Law, Logic and Symbolic Artificial Intelligence
Days: 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14, September, 2018.
Time: 16h-18h.
10h (lectures) + 5h (reading) = 15h
Goal: Introduce mathematical logic and its power as modelling language for symbolic artificial intelligence applications in law.
Prerequisites: No particular background is required.
Syllabus
What is logic? [slides here]
A bit of history of logic.
Logic as critical thinking/good reasoning.
Logic as mathematical logic.
Logic as valuable Skills for legal professions and academics.
How to use logic 1: a beginning. [slides here]
Truth and Validity
First steps in formalization and analysis of arguments: Venn Diagrams.
Propositional logic.
Building propositional logic: Syntax.
Meaning: Semantics though truth tables.
How to use logic 2: doing some stuffs. [slides here]
Tautology, contradiction, contingency.
Logical equivalences and logical consequence.
A brief notion of proofs.
Symbolic Artificial Intelligence and Law 1: first steps. [slides here]
Knowledge Representation and Reasoning.
Knowledge-based System and Expert System.
Computational Law.
Protégé ontology editor and some related tools.
Symbolic AI and Law 2: doing some more stuffs. [no slide]
Working some more with Protégé.
Working on the project.
Examination
The student must finish a short project:
Designing a simples legal ontology: In classroom in the last class the students will receive instruction about what exactly they should model using Protégé. The legal ontology must be able to answer, through reasoning, some questions. The outcome of the project is a legal ontology as an OWL file created by Protégé.
Outcomes: The descriptions of the project problem can ben found HERE. The works done by students HERE.
Bibliography and recommendations
10 Tips for Winning a Debate (video; related to critical thinking)
5 tips to improve your critical thinking (video; critical thinking)
The Joy of Logic (video; overview on logic)
Venn Diagrams (complete module)
Sentential Logic (SL 01 up to SL 10, plus SL 18)
GENESERETH, Michael. Computational Law.
Bibliography and recommendations for after this course
Wireless Philosophy - Introduction to Critical Thinking (playlist of videos)
SINNOTT-ARMSTRONG, Walter; FOGELIN, Robert J. Cengage Advantage Books: Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic. Cengage Learning, 2014. (popular textbook about critical thinking)
GENSLER, Harry J. Introduction to logic. Routledge, 2017. (soft textbook about formal logic; philosophically inclined)
BRACHMAN, Ronald; LEVESQUE, Hector. Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. Elsevier, 2004. (popular textbook about KR)
CASELLAS, Núria. Legal ontology engineering: Methodologies, modelling trends, and the ontology of professional judicial knowledge. Springer Science & Business Media, 2011.
Tools
Multicolumn Truth Table Generator
OntoGraph (Protégé plug-in for ontology visualization)
Webvowl (ontology visualization)