Avoiding deontic explosion by contextually restricting aggregation

In this paper, we present an adaptive logic for deontic conflicts, called P2.1(r), that is based on Goble's logic SDLaPe-a bimodal extension of Goble's logic P that invalidates aggregation for all prima facie obligations. The logic P2.1(r) has several advantages with respect to SDLaPe. For consistent sets of obligations it yields the same results as Standard Deontic Logic and for inconsistent sets of obligations, it validates aggregation "as much as possible". It thus leads to a richer consequence set than SDLaPe. The logic P2.1(r) avoids Goble's criticisms against other non-adjunctive systems of deontic logic. Moreover, it can handle all the 'toy examples' from the literature as well as more complex ones

A stit Logic Analysis of Morally Lucky and Legally Lucky Action Outcomes

Moral luck is the phenomenon that agents are not always held accountable for performance of a choice that under normal circumstances is likely to result in a state that is considered bad, but where due to some unexpected interaction the bad outcome does not obtain. We can also speak of ‘moral misfortune’ in the mirror situation where an agent chooses the good thing but the outcome is bad. This paper studies formalizations of moral and legal luck (and moral and legal misfortune). The three ingredients essential to modelling luck of these two different kinds are (1) indeterminacy of action effects, (2) determination on the part of the acting agent, (3) the possibility of evaluation of acts and/or their outcomes relative to a normative moral or legal code. The first, indeterminacy of action, is modelled by extending stit logic by allowing choices to have a probabilistic effect. The second, deliberateness of action, is modelled by (a) endowing stit operators with the possibility to specify a lower bound on the change of success, and (b) by introducing the notion of attempt as a maximisation of the probability of success. The third, evaluation relative to a moral or legal code, is modelled using Anderson’s reduction of normative truth to logical truth. The conclusion will be that the problems embodied by the phenomenon of moral luck may be introduced by confusing it with legal luck. Formalizations of both forms are given

Determination of Technetium-99 in Environmental Samples by Solvent Extraction at Controlled Valence

Abstract. This paper describes some of our recent work on using argumentation to handle information about trust. We first discuss the importance of trust in computer science in general and in multi-agent systems in particular. We then describe the setting of our work, situating it within the broad area of work on trust. Next we provide an overview of two lines of work we are currently pursuing — using argumentation to reason about which individuals to trust, and using argumentation to relate sources of information to conclusions drawn from information provided by those sources. Finally, we outline our current initiatives and briefly highlight other work that is closely related to ours. 1 Why trust is important Trust is a mechanism for managing the uncertainty about autonomous entities and the information they deal with. As a result, trust can play an important role in any decentralized system. As computer systems have become increasingly distributed, and control in those systems has become more decentralized, trust has become an increasingly more important concept in computer science [3, 12]

A step towards medical ethics modeling

Modeling of ethical reasoning has been a matter of discussion and research among distinct scientific fields, however no definite model has demonstrated undeniable global superiority over the others. However, the context of application of moral reasoning can require one methodology over the other. In areas such as medicine where quality of life and the life itself of a patient may be at stake, the ability to make the reasoning process understandable to staff and to change is of a paramount importance. In this paper we present some of the modeling lines of ethical reasoning applied to medicine, and defend that continuous logic programming presents potential for the development of trustworthy morally aware decision support systems. It is also presented a model of moral decision in two situations that emerge recurrently at the Intensive Care Units, a service where the moral complexity of regular decisions is a motivation for the analyze and development of moral decision support methodologies