Collaborative Research: Applying Constraint Satisfaction Models to Legal Reasoning

[0080424] simon, DanRead， stephen南加州大学人类推理理论深受演绎逻辑的形式描述所衍生的许多假设的影响。这些模型的一个中心假设是推断流是单向的。推理过程的三段论和单向性排除了“反向”推理，即一个人的结论可能导致对前提和证据的评估发生变化。违反这一假设被视为人类推理能力薄弱的标志。在这个项目中，我们探索了推理和决策的另一种概念，它基于一种称为约束满足机制的理论范式。我们的初步研究表明，推理需要在证据、前提和结论的参与部分之间产生双向影响，而且这些变化大多是在无意识的情况下发生的。这个项目是一个新颖的尝试，将这种新兴的认知模型引入决策，特别是在法律领域。首先，我们打算将其应用于事实认定阶段的证据整合问题。我们将研究证据整合的过程是否会导致对单个证据的评估发生变化。特别是，我们将检查被告的精神状态判断的认知影响，这是一个决定是至关重要的判决侵权和刑法（犯罪事实）。其他的研究将调查为什么决策者会遇到忽视不可接受证据的问题。做决定可能是一项困难而艰巨的任务，就像在做决定之前和之后经常表现出来的那样，然而在做决定的时候，人们通常会感到自信，甚至过度自信。在项目的第二部分，我们打算探索决策前冲突、自信决策和决策后后悔之间的关系。这个问题与法律领域特别相关，因为法律文化的一个中心特征是非常认真地对待决定。例如，合同法基于信赖的概念，不履行义务被认为是违约。在裁决方面，灵活性甚至更低，法官和陪审员宣布的决定几乎被视为不可改变的。鉴于这些问题的严重性和法律交易和争端中经常涉及的竞争立场的密切性，我们必须更好地了解这些看似矛盾的冲突、信任和遗憾现象。

AbstractSES-0080424Simon, DanRead, StephenUniversity of Southern CaliforniaTheories of human reasoning are heavily influenced by a number of assumptions derived from formal accounts of deductive logic. A central assumption of these models is that the flow of inferences is unidirectional. The syllogistic, unidirectional nature of the reasoning processes rules out "reverse" inferences in which a person's conclusions might lead to a change in the evaluation of the premises and evidence. Violations of this assumption are viewed as signs of the frailty of human reasoning. In this project, we explore an alternative conception of reasoning and decision-making, one based on a theoretical paradigm called constraint satisfaction mechanisms. Our preliminary research has shown that reasoning entails bi-directional influences among the participating pieces of evidence, premises and conclusions, and that the changes occur mostly without awareness. This project is a novel attempt to introduce this emerging model of cognition to decision making, particularly in the legal domain. First, we intend to apply it to the issue of evidence integration in the fact-finding phase. We will examine whether the process of evidence integration leads to changes in the evaluation of the individual pieces of evidence. In particular, we will examine cognitive effects on judgments of defendants' mental states, a determination that is crucial to adjudication in tort and criminal law (mens rea). Other studies will examine why decision makers encounter problems with ignoring inadmissible evidence. The making of a decision can be a difficult and daunting task, as is often manifested both before and after the decision is made, yet at the time of making the decision people generally feel confident, even overconfident. In the second part of the project we intend to explore this relationship among pre-decisional conflict, confident decisions, and post-decisional regret. This issue is especially pertinent to the legal domain, since a central feature of legal culture is that decisions are taken very seriously. Contract law, for example, is based on a concept of reliance, and a failure to fulfill an obligation is considered a breach. There is even less flexibility when it comes to adjudication, wherein decisions announced by judges and jurors are treated as virtually immutable. Given the weightiness of the issues and the closeness of the vying positions often involved in legal transactions and disputes, it is important that we gain a better understanding of these seemingly paradoxical phenomena of conflict, confidence and regret.