordering on values acceptable, and how such an ordering might be determined. (shrink)

The relevance of the study lies in the fact that the information and computer revolution has made it possible to create and include in the system of social circulation such information flows, which are currently sufficient to ensure the most rational use of nature, demographic, economic, industrial, agricultural and spiritual and cultural development of mankind. The phenomenon of the information revolution is the result of two parallel processes that can develop throughout history: an increase in the role and volume of (...) information necessary to ensure the full existence of society, and improvement in the technology of information accumulation and dissemination. Information technology has been integrated into the current social and economic space. The use of computers and telecommunications has influenced an unprecedented intensity of communicative interactions. These processes affect the stages of social development. The article analyzes the current understanding of the fourth and fifth information revolution. The problems of economics, management and post-industrial society are considered. An attempt is made to synthesize the models of foreign and domestic researchers. The article considers the existing theoretical approaches to the explication of political security, highlighted such its component as information and political security, and this author's interpretation of the latter. The limits of the information-political security, allowing to separate it from other types of security, depending on the information are established. The influence of information on the formation of information and political threats affecting the information and political security of the country is considered. (shrink)

Disgust and Intimacy The aim of the paper is to present the results of preliminary research into the relation between disgust and intimacy. The authors apply current psychological conceptions of the emotions relating to social behaviour, primarily the theory of disgust associated with Paul Rozin, Jonathan Haidt and Clark McCauley. The research was conducted in a community of students living in student halls in Bratislava. The authors argue that social relationships may influence expressions of core disgust and the animal-nature disgust (...) that is considered to be an earlier stage in the evolutionary development of this emotion. More specifically, people's representations of feelings of disgust towards elicitors linked to certain persons are conditioned by the social categories those persons belong to and the socio-cultural schemas distributed in the given environment. (shrink)

Mistaken payment is the ‘core case’ of unjust enrichment, and it has had a powerful effect on the development of this area of private law. For Peter Birks, unjust enrichment was simply ‘the law of all events materially identical to mistaken payment’—to be shaped through a process of abstraction from that core case. But this begs the question: how do we work out what counts as ‘materially identical’ to mistaken payment? The most obvious starting point, and that which Birks chose, (...) is the central characteristic of money: money is valuable. Thus, ‘the law of all events materially identical to mistaken payments’ is ‘the law of all events that unjustly enrich one party at another’s expense’.In this article, I argue that this starting point is incorrect. Rather than looking for some factual similarity between mistaken payment and other events, we should identify the role that money plays in justifying restitution. And what justifies restitution in the core case is not the ‘value’ or ‘benefit’ that money confers; rather, it is a defect in the legal transaction that links payor with payee. The payee is not liable because she has been ‘enriched’, but because she is the counterparty to a legal transaction which exhibits traits that there are institutional reasons to disavow. Just like contract and torts, the role of value is secondary: where correcting the injustice in specie is impossible or undesirable, the defendant must pay whichever sum will most nearly achieve that goal. (shrink)

What counts as an intuitively plausible set theoretic content (notion, axiom or theorem) has been a matter of much debate in contemporary philosophy of mathematics. In this paper I develop a critical appraisal of the issue. I analyze first R. B. Jensen's positions on the epistemic status of the axiom of constructibility. I then formulate and discuss a view of intuitiveness in set theory that assumes it to hinge basically on mathematical success. At the same time, I present accounts of (...) set theoretic axioms and theorems formulated in non-strictly mathematical terms, e.g., by appealing to the iterative concept of set and/or to overall methodological principles, like unify and maximize, and investigate the relation of the latter to success in mathematics. (shrink)

Normative case studies are designed to offer richly detailed “worlds of possibility” that invite complex reflection and discussion about authentic ethical dilemmas in education. In this essay, Tatiana Geron and Meira Levinson argue that authors' choices of what details to include in a case are themselves ethical decisions that require significant ethical responsibility. Case details can shape which avenues of ethical inquiry are open to readers, whether and how institutional and structural conditions get considered, whose perspectives are included and (...) legitimized, and what political issues are understood as “open” or “closed.” At its best, case “world-building” can help readers understand the full complexity of ethical decision-making in education. However, for this to occur, case authors must seek out expert and dissenting perspectives, field test the case with diverse audiences, and remain reflexive about their own perspectives and how these shape their world-building decisions. (shrink)

This paper discusses some engineering considerations that should be taken into account when building a knowledge based system, and recommends isomorphism, the well defined correspondence of the knowledge base to the source texts, as a basic principle of system construction in the legal domain. Isomorphism, as it has been used in the field of legal knowledge based systems, is characterised and the benefits which stem from its use are described. Some objections to and limitations of the approach are discussed. The (...) paper concludes with a case study giving a detailed example of the use of the isomorphic approach in a particular application. (shrink)

:This article reexamines the “prostitution objection” to paid surrogacy, and argues that rebuttals to this objection fail to focus on surrogates as embodied persons. This failure is based on the false distinction between “selling one’s reproductive services” and “selling one’s body.” To ground the analysis of humans as embodied persons, this article uses Kant’s late ethical theory, which develops the conceptual framework for understanding human beings as embodied selves. Literature on surrogacy commonly emphasizes that all Kantian duties heed to the (...) categorical prohibition to treat persons as mere means. What this literature leaves out is that this imperative commands us more specifically to engage ourselves and others as embodied persons. This article aims to relate this point to a specific issue in assisted reproduction. It argues that a Kantian account of human beings as embodied persons prohibits paid surrogacy on exactly the same grounds as it prohibits prostitution. (shrink)

This paper argues that the impact of individual higher education institutions’ strategies on system diversity should be explored. By looking at how universities respond strategically to governmental policies as well as to the actions of other (competing) institutions, our understanding of determinants of diversity can be enriched. A conceptual framework focusing on institutional positioning is explained using the dimensions deliberateness of organizational actions versus environmental influence, on the one hand, and differentiation versus compliance, on the other. We posit institutional positioning (...) as the mechanism through which organizational and environmental levels are linked. Our model features multiple dimensions and relations reflecting how higher education institutions locate themselves in specific niches, i.e. positions where they are able to gather the necessary resources for their core activities. The implications for research on diversity and for policymaking are discussed. (shrink)

The design and analysis of norms is a somewhat neglected topic in AI and Law, but this is not so in other areas of Computer Science. In recent years powerful techniques to model and analyse norms have been developed in the Multi-Agent Systems community, driven both by the practical need to regulate electronic institutions and open agent systems, and by a theoretical interest in mechanism design and normative systems. Agent based techniques often rely heavily on enforcing norms using the software (...) to prevent violation, but I will also discuss the use of sanctions and rewards, and the conditions under which compliance by autonomous agents (including humans) can be expected or encouraged without sanctions or rewards. In the course of the paper a suggested framework for the exploration of these issues is developed. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to expatiate on the poetic function of language on the basis of considerations by Jakobson and Waugh. I try to bring in the consideration that pragmatics plays an important role in elucidating the poetic function of language. Contextualism allows us to interpret a poem: referents must be fixed or need not be fixed due to the requirements of the discourse; citations are brought in through pragmatic ways; polyphony is achieved by taking into account the context (...) of previous analyses of a poetic text; the vicinity of a certain word, or concept or line is likely to affect the interpretation of a certain expression; the poetic text can take different forms, from graffiti to discourse at the market place, to discourse between lovers. All these forms of poetic text would not exist if the notion of poetry did not include the idea of semantic/pragmatic compression which is matched, in interpretation, by expansions. (shrink)

This article examines public communication about atomic energy as an important vector in the political, institutional, and technological transformations of Ukraine's nuclear industry since the breakup of the USSR. It explores the ongoing effort to make the atom more domestic, familiar, human, and accessible against the not-so-distant backdrop of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. The central focus of this article is the analysis of children's drawings of nuclear power stations produced for art contests organized by local nuclear information centers. (...) These contests and other activities of the centers have contributed to the increased visibility of nuclear power in Ukraine. The drawings reveal the inscription of the atom into complex representations about the Ukrainian nation, its past, present, traditions, and modernity. The analysis of these drawings as well as government and nuclear power station (NPP) documents, press articles, and interviews indicates that the notion of the “domestication” of the atom is a particularly appropriate way to describe the banalization of nuclear technologies in Ukraine. (shrink)

Stories can be powerful argumentative vehicles, and they are often used to present arguments from analogy, most notably as parables, fables or allegories where the story invites the hearer to infer an important claim of the argument. Case Based Reasoning in Law has many similar features: the current case is compared to previously decided cases, and in case the similarity between the previous and current cases is deemed sufficient, a similar conclusion can be drawn for the current case. In this (...) article, we want to take a further step towards computationally modelling the connection between stories and argumentation in analogical reasoning. We show how story schemes can be used to investigate and determine story similarity, and how the point of a story – that is, the conclusion that the storyteller intends the hearer to draw – can be likened to the ratio decidendi in a legal case. Finally, we present some formal tools for modelling stories based on computational models of practical reasoning. (shrink)

In this paper I shall discuss the notion of argument, and the importanceof argument in AI and Law. I shall distinguish four areas where argument hasbeen applied: in modelling legal reasoning based on cases; in thepresentation and explanation of results from a rule based legal informationsystem; in the resolution of normative conflict and problems ofnon-monotonicity; and as a basis for dialogue games to support the modellingof the process of argument. The study of argument is held to offer prospectsof real progress (...) in the field of AI and law, and the purpose of this paperis to provide an overview of work, and the connection between the various strands. (shrink)