Schedule of Events at Workshop on AI & Evidential Inference, June 10, 2011

One-Day Workshop on AI & Evidential Inference
(in memory of Craig Callen)
in Conjunction with
ICAIL 2011, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, June 10, 2011

Workshop on AI & Evidential Inference: Main Page

 

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Schedule of Workshop Talks & Events, Friday, June 10, 2011

8:50 – 9:00	Giovanni Sartor & Peter Tillers	Welcome, greetings
9:00 – 9:30	James Franklin	How much of commonsense and legal reasoning is formalizable? A review
9:30 – 10:00	D. Michael Risinger	Against Symbolization—Some reflections on the limits of formal systems in the description of inferential reasoning and legal argumentation
10:00 – 10:30	Federico Picinali	Structuring inferential reasoning in criminal cases. An analogical approach
10:30 – 11:00	Coffee	Coffee
11:00 – 11:30	Michael Pardo	Relevance, Sufficiency, and Defeasible Inferences: Comments on Modeling Legal Proof
11:30 – 12:00	David Hamer	A probabilistic model of the relationship between the quantity (weight) of evidence, and its strength
12:00 – 12:30	Joseph Laronge	Evaluating Universal Sufficiency of a Single Logical Form for Inference in Court
12:30 – 1:00	Rainhard Bengez	On the Computable Structure of the Logocratic Method and Analyses Specific to Evidence Law
1:00 – 2:00	Lunch	Lunch
2:00 – 2:30	Bruce Hay	Roughly Two Conceptions of the Trial
2:20 – 3:00	Ronald J. Allen	Taming Complexity: Rationality, the Law of Evidence, and the Nature of the Legal System
3:00 – 3:30	Scott Brewer	Representing Legal Arguments: The Centrality of Abduction
3:30 – 4:00	Coffee	Coffee
4:00 – 4:30	Douglas Walton & Floris Bex	Combining Evidential and Legal Reasoning with Burdens and Standards of Proof
4:30 – 5:00	Bart Verheij	Can the argumentative, narrative and statistical perspectives on legal evidence and proof be integrated?
5:00 – 5:30	Henry Prakken	Can non-probabilistic models of legal evidential inference learn from probability theory?
5:30 – 6:00	Giovanni Sartor & Giuseppe Contissa	Evidence arguments in air traffic safety. A model for the law?
6:00 – 6:30	Boaz Sangero	Proposal to Reverse the View of a Confession: From Key Evidence Requiring Corroboration to Corroboration for Key Evidence

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Workshop on AI & Evidential Inference: Main Page

Not an Arcane Issue?: The Modularity or Non-Modularity of the Brain (Mind)

In a recent book review in the London Review of Books the witty and irreverent Rutgers philosopher Jerry Fodor again attacks the thesis of the "massive modularity" of the mind. See Fodor, "Massively Modular Minds," 33 LRB No. 9 (April 28, 2011). This controversy may seem arcane -- and it is -- but the question of whether the mind amounts to nothing more than a clump of distinct adaptive parts -- parts produced only by Darwinian natural selection -- has a bearing on the question of the extent to which explicit rational deliberation -- or what passes for rational deliberation -- can influence the inferences that human beings ought to draw from evidence. Cf. the blog post:

Do You Believe in Sociobiology and the Law? - Chapter II (October 21, 2007)

See also the brief discussion associated with Figure 3 of the following blog post:

Friday, October 16, 2009

Brain Science: A Meditation on Mechanical Lie Detection

Drawing Inferences about "Deception" from Observed Events in the Brain:
Of fMRI and Similar Purported Tools for Observing or Inferring States of the Human Mind and Heart

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The dynamic evidence page
It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

A Two-Part Course in Fact Investigation: Tentative Descriptions

Fact Investigation I  (Fall 2011)

Professor: Tillers/Segal

Credits: 3 (2 academic, 1 clinical) 

Pre/Corequisite: None

Effective pretrial investigation requires not only imagination, but also careful marshaling of evidence and careful organization of thinking about evidence. It frequently requires the application of a variety of distinct marshaling and analytical methods such as the development of time lines, the formation of scenarios, orderly assessment of the credibility of testimonial evidence, and the marshaling of evidence on the basis of legal rules and their elements. Students in the course are introduced to a toolkit of evidence marshaling strategies for investigation. Students also become familiar with important databases and public records. Students work in teams and conduct actual investigations of real-world problems. Consult the following web site for a more detailed description of the course: http://tillers.net/fi-course/fi-home.html. 

Fact Investigation II  (Spring 2012)
Professor: Tillers/Segal
Credits: 2
Pre/Corequisite: Fact Investigation I

This course is a continuation of Fact Investigation I. In this course, teams of students carry forward and bring to a conclusion one or more of the investigations launched by the members of the previous semester's course in fact investigation. Although this course and the previous semester's course in fact investigation have some common objectives and themes, this course differs in important ways from its predecessor. In this course, there is a greater emphasis on sources of evidence apart from databases and public records; for example, there is a greater emphasis on witness interviews. More generally, this semester there is less emphasis on exploratory investigation and more emphasis on bringing an investigation to a successful conclusion. For this reason, close attention is given to the relationship between (i) decisions and steps during investigation and (ii) matters such as (a) the legal requirements governing the admissibility of evidence in settings such as trials and (b) the persuasiveness of evidence submitted to a trier of fact or audience such as a judge, a jury, a legislative committee, a corporate executive, or the public.