Beyond Logic Programming for Legal Reasoning

Logic programming has long being advocated for legal reasoning, and several approaches have been put forward relying upon explicit representation of the law in logic programming terms. In this position paper we focus on the PROLEG logic-programming-based framework for formalizing and reasoning with Japanese presupposed ultimate fact theory. Specifically, we examine challenges and opportunities in leveraging deep learning techniques for improving legal reasoning using PROLEG identifying four distinct options ranging from enhancing fact extraction using deep learning to end-to-end solutions for reasoning with textual legal descriptions. We assess advantages and limitations of each option, considering their technical feasibility, interpretability, and alignment with the needs of legal practitioners and decision-makers. We believe that our analysis can serve as a guideline for developers aiming to build effective decision-support systems for the legal domain, while fostering a deeper understanding of challenges and potential advancements by neuro-symbolic approaches in legal applications.Comment: Workshop on Logic Programming and Legal Reasoning, @ICLP 202

CLiFF Notes: Research In Natural Language Processing at the University of Pennsylvania

The Computational Linguistics Feedback Forum (CLIFF) is a group of students and faculty who gather once a week to discuss the members\u27 current research. As the word feedback suggests, the group\u27s purpose is the sharing of ideas. The group also promotes interdisciplinary contacts between researchers who share an interest in Cognitive Science. There is no single theme describing the research in Natural Language Processing at Penn. There is work done in CCG, Tree adjoining grammars, intonation, statistical methods, plan inference, instruction understanding, incremental interpretation, language acquisition, syntactic parsing, causal reasoning, free word order languages, ... and many other areas. With this in mind, rather than trying to summarize the varied work currently underway here at Penn, we suggest reading the following abstracts to see how the students and faculty themselves describe their work. Their abstracts illustrate the diversity of interests among the researchers, explain the areas of common interest, and describe some very interesting work in Cognitive Science. This report is a collection of abstracts from both faculty and graduate students in Computer Science, Psychology and Linguistics. We pride ourselves on the close working relations between these groups, as we believe that the communication among the different departments and the ongoing inter-departmental research not only improves the quality of our work, but makes much of that work possible

Justifying Answer Sets using Argumentation

An answer set is a plain set of literals which has no further structure that would explain why certain literals are part of it and why others are not. We show how argumentation theory can help to explain why a literal is or is not contained in a given answer set by defining two justification methods, both of which make use of the correspondence between answer sets of a logic program and stable extensions of the Assumption-Based Argumentation (ABA) framework constructed from the same logic program. Attack Trees justify a literal in argumentation-theoretic terms, i.e. using arguments and attacks between them, whereas ABA-Based Answer Set Justifications express the same justification structure in logic programming terms, that is using literals and their relationships. Interestingly, an ABA-Based Answer Set Justification corresponds to an admissible fragment of the answer set in question, and an Attack Tree corresponds to an admissible fragment of the stable extension corresponding to this answer set.Comment: This article has been accepted for publication in Theory and Practice of Logic Programmin

Towards a linguistic worldview for artificial languages

Wydział NeofilologiiCelem rozprawy była ocena możliwości zastosowania teorii oraz badań empirycznych formułowanych w ramach metodologii tzw. Lubelskiej Szkoły Etnolingwistycznej do lingwistycznej analizy języków sztucznych oraz zaprezentowanie ograniczeń wynikających z takiego podejścia. W części końcowej rozprawy zostały sformułowane następujące wnioski z badań: 1. Języki sztuczne nie stanowią jednolitej grupy, a ich różnorodne cechy wymuszają różne perspektywy przy próbie zastosowania paradygmatu lubelskiego. 2. Obalony został binarny podział na języki sztuczne i naturalne; zaproponowana została skala naturalności/sztuczności. 3. Językiem, który może w ramach Lubelskiej Szkoły Etnolingwistycznej być traktowany jako naturalny jest bez wątpienia esperanto. 4. Wszelkie badania języków sztucznych w ramach paradygmatu lubelskiego wymagają uwzględnienia transferu z innych języków znanych respondentom a także wpływów kulturowych. Wykazano również istnienie JOS typowego dla esperanta i konsekwentnie prezentowanego w następujących obszarach: • koncepty kulturowe związane z Ruchem; • stereotyp esperantysty.The main objective of the present dissertation was to evaluate the applicability of the theory and practice developed within the methodological framework of the so-called Ethnolinguistic School of Lublin to the linguistic analysis of artificial languages and to present the limitations of such an approach. The following research conclusions were formulated: 1. Artificial languages are not a homogeneous group, and their various characteristics necessitate different perspectives in the application of the Lublin paradigm. 2. The binary division between artificial and natural languages is disproved; a scale of naturalness/artificiality is proposed. 3. The language which may be treated as natural within the Ethnolinguistic School of Lublin is undoubtedly Esperanto. 4. Any study of artificial languages within this paradigm needs to take into account a transfer from other languages known to the respondents as well as cultural influences. The existence of a linguistic worldview typical of Esperanto and presented consistently in the following areas was proved: • cultural concepts related to the Movement • stereotype of an Esperantis

Inventing languages, inventing worlds. Towards a linguistic worldview for artificial languages

The present book evaluates the applicability of the linguistic worldview framework to the analysis of artificial languages and presents the limitations of such an approach. The following research conclusions were formulated: 1. Artificial languages are not a homogeneous group, and their various characteristics necessitate different perspectives in the application of the framework. 2. The binary division between artificial and natural languages is disproved; a scale of naturalness/artificiality is proposed. 3. The language which may be treated as natural is undoubtedly Esperanto. 4. Any study of artificial languages within this framework needs to take into account transfer from other languages known to the respondents as well as cultural influences. The existence of a linguistic worldview typical of Esperanto and presented consistently in the following areas was proved: cultural concepts related to the Movement and stereotype of an Esperantist

Re-thinking ‘Flourishing’ as an Organic Concept of the Good: The Interpretation of Development and the Evaluation of Life

This thesis explores the relation between the normative structures brought to bear on the evaluation of life and the way in which the coming-into-being of living organisms is fundamentally understood. It provides a new analysis and critique of the standard concept of ‘flourishing’ in neo-Aristotelian meta-ethics, by uncovering the underlying interpretation of organismic becoming on which it relies, and showing how the turn to a ‘constructivist’ conception of development in contemporary biological theory both disrupts this underlying metaphysics, and provides resources for re-thinking flourishing on a fundamentally different basis. The central claim is that we should turn from a view in which life is given a form to fulfil, and becoming is the process of its fulfilment, to one in which living is the process of creating a way in the world, as life goes along.ESR

What Is 'Critical' About Critical Theory?

The idea of a critical theory has colonized the social consciousness of academia, and become an integral part of the pursuit of higher knowledge. Competing ideas have thereby become standard bearers in that critical theory acts as a measure of true understanding . The only problem, however, is that many of the distinct theories similarly answering to the description raise two related questions – namely, ‘what is a critical theory?’ and what is ‘critical’ about the ‘theory’ (or theories) in question? We explore the problematic connection between criteria and critique, and consider the critical theories of Derrida, Lyotard and Habermas via hermeneutics's conception of the circular relation between thought and language. The approach is performative in that the competing critical theories are interpreted as parts that form a complex whole, and are understood (questioned) with respect to each other. We argue that the critical issue between them is a normative conception of our practical and/or linguistic identities . The methodological approach to the circle therefore serves a critical function in that it is performed (enabled and directed) through the very idea(s) in question