Dissecting Common Ground: Examining an Instance of Reference Repair

How participants to a joint activity come to develop a shared or mutual understanding of what they are perceiving has long been a problematic issue for philosophers, sociologists, and linguists. We examine the abstract model proposed by Clark and Marshall (1981) whereby speakers and hearers construct mutual knowledge and by which discrepancies in definite reference are repaired. We focus in particular on forms of demonstrative reference that depend upon physical co-presence. We examine an attested example of reference repair in the operating room of a teaching hospital. It involves learning to recognize pertinent structures within endoscopic surgeries, that is surgeries in which internal spaces are rendered visible by inserting a fiber-optic lens into the body of the patient. Clark and Marshall provide a useful vocabulary for discussing referential practices in this applied setting. We are left with some questions about how to interpret certain features of their model, however. We conclude that further theoretical framing is required before we develop a full appreciation of how reference and reference repair is accomplished in day-to-day interaction

“Can You See the Cystic Artery Yet?” A Simple Matter of Trust

As our contribution to this special issue, we examine how understandings of objects are talked and worked into being within concerted action. We will argue that formal procedure can serve as a resource in this regard. Procedures make relevant certain kinds of objects, objects that serve as its materials, tools, end-products, agents, etc. Our analysis traces all references to a particular object, the cystic artery, over the course of a surgery conducted at a teaching hospital. The arrangements of the operating theatre impose certain constraints on how the key participants, a surgeon in training, a faculty member and a medical student, were able to display and detect particular features of their material environment. Also, because of the surgery’s status as a ‘site of instruction,’ a special set of accountabilities came into play during its performance. Talk was frequently seen to do both instructional and instrumental work. The team members were called upon to interpret the visual field in congruent ways and, more specifically, to strike agreements as to what would serve as salient objects for the purposes of the work at hand. The identification of the cystic artery was called into question and its thingness had to be renegotiated. We draw on Garfinkel’s notion of ‘trust’ to describe the prospective/retrospective processes of referring to what comes to be the cystic-artery-for-the-purposes-of-this-surgery. We argue that procedure both determines and is determined by its objects

New Developments in Ontology-Based Policy Management: Increasing the Practicality and Comprehensiveness of KAoS

The KAoS policy management framework pioneered the use of semantically-rich ontological representation and reasoning to specify, analyze, deconflict, and enforce policies [9, 10]. The framework has continued to evolve over the last five years, inspired by both technological advances and the practical needs of its varied applications. In this paper, we describe how these applications have motivated the partitioning of components into a well-defined three-layer policy management architecture that hides ontology complexity from the human user and from the policy-governed system. The power of semantic reasoning is embedded in the middle layer of the architecture where it can provide the most benefit. We also describe how the policy semantics of the core KAoS Policy Ontology has grown in its comprehensiveness. The flexible and mature architecture of KAoS enables straightforward integration with a variety of deployment platforms, ranging from highly distributed systems, such as the AFRL Information Management System, to human-robotic interaction, to dynamic management of quality-of-service and cross-domain information management of wireless networks in resource-constrained or security-sensitive environments

Human-Agent Teamwork in Cyber Operations: Supporting Co-evolution of Tasks and Artifacts with Luna

Abstract. In this article, we outline the general concept of coactive emergence, an iterative process whereby joint sensemaking and decision-making activities are undertaken by analysts and software agents. Then we explain our rationale for the development of the Luna software agent framework. In particular, we focus on how we use capabilities for comprehensive policy-based governance to ensure that key requirements for security, declarative specification of task-work, and built-in support for joint activity within mixed teams of humans and agents are satisfied

Social Order and Adaptability in Animal and Human Cultures as Analogues for Agent Communities: Toward a Policy-Based Approach

Abstract. In this paper we discuss some of the ways social order is maintained in animal and human realms, with the goal of enriching our thinking about mechanisms that might be employed in developing similar means of ordering communities of agents. We present examples from our current work in human-agent teamwork, and we speculate about some new directions this kind of research might take. Since communities also need to change over time to cope with changing circumstances, we also speculate on means that regulatory bodies can use to adapt. 1