State-of-the-art on evolution and reactivity

This report starts by, in Chapter 1, outlining aspects of querying and updating resources on the Web and on the Semantic Web, including the development of query and update languages to be carried out within the Rewerse project. From this outline, it becomes clear that several existing research areas and topics are of interest for this work in Rewerse. In the remainder of this report we further present state of the art surveys in a selection of such areas and topics. More precisely: in Chapter 2 we give an overview of logics for reasoning about state change and updates; Chapter 3 is devoted to briefly describing existing update languages for the Web, and also for updating logic programs; in Chapter 4 event-condition-action rules, both in the context of active database systems and in the context of semistructured data, are surveyed; in Chapter 5 we give an overview of some relevant rule-based agents frameworks

Biological Pattern Generation: The Cellular and Computational Logic of Networks in Motion

In 1900, Ramón y Cajal advanced the neuron doctrine, defining the neuron as the fundamental signaling unit of the nervous system. Over a century later, neurobiologists address the circuit doctrine: the logic of the core units of neuronal circuitry that control animal behavior. These are circuits that can be called into action for perceptual, conceptual, and motor tasks, and we now need to understand whether there are coherent and overriding principles that govern the design and function of these modules. The discovery of central motor programs has provided crucial insight into the logic of one prototypic set of neural circuits: those that generate motor patterns. In this review, I discuss the mode of operation of these pattern generator networks and consider the neural mechanisms through which they are selected and activated. In addition, I will outline the utility of computational models in analysis of the dynamic actions of these motor networks

Changing the world, one word at a time: The struggles of higher education and communicative action in a capitalist world

Debates within critical educational theory and its relation to capitalism have often been heavily influenced by the tradition of critical social theory. For instance, Jurgen Habermas’ communicative action approach has proven to be a valuable theory that combines both analytical considerations regarding the conflict between the ‘lifeworld’ and ‘system’, and a decisively normative theory for deliberative and democratic discourse. However, Habermas’ communicative action does not go without problems, as a critical linguistic approach may prove. As such, in this paper I attempt to analyse the issues of communicative action in the context of anti-capitalist discourse and debate within and about higher education. To do this, I first outline Habermas’ and Fleming’s theories on the colonization of higher education, followed by a critique by means of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language. As such, I attempt to argue that, in order to decolonize higher education from the ‘logic of capital’, we must reflect upon the language-games used when speaking about education.

Challenges in the specification of full contracts

Partially supported by the Nordunet3 project “COSoDIS”.The complete specification of full contracts - contracts which include tolerated exceptions, and which enable reasoning about the contracts themselves, can be achieved using a combination of temporal and deontic concepts. In this paper we discuss the challenges in combining deontic and other relevant logics, in particular focusing on operators for choice, obligations over sequences, contrary-to-duty obligations, and how internal and external decisions may be incorporated in an action-based language for specifying contracts. We provide different viable interpretations and approaches for the development of such a sound logic and outline challenges for the future.peer-reviewe

Putting time into proof outlines

A logic for reasoning about timing of concurrent programs is presented. The logic is based on proof outlines and can handle maximal parallelism as well as resource-constrained execution environments. The correctness proof for a mutual exclusion protocol that uses execution timings in a subtle way illustrates the logic in action

Educating for Intellectual Virtue: a critique from action guidance

Virtue epistemology is among the dominant influences in mainstream epistemology today. An important commitment of one strand of virtue epistemology – responsibilist virtue epistemology (e.g., Montmarquet 1993; Zagzebski 1996; Battaly 2006; Baehr 2011) – is that it must provide regulative normative guidance for good thinking. Recently, a number of virtue epistemologists (most notably Baehr, 2013) have held that virtue epistemology not only can provide regulative normative guidance, but moreover that we should reconceive the primary epistemic aim of all education as the inculcation of the intellectual virtues. Baehr’s picture contrasts with another well-known position – that the primary aim of education is the promotion of critical thinking (Scheffler 1989; Siegel 1988; 1997; 2017). In this paper – that we hold makes a contribution to both philosophy of education and epistemology and, a fortiori, epistemology of education – we challenge this picture. We outline three criteria that any putative aim of education must meet and hold that it is the aim of critical thinking, rather than the aim of instilling intellectual virtue, that best meets these criteria. On this basis, we propose a new challenge for intellectual virtue epistemology, next to the well-known empirically-driven ‘situationist challenge’. What we call the ‘pedagogical challenge’ maintains that the intellectual virtues approach does not have available a suitably effective pedagogy to qualify the acquisition of intellectual virtue as the primary aim of education. This is because the pedagogic model of the intellectual virtues approach (borrowed largely from exemplarist thinking) is not properly action-guiding. Instead, we hold that, without much further development in virtue-based theory, logic and critical thinking must still play the primary role in the epistemology of education

Specifying and Verifying Concurrent Algorithms with Histories and Subjectivity

We present a lightweight approach to Hoare-style specifications for fine-grained concurrency, based on a notion of time-stamped histories that abstractly capture atomic changes in the program state. Our key observation is that histories form a partial commutative monoid, a structure fundamental for representation of concurrent resources. This insight provides us with a unifying mechanism that allows us to treat histories just like heaps in separation logic. For example, both are subject to the same assertion logic and inference rules (e.g., the frame rule). Moreover, the notion of ownership transfer, which usually applies to heaps, has an equivalent in histories. It can be used to formally represent helping---an important design pattern for concurrent algorithms whereby one thread can execute code on behalf of another. Specifications in terms of histories naturally abstract granularity, in the sense that sophisticated fine-grained algorithms can be given the same specifications as their simplified coarse-grained counterparts, making them equally convenient for client-side reasoning. We illustrate our approach on a number of examples and validate all of them in Coq.Comment: 17 page

Developing the logic framework underpinning a whole-systems approach to childhood overweight and obesity prevention:Amsterdam Healthy Weight Approach

Abstract Background Whole‐systems approaches (WSAs) are well placed to tackle the complex local environmental influences on overweight and obesity, yet there are few examples of WSAs in practice. Amsterdam Healthy Weight Approach (AHWA) is a long‐term, municipality‐led program to improve children's physical activity, diet, and sleep through action in the home, neighborhood, school, and city. Adopting a WSA, local political, physical, social, educational, and healthcare drivers of childhood obesity are viewed as a complex adaptive system. Since 2013, AHWA has reached >15,000 children. During this time, the estimated prevalence of 2–18‐year‐olds with overweight or obesity in Amsterdam has declined from 21% in 2012 to 18.7% in 2017. Declining trends are rarely observed in cities. There is a need to formally articulate AHWA program theory in order to: (i) inform future program evaluation which can interpret this decline within the context of AHWA and (ii) contribute a real‐life example of a WSA to the literature. Methods This study aimed to formally document the program theory of AHWA to permit future evaluation. A logic framework was developed through extensive document review and discussion, during program implementation. Results The working principles of the WSA underpinning AHWA were made explicit in an overarching theory of change, articulated in a logic framework. The framework was operationalized using an illustrative example of sugar intake. Conclusions The logic framework will inform AHWA development, monitoring, and evaluation and responds to a wider need to outline the working principles of WSAs in public health