Plants May Not Malinger, But They Do Prevaricate

David Livingstone Smith, Natural-Born Liars, Scientific American (online) (June 2005)

If [the] bald truth [that human beings systematically lie, that lying gives liars advantages, that "our primary aim is still to look out for ourselves above all," and that "lying to ourselves--a talent built into our brains--helps us accept our fraudulent behavior"] makes any one of us feel uncomfortable, we can take some solace in knowing we are not the only species to exploit the lie. Plants and animals communicate with one another by sounds, ritualistic displays, colors, airborne chemicals and other methods, and biologists once naively assumed that the sole function of these communication systems was to transmit accurate information. But the more we have learned, the more obvious it has become that nonhuman species put a lot of effort into sending inaccurate messages. 

The mirror orchid, for example, displays beautiful blue blossoms that are dead ringers for female wasps. The flower also manufactures a chemical cocktail that simulates the pheromones released by females to attract mates. These visual and olfactory cues keep hapless male wasps on the flower long enough to ensure that a hefty load of pollen is clinging to their bodies by the time they fly off to try their luck with another orchid in disguise. Of course, the orchid does not "intend" to deceive the wasp. Its fakery is built into its physical design, because over the course of history plants that had this capability were more readily able to pass on their genes than those that did not. ...

This account of the pervasiveness of lying -- or, in any event, of deception -- in the organic order is strong enough to warm the cockles of the hearts (and fan the anxieties) of people who believe in Original Sin. Indeed, this scientific account goes beyond the Bible -- since this account sees darkness (in the form of deception) in the very fiber (so to speak) of plant life as well as in the hearts (or in the genes, in any event) of human beings and non-human animals.

But my dog really loves me! She can't just be pretending, can she? Say it isn't so, Sam [or Jane]!)

N.B. In reality I do not own a dog. I have learned my lesson. (But is it better to have lied and lost than never to have lied at all? This is a deep philosophical and moral question that I will address on some other occasion.)

By the way [BTW], what is a "cockle"? Do hearts really have cockles? Does anyone know?

Playing with Loaded Dice

At Las Vegas casinos and racetracks if you make more bad bets than good bets, you generally (but not invariably) lose more money than you win. But this rule of thumb may not apply in the game of American litigation. Consider Jeffrey Anderson, who has reportedly made millions of dollars bringing lawsuits against Catholic clergy for sexual abuse. Anderson, Esq., brags (confesses?), "'I'm the losingest lawyer you've ever interviewed. I've lost a lot more than I've won, and people only read about the stunning victories.'" Terry Carter, Collaring the Clergy, 93 ABA Journal 38, 41 (June 2007). How is this possible? Is it because Anderson has had a lucky streak, recovering such vast amounts in some isolated cases that the winnings greatly outweigh the losses? Or is Anderson a rich man today because he is fortunate enough to work within a litigation system in which neither he nor his clients pay for the full costs of the bad litigation bets -- and the unjustified harms they have inflicted on opponents?

Oh well: Justice at any price! Ya gotta break some eggs to make an omellette? Isn't that right?

P.S. The article reports that Anderson, Esq., flew into a rage on learning that an accused priest had counterclaimed for defamation. Id. at 39. This strikes me as mildly ironic. In any event, would Anderson's rage persist if it turns that his client's accusations against the priest are false? Or, al la the mantra of the 1980s (largely popularized by Oprah Winfrey, about the need to "believe the children," some of whom turned out to be unworthy of belief), is it the case that the following mandate applies: Believe the (alleged?) victim!

Telltale Prints

Richard Gray, Fingerprints Tell A Story, London Sunday Telegraph, reprinted in the Washington Times (June 9, 2007):

LONDON -- For more than a century, fingerprints have helped to bring criminals to justice. Now, in a development that should help police catch more crooks, scientists have discovered how to coax details of an offender's lifestyle and health from the prints he or she leaves at a crime scene.
The technique will prove particularly valuable when officers are unable to find a match for a fingerprint on the national database. Currently, if no match is found, the print is useless until a suspect is brought in for questioning.
The new technique will reveal whether an offender smokes, takes drugs, drinks coffee, is using a certain type of medication or has a specific disease. This will help to narrow down the list of potential suspects, saving time and money for the police and securing more convictions.

Read the rest of the story online!

Time Lines and Probabilities in German Courtrooms

In a controversial case in Germany a court of the first instance acquitted a man (Alfred B.) charged with committing a bank robbery. The evidence against the man included (forgive the following attempt at a translation of the article from Der Spiegel (May 21, 2007):

Alfred B. is arrested on the basis of statements made by the only two eyetwitnesses, and indications of guilt surface immediately: The police discover 14,970 Euros in the rear panel of an old refrigerator [at Alfred B.'s residence]. {Furthermore,] Alred B. had 10,000 Euros [in his possession] on the day of the crime, and a day later [a day after the day of the crime] he deposited 4,970 Euros in [a bank in a neighboring village]. Taken together, therefore, [Alfred B. had] almost as much as the approximately 33,500 Euros that were taken during the robbery. In addition, there were fourteen 500 Euro notes in the money found in Alfred B's possession. [At the behest of the perpetrator] the bank clerk put fifteen such notes in sacks during the robbery.

The two surviving eyewitnesses to the robbery identified Alfred B. as the perpetrator.

Furthermore, according to expert witnesses (the robber shot two people at the bank that he robbed), the perpetrator used a "Walther PP, caliber 7.65 cm." Alfred B. was the owner of precisely the same model revolver (which, however, he reported was stolen years earlier).

So why was Alfred B. acquitted?

One problem, it appears, was with the reported sequence of events (id.):

One of the principal witnesses, the farmer Bauer B., has an ironclad belief that he saw Alfred B. to the east of the scene of the crime at the time of th crime.

A higher-instance court reversed the lower court's acquittal and ordered a new trial.

What is the moral of this (unfinished) story?

The attorney for the family of one of the victims said this:

The big error in the [lower court's] opinion is that indications of guilt were hacked away [by the court] because doubts remained. But one must consider the larger picture: The probability that there was a doppelgaenger with such a gun, with similar rubber boots, and with almost exactly the same amount of money is close to zero."

My thanks to Prof. Lothar Philipps for alerting me to this case.

Dogs Threaten To Invade the Province of the German Judiciary: Olfactory and Dog Tracking Evidence in Germany

The editors of Der Spiegel plainly do not approve of "dog-tracking evidence." See The Scent of Terror, Spiegel Online International (English) (May 23, 2007).

But there is more to this story.

First, I note that Professor Andrew Taslitz's views of dog-tracking evidence have caught the attention of our friends(?) in Germany (id.):

Even in the US, where the rule of law is currently being dismantled in the war on terror, there are qualms about trusting dogs to search for the truth. "Does the Cold Nose Know?" is the title of a critical study by the US academic lawyer Andrew Taslitz, who is demanding that man's four-legged friends be banned from the courtroom altogether.

Second, Der Spiegel notes an interesting experiment that has the air of a parlor trick:

... [T]here has never been an internationally recognized scientific study that proves dogs' infallibility when it comes to odor identification.

Nevertheless, German investigators rely on a strictly defined scent identification procedure, one that has been put to the test thousands of times. Six tubes are placed on a podium, including the sample belonging to the suspect. The dog has to sniff an object that has been handled by someone other than the suspect and then has to find their sample.

In the final test, six samples are laid out, but not the one from the first test. Now the dog has to sniff the real evidence, maybe a tool used for a break in. If three dogs come up with the same results in the preliminary and main tests, then the failure rate is one in every 1.2 million. That at least is what a researcher at the University of Paderborn has calculated.

Sunny, Skip and Zoey have noses that seem to be infallible. The samples are mixed up and even the dog handler doesn't know which one is which.

Third, a West German defense attorney fears that dogs will invade the province of the judiciary and leave us with K-9s in judicial robes:

Hamburg defense lawyer Gerhard Strate, who has been researching the use of olfactory proof, also finds it hard to believe in the infallibility of animals. "Then we could just replace the judges with dogs wagging their tails."

Fourth, Der Spiegel, ever alert to the prospect of 1984 or of a reversion to the Stasi-State notes that the evidentiary uses of olfactory material may be in their infancy (the subtitle of the Spiegel article is "STASI METHODS USED TO TRACK G8 OPPONENTS"):

US scientists are currently working on digitally upgrading the controversial dog tests, so that the scents could also be used in the war on terror. The Pentagon is financing research at Darpa -- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- to develop a detector that can pick up the scent of foreign combatants.

The researchers in Philadelphia have already discovered that scent is inseparable from the genetic fingerprint and in particular the immune system. "Every person has their own unique, individual smell," says Gary Beauchamp, the director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center, who is working on the Darpa project.

People carry so much information in their scent it would make every data protector's hair stand on end. Beauchamp is convinced that it should be possible to "recognize how old someone is, what their gender is, and what illnesses they have."

Evidence Examination Spring Semester 2007

Evidence Spring Term 2007 Prof. Peter Tillers

Instructions

This examination has one question.

This is an "open book" "take home" examination.

You have 24 hours to prepare and submit an answer.

You are free to consult any written material of any kind, including library materials, LEXIS, and WESTLAW. [further exam instructions omitted]

Problem

Vila Victim was stabbed to death on June 1, 2006.

Sam Sidekick was also stabbed during the attack on Vila. However, Sidekick did not die on June 1, 2006. Sidekick died in a hospice on September 1, 2006.

The State of Blackacre indicts Albert Accused for the murder of Vila Victim on June 1, 2006. Accused pleads not guilty.

The case against Accused proceeds to trial. The presiding judge is Judge Obscure Wisdom. You are Wisdom’s law clerk. Your name is Diligent Clerk.

The prosecution’s theory is that (i) Albert Accused tried to rape Vila Victim while Sam Sidekick held Victim from behind, (ii) Victim resisted the attempted rape, (iii) Victim’s resistance enraged Accused, Accused pulled a knife out of his pocket, and Accused began stabbing Victim, (iv) Victim fought furiously to fend off the knife attack, and (v) during the ensuing struggle between Vila Victim and Albert Accused, Accused inadvertently stabbed Sidekick as well as Victim.

The defense theory is that Albert Accused stabbed Sam Sidekick to prevent Sidekick from raping Vila Victim and that Accused accidentally stabbed Victim while trying to prevent Sidekick from raping Victim.

At the trial the prosecution offers to have Caring Caretaker give the following testimony:

I work at Hopeful Hospice. I first saw Sam Sidekick there on June 15, 2006. He was in pretty bad shape. I was assigned to be his main caretaker. Of course, all the people who come to Hopeful Hospice are in a bad way; they’re there precisely because they’re dying. But Sam was in a bad way psychically as well as physically, and something other than the prospect of death was troubling his soul.

I decided to do something about that. I decided to subject Sam to guided visual imagery and guided auditory stimuli. The aim of my therapy is both to clear the mind and calm the soul in preparation for death. No one taught me how to do the sort of therapy I do. I’m an autodidact; I taught myself. I got the idea of doing what I do by reading about guided imagery on the web and in books. But no one taught me how to do the sort of therapy I do. My therapy is unique. As I said before, my job is to keep patients comfortable and to bring them peace of mind in any way I can. I can’t tell you why or how my therapy works. All I know is that it works. I know this from trial and error. I’ve used it on many patients, and many patients have come to feel better spiritually as a result. I know that this is so because I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes.

I did my thing with Sam over a period of weeks. For a long time the therapy didn’t seem to work; for the most part Sam just mumbled and jumbled, and he generally spoke in incoherent phrases. If he said anything at all, he said only that he didn’t remember a thing. But then it worked; something clicked. One day – it was August 31, 2006 – after I showed Sam a series of images and had him listen to a series of soothing sounds, Sam went into a trance. It was a deep trance. It was a frenzied trance; he was semi-conscious but excited. That’s precisely the state I seek to induce by the regimen of guided visual imagery and guided auditory stimuli that I use. My regimen has almost always worked in the past. I think it worked this time as well. When Sam came out of the trance, he was lucid and coherent. He told me that his mind was clear, that his soul was at peace, and that he remembered every last detail in his life. And he thanked me.

The very next day – September 1 – two police officers came by. They said they were investigating a case and they wanted to interview Sam. I told them they were free to try. We went to Sam’s room. They set up a digital video disk recorder; they said they wanted to record their interview. They then proceeded to ask Sam questions about someone they called "Albert Accused" and someone else they called "Vila Victim." They asked Sam all kinds of questions. But Sam just rolled around in the bed and moaned. After about ten minutes, they turned to me and said, "Can you get him to talk? We can’t get anything out of him." I told them I could make no promises but that I could subject him to some guided imagery and stimuli to see what if anything would happen. So I did my shtick.

When I do my sort of therapy, I use all kinds of images and sounds. In Sam’s case, I usually used the sound of rippling water and religious imagery such as pictures of St. Francis of Assisi. This time I played the sound of a running waterfall and I showed Sam an image of Joan of Arc, one in which Joan is shown being burned at the stake. This had an immediate effect. Sam seemed to go into a frenzied trance. He rolled back and forth and he moaned loudly. He then shouted, "Albert, did you get her in the chest? But you didn’t mean to stab Vila in the head, did you?" This was all recorded on the videodisk that the police made with their digital recorder.

But things ended badly. Immediately after Sam blurted out his odd question about Albert and Vila, Sam rolled over and went into cardiac arrest. I shouldn’t have agreed to help the cops; I realized that even then. But I made no effort to revive Sam or to get medical help. After all, Sam was at a hospice, not a hospital. It was my job to keep Sam comfortable, not to keep him alive. A few hours later Sam died. It was all very sad.

Albert Accused’s counsel states, "Your Honor, I object to this testimony. Caretaker’s testimony is clearly hearsay. Furthermore, …" Before defense counsel can say anything more, Judge Wisdom interrupts by stating, "Counsel, I don’t want to hear anything more. I’m going to adjourn the trial so that I can consider the admissibility of Caretaker’s testimony." Judge Wisdom turns to you and says:

Diligent, I want you to write a memo for me. I want your memo in my hands in 24 hours or less. I want you to tell me if Caring Caretaker’s testimony or any part of it is admissible or inadmissible. Consider and evaluate all plausible objections to Caretaker’s testimony. But keep your perspective. Focus on the important issues. Don’t discuss every conceivable evidence issue. Moreover, emphasize the nettlesome evidence issues. You’ll have to discuss black letter law, of course. But I don’t need or want an extended lecture on black-letter principles of evidence. I want you to grapple with the hard questions. Oh yes, I almost forgot: Diligent, don’t forget to do your homework. What I mean is this: I’m sure you’ll have to do some legal research. I can’t imagine that you can give me a good analysis of this Caretaker problem without doing some legal research. So get to work.

Write the memorandum and submit it within 24 hours.

Lugovoi, Litvinenko, Polonium, and the Director of Public Prosecutions

Britain Charges Russian [Lugovoi] in Poisoning, New York Times (May 22, 2007) (Associated Press)

I had fingered Lugovoi as one of the prime suspects. See the archived posts for December 03 - 10, 2006. My suspicion became most focused on Lugovoi as a result of the item of evidence mentioned in the 14th comment to the blog post of Friday, December 8, 2006. See also, at the same link, the earlier blog post of December 6, 2006, Bungler-Murder Hypothesis 2.1.

I had suggested that time lines might help sort out the evidence and the possibilties. I see that the New York Times and the AP agree with my sentiment:

Timeline in Poisoning of Ex - KGB Agent, New York Times (May 22, 2007) (AP).

Of course, as Priit Parmakson has pointed out, the New York Times has been enamored of time lines for quite some time. When I teach my course in fact investigation next (in the fall of 2008) I must point this out to my students.

If this case ever results in a public trial -- but, alas, it appears this is unlikely -- students of evidence, inference, and investigation would have great clay to sculpt.

A Difficult Problem: Deciding What To Investigate

Talk to the Newsroom: Investigations Editor Matthew Purdy, New York Times Online (May 14, 2007):

Q. I've always been interested to know how you decide WHAT to investigate? After all, you can't investigate everything — yet many things warrant investigation. I also understand that investigative reporting is an expensive process, taking reporters and editors away from other stories. For some news organization, it seems a luxury/indulgence they can't afford. So what's the calculus, the criteria, at The Times?

— Thomas Hackett

A. Your question is a good one because deciding what to investigate is often the most difficult decision. ...

Exactly! See Assignment No. 1, Assignments Page, Fact Investigation Course (Fall 2006):

I believe it is important for students of investigation to experience the "agony of exploratory investigation" for themselves.

My experience with prior incarnations of this course shows that the process of identifying a suitable investigation topic can be both arduous and time-consuming. Beginnings of any kind are usually hard. The beginnings of investigations are no exception to this rule: in the initial phases of investigation -- phases that are usually exploratory in nature -- everything often seems to be a bloomin' buzzin' confusion.

See also Beginnings Are Hard: Notes on Starting an Investigation

Hidden Harms

The prose is restrained in Leonie Star's biography JULIUS STONE: An Intellectual Life (Oxford University Press and Sydney University Press, 1992). But at times it is almost heartbreaking to read the story of Stone's life. For example, in 1941 there was a major public controversy about the appointment of Julius Stone and James Williams to two chairs at the University of Sydney's Faculty of Law. Part of the opposition to Stone was fueled by anti-Semitism. After the university's senate narrowly (and publicly) voted to rescind the offers of the chairs to Stone and Williams, Stone wrote to Williams suggesting that both of them should withdraw their candidatures for the chairs. Williams rebuffed Stone's suggestion. After the university senate reversed itself again and reinstated its earlier approval of the offer of the chairs to Stone and Williams, Stone cabled Williams suggesting that the two men now should both accept the offers. Leonie Star writes (id. at p. 65):

Williams wrote to Stone on 10 November [1941]. He did not agree that decisions by either one would so affect the other that neither could act independently; he was not sure there were not factors which affected only one of them. It is clear that he had still not decided whether to accept; his indecision seems not to have been based on principle but on dislike of Stone. He asked a colleague by letter on 12 November whether he thought Stone's letter of 7 November was hostile and 'a declaration of war without any rules'. Williams seems to have believed that the main question was whether it would be worth his while trying to work with Stone, for he elsewhere expressed concern that a position which could be regarded as superior to a New Zealand Supreme Court judgeship [Williams held an academic position in New Zealand] could be lost for no better reason than 'I don't want to be plagued by a Hebrew for the rest of my life'.

It should be noted that in the end Stone was awarded the chair. Furthermore, the support for Stone among the faculty and students of the University of Sydney was very strong from the beginning. The times they were already a'changin'. Furthermore, Stone apparently vowed, on this occasion and others, only to work harder, believing that this was the way forward for him. But one naturally wonders how deep were the wounds. (Perhaps I will find out the answer as I read on.)

Stanford's Plan for 3D Legal Education

Stanford Law School has an enterprising plan:

Stanford Law School today [Nov. 28, 2006] announced changes that are transforming the JD into a three-dimensional degree program that combines the study of other disciplines with team-oriented, problem-solving techniques and expanded clinical training that enables students to represent clients and litigate cases—before they graduate.

This plan, announced months ago, sounds excellent to me. Indeed, it sounds exciting and alluring: it offers the prospect of successfully combining interdisciplinary (and "theoretical") education with practical training.

Tillers Tries To Be Rationale

I have tried to use Rationale to diagram part (but only part!) of the inference problem presented by United States v. Robinson, 544 F.2d 611 (2d Cir., 1976) & United States v. Robinson, 560 F.2d 507 (2d Cir., 1977) (en banc). See http://tillers.net/ev-course/materials/robinson.html (scroll down about 4/5 of the page). Here is the most comprehensive map I produced of the problem in Robinson:

Note that my representation of the Robinson problem is incomplete -- both by necessity and by design. For example, I make no attempt to portray how questions about matters such as the number of revolvers, the number of .38 caliber revolvers, or the legality and illegality of the possession of revolvers in New York City, New York State, or beyond affect the argument about the problem in Robinson. (By the way: What is "the" [inference] problem in Robinson?) Perhaps I will ask my students this fall to develop their own maps. Do you think that doing so would amount cruel and unusual punishment of students who are taking a basic Evidence course?

Some people (William Twining, David Schum, Terry Anderson) have been courageously asking their students to do this sort of thing -- to map arguments from and about evidence -- for literally decades. I have used inference maps (on a limited basis) in my basic course in the law of evidence, but I have not asked my students to produce their own maps in the basic Evidence course. I am a bit ashamed of this. In my defense: (my) long experience in academia suggests that traveling solo in this fashion in the American law school world presents hazards. But perhaps now I am in a position to withstand student complaints? Or perhaps not. (In any event, an ingratiating classroom manner usually counts for far more than does the substance of the stuff one teaches. The parallel to quackery in expert testimony is unmistakable. [A pleasing courtroom manner will take an "expert" far. {Am I too cynical?}])

The maps one makes by using Rationale or other tools for mapping (inter alia) evidential inference vividly illustrate why it is useless and impossible to talk (coherently) about the law of evidence or about proof in adjudication (or pretrial or prelitigation investigation) without talking about chains and webs of evidence and inference.

Joseph Laronge Demonstrates How to Use Rationale to Portray a Witness Credibility Problem

The following illustration is found on Joseph Laronge's blog Inference Path:

The example is not trivial: witness credibility is perhaps the most complex inference problem known to ordinary human mortals. (I say "ordinary" to put to one side esoteric problems such as string theory and quantum computing.)

Laronge's mode of visualizing credibility problems seems analytically correct and makes it possible in Rationale readily to marshal evidence bearing on distinct credibility attributes, or variables. (Peripheral note: I would add to the list of variables; I would include, e.g., objectivity vel non and ability to communicate [or use language] vel non.)

The Impossibility Principle

Lotfi Zadeh, Extended Abstract, From Fuzzy Logic to Extended Fuzzy Logic—The Concept of F-validity and the Impossibility Principle, Lecture given at FUZZ-IEEE 2007, Imperial College, London, UK:

In an environment of imprecision, uncertainty, incompleteness of information, conflicting goals and partiality of truth, p-validity [provable validity; a provably valid solution] is not, in general, an achievable objective.

It does not follow, of course, Zadeh asserts, that logic dissolves into incoherence. Instead, logic becomes fuzzy -- in the extended sense that Zadeh describes in this lecture and on other occasions and in other publications.

The conception is bold. I am not a logician. But I would hesitate to dismiss Zadeh's (attempt at) radical (re)conceptualization of logic. Zadeh has grounds for making the following assertion (id.):

Fuzzy logic has come of age.

He adds:

During much of its early history, fuzzy logic has been an object of skepticism and derision, in part because fuzzy is a word which is usually used in a pejorative sense. Today, fuzzy logic is used in a wide variety of products and systems ranging from cameras, home appliances, medical instrumentation and automobiles to elevators, industrial control, subways, fraud detection and traffic control systems.

Whether or not fuzzy logic makes sense and whether or not it "works," Zadeh is plainly right in saying and complaining:

[T]here are still many misconceptions about fuzzy logic. To begin with, fuzzy logic is not fuzzy. Basically, fuzzy logic is a precise logic of imprecision.

Furthermore, there is more to fuzzy logic, he rightly adds, than the concept of a fuzzy set. However, for want of technical proficiency, I will not even begin to try to recount or summarize Zadeh's account of the four principal facets of fuzzy logic. Instead, I limit myself to quoting this statement:

More specifically, in fuzzy logic everything is or is allowed to be graduated, that is, be a matter of degree or, equivalently, fuzzy. Furthermore, in fuzzy logic everything is or is allowed to be granulated, with a granule being a clump of attribute values drawn together by indistinguishability, equivalence, similarity, proximity or functionality.

What does this mean? The answer cannot be simple. My intuitions are too poor to help me out here.

Zadeh proceeds to talk about natural language and he asserts (as he has done before) that "a natural language is viewed as a system for describing perceptions." He then proceeds to describe a program for the development of a logic or -- more precisely stated -- "a maximally expressive constraint definition language" that can "serve as a meaning representation/precisiation language for natural languages."

It is intriguing and revealing that Zadeh views the ability to use computations to mimic or manipulate (natural) words as almost equivalent to, or very closely related to, the ability to interpret perceptions:

Since a natural language is a system for describing perceptions, NL-Computation is closely related to computation with perception-based information. NL-capability is the capability of a theory to operate on information described in natural language or, equivalently, to operate on perception-based information. The importance of NL-capability derives from the fact that much of human knowledge is expressed in natural language.

The last sentence in the above quotation bears emphasis: Zadeh asserts (correctly, I think) that much genuine human knowledge is embedded in, or carried by, ordinary words [natural language].

Zadeh, as before, does not hesitate to embrace inference rules that look very different from the sorts of inference rules we are accustomed to seeing in traditional deductive and traditional if-then logic -- but, note, Zadeh refuses to cede any ground to traditional bivalent logic and insists on calling his new inference rules rules for drawing deductions:

Deduction in fuzzy logic is governed by a collection of rules of deduction which, in the main, are rules that govern propagation and counterpropagation of generalized constraints. The principal rule is the extension principle. Extension principle has many versions. The simplest version (Zadeh 1965) is the following. Let f be a function from reals to reals, Y=f(X). What we know is that X is A, where A is a fuzzy subset of the real line. Equivalently, what we know about X is its granular value, that is, its possibility distribution, A. What can be said about Y, that is, what is its granular value or, equivalently, its possibility distribution? In a more general form, (Zadeh 1975) X is A is replaced by f(X) is A. It is this form that is used in most practical applications. In a form that is used in fuzzy control, what is granulated is f, resulting in a granular function, f*, which is defined by a collection of fuzzy-if-then rules. More generally, the extension principle may be viewed as follows. Let Z =f(X), where X is a real-valued variable. Assume that we can compute Z for singular values of f and X. Basically, the extension principle serves to extend the definition of Z to granular values of f and X.

What does this all mean -- precisely? I am the wrong person to ask.

But to the eyes of this amateur, this ingenue, and this reckless autodidact, Zadeh's theory strikes me as one that must be taken very, very seriously.

In any event(!): There are delicious observations in Zadeh's abstract. For example:

Turning to Case 2, we observe that, in general, precision carries a cost.

This point is -- in some sense -- indubitably correct. In what sense? Well then, read Zadeh and then think about the question. And then -- and only then -- render your opinion.

Zadeh does not claim that he has already developed the broad sort of fuzzy logic that he thinks is required. He writes:

The concepts of extended fuzzy logic, FL+, and f-validity which are sketched in the following represent a more radical development. In essence, extended fuzzy logic may be viewed as an attempt at legitimizing the concept of fuzzy theorem (Zadeh 1975) and fuzzy validity. In large measure, the move from fuzzy logic, FL, to extended fuzzy logic, FL+, is a move into as yet uncharted territory.

Zadeh does not hesitate to stare directly at the seemingly anomalous, or paradoxical, character of the sort of logic he yearns to develop and justify:

A conclusion which is of key importance is that there are no crisp theorems in f-geometry.

There are no crisp arguments! What a baffling, strange, and intriguing proposition!

But, of course, lawyers are thoroughly familiar with this strange proposition: none of their arguments are "crisp." But they are full of arguments. And many lawyers even think that their arguments are arguments. They should therefore -- by all rights -- read Zadeh. There they will find a stout defender of their craft and of law's peculiar logic.

Looking Up Down Under

SSRO/PROMPT and NOAO/AURA/NSF

In 2008 I will be a visitor down under: for part of my sabbatical leave (February and March) I will be a visiting professor at the University of New South Wales Faculty of Law. (I am to be the Julius Stone Visiting Professor. More about the influential, interesting, and prolific Julius Stone later.)

I have many reasons for looking forward to this visit. Among my reasons is the presence of many interesting people down under -- for example, the mathematician, historian, and social commentator James Franklin at the University of New South Wales, Tim van Gelder in Melbourne, and many other people, people I hope to mention and discuss on these pages later.

But one of my reasons for looking forward to my visit down under is looking up -- looking up at the skies, that is. There are few places on earth with little "light pollution." Death Valley in California was once such a place. But many parts of Australia are an astronomer's paradise -- dry air and little man-made light.

It has been decades since I was an active amateur astronomer. But I hope to pick up this avocation again a little bit when I go to Australia. The opportunity to go to regions where the skies are truly dark, much the way they were thousands of years ago, is just too alluring to resist.

Now I have to buy some good astronomical binoculars (nothing more fancy). I am terribly behind the times. I loved my small refractor, crude and misshapen though it was. Now, for about the same amount of money, I will get a far better device, one that will partially remedy the ravages of time on my eyes.

N.B. I hope to visit Tasmania -- to look down at marsupials and other terrestrial wonders.

Gemini Observatory, US National Science Foundation, and the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy

James Fallows in Atlantic on Tim van Gelder's Rationale

Computer-assisted critical thinking has become the soup du jour -- and, one hopes, the flavor of the year -- in the (some) mass media. See James Fallows, What Was I Thinking?, in The Atlantic pp. 131-133 (June 2007):

This leads to the newest ambitious entry: Rationale, an “argument processor” from a start-up company in Melbourne, Australia, called Austhink. The firm’s CEO, Tim van Gelder, is a former academic philosopher whose specialty was teaching critical thinking—that is, preparing students to examine the premises of any argument, another person’s or their own. He had a discouraging experience in the 1990s when teaching such classes at universities in the United States. “Despite my best efforts, and maybe theirs, it just wasn’t working,” he told me in a Skype conversation, he in Melbourne and I in Shanghai. He was gracious enough not to attribute this failure to the defects of America’s K-12 school system. Instead, he concluded that people in general needed better training in assessing arguments. After returning to Australia, he raised money to start a company and create a program that could be used by schools for teaching logic.

In operation, the Rationale program is quite simple. You state a main contention you are trying to test—I should buy a new house, we should invade Iran—and then systematically list each of the supporting claims for it. Then you list the objections to each claim, and the rebuttals to those objections, and so on until you’re down to first principles—all of which are shown as connected boxes on a map. “To the extent you are perfectly clear about your thoughts, this should be a trivial process,” van Gelder told me. But in reality, he said, people find it more challenging than they expect, and this visual representation of the claims and counterclaims generally provokes a new perspective on the ideas at stake.

The more factors there are to weigh in making a decision—and, especially, the more views there are to reconcile when more than one person is involved in a choice—the more helpful this logic map can be. For example, a “tree” view in Rationale can show the full chain of assumptions that lead to a particular conclusion, which in turn helps identify exactly where people with different views disagree. “Everyone knows that complex structure is generally more easily understood and conveyed in visual or diagrammatic form,” van Gelder wrote in an academic paper. “That is why, for example, we have street maps rather than verbal descriptions of the layout of cities.” The same principle applies in complex debates, he told me, because in all but the simplest discussions people have a hard time remembering all the relevant considerations.

Van Gelder’s initial sales target was schools and universities, but he increasingly sells to consulting firms, govern‑ ment agencies, and other groups wrestling with decisions, as well as to individuals. The strongest interest has come from U.S. intelligence agencies, which are using the software to train analysts to think critically about intelligence claims. I was gracious enough not to ask van Gelder why he didn’t finish the program a few years earlier.

Probability in Science and (Religious) Faith

Probability theory and one of my little books have been enlisted (on the side of God, against Richard Dawkins) by an Oxford don (at Cambridge University) in the recent wars over the tension between faith and science. See Alister McGrath, Has Science Eliminated God? Richard Dawkins and the Meaning of Life (Lecture, 2004). See, in particular, note 23, citing P. Tillers & E. Green, PROBABILITY AND INFERENCE IN THE LAW OF EVIDENCE: The Uses and Limits of Bayesianism (1988).

I will forgive Professor McGrath -- it's the Christian thing to do -- for listing Eric Green as the lead editor. (Eric and I negotiated this matter when this matter mattered.)

I confess that I am pleased that Professor McGrath took note of my little book (despite Professor McGrath's failure to note the proper order of the editors): it's nice to know that someone thinks that debates about probability touch the deepest questions of life.

The connection between theological debate and probability theory is not new. See, inter alia, Blaise Pascal (again, betting on God rather than non-God).

Can't We All Get Along?

R.R. Reno, Moses and Multiculturalism, First Things (May 7, 2007):

[Martha] Nussbaum sounds like Rodney King with subordinate clauses. [In Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education] [s]he hopes for a university dedicated to “cross-cultural understanding” and “respectful dialogue” that will produce an environment “in which we can all learn to function as citizens of the entire world.”

The stiletto is sharp and clever. Withal, Professor Nussbaum's faith in the humanizing properties of higher education is touching (in the good sense). But one naturally wonders if Nussbaum's faith is factually warranted. Much depends, of course, on what the university actually looks like. There is a difficulty: one wants unvarnished discussion and debate rather than propaganda (however well-intended). One also wants "good values." What kind of university generates them? At what price?

Rationale redux

The folks at Austhink have been busy and they have created another wiki illustrating how law might be made Rationale. This time they created an even richer tapestry:

Rationale Law

Tim van Gelder has created a wiki illustrating the use of Rationale (software) to portray reasoning about a legal problem. Here is the colorful picture that he developed:

Ellis Island, May 6, 2007

 

My family and I (all three of us) arrived, not at Ellis Island (which you see here), but at the Brooklyn docks, which you do not see here, but which lay (they no longer exist) across the Hudson River (which you see in this view) and, beyond that, past Manhattan and then across the East River.