Epistemic Values and Scientific Theories

The frame of this thesis is the longstanding issue in philosophy of science concerning the relationship between scientific theories and epistemic values. Indeed, here, I present three essays, each of which constitutes a chapter, dealing with such an issue from a formal point of view, i.e., by using logical patterns, and mathematical tools borrowed from economics and statistics. More specifically, the thesis has the following structure. Chapter 1's starting point is Samir Okasha's 2011 paper "Theory Choice and Social choice: Kuhn versus Arrow", in which Okasha applies Kenneth Arrow's impossibility for social choice to scientific theory choice based on Kuhn's epistemic criteria. In this regard, the chapter aims to investigate whether it is possible to escape from Arrovian impossibility for ‘large scale’ theory choices, i.e. choices among ‘key theories’ which imply a change of paradigm, based on Kuhn’s criteria. Chapter 2 looks at the problem of old evidence (POE) for Bayesian confirmation theory from the point of view of the Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE). Particularly, the chapter has two main aims. The first consists of gauging the weakness and strengths of Eva and Hartmann's two new solutions from IBE's perspective. The second aim is to asses the static dimension of POE and its counterfactual solution from this same perspective. Finally, Chapter 3 focuses on abduction as a search strategy, and looks for case studies of abduction in this sense in the Covid-19 pandemic

Automating the repair of faulty logical theories

This thesis aims to develop a domain-independent system for repairing faulty Datalog-like theories by combining three existing techniques: abduction, belief revision and conceptual change. Accordingly, the proposed system is named the ABC repair system (ABC). Given an observed assertion and a current theory, abduction adds axioms, or deletes preconditions, which explain that observation by making the corresponding assertion derivable from the expanded theory. Belief revision incorporates a new piece of information which conflicts with the input theory by deleting old axioms. Conceptual change uses the reformation algorithm for blocking unwanted proofs or unblocking wanted proofs. The former two techniques change an axiom as a whole, while reformation changes the language in which the theory is written. These three techniques are complementary. But they have not previously been combined into one system. We are working on aligning these three techniques in ABC, which is capable of repairing logical theories with better result than each individual technique alone. Datalog is used as the underlying logic of theories in this thesis, but the proposed system has the potential to be adapted to theories in other logics

Semantic Blockchain to Improve Scalability in the Internet of Things

Generally scarce computational and memory resource availability is a well known problem for the IoT, whose intrinsic volatility makes complex applications unfeasible. Noteworthy efforts in overcoming unpredictability (particularly in case of large dimensions) are the ones integrating Knowledge Representation technologies to build the so-called Semantic Web of Things (SWoT). In spite of allowed advanced discovery features, transactions in the SWoT still suffer from not viable trust management strategies. Given its intrinsic characteristics, blockchain technology appears as interesting from this perspective: a semantic resource/service discovery layer built upon a basic blockchain infrastructure gains a consensus validation. This paper proposes a novel Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) based on a semantic blockchain for registration, discovery, selection and payment. Such operations are implemented as smart contracts, allowing distributed execution and trust. Reported experiments early assess the sustainability of the proposal

Toward a Design of a Telerehabilitation Program for the Functional Recovery in Post-Hip Arthroplasty Patients

Telerehabilitation uses new information and communication technologies as an instrument to ensure a distant rehabilitation service. Patients who underwent hip replacement surgery are an excellent case study for the application of this technology. Post-surgical rehabilitation guidelines for hip arthroplasty are well known, and the correct application has a positive effect on the patients’ prognosis. However, there are no complementary guidelines for physical therapy that could be used at a distance by patients through a computer platform. This chapter presents a systematic review about conventional physical therapy programs for hip arthroplasty. Based on this review, we proposed therapeutic exercises adapted to a low cost web-platform. In order to reach this objective we will present a brief review of the total hip arthroplasty, telemedicine, telerehabilitation and conventional physical therapy approaches

ChatABL: Abductive Learning via Natural Language Interaction with ChatGPT

Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have recently demonstrated significant potential in mathematical abilities, providing valuable reasoning paradigm consistent with human natural language. However, LLMs currently have difficulty in bridging perception, language understanding and reasoning capabilities due to incompatibility of the underlying information flow among them, making it challenging to accomplish tasks autonomously. On the other hand, abductive learning (ABL) frameworks for integrating the two abilities of perception and reasoning has seen significant success in inverse decipherment of incomplete facts, but it is limited by the lack of semantic understanding of logical reasoning rules and the dependence on complicated domain knowledge representation. This paper presents a novel method (ChatABL) for integrating LLMs into the ABL framework, aiming at unifying the three abilities in a more user-friendly and understandable manner. The proposed method uses the strengths of LLMs' understanding and logical reasoning to correct the incomplete logical facts for optimizing the performance of perceptual module, by summarizing and reorganizing reasoning rules represented in natural language format. Similarly, perceptual module provides necessary reasoning examples for LLMs in natural language format. The variable-length handwritten equation deciphering task, an abstract expression of the Mayan calendar decoding, is used as a testbed to demonstrate that ChatABL has reasoning ability beyond most existing state-of-the-art methods, which has been well supported by comparative studies. To our best knowledge, the proposed ChatABL is the first attempt to explore a new pattern for further approaching human-level cognitive ability via natural language interaction with ChatGPT

Reasoning techniques for analysis and refinement of policies for service management

The work described in this technical report falls under the general problem of developing methods that would allow us to engineer software systems that are reliable and would offer a certain acceptable level of quality in their operation. This report shows how the analysis and refinement of policies for Quality of Service can be carried out within logic by exploiting forms of abductive and argumentative reasoning. In particular, it provides two main contributions. The first is an extension of earlier work on the use of abductive reasoning for automatic policy refinement by exploiting the use of integrity constraints within abduction and its integration with constraint solving. This has allowed us to enhance this refinement process in various ways, e.g. supporting parameter values derivation to quantify abstract refinement to specific policies ready to be put in operation, and calculating utility values to determine optimal refined policies. The second contribution is a new approach for modelling and formulating Quality of Service policies, and more general policies for software requirements, as preference policies within logical frameworks of argumentation. This is shown to be a flexible and declarative approach to the analysis of such policies through high-level semantic queries of argumentation, demonstrated here for the particular case of network firewall policies where the logical framework of argumentation allows us to detect anomalies in the firewalls and facilitates the process of their resolution. To our knowledge this is the first time that the link between argumentation and the specification and analysis of requirement policies has been studied