The Illogic of Logic in Security Analysis: An Example from Serbia

The author discusses the good and bad implications of both denotation and connotation

A Logic for Statutes

Case-based reasoning is, without question, a puzzle. When students are taught to “think like lawyers” in their first year of law school, they are taught case-based common-law reasoning. Books on legal reasoning are devoted almost entirely to the topic. How do courts reason from one case to the next? Is case-based reasoning reasoning from analogy? How should case-based reasoning be modeled? How can it be justified? In contrast, rule-based legal reasoning (as exemplified in much statutory reasoning) is taken as simple in legal scholarship. Statutory interpretation—how to determine the meaning of words in a statute, the relevance of the lawmakers’ intent, and so forth—is much discussed, but there is little treatment of the structure of statutory reasoning once the meaning of the words is established. Once the meaning of terms is established, statutory reasoning is considered, roughly speaking, to be deductive reasoning. This Essay examines the structure of statutory reasoning after ambiguities are resolved and the meaning of the statute’s terms established. It argues that standard formal logic is not the best approach for modeling statutory rule-based reasoning. Rather, the Essay argues, using the Internal Revenue Code and accompanying regulations, judicial decisions, and rulings as its primary example, that at least some statutory reasoning is best characterized as defeasible reasoning—reasoning that may result in conclusions that can be defeated by subsequent information—and is best modeled using default logic. The Essay then addresses the practical and theoretical benefits of this alternative understanding of rule-based legal reasoning

Review of: Graph Theory by J. A. Bondy and U. S. R. Murty

The article reviews the book Graph Theory, by J. A. Bondy and U. S. R. Murty

Structured belief bases

In this paper we discuss a formal approach to belief representation which stores proof-theoretic information together with formulae. It is illustrated how this additional information can be used in the context of belief revision. The general aims of this paper are the following three: First, we would like to give a descriptive approach to belief revision, in contrast to a normative one. Secondly, the given theory should avoid (the consequences of) logical omniscience of beliefs. Finally, from a broader point of view, the presented approach can be considered as a case study within the programme of proof-theoretic semantics. In this programme, the question is raised whether and how proof-theoretic information can be used as a basis for semantics