In informal terms, abductive reasoning involves inferring the best or most plausible explanation from a given set of facts or data. It is a common occurrence in everyday life and crops up in such diverse places as medical diagnosis, scientific theory formation, accident investigation, language understanding, and jury deliberation. In recent years, it has become a popular and fruitful topic in artificial intelligence research. This volume breaks new ground in the scientific, philosophical, and technological study of abduction. It presents new (...) ideas about inferential and information-processing foundations for knowledge and certainty. The authors argue that knowledge arises from experience by processes of abductive inference, in contrast to the view that it arises non-inferentially, or that deduction and inductive generalization are enough to account for knowledge. Much AI research is hypothetical, so the importance of this book is that it reports key discoveries about abduction that have been made as a result of designing, building, testing, and analyzing actual working knowledge-based systems for medical diagnosis and other abductive tasks. The book tells the story of six generations of increasingly sophisticated generic abduction machines, RED-1, RED-2, PEIRCE, MDX2, TIPS, QUAWDS, and the discovery of reasoning strategies that make it computationally feasible to form well-justified composite explanatory hypotheses, despite the threat of combinatorial explosion. The final chapter argues that perception is logically abductive and presents a layered-abduction computational model of perceptual information processing. This book will be of great interest to researchers in AI, cognitive science, and philosophy of science. (shrink)

A study in the philosophy of mind, centred on the problem of 'intentionality' the sense in which emotions can be said to have objects, their relation to these objects, and the implications of this relation for our understanding of human action and behaviour. Dr Wilson sets his enquiry against a broad historical background on what distinguishes man from inanimate objects by describing both Cartesian view of man is matter plus mind and the neo-Wittgensteinian view that there is a dynamic behavioural (...) difference – causal notions being often inapplicable to human action. Dr Wilson goes on to show the controversies and arguments that arise from the notion of intentionality cannot be analysed in causal terms. Dr Wilson believes that this notion can be shown causally and sets out to prove it. Finally, he brings this argument to a larger context mentioning that it has far-reaching effects in natural and social sciences. (shrink)

In this paper we shall answer some questions in the set theory of L, the universe of all sets constructible from the reals. In order to do so, we shall assume ADL, the hypothesis that all 2-person games of perfect information on ω whose payoff set is in L are determined. This is by now standard practice. ZFC itself decides few questions in the set theory of L, and for reasons we cannot discuss here, ZFC + ADL yields the most (...) interesting “completion” of the ZFC-theory of L.ADL implies that L satisfies “every wellordered set of reals is countable”, so that the axiom of choice fails in L. Nevertheless, there is a natural inner model of L, namely HODL, which satisfies ZFC.. The superscript “L” indicates, here and below, that the notion in question is to be interpreted in L.) HODL is reasonably close to the full L, in ways we shall make precise in § 1. The most important of the questions we shall answer concern HODL: what is its first order theory, and in particular, does it satisfy GCH?These questions first drew attention in the 70's and early 80's. (shrink)

How should ethics help decide the morality of enhancing morality? The idea of morally enhancing the human brain quickly emerged when the promise of cognitive enhancement in general began to seem realizable. However, on reflection, achieving moral enhancement must be limited by the practical challenges to any sort of cognitive modification, along with obstacles particular to morality’s bases in social cognition. The objectivity offered by the brain sciences cannot ensure the technological achievement of moral bioenhancement for humanity-wide application. Additionally, any (...) limited moral enhancement will not easily fulfil ethical expectations. Three hypothetical scenarios involving putative moral enhancement help illustrate why. Philosophical concerns about the “Does-Must Dichotomy” and the “Factor-Cause Plurality,” as I label them, forbid easy leaps from views about morality on to conclusions about ways to enhance morality, and then further on to ethically justifying those enhancements. A modest and realistic approach to moral enhancement emerges from exploring these issues. (shrink)

To promote so-called cultural competence in work of direct-care providers and other health professionals among diverse peoples, cross-cultural training is now widely advised. However, in ethically assessing aims and content of CCT, and surrounding issues and concerns, what should guide us? And if we can elaborate satisfactory moral touchstones, what do they imply for healthcare professionals, overarching structures, and bioethicists? Building on prior work, this paper tries to help answer these questions.

Deals with one of the most critical business issues of the century, the question of corporate responsibility. The author reconstructs and critically evaluates the arguments for the maximisation of profits, versus those to be found in the broader context of increased social responsibility.

ABSTRACTThe latest draft of UNESCO's proposed Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights is a major disappointment. The committee of government ‘experts’ that produced it made sure that it would not introduce any new obligations for States, and so the document simply restates existing agreements and lists desirable goals without specifying how they can be achieved. This article focuses on the shortcomings of the document as it would apply to health care. These shortcomings are evident in the document's scope, aims (...) and principles. The conclusion is that if UNESCO still thinks that such a declaration is needed, it should produce either an ethical document addressed to individuals and groups, which would be primarily educational in nature, or a legal document addressed to States, which should not have the word ‘ethics’ in its title. (shrink)

Despite often being condemned for having a paradigmatically unrealistic or dangerous conception of power, Plato expends much effort in constructing his distinctive conception of power. In the wake of Socrates’ trial and execution, Plato writes about conventional, elitist, and radically unethical conceptions of power only to ‘refute’ them on behalf of a favoured conception of power allied with justice. Are his arguments as pathetic or wrong-headed as many theorists make them out to be – from Machiavelli to contemporary political realists, (...) from ‘political’ critics of Plato ranging from Popper to Arendt? And if not, has our understanding of power been impoverished? This question has been surprisingly unasked, and it is one I address by asking Plato and his critics: What are the dialectical moves Plato makes in refuting Socrates’s opponents and constructing his own conception of legitimate power? Exactly how does he interweave his conception of power with a kind of ethics? How does it compare to recent conceptions of political realism and the power-politics/ethics relationship – e.g., after Marx and Foucault? While addressing these questions I also attend to the issue of Plato’s historicity: to what extent do the limits of his language and world affect our reading of Plato and his political critics? Ultimately, I argue that and how Plato’s conception of power and its political dimensions realistically have much to teach us that we have not learned. (shrink)

Among the greatest challenges to improving health is determining how cultural diversity should influence healthcare practices and organizations, public health measures, biomedical research, and community partnering. Important but seldom addressed are challenges for bioethicists.

More companies are understanding the benefits of designing work to enhance, rather than minimise, the contributions of their employees within human-centred systems. To do this, they require their supportive subsystems (such as training, job, and team design, performance measurement and information) to provide people with the ability, motivation and opportunity to become increasingly involved. Opportunity for involvement will require different communication interfaces, providing data and background information both personally and at the work site or process. In the past few years, (...) the media available for visualisation and communication have become much more numerous and have much greater capabilities. This paper examines the information requirements of certain features of modern manufacturing enterprises—local control, skills, knowledge and training, function allocation and team communications. It then assesses the utility of three broad types of information display—Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), Multimedia/Closed-circuit Television (CCTV) and Virtual Environments (VEs)—for shopfloor systems. (shrink)

By examining the theories of justice developed by Joseph Butler and David Hume, the author discloses the conceptual limits of their moral naturalism. Butler was unable to accommodate the possibility that justice is, at least to some extent, a social convention. Hume, who more presciently tried to spell out the conventional character of justice, was unable to carry through that project within the framework of his moral naturalism. These limits have gone unnoticed, largely because Butler and Hume have been misinterpreted, (...) their relation misconstrued. Exegetes have persistently misunderstood the differences that divide them, have misconceived the notion of "public utility" in Hume's account of justice, have wrongly interpreted Butler as a forerunner of Immanuel Kant, and have altogether missed the degree to which Hume stands in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

Red-2 is a computer program for red-cell antibody identification, a piece of "normal science". Abstracting from Red-2, a general problem solving mechanism is described that is especially suited for performing a form of abductive inference or best explanation finding. A problem solver embodying this mechanism synthesizes composite hypotheses by combining hypothesis parts. This is a common task of intelligence, and a component of scientific reasoning. The work addresses the question, 'How is science possible?' by showing how a simple but powerful (...) form of hypothesis synthesis is computationally feasible. (shrink)

This paper describes in some detail a pattern of justification which seems to be part of common sense logic and also part of the logic of scientific investigations. Calling this pattern “abduction,” the paper lays out an “abduction-prediction” model of scientific inference as an update to the traditional hypothetico-deductive model. According to this newer model, scientific theories receive their claims for acceptance and belief from the abductive arguments that support them, and the processes of scientific discovery aim to develop theories (...) with strong abductive support. It is suggested that the study of diagnosis presents a good opportunity for studying abduction under somewhat simpler and more reproducible conditions than occur in scientific discovery. A computer-based diagnostic system is described which provides a small-scale validation of the abduc-tion-prediction model by showing that a version of it can be made precise enough to be implemented and to perform correctly for diagnosis. (shrink)

One conclusion has already been reached, namely, the diagnosis of the problems of Rousseau's political thought. Again, this is not to say that Locke or Hobbes is correct and Rousseau incorrect, but only to observe that one cannot mix myths without getting into the deepest trouble. But there are several other observations of a more general nature that I want to make. First, the considerations introduced above are intended to point out something of the character of the language of political (...) theory. It is an error to treat such language as if it were assimilable to the verifiability model of scientific language (this was the mistake of both Hume and Weldon). The language of political theory, such as social contract theory, bears a much closer relationship to religious language than it does to at least that model of scientific discourse, for it is basically mythic in character. Speaking still in terms of the verifiability model of scientific discourse, political theories such as social contract are neither true nor false. If one means by “cognitively meaningful” the same thing as “true or false,” then one would be constrained to say that such political theories are meaningless. But the point is that although such theories cannot be shown to be either true or false in that rather simple-minded way that both Hume and Weldon require, they are in fact meaningful, and cognitively so. The essential difference is that the Hume-Weldon model requires that cognitive discourse be descriptive, while the view here advanced rejects this.It is perhaps worth noting, that the Hume-Weldon (positivistic) model has rather gone out of fashion even in the paradigmatic case of the language of science. The difficulties of the verifiability theory of meaning are legion and are well-known to philosophers of science. The problem is, however, that those difficulties and the more recent developments in the theory of scientific language arising out of those difficulties are not equally well known to all philosophers and not known at all outside philosophy. Thus a great many philosophers and practically all nonphilosophers operate with an outmoded theory of language and this theory, unfortunately, governs most of the discussion about political theory.Second, a problem related to that of verification arises out of a consideration of the relationships among mythic structures. For example, it is sometimes maintained that the American democratic system rests on a certain religious point of view: that we are a Christian nation. I am not concerned to attack or defend this position. I want only to observe that it is conceivable that myths may “stack” in certain ways, that hierarchies of mythic structures are possible, such that under one very general kind of myth (such as Marxism), certain subordinate or lower-order myths are permissible and others are not. Among these high-order myths may be certain metaphysics, such as Spinozism or Platonism, or certain religions. Consequently, in addition to such “verification” procedures as have already been suggested, there may be another, namely, the determination of the compatibility of the given myth with others of higher order. If this is so, then one must be careful not to assume that his particular political myth is compatible with just any other point of view he might hold.Finally, returning once more to Rousseau, there is the difficulty involved in getting out of one myth and into another. Religious thinkers have always known about this, for it is the problem of conversion. But philosophers have tended to think that all one had to do was present some arguments and everyone would come around to that point of view. What has been missed is the blikish element, and this undoubtedly explains why there have been virtually no philosophical conversions by argument. Scientific disputes can usually (though not always) be resolved by the introduction of evidence, but if religious points of view and political myths (like the social contract) are bliks, then they determine what will be accepted as evidence and consequently no evidence will count against them. As I have already said, I think this is too strong. There is a blikish element in myths, but in a very large, although recognizable, sense, they are “verifiable.” Even so, the fact that in myth one is presented with a picture, a drama, of which one is a part and not, as in the descriptive model of scientific language, with a set of propositions of which the knowing subject is independent, this fact, I say, makes all the difference in the world so far as switching positions is concerned. Thus, as Rousseau's case suggests, it is extremely hard to get out of one myth, one blik, one way of looking at the world, and into another. This suggests why Democrats do not often become Republicans, why Buddhists do not often become Christians, and why teen-agers complain that their parents do not understand them. (shrink)