‘Mystery, ancient and modern’: the Alice books and the hermeneutics of history

Fantastic fiction, where the referent is evidently a creation of words, facilitates the move beyond meaning to significance, and this marks its difference vis-à-vis realist fiction where the “referential fallacy” often gets in the way of the reader reaching the level of significance. Exploiting this potential, Carroll helps the reader of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass suspend their habit of looking at their self and the world as two unrelated entities. He does this by challenging the assumed plenitude of the Cartesian “I” and the substantiality of the world this “I” seeks to know. From this vantage point, the power relations in the Victorian society that the culture of this society sustains become obvious to the reader. This is Carroll’s innovation on the tradition in fantasy literature. “Carrolludicity,” the use of play to facilitate scrutiny of contemporary knowledge and belief systems, and the unique way in which the food chain becomes a metaphor for contemporary social hierarchy, forcing reflection on the dominant cultural code are instances of this innovation. The Alice books offer their reader the experience of occupying a belief and value neutral space for a few fleeting moments, facilitating reflection on contemporary culture, and herein lies Carroll’s relevance for his post-Victorian reader. Carrroll’s deconstruction of the symbolic system is more apparent to postmodern readers who are familiar with antifoundationalism, the dominant philosophical stance of their time. The Alice books initiate these readers into the process of becoming sojourners through the cultures of the world, including their own culture, and prepare them for a cosmopolitan life.

The article examines the issues related to the creation of semantic models of knowledge that can be used to endow artificial intelligence systems with the ability to understand the meaning of text in natural or any other language. Possible means for constructing semantic models of knowledge include the mechanism of multi-system integration of knowledge developed by the authors earlier, formal ontologies, and techniques of understanding meaning that have emerged within the framework of philological hermeneutics. Significant components of the presented study include an examination of the currently used language models of artificial intelligence, a new approach to the conceptualization of knowledge through its generalization in the form of open models, an assessment of the genesis and prospects of teleological and axiological interpretations of meaning for natural and artificial cognitive systems. The methodological basis of the presented study consists of the authors’ developments in the field of systems analysis, well-known analytical methods adopted within hermeneutics, structuralism, classical epistemology, formal ontology theory, and linguistic and language modeling. The scientific novelty of this research lies in the determination of the necessary tools for creating semantic models that generalize knowledge. The mentioned tools include: multi-system integration of knowledge based on the integration of the subject of cognition into multiple systems with subsequent generalization of the patterns identified in these systems and their translation for solving tasks of understanding and creativity; formal ontologies that implement the description of knowledge from a specific domain in the form of conceptual schemes, taking into account existing rules and relationships between elements, allowing automatic extraction of knowledge; and a wide variety of hermeneutic techniques for understanding meanings. Objective limitations of use for artificial cognitive systems that lack subjectivity and value prioritization in understanding meanings are noted. Some limitations in the use for artificial cognitive systems are also found in hermeneutic techniques for understanding the meaning of text. This is related to the impossibility of full reflection without feelings, emotions, and desires generated by needs that also initiate subjectivity.

Harrison, Timothy M. <i>Coming To: Consciousness and Natality in Early Modern England</i>

Policy is a flexible mechanism to deal with complex coordination and management of organizational elements in an open system environment. A formal specification framework is proposed for such a kind of system called policy-governed institutional agency. The formal framework includes: an abstract architecture, a formal institutional model, and a formal specification language for this type of systems. The concrete syntax and semantics of the formal specification language are given. The core of the framework has been implemented in a prototype environment.

Security mechanisms enforcement consists in configuring devices with the aim that they cooperate and guarantee the defined security goals. In the network context, this task is complex due to the number, the nature, and the interdependences of the devices to consider. We propose in this article a formal framework, which models the network security management information in order to verify the appliance of security goals. The framework is divided into two components. First, a formal language allows its user to graphically specify the abstract network security tactics while considering network topologies. Second, an associated evaluation method guarantees the consistency and the correctness of the tactics according to the security goals

This paper describes a case study of relation derivation within the context of situation awareness. First we present a scenario in which inputs are supplied by a simulated Level 1 system. The inputs are events annotated with terms from an ontology for situation awareness. This ontology contains concepts used to represent and reason about situations. The ontology and the annotations of events are represented in DAML and Rule-ML and then systematically translated to a formal method language called MetaSlang. Having all information expressed in a formal method language allows us to use a theorem prover, SNARK, to prove that a given relationship among the Level 1 objects holds (or that it does not hold). The paper shows a proof of concept that relation derivation in situation awareness can be done within a formal framework. It also identifies bottlenecks associated with this approach, such as the issue of the large number of potential relations that may have to be considered by the theorem prover. The paper discusses ways of resolving this as well as other problems identified in this study.

In this paper, we report on the use of theAlbert II requirements specification language through the handling of the Generalized Railroad Crossing case study. This formal language is based on an ontology of concepts used for capturing requirements inherent in real-time, distributed systems. Because of itsnaturalness, the language supports a direct mapping of customers' informal needs onto formal statements, without having to introduce artificial elements. The language is founded on a formal framework (real-time temporal logic) which supports the reasoning process of the analyst during the elaboration of the specification. Such support for the reasoning is illustrated in the context of a goal-oriented approach adopted for the elaboration of the case study.

This paper focuses on an application of formal methods: behavior detection, where a formal language is used to describe behaviors within a system, together with formal recognition rules used to detect these described behaviors within an event flow resulting from the operation of the system. This formal approach is very interesting for aerospace system studies: these generally involve numerous interacting agents and are thus very complex. Since actual systems are too expensive or too critical to be directly studied, they require simulations. Formal behavior detection is a convenient method allowing, in a non-intrusive way, to evidence within a very complex simulation the data necessary to understand finely the behavior of some agents. This data may be used to evidence integration problems in the simulation, or to exploit its results. We present an application where formal behavior detection has proven to be very beneficial, and the formal framework used, namely a description language called chronicles and an operational recognition model provided by a modular coloured Petri net semantics, which we prove to be adequate with the set definition of the recognition notion.

In this paper we present a formalization of the Z notation and its structuring mechanisms. One of the main features of our formal framework, based on category theory and the theory of institutions, is that it enables us to provide an abstract view of Z and its related concepts. We show that the main structuring mechanisms of Z are captured smoothly by categorical constructions. In particular, we provide a straightforward and clear semantics for promotion, a powerful structuring technique that is often not presented as part of the schema calculus. Here we show that promotion is already an operation over schemas (and more generally over specifications), that allows one to promote schemas that operate on a local notion of state to operate on a subsuming global state, and in particular can be used to conveniently define large specifications from collections of simpler ones. Moreover, our proposed formalization facilitates the combination of Z with other notations in order to produce heterogeneous specifications, i.e., specifications that are obtained by using various different mathematical formalisms. Thus, our abstract and precise formulation of Z is useful for relating this notation with other formal languages used by the formal methods community. We illustrate this by means of a known combination of formal languages, namely the combination of Z with CSP .

In this paper, we introduce a formal-language model for explicitly formalizing agent-environment interaction in a multi-agent systems (MAS) framework: Conversational Grammar Systems(CGS). The main goal of the model is to provide a formal framework for defining how agents interact with environments in MAS. CGS offer a model with a high degree of flexibility, what means that they are able to accept new concepts and modify rules, protocols and settings during the computation. Evolution and action are involved in a consistent way in environment, while interaction of agents with the medium is constant. Based on a consolidated and active branch in the field of formal language theory, CGS are a highly formalized framework based in the postulates of artificial life that seems to be quite easy to implement, due to the simplicity of the formalism and the computational background of the theory they use.

The theory of traces belongs to both formal language theory and the theory of concurrent systems. In both these disciplines it is a well-recognized and dynamic research area. Within formal language theory it yields the theory of partially commutative monoids, and provides an important connection between languages and graphs. Within the theory of concurrent systems it provides an important formal framework for the analysis and synthesis of concurrent systems. This monograph covers all important research lines of the theory of traces - each chapter of the book is devoted to one research line and is written by leading experts. It is organized in such a way that each chapter can be read independently - and hence is suitable for advanced courses/seminars on formal language theory and the theory of concurrent systems.

Formal Language Theory for Security (LANGSEC) has proposed that formal language theory and grammars be used to define and secure protocols and parsers. The assumption is that by restricting languages to lower levels of the Chomsky hierarchy, it is easier to control and verify parser code. In this paper, we investigate an alternative approach to inferring grammars via pattern languages and elementary formal system frameworks. We summarize inferability results for subclasses of both frameworks and discuss how they map to the Chomsky hierarchy. Finally, we present initial results of pattern language learning on logged HTTP sessions and suggest future areas of research.

Wearable fitness devices are widely used to track an individual’s health and physical activities to improve the quality of health services. These devices sense a considerable amount of sensitive data processed by a centralized third party. While many researchers have thoroughly evaluated privacy issues surrounding wearable fitness trackers, no study has addressed privacy issues in trackers by giving control of the data to the user. Blockchain is an emerging technology with outstanding advantages in resolving consent management privacy concerns. As there are no fully transparent, legally compliant solutions for sharing personal fitness data, this study introduces an architecture for a human-centric, legally compliant, decentralized and dynamic consent system based on blockchain and smart contracts. Algorithms and sequence diagrams of the proposed system’s activities show consent-related data flow among various agents, which are used later to prove the system’s trustworthiness by formalizing the security requirements. The security properties of the proposed system were evaluated using the formal security modeling framework SeMF, which demonstrates the feasibility of the solution at an abstract level based on formal language theory. As a result, we have empirically proven that blockchain technology is suitable for mitigating the privacy issues of fitness providers by recording individuals’ consent using blockchain and smart contracts.<br>

A precise model of the behavioral dynamics involved in collaborative environments is a necessary precondition for the development of smart, proactive user interfaces (UIs). In this chapter, we present a formal task-based specification framework for collaborative environments. The framework consists of two components: A formal specification languages (called CTML) and a tool for editing and animating CTML specifications. The former has a formally defined syntax and semantics and is designed to model actors, roles, and their collaborative tasks. The latter is an Eclipse IDE for the interactive creation and simulation of CTML specifications.

The development of cyber-physical production systems (CPPSs) as the core of intelligent manufacturing systems facilitates frequent changes in product variants and batches, dynamic configurations of processing resources and relevant parameters during customized manufacturing. Production prediction, scheduling, and optimization in such a complex system require a consolidated theoretical foundation. Formal techniques, as one of the critical enablers toward this end, can be used to detect and analyse malfunctions in a CPPS based on product information before starting production. However, the inconsistency of information terminology during the interaction between heterogeneous production system components may lead to semantics-level ambiguities during the formal modelling process. This paper proposes a formal modelling framework for CPPS based on mathematical definitions of the unified ‘Product-Process-Resource’ concept. A factory formal model language (FFML) is defined and applied to the modelling of a real-world production scenario. The applicability and accuracy of the proposed framework are verified by transforming constructed formal models to coloured Petri-nets for simulations. The verification results have a certain guiding significance to the layout design and scheduling strategy decisions of production lines.