Learning to Rank based on Analogical Reasoning

Object ranking or "learning to rank" is an important problem in the realm of preference learning. On the basis of training data in the form of a set of rankings of objects represented as feature vectors, the goal is to learn a ranking function that predicts a linear order of any new set of objects. In this paper, we propose a new approach to object ranking based on principles of analogical reasoning. More specifically, our inference pattern is formalized in terms of so-called analogical proportions and can be summarized as follows: Given objects $A,B,C,D$, if object $A$ is known to be preferred to $B$, and $C$ relates to $D$ as $A$ relates to $B$, then $C$ is (supposedly) preferred to $D$. Our method applies this pattern as a main building block and combines it with ideas and techniques from instance-based learning and rank aggregation. Based on first experimental results for data sets from various domains (sports, education, tourism, etc.), we conclude that our approach is highly competitive. It appears to be specifically interesting in situations in which the objects are coming from different subdomains, and which hence require a kind of knowledge transfer.Comment: Thirty-Second AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-18), 8 page

Modal epistemology made concrete

Many philosophers since Hume have accepted that imagining/conceiving a scenario is our prime guide to knowing its possibility. Stephen Yablo provided a more systematic criterion: one is justified in judging that p is possible if one can imagine a world which one takes to verify p. I defend a version of Yablo\u2019s criterion against van Inwagen\u2019s moderate modal scepticism. Van Inwagen\u2019s key argument is that we cannot satisfy Yablo\u2019s criterion because we are not in a position to spell out far-fetched possible scenarios in relevant detail. Van Inwagen\u2019s argument can be applied to the use of conceivability for everyday possibility claims, leaving us with the spectre of pervasive modal scepticism. In order to answer the sceptical threat, I combine van Inwagen\u2019s main example with general considerations about the nature of metaphysical modality to motivate a version of Yablo\u2019s criterion and show that it does not lead to scepticism. One structural condition of p being metaphysically possible is that it coheres with a complete reality. This condition gives rise to Yablo\u2019s criterion. However, for the criterion to be of any avail, we have to disregard details we are not in a position to specify. To account for our practice of doing so, I use Yablo\u2019s distinction between imagining a world as determinate and imagining it determinately. I present a condition when we may simply disregard details as determinate. The condition results from integrating analogical reasoning into the conceivability test

Legal analogy as an alternative to the deductive model of legal reasoning

This article demonstrates the inadequacy of legal deduction as a method that guarantees the certainty and predictability of law and its outcomes in concrete instances. Inter alia, the Author brings our attention to the far smaller role that the deductive pattern of inference plays in legal thought than one may suppose, since it is rather only a schematic illustration of the decisions that were previously made by recourse to the mental operations of a non-logical nature. In return, he proffers legal analogy as an alternative, by which he understands a mode of thinking which helps the reasoner to take into account a mass of different factors that are traditionally deemed to be relevant for legal thought and decision-making

Dlaczego rozumowanie z analogii w naukach empirycznych i życiu codziennym różni się od rozumowania z analogii występującego w prawie

The article elucidates differences between analogy in law and the empirical science and everyday matters such as: a) the lack of possibility of verification of its conclusions on empirical grounds resulting in the necessity of its performing either heuristic and probative functions or rejecting both of them, b) being of a prescriptive nature, c) having an obligatory character, d) entailing rather no need for complex underling doctrines or theories, e) causing more serious practical consequences, f) having base points that are easily recognizable, g) serving as a means of extending authority, h) being a subject of training and education, i) receiving extraordinary attention among scholars, often combined with the real adoration – if not worship – on their part.The author is convinced that – by highlighting these differences – he will have demonstrated the uniqueness of legal analogy. However, simultaneously, he is far from contending that he knows how legal analogy really proceeds and how the judgment of similarity within it is precisely done. Instead, he assumes that if exact knowledge in these respects remains unattainable for human beings, it is all the better for legal philosophy and those who are devoted to it.W artykule zostały omówione różnice, jakie zachodzą pomiędzy rozumowaniem per analogiam w prawie oraz w naukach przyrodniczych i życiu codziennym. W efekcie w stosunku do analogii stosowanej w prawie zwrócono w nim uwagę na: a) brak możliwości empirycznej weryfikacji wniosków stawianych za jej pomocą, skutkujący bądź koniecznością zakceptowania pełnienia przez nią zarówno funkcji heurystycznej, jak i dowodowej, bądź odmówieniem jej możliwości pełnienia którejkolwiek z tych funkcji, b) względny brak potrzeby uzasadniania (wyjaśniania) takich wniosków za pomocą jakichś rozbudowanych teorii (doktryn), c) jej obligarotryjny (w sensie konieczności sięgania do niej) oraz normatywny (preskryptywny) charakter, d) poważniejsze konsekwencje, jakie wiążą się z korzystaniem z niej w praktyce, e) łatwiej identyfikowalną podstawę dla przeprowadzanych w jej zakresie porównań, f) służenie jako środek do rozciągania tego, co posiada „autorytet”, g) bycie przedmiotem profesjonalnego nauczania, h) szczególne zainteresowanie się nią ze strony ludzi nauki, połączone często z jej uwielbieniem, jeśli nie wręcz kultem.Autor przejawia nadzieję, iż przez wyszczególnienie wyżej wymienionych różnic wykazał jednocześnie unikalny charakter prawniczej analogii na tle analogii występującej w naukach empirycznych i życiu codziennym. W treści artykułu nie stawia on jednak tezy, iż wiadome jest, jak dokładnie przebiega rozumowanie z takiej analogii, tudzież w jaki sposób dochodzi do określania w jej ramach zaistnienia istotnego podobieństwa pomiędzy porównywanymi stanami (sprawami, sytuacjami). Niejako w zamian twierdzi on, iż jeśli pełna wiedza w tym zakresie pozostanie dla ludzi nieosiągalna, to tym lepiej dla filozofii prawa i tych, którzy oddają się jej uprawianiu

Confirmation based on analogical inference:Bayes meets Jeffrey

Certain hypotheses cannot be directly confirmed for theoretical, practical, or moral reasons. For some of these hypotheses, however, there might be a workaround: confirmation based on analogical reasoning. In this paper we take up Dardashti, Hartmann, Thébault, and Winsberg’s (2019) idea of analyzing confirmation based on analogical inference Bayesian style. We identify three types of confirmation by analogy and show that Dardashti et al.’s approach can cover two of them. We then highlight possible problems with their model as a general approach to analogical inference and argue that these problems can be avoided by supplementing Bayesian update with Jeffrey conditionalization

Legal analogical reasoning - the interplay between legal theory and artificial intelligence

This thesis examines and critiques attempts by researchers in the field of artificial intelligence and law to simulate legal analogical reasoning. Supported by an analysis of legal theoretical accounts of legal analogising, and an examination of approaches to simulating analogising developed in the field of artificial intelligence, it is argued that simulations of legal analogising fall far short of simulating all the is involved in human analogising. These examinations of legal theory and artificial intelligence inform a detailed critique of simulations of legal analogising. It is argued that simulations of legal analogising are limited in the kind of legal analogising they can simulate - these simulations cannot simulate the semantic flexibility that is characteristic of creative analogising. This thesis argues that one reason for current restrictions on simulations of legal analogising is that researchers in artificial intelligence and law have ignored the important role played by legal principles in legal analogising. It is argued that improvements in simulations of legal analogising will come from incorporating the influence of legal principles on legal analogising and that until researchers address this semantic flexibility and the role that legal principles play in generating it, simulations of legal analogising will be restricted and of benefit only for limited uses and in restricted areas of the law. Building on the analysis of legal theoretical accounts of legal reasoning and the examination of the processes of analogising, this thesis further argues that legal theoretical accounts of legal analogising are insufficient to account for legal analogising. This thesis argues that legal theorists have themselves ignored important aspects of legal analogising and hence that legal theoretical accounts of legal analogising are deficient. This thesis offers suggestions as to some of the modifications required in legal theory in order to better account for the processes of legal analogising

Why Philosophy Must Go Global: A Manifesto

The world of academic philosophy is now entering a new age, one defined neither by colonial need for recognition nor by postcolonial wish to integrate. The indicators of this new era include heightened appreciation of the value of world philosophies, the internationalization of the student body, the philosophical pluralism which interaction and migration in new global movements make salient, growing concerns about diversity within a still too-white faculty body and curricular canon, and identification of a range of deep structural problems with the contemporary philosophical academy in its discursive, citational, refereeing and ranking practices. We are entering what we might call " the age of " re-emergence, " a new period the key features of which are as follows. First, philosophies from every region of the world, locally grounded in lived experience and reflection upon it, are finding new autonomous and authentic forms of articulation. Second, philosophical industry, leaving behind a center-periphery mode of production, is becoming again polycentric: the philosophical world is returning to a plural and diverse network of productive sites. Third, Europe and other colonial powers have been provincialized, no longer mandatory conversation partners or points of comparison but rather unprivileged participants in global dialogue. Fourth, philosophers within the largely Anglophone international academy are beginning to acknowledge their responsibility to arrange international institutions to enable wide and open participation; that is, acknowledge that their control over the academy is a fallout from colonialism rather than a reflection of intellectual superiority. We may thus look to a future when there will be a vibrant pluralistic realism in departments of academic philosophy around the globe, and a new cartography of philosophy