A PRISMA-driven systematic mapping study on system assurance weakeners

Context: An assurance case is a structured hierarchy of claims aiming at demonstrating that a given mission-critical system supports specific requirements (e.g., safety, security, privacy). The presence of assurance weakeners (i.e., assurance deficits, logical fallacies) in assurance cases reflects insufficient evidence, knowledge, or gaps in reasoning. These weakeners can undermine confidence in assurance arguments, potentially hindering the verification of mission-critical system capabilities. Objectives: As a stepping stone for future research on assurance weakeners, we aim to initiate the first comprehensive systematic mapping study on this subject. Methods: We followed the well-established PRISMA 2020 and SEGRESS guidelines to conduct our systematic mapping study. We searched for primary studies in five digital libraries and focused on the 2012-2023 publication year range. Our selection criteria focused on studies addressing assurance weakeners at the modeling level, resulting in the inclusion of 39 primary studies in our systematic review. Results: Our systematic mapping study reports a taxonomy (map) that provides a uniform categorization of assurance weakeners and approaches proposed to manage them at the modeling level. Conclusion: Our study findings suggest that the SACM (Structured Assurance Case Metamodel) -- a standard specified by the OMG (Object Management Group) -- may be the best specification to capture structured arguments and reason about their potential assurance weakeners

Evaluating the Effectiveness of GPT-4 Turbo in Creating Defeaters for Assurance Cases

Assurance cases (ACs) are structured arguments that support the verification of the correct implementation of systems' non-functional requirements, such as safety and security, thereby preventing system failures which could lead to catastrophic outcomes, including loss of lives. ACs facilitate the certification of systems in accordance with industrial standards, for example, DO-178C and ISO 26262. Identifying defeaters arguments that refute these ACs is essential for improving the robustness and confidence in ACs. To automate this task, we introduce a novel method that leverages the capabilities of GPT-4 Turbo, an advanced Large Language Model (LLM) developed by OpenAI, to identify defeaters within ACs formalized using the Eliminative Argumentation (EA) notation. Our initial evaluation gauges the model's proficiency in understanding and generating arguments within this framework. The findings indicate that GPT-4 Turbo excels in EA notation and is capable of generating various types of defeaters

The Pragmatic Nature of Manipulation

Broadly defined, manipulation is a kind of covert behavior or a means, whether linguistic or non- linguistic, used by manipulators in certain communicative encounters to achieve their goals, desires, and interests regardless of the perceptual, cognitive , and emotional feelings of their interlocutors. In this regard, they utilize myriad devices, especially those dishonest ones, like cunning, lying, making tricks, deceiving, and the like. To be successful in doing so, manipulators should have a cognition which enables them to pursue their own interests through making use of some aspects of human cognition, notably reasoning, checking for likeliness, and emotions. As such, manipulators play on their targets’ weaknesses to influence their motivation, beliefs, emotions, and reaction. For some scholars, manipulation is a psychologicalissuebecause it can be considered as a kind of human behavior or cognition. For others, it falls within the region of cognitive pragmatics since it is basically based on the use of cognition in relation to context. In this study, as far as language use is concerned, it is argued that manipulation is more pragmatic than psychological in nature. Besides, it is characterized by pragmatic features other than the cognitive ones. Hence, it is felt, here, that there is a need to reveal those pragmatic aspects to locate its treatment in its right place. This is done by means of identifying the relationship between manipulation and various pragmatic theories and issues

What Do We Know About the World? Rhetorical and Argumentative Perspectives

his book consists of selected papers delivered at “First International Conference on Rhetoric in Croatia: the Days of Ivo Škarić” in May, 2012, and subsequently revised for publication. Through a variety of different routes, the papers explore the role of rhetoric and argumentation in various types of public discourse and present interdisciplinary work connecting linguists, phoneticians, philosophers, law experts and communication scientists in the common ground of rhetoric and argumentation

NEGLIGENCE AS OPTIMIZATION PUZZLES: A NEW THEORY OF NEGLIGENCE

This thesis addresses the following questions, among others. Can two people take the exact same precautions yet face different liabilities for identical accidents? Can two people exercise the same overall care yet face different liabilities? Can a person take more precautions than the efficient level of care requires at the time of the accident, yet justifiably be found liable in negligence? More generally, is the Hand Formula economically misguided or inapplicable, at least in many real-world scenarios? Is the Restatement (Third) of Torts equally misguided or imprecise? Is orthodox economic analysis of negligence law predicated and contingent upon over-constrained and unrealistic assumptions? What are the prerequisites for the application of the conventional model of negligence adjudication? The principle issues examined include (i) Interacting precautions and multidimensional frameworks; (ii) Short-run versus long-run optimization of negligence puzzles; (iii) Pathdependencies and dynamic analysis of care measures; (iv) Non-strictly convex and discontinuous social costs functions; (v) Fluctuating and discontinuous social cost functions; (vi) Threshold effects in costs and efficiency functions; (vii) An expansive methodology to cost-benefit analysis in torts: degrees of freedom, mixed and tailored approaches

The press reception of Austrian works of Vergangenheitsbewältigung

This thesis explores the relationship between literature and historical memory in Austria through five case studies of literary press reception, examining the validity of common conceptions of Austrian Vergangenheitsbewättigung. The introduction provides an overview and explanation of the historico-political context of the thesis, considering cultural narratives on Vergangenheitsbewaltigung, the position of the Austrian press and its relationship with contemporary, socially critical literature. Chapters One and Two compare 'the press reception of Hans Lebert'ร Die Wolfshaut and Gerhard Fritsch's Fasching to the widely held view of a failed Vergangenheitsbewältigung in 1960ร Austria. Chapter Three considers the reception of Elfriede Jelinek's Die Ausgesperrten in the context of the Sozialpartnerschaft and the politics of memory associated with this period of forced political harmony. Chapter Four deals with the most extreme case, Thomas Bemhard's Heldenplatz, questioning the common assumption that the late 1980s marked a turning point in Austria's troubled relationship with its past. This is developed in Chapter Five, which examines the reception of Robert Schindel’s Gebürtig and considers the extent to which Austrian Vergangenheitsbewältigung can be viewed as a completed process. In the Conclusion the findings of the previous five chapters are brought together and compared with the grand cultural narrative on Austrian historical memory in a consideration of the validity of a linear conceptualisation of Vergangenheitsbewältigung