Legal decision-support systems have the potential to improve access to justice, administrative efficiency, and judicial consistency, but broad adoption of such systems is contingent on development of technologies with low knowledge-engineering, validation, and maintenance costs. This paper describes two approaches to an important form of legal decision support—explainable outcome prediction—that obviate both annotation of an entire decision corpus and manual processing of new cases. The first approach, which uses an attention network for prediction and attention weights to highlight salient case (...) text, was shown to be capable of predicting decisions, but attention-weight-based text highlighting did not demonstrably improve human decision speed or accuracy in an evaluation with 61 human subjects. The second approach, termed semi-supervised case annotation for legal explanations, exploits structural and semantic regularities in case corpora to identify textual patterns that have both predictable relationships to case decisions and explanatory value. (shrink)

Online dispute resolution (ODR) is an alternative to traditional litigation that can both significantly reduce the disadvantages suffered by litigants unable to afford an attorney and greatly improve court efficiency and economy. An important aspect of many ODR systems is a facilitator, a neutral party who guides the disputants through the steps of reaching an agreement. However, insufficient availability of facilitators impedes broad adoption of ODR systems. This paper describes a novel model of facilitation that integrates two distinct but complementary (...) knowledge sources: cognitive task analysis of facilitator behavior and corpus analysis of ODR session transcripts. This model is implemented in a decision-support system that (1) monitors cases to detect situations requiring immediate attention and (2) automates selection of standard text messages appropriate to the current state of the negotiations. This facilitation model has the potential to compensate for shortages of facilitators by improving the efficiency of experienced facilitators, assisting novice facilitators, and providing autonomous facilitation. (shrink)

Clinicians at quaternary centers see part of their mission as providing hope when others cannot. They tend to see sicker patients with more complex disease processes. Part of this mission is offering longshot treatment modalities that are unlikely to achieve their stated goal, but conceivably could. When patients embark on such a treatment plan, it may fail. Often treatment toward an initial goal continues beyond the point at which such a goal is feasible. We explore the progression of care from (...) longshot to fantasy using two pediatric cases. This progression may be differentiated into four distinct stages of care related to the potential of achieving the initial goals of care. Physicians are often ill prepared for the progression of treatments from a longshot hope to an unfeasible and, therefore, typically unjustified intervention. We present a structured approach to guide clinicians at referral institutions where these situations may be common. The transition of care from “longshot” to “fantasy” is an inherent part of quaternary care for the sickest of patients that has been underexplored. Physicians are often poorly equipped to approach that transition. We advocate this approach to the shift from longshot to fantasy with the belief that such a structured method will have multiple benefits, including: reduced suffering for the patient; decreased emotional burden on patient and family; decreased provider moral distress; increased likelihood of seeking high quality palliative care earlier; and provision of honest and straightforward information to patients and their families. (shrink)

This essay focuses on Husserl’s conception of the natural attitude, which, I argue, is one of his most important contributions to contemporary phenomenology. I offer a critical exploration of this concept’s productive explanatory potential for feminist theory, critical race theory, queer theory, and disability studies. In the process, I draw attention to the rich, multi-faceted, and ever-changing social world that can be brought to life through this particular phenomenological concept. One of the most striking features of the natural attitude, as (...) Husserl describes it, is that it is not natural at all, but rather, is a developmental phenomenon that is acquired through, and profoundly influenced by, specific socio-cultural practices. To de-naturalize the natural attitude, then, is to recognize that the natural attitude is not fixed or innate but relative to a particular time period and culture, and therefore always capable of being changed. (shrink)

If the Libyan intervention goes well, it will put teeth in the fledgling RtoP doctrine. Yet, if it goes badly, critics will redouble their opposition, and future decisions will be made more difficult. Libya suggests that we can say no more Holocausts, Cambodias, and Rwandas--and occasionally mean it.

Subset Spaces were introduced by L. Moss and R. Parikh in [8]. These spaces model the reasoning about knowledge of changing states.In [2] a kind of subset space called intersection space was considered and the question about the existence of a set of axioms that is complete for the logic of intersection spaces was addressed. In [9] the first author introduced the class of directed spaces and proved that any set of axioms for directed frames also characterizes intersection spaces.We give (...) here a complete axiomatization for directed spaces. We also show that it is not possible to reduce this set of axioms to a finite set. (shrink)

Most of the surveys that were undertaken in the 19th century, particularly in France, among workers, were conducted essentially from viewpoints of social legislation, philanthropy, or were even animated by a bias against the labor movement. Marx, however, in the survey that he initiated in 1880, not only wanted to deliver information on working and living conditions of the workers to the public, but tried to clarify by the questionnaires the thoughts of the workers themselves on their own situation and (...) its social causes. The questionnaire containing about one hundred different questions utilizes, therefore, in adapting itself to the labor movement of the time and the character of the workers' education, the relevant categories of the Marxian theory of society.As an appendix, the essay contains a german translation of the questionnaire itself.Les enquêtes sur la situation sociale des ouvriers organisées dans le cours du xixe siècle en Angleterre et surtout en France, étaient entreprises avec des intentions de politique sociale ou de philanthropie ou même d’hostilité contre le mouvement ouvrier. Elles n’avaient souvent qu’un intérêt déterminé, limité à la mise au jour de l’état des choses réeL Au contraire, lorsque Marx organise en 1880 une enquête par questionnaires,, il ne veut pas seulement donner à l’opinion publique des informations précises sur les conditions de travail et de vie des ouvriers français ; le questionnaire qui, pour la première fois, s’adresse exclusivement aux ouvriers, eux-mêmes doit aussi servir à éclairer la classe ouvrière elle-même sur sa situation réelle et les causes sociales de sa misère. Aussi le questionnaire détaillé, qui comprend 100 questions, utilise-t-il les catégories essentielles de la théorie marxiste de la société de manière adaptée à l’état du mouvement ouvrier et à l’éducation de la classe ouvrière à cette époque.On a reproduit, en appendice de l’article, une traduction allemande du questionnaire. (shrink)

This volume addresses the issues of the Third Age--that time after retirement when financial stability and reduced obligations to others, together, allow for freedom--and good health makes it possible to enjoy that freedom. How, in this special time of life, is meaning and purpose to be found? And what alternatives are available? These difficult questions are responded to by scholars in the field of aging, some themselves in the Third Age.

Why, despite well-established and well-publicized intergovernmental processes that date back to the early 1970s, have we been unable to put in place effective mechanisms to combat climate change? Why, despite the existence of extensive global human rights machinery, do we live in a world where mass kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder continue to blight the lives of so many? Why, despite a great deal of effort on the part of intergovernmental organizations and nonstate actors, have we been unable to make (...) much of a difference to the lives of the ultra-poor and attenuate the very worst aspects of growing global inequalities? Most fundamentally, why have the current international system and the outcomes that it has produced remained so inadequate in the postwar period? (shrink)

The main object of this article is to give two novel proofs of the admissibility of Ackermann’s rule (γ) for the propositional relevant logic R. The results are established as corollaries of cut elimination for systems of tableaux for R. Cut elimination, in turn, is established both nonconstructively (as a corollary of completeness) and constructively (using Gentzen-like methods). The extensibility of the techniques is demonstrated by showing that (γ) is admissible for RQ* (R with constant domain quantifiers). The status of (...) the admissibility of (γ) for RQ* was, to the best of the author’s knowledge, an open problem. Further extensions of these results will be explored in the sequel(s). (shrink)

This commentary examines the interpretation of Parmenides developed by Rose Cherubin in her paper, “Parmenides, Liars, and Mortal Incompleteness.” First, I discuss the tensions Cherubin identifies between the definitions and presuppositions of justice, necessity, fate, and the other requisites of inquiry. Second, I critically assess Cherubin’s attribution of a sort of liar paradox to Parmenides. Finally, I argue that Cherubin’s handling of the Doxa, the section of Parmenides’ poem that deals with mortal opinion and cosmology, is unsatisfactory. I suggest that (...) her reading may contradict the text in denying that the Doxa contains truths. (shrink)

Traditional pedagogical approaches to the Platonic forms pose problems that can be best addressed by presenting students two rival interpretations: one that understands the forms in terms of definitions, and another in terms of ideals. The second, if not the first interpretation, models, for students of even a relativistic stripe, how one can conceive the existence of thought-objects about which no consensus exists. It also serves to illustrate how knowledge of such thought-objects may be attained nonetheless. This approach is to (...) be preferred, therefore, to traditional approaches that tend to reinforce, rather than counteract, relativism in students. (shrink)

Decision making is an area of profound importance to a wide range of specialities - for psychologists, economists, lawyers, clinicians, managers, and of course philosophers. Only relatively recently, though, have we begun to really understand how decision making processes are implemented in the brain, and how they might interact with our emotions.'Emotion and Reason' presents a groundbreaking new approach to understanding decision making processes and their neural bases. The book presents a sweeping survey of the science of decision making.

Response to the first number of The Owl has been encouraging. The editor wishes to thank the many individuals who have written asking to be placed or maintained on the mailing list, and also those who have responded to the request for correspondence pertaining to Hegel scholarship. It is hoped that this interest will further manifest itself in continued applications for membership in the Hegel Society of America, in order that the Society, through The Owl and its other functions, may (...) better serve students and scholars of Hegel in America. * * * We are indebted to Professor Robert Perkins of the University of South Alabama, and to Professor Don Verene of Northern Illinois University for their assistance in publishing the first two numbers of The Owl. Although henceforward this operation will be handled entirely by the Department of Philosophy of The Florida State University, HSA membership applications should continue to be directed to the Treasurer, c/o the Department of Philosophy, Northern Illinois University, Dekalb, Illinois 60115. * * * More than 2700 copies of The Owl are mailed quarterly to individuals and departments of philosophy in the United States, Canada and Europe. THE EDITOR ASKS DEPARTMENTAL CHAIRMEN EITHER TO POST THE THE OWL OR CALL IT TO THE ATTENTION OF APPROPRIATE FACULTY AND STUDENTS IN THE DEPARTMENT. As noted in out initial issue, the mailing list will gradually be restricted to those who either belong to the Society, or have indicated by a note to the editor their interest in continued receipt of the newsletter. This procedure is necessary due to the increased cost of future issues which we expect to have professionally printed and enlarged in scope. (shrink)