Weighted logics for artificial intelligence : an introductory discussion

International audienceBefore presenting the contents of the special issue, we propose a structured introductory overview of a landscape of the weighted logics (in a general sense) that can be found in the Artificial Intelligence literature, highlighting their fundamental differences and their application areas

07351 Abstracts Collection -- Formal Models of Belief Change in Rational Agents

From 26.08. to 30.08.2007, the Dagstuhl Seminar 07351 ``Formal Models of Belief Change in Rational Agents\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

Logic and the Foundations of Game and Decision Theory (LOFT 7)

This volume collects together revised papers originally presented at the 7th Conference on Logic and the Foundations of Game and Decision Theory (LOFT 2006). LOFT is a key venue for presenting research at the intersection of logic, economics and computer science, and the present collection gives a lively and wide-ranging view of an exciting and rapidly growing area

Causal explanations - how to generate, identify, and evaluate them

The main goal of this dissertation is to provide a solid foundation for a formalization of Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE). This foundation consists of three major components. First, an intuitively adequate and formally precise model of causal explanation. Secondly, an intuitively adequate and formally precise measure of (causal) explanatory power. And third, an intuitively adequate and formally precise criterion of proportionality that is able to identify the most appropriate level of specificity for a causal explanation. While the first component makes it possible to generate and identify causal explanations reliably, the second and third components make it possible to evaluate the strength or quality of causal explanations, which is crucial for identifying the best of a set of competing causal explanations

On politics and social science – the subject-object problem in social science and Foucault’s engaged epistemology

The epistemological problem of the relationship between the subject of knowledge and the object being known has it’s form in social science as a problem of the relationship between a social scientist as a researcher and society and it’s phenomena as an object of this inquiry. As Berger and Kellner note in their book “Sociology Reinterpreted” a social scientist is necessarily a part of the object he studies, being embedded in a position in society from which he studies it. Hence social sciences as scientific endeavors face a problem of the inseperability of their researchers from object they study. Two main solutions two this problem have arisen: positivism and interpretivism. Positivism postulates that rigorous methods for research will insure that objective knowledge will be produced while interpretivism sees society only as an aggregate of individuals whose interactions should be interpreted. A third epistemological framework has arisen in the first half of the twentieth century usually called “critical theory”. Critical theory states that researchers should aim their research towards changing the object they are researching, therefore their scientific practice should have extra-scientific effects, namely political effects. This perspective violates Webers postulate of value neutrality which claims that social sciences can only study the state of affairs but can’t subscribe desirable ways of action. As we will see the main topic of our paper is the epistemological framework of the work of Michel Foucault and his contribution to the resolution of the problematic relation between a researcher and his research object in social science. We will claim that Foucault broadly falls into the critical theory paradigm but manages to solve it’s conflict with the value neutrality postulate. Foucault envisions society as an amalgam of discursive and non-discursive practices that interconnect in a way that gives them regularity and coherence through time. As Gayatri Spivak notices for Foucault discursive practices create meaning and in doing so chart a way for nondiscursive practices and therefore for action. This can be seen as an explanation for Foucault’s well known postulate of the relationship between power and knowledge, discursive practices create knowledge that makes visible certain paths for action. Both of these types of practices intertwine to create what Foucault calls “dispositifs” that can be seen as mechanisms that bind discursive and non-discursive practices in a coherent manner and enable their regular repetition through time. Foucault calls his methodology “genealogy” and sees it as a historical research of the emergence of dipositifs. Genealogy is a historical research of the contingent ways in which practices got interconnected in the past to create dispositifs we see today. As Foucault claims genealogy begins with a “question posed in the present” about a certain dispositive and then charts historical events and processes that led to its current form. The main aim of genealogy is to show that there is no transcendental necessity for a certain dispositif to exist in it’s current form by exposing the historical contingency that led to it’s current state. Foucault claimed that his intent was to show that there is no metaphysical necessity that grounds the existences of dispositifs and hence that their current form is arbitrary. As we can see Foucault follows his postulate on the relationship between knowledge and power and formulates his scientific practice as an opening of possibilities for different forms of action. This is way he calls his books “experiments” and claims that they are to be used for readers to re-examine their own links to the currently existing dispositifs and possibilities of their alternative arrangements. But as Foucault claims the genealogical method doesn’t include normative prescriptions and can be seen only as a form of an anti-metaphysical “unmasking” of current dispositifs. This unmasking doesn’t prescribe a desirable form to any dispositive but only shows that it can be arranged in different ways. Hence we can say that Foucault sees the relationship between a researcher and his object of study as a form of an intervention of the subject that aims at showing that the object is an arbitrary construction. In that regard Foucault falls into the critical theory paradigm. Where he differs from critical theory is his anti-normative stance that refuses to prescribe any desirable form of action unlike for example Horkheimer who in his essay on critical theory claims that “the task of the theorist is to push society towards justice”. Foucault claims that his research results should be used as “instruments” in political struggles but he himself doesn’t ever proclaim a desirable political goal. So we can conclude that Foucault solves the problem of the subject-object relation in social science by envisioning the research process as a practice of production of tools for social change. Therefore he connects social science to extra-scientific political goals but doesn’t violate the value neutrality postulate because his research doesn’t prescribe any concrete political goals but only shows the possibility for social change