commitments, expectations, affordances and susceptibilities: towards positional agent programming

Commitments, Expectations, Affordances and Susceptibilities

Giovanni Sileno ([email protected]), Alexander Boer, Tom van Engers

Leibniz Center for LawUniversity of Amsterdam

29 October 2015 – PRIMA @ Bertinoro (FC)

Towards Positional Agent Programming

mailto:[email protected]

Prologue

From institutional positions..

● In a formal institution, each actor is bound to other actors according to certain legal relationships, associated to certain legal positions..


● Positions have inter-dependencies, e.g.

– if a party has a duty to perform a certain action, then there is another party that has a claim towards the first

– if a party is in a certain position (e.g. duty to A), this precludes the same party to be in another position (e.g. no-duty to A).


● Positions have inter-dependencies, e.g.

– if a party has a duty to perform a certain action, then there is another party that has a claim towards the first

– if a party is in a certain position (e.g. duty to A), this precludes the same party to be in another position (e.g. no-duty to A).

● Hohfeld [1917] presented a visual organization of fundamental legal positions

First Hohfeldian square

CLAIMRIGHT

DUTYcorrelative

opposite opposite

NO-CLAIMNO-RIGHT

PRIVILEGELIBERTYNO-DUTY

beneficiary perspective addressee perspective

W. N. Hohfeld. Fundamental legal conceptions as applied in judicial reasoning. The Yale Law Journal, 1917.

Second Hohfeldian square

POWERABILITY

LIABILITYSUBJECTION

correlative

opposite opposite

DISABILITY IMMUNITY

performer perspective recipient perspective

W. N. Hohfeld. Fundamental legal conceptions as applied in judicial reasoning. The Yale Law Journal, 1917.

Second Hohfeldian square

POWERABILITY

LIABILITYSUBJECTION

correlative

opposite opposite

DISABILITY IMMUNITY


Lindhal's formal analysis (1977) showed that privilege and immunity relationships are asymmetrical in the framework

Similar asymmetriesWe found that these asymmetries can be related to deontic logic:

G. Sileno, A. Boer, T. Van Engers. “On the Interactional Meaning of Fundamental Legal Concepts", JURIX 2014

A viable laternative?

● Blanché proposed in the 70s to extend the Aristotelian square after considerations on natural language.

A E

I O

ALL NONE

SOMENOT

SOME

Y

UALL or NONE

SOME and SOME NOT “≡ SOME”

A E

Y

forb A+ -obl A

“perm” A = faculty A

0

Deontic triangle of contrariety

positive polarity negative polarity

no polarity

A E

Y

forb A+ -obl A

“perm” A = faculty A

0

Deontic triangle of contrariety

positive polarity negative polarity

no polarity

Two negations operators:polarity inversion and nullification!

DUTYCLAIM

NO-CLAIM PRIVILEGE


NO-CLAIM PRIVILEGE

DUTYCLAIM


DUTYCLAIM

NO-CLAIM PRIVILEGE


AE

Y

forb

obl

“perm” = faculty

DUTYCLAIM

NO-CLAIMPRIVILEGE


+-

AE

Y

forb

obl

“perm” = faculty

DUTYCLAIM

NO-CLAIMPRIVILEGE


+-right to

protection against

right to performance

First Hohfeldian Prism


E

Y“perm”, faculty to follow along

+--LIABILITYPOWER

DISABILITYIMMUNITY

forb to follow along

obl to follow along


+A

Second Hohfeldian Prism


(positive)power

negativepower

The “contract” for living

...to agential positions

● intuition: correlativeness of legal relationships holding between two parties can be put in relation with the correlativeness of the agent with his own environment.

...to agential positions

● intuition: correlativeness of legal relationships holding between two parties can be put in relation with the correlativeness of the agent with his own environment.

● the difference is one of extrinsic vs intrinsic components:

– extrinsic, created by normative forces at social level– intrinsic, by internal structuring processes at agent level

● DUTY

Proposed mapping

(legal aspect of social commitment)

● DUTY COMMITMENT

Proposed mapping

(legal aspect of social commitment)

● DUTY COMMITMENT● CLAIM

Proposed mapping

● DUTY COMMITMENT● CLAIM

Proposed mapping

(what a party expects from the other party)

● DUTY COMMITMENT● CLAIM EXPECTATION

Proposed mapping

(what a party expects from the other party)

● DUTY COMMITMENT● CLAIM EXPECTATION● POWER

Proposed mapping

(what a party is able to modify of the other at institutional level)

● DUTY COMMITMENT● CLAIM EXPECTATION● POWER AFFORDANCE

Proposed mapping

(what a party is able to modify of the other at institutional level)

● DUTY COMMITMENT● CLAIM EXPECTATION● POWER AFFORDANCE● LIABILITY

Proposed mapping

(what a party is subjected to be modified by the other at institutional level)

● DUTY COMMITMENT● CLAIM EXPECTATION● POWER AFFORDANCE● LIABILITY SUSCEPTIBILITY

Proposed mapping

(what a party is subjected to be modified by the other at institutional level)

● DUTY COMMITMENT● CLAIM EXPECTATION● POWER AFFORDANCE● LIABILITY SUSCEPTIBILITY

Proposed mapping

● 4 Position Types x 3 Characterizations = 12 Positions

A mythological example

Persistent conditional commitment Ulysses desiring to jump off towards the Sirens after their voice, and insisting on trying even if bound to the mainmast

Positive Expectation Ulysses believing that the sirens were along that specific path

Negative Affordance associated with the overall plan preventing Sirens’ effect

Disability Ulysses to move, because bound to the mast

Negative susceptibility Sailors not to follow Ulysses’ requests

No susceptibility Sailors to Sirens’ voices

Operationalization

Computational grounding

● We decided to ground our work on Petri nets:

– positions are local states, and events have impact on local scale (mental causation)

– the two elements we consider are operations (composition of transitions) for actions/events, situations (composition of places) for conditions and references.

Example: commitment structure

c

Cognitive grounding● From commitment to action● From commitment to monitoring

From commitment to action● According to the prevent-acquire-cure-keep (PACK)

psychological framework [Ogilvie and Rose, 1995]

– the presence or absence – of a positive (negative) condition – guides the agent to select a certain behaviour, – in order to promote (demote) such condition.

From commitment to action..● ACQUIRE:

– If you have a commitment towards a certain target, not holding at the moment, and an associated affordance is available, then use it.

From commitment to action..● PREVENT:

– If you have a negative commitment towards a certain target, which is not holding at the moment, and you have a negative affordance towards it, then use such affordance.

– Inhibit affordances with undesired side-effects.

From commitment to monitoring● Not all that the agent may perceive or infer from his

knowledge is relevant to his commitments.

From commitment to monitoring

– identifying potential situations enabling changes to current and potential PACK-related positions

● The relevance relation can be extracted from the commitment specifications, considering two directions:

c

From commitment to monitoring● The relevance relation can be extracted from the

commitment specifications, considering two directions:

c

feedback processes

– identifying potential situations enabling changes to current and potential PACK-related positions

– circumscribing success and failure references

An additional example

“I want to finish this article before this weekend.”


“I don't want to get to the weekend without finishing this article.”

They are similar, but not the same.


“I don't want to get to the weekend without finishing this article.”

They activate different PACK rules (ACQUIRE vs PREVENT) and therefore different susceptibilities!

Conclusion

Conclusions● Most known agent languages/architectures today:

– conflates negative and null positions


– conflates negative and null positions– overlook the susceptibility components

(critical to design evidence gathering tasks)



(critical to design evidence gathering tasks)● This contribution attempts to reduce this gap,

– grounding the associated practical reasoning in cognitive research studies





– trying alternative solutions for known computational/representational issues





– trying alternative solutions for known computational/representational issues

● Many extensions already prefigured!

commitments, expectations, affordances and susceptibilities: towards positional agent programming

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