Heuristic Voting as Ordinal Dominance Strategies

Decision making under uncertainty is a key component of many AI settings, and in particular of voting scenarios where strategic agents are trying to reach a joint decision. The common approach to handle uncertainty is by maximizing expected utility, which requires a cardinal utility function as well as detailed probabilistic information. However, often such probabilities are not easy to estimate or apply. To this end, we present a framework that allows "shades of gray" of likelihood without probabilities. Specifically, we create a hierarchy of sets of world states based on a prospective poll, with inner sets contain more likely outcomes. This hierarchy of likelihoods allows us to define what we term ordinally-dominated strategies. We use this approach to justify various known voting heuristics as bounded-rational strategies.Comment: This is the full version of paper #6080 accepted to AAAI'1

Aggregated fuzzy answer set programming

Fuzzy Answer Set programming (FASP) is an extension of answer set programming (ASP), based on fuzzy logic. It allows to encode continuous optimization problems in the same concise manner as ASP allows to model combinatorial problems. As a result of its inherent continuity, rules in FASP may be satisfied or violated to certain degrees. Rather than insisting that all rules are fully satisfied, we may only require that they are satisfied partially, to the best extent possible. However, most approaches that feature partial rule satisfaction limit themselves to attaching predefined weights to rules, which is not sufficiently flexible for most real-life applications. In this paper, we develop an alternative, based on aggregator functions that specify which (combination of) rules are most important to satisfy. We extend upon previous work by allowing aggregator expressions to define partially ordered preferences, and by the use of a fixpoint semantics

ISIPTA'07: Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium on Imprecise Probability: Theories and Applications

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Born free and equal?: on the ethical consistency of animal equality

This dissertation investigates the possibility of constructing a consistent ethical system that offers clear notions of equality and incorporates an animal ethic. The first part is more meta-ethical in nature, reflecting on notions such as moral intuitions, universalism, consistency and coherence. It demonstrates that moral illusions might exist and offers a method to discover such moral illusions. The second part turns to normative ethics, dealing with principles of welfare, justice and basic rights. It tackles problems ranging from population ethics to non-ideal theory. Finally, the third part moves to applied (animal) ethics, In analogy to optical illusions, I demonstrate that speciesism is not only a kind of prejudicial discrimination but also a moral illusion: an obstinate intuitive judgment that is inconsistent with a coherent system. The third part also tackles the predation problem and the sentience problem in animal ethics. The end result of this work is a pluralist principlist ethical system that can be captured in a metaphor of five moral fingers working together as the moral hand. This moral hand is a constructed, coherent ethical system of five universalized ethical principles based on strong moral intuitions. The thumb represents the principle of universalism, which is a basic ingredient of coherentism, and generates an anti-discrimination rule. The index finger symbolizes a consequentialist welfare ethic, based on the coherence of impartiality and empathy. The middle finger is the mere means principle of a deontological rights ethic: humans (and animals) have a right not to be used as merely means to someone else’s ends. This principle captures a lot of moral intuitions that pop up in famous dilemmas. A fourth principle, the ring finger, refers to the value of biodiversity and adopts some elements of carnism, the opposite of veganism as ideology. This fourth principle solves the predation problem and is coherent with some other moral intuitions. Finally, the little finger represents the principle of tolerated partiality which can be used in some final moral dilemmas. With these five fingers of ethics, we can grasp the moral problem of consuming animal products, and answer the question whether veganism is a moral duty

Models of Political Economy

Models of Political Economy will introduce students to the basic methodology of political economics. It covers all core theories as well as new developments including: decision theory game theory mechanism design games of asymmetric information. Hannu Nurmi's text will prove to be invaluable to all students who wish to understand this increasingly technical field