Notion Of Commitment Research Articles

Agent communication and artificial institutions

In this paper we propose an application-independent model for the definition of artificial institutions that can be used to define open multi-agent systems. Such a model of institutional reality makes us able also to define an objective and external semantics of a commitment-based Agent Communication Language (ACL). In particular we propose to regard an ACL as a set of conventions to act on a fragment of institutional reality, defined in the context of an artificial institution. Another contribution of the work presented in this paper is an operational definition of norms, a crucial component of artificial institutions. In fact in open systems interacting agents might not conform to the specifications. We regard norms as event-driven rules that when are fired by events happening in the system create or cancel a set of commitments. An interesting aspect of our proposal is that both the definition of the ACL and the definition of norms are based on the same notion of commitment. Therefore an agent capable of reasoning on commitments can reason on the semantics of communicative acts and on the system of norms.

Comparative analysis of frameworks for knowledge-intensive intelligent agents

A recurring requirement for human-level artificial intelligence is the incorporation of vast amounts of knowledge into a software agent that can use the knowledge in an efficient and organized fashion. This article discusses representations and processes for agents and behavior models that integrate large, diverse knowledge stores, are long-lived, and exhibit high degrees of competence and flexibility while interacting with complex environments. There are many different approaches to building such agents, and understanding the important commonalities and differences between approaches is often difficult. We introduce a new approach to comparing frameworks based on the notions of commitment, reconsideration, and a categorization of representations and processes. We review four agent frameworks, concentrating on the major representations and processes each directly supports. By organizing the approaches according to a common nomenclature, the analysis highlights points of similarity and difference and suggests directions for integrating and unifying disparate approaches and for incorporating research results from one framework into alternatives

A New Puzzle about Believed Fallibility

ABSTRACTI shall consider the phenomenon of believing ourselves to have at least one false belief: a phenomenon I call believed fallibility. I shall first present a paradoxical argument which appears to show that believed fallibility is incoherent; second, note that this argument assumes that we are committed to the conjunction of all our beliefs; third, sketch a more intuitive notion of commitment in which we are not committed to the conjunction of all our beliefs and argue that the original paradoxical argument is now defused; fourth, construct a new paradoxical argument showing that if we believe that we have at least one false belief we are committed to a contradiction, employing the preferable notion of commitment; and, fifth, suggest that perhaps we might avoid the new paradox by denying that closing our beliefs under conjunction is required by rationality.

The Concept of Commitment as a Basis for Social Marketing Efforts: Conversion Model as a Case

This article examines how social marketers and researchers can concentrate social marketing efforts around a crucial mechanism in behavior change, the notion of commitment. Citizens are committed to different forms of behavior and the success of social marketing depends upon the ability to change this commitment. This is illustrated in a case study about environmentally sustainable behaviors that is analyzed using a research tool, the Conversion Model™, based on the concept of commitment.

Website loyalty: an empirical investigation of its antecedents

Recently, the notion of loyalty has become an important construct within the e-business framework because of customers' easy switching behaviour on the web. Despite the increasing importance of website loyalty, substantive research employing this construct has been constrained by various factors. In this paper, a model where individuals' website loyalty is conceptualised by both their willingness to return to a website (revisit), and their desire to spend a longer time at a website (stickiness) is presented. In this model the relationships between website trust, satisfaction, flow, and loyalty is examined. Further, the antecedents of website trust, satisfaction and flow in online environment are investigated. The proposed model is tested by two different studies. The findings support the proposed relationships in the model. Managerial implications are also discussed.

Conditions, Commitments, and the Politics of Restructuring in Africa

Both supporters and critics of neoliberal reforms adopted by African countries during the past two decades argue that donor conditionalities have been counterproductive and should be abandoned. Several studies claim that, when donors have forced governments into implementing policies to which they were not committed, they either failed or were reversed and aid money was wasted. Furthermore, because investors perceived that African governments were coerced into enacting reforms rather than implementing them on their accord, they did not find the reforms credible. Fear that governments would reverse reforms in the short term deterred them from investing in many African countries.1 As an alternative to conditionality, some scholars and representatives of international financial institutions now contend that neoliberal reforms are more likely to succeed when national governments own them, that is, when they are committed to implementing them.2 In the case of austerity measures typically recommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the logic of the argument is straightforward. If governments balance their budgets, stabilize their exchange rates, and improve their balance of payments, then growth (success) will occur.3 With regard to more structural reforms (such as changes in property rights), the reasoning is more complex. If government officials implement policies on their accord, in the absence of conditionality, they will be more committed to them. If they are more committed to them, the reforms will be successful. Part of the reasoning here rests on the notion of credibility. For example, if investors believe the government is committed to the sale of state assets to the private sector, then they will be more likely to invest. If investment increases, the policy reform is a success.4 The shift of emphasis from conditionality to and the linking of government ownership to a successful outcome pose several conceptual dilemmas for neoliberalism. The dilemma begins with the notion of commitment or ownership. The emerging perspective treats as if it is an action that a government can or should adopt unilaterally without acknowledging the risks such an action entails. How or what makes commitments credible is not specified, nor is there recognition of the role that social forces might play in molding, thwarting, or accelerating a government's decision to neoliberal policies.

Can willingness to pay capture the value of altruism? An exploration of Sen’s notion of commitment

Amartya Sen’s distinction between sympathy and commitment is used to examine the assertion that willingness to pay (WTP) can capture the value of altruism in health care. Willingness to pay values for a vaccination program stated to benefit only one’s self in the first instance and only other people in the second instance were elicited from a small convenience sample. Qualitative methods were then used to explore the meaning of the responses. Commitment was found to be a motivating factor and drove a wedge between willingness to pay and valuation of the program. The consequences of this for health economic research are discussed.

A Propos de l'Économie Kantienne

Kantian moral philosophy has become a reference sometimes invoked in economics as an example of a solution to the problem of co-ordinating agents. The present article provides a critical overview of the literature. Kantian economics refers to a set of principles that are more or less related to Kant's moral philosophy. The first in the set is the principle of generalization. It is the foundation of an ordinary Kantism. The distinction between the principle of generalization and the principle of reciprocity underscores the importance of the principle of unconditionality. Finally, the notion of commitment is closer to this philosophy, but used in a broader sense. It can give rise to different interpretations.

Commitment, Justification, and the Rejection of Natural Theology

This paper considers two related claims in the work of D. Z. Phillips: that commitment to God precludes a distinction between the commitment and the grounds for the commitment, and that belief and understanding are the same in religion. Both these claims motivate Phillips's rejection of natural theology. I examine these claims by analyzing the notion of commitment, discussing what is involved in making a commitment to a worldview, why commitment is necessary at all in religion, levels of commitment, and com- mitment and justification. I show that Phillips fails to distinguish between adopting a hypothesis, where justification would be germane, and commit- ting to the hypothesis after one has adopted it, where justification is not so pressing. This failure fatally undermines his rejection of natural theology.

Friends or Foes: Changing Concepts of Ruler-Minister Relations and the Notion of Loyalty in Pre-Imperial China

新出土的郭店楚簡中有幾篇討論君臣關係及忠君觀念的文章。其中《語叢》 篇中所講的「君臣，朋友，其擇者也」 「君臣不相在也，則可己;不悅， 可去也」等表示出戰國士人的自豪意識，以及他們認為自己與國君地位基 本上平等一相匹的觀念。在本文中我將探討戰國士的自豪意識的歷史背景及 其對於「忠」觀念的影響，并討論春秋戰國時期君臣關系的演變。從春秋時 代的卿大夫以至到戰國時代的游士，在不同歷史條件之下，當官之人一直保 持了自己的較高地位，擺脫了對君主的依附性，因此其有君臣相匹的思潮。 這時代的「社稜重於君」、「從道不從君」、「君與臣為朋友」的思維方式 都提高了臣子的自由，允許臣違背君的命令，寓開國君，甚至「革之」。因 這神情況對于國內秩序其有消極的影響，戰國末葉的某些思想家提出了相反 的看法，意在提高君主的地位及臣對君的依附性。此後苟子將這些觀念綜合 起來，提出了「忠於道，即忠於社稜，即忠於君」的觀念，建立了歷來王朝 的君臣之倫理的基礎。而秦漢大一統以後，皇帝的地位越來越高，臣的依附 性越來越大，因此「君臣相匹」的觀念漸漸被志，最終從歷史舞台上消失 了。

Farewell to Objectivity: A Critique of Brandom

I argue that Brandom's account of inconsistency in terms of the pragmatic notion of incompatibility, as originally set out in his Making It Explicit(1994) and defended in Articulating Reasons(2000), has the absurd consequence that all true claims are warranted. This is in obvious conflict with our ordinary conception of truth as objective, which is what Brandom intends to capture. My proof proceeds from two principles, extracted from Making It Explicit, that govern the notions of commitment and entitlement in terms of which the notion of incompatibility is being defined. If either of these principles is rejected, it will no longer be clear what the content of Brandom's thesis is.

Johnstone's View of Rhetorical and Dialectical Argument

In the writings of Henry W. Johnstone, Jr. there can be found an evolving and gradually more sophisticated discussion of the relationship between rhetorical and dialectical argument. Johnstone's view on these matters was highly original, and at odds with the prevailing logical empiricism of the time, much like Toulmin's views on argumentation in The Uses of Argument (1958). In view of the rising importance of the issue of the relationship between rhetoric and informal logic, Johnstone's analysis of the argumentum ad hominem, and its relationship to Hamblin's notion of commitment, is especially worth careful consideration.

The agreement process: an empirical investigation of human–human computer-mediated collaborative dialogs

In this paper, we investigate the empirical correlates of the agreement process. Informally, the agreement process is the dialog process by which collaborators achieve joint commitment on a joint action. We propose a specific instantiation of the agreement process, derived from our theoretical model, that integrates the IRMA framework for rational problem solving (Bratman, Israel & Pollack, 1988) with Clark's (1992, 1996) work on language as a collaborative activity; and from the characteristics of our task, a simple design problem (furnishing a two-room apartment) in which knowledge is equally distributed among agents, and needs to be shared. The main contribution of our paper is an empirical study of some of the components of the agreement process. We first discuss why we believe the findings from our corpus of computer-mediated dialogs are applicable to human–human collaborative dialogs in general. We then present our theoretical model, and apply it to make predictions about the components of the agreement process. We focus on how information is exchanged in order to arrive at a proposal, and on what constitutes a proposal and its acceptance/rejection. Our corpus study makes use of features of both the dialog and the domain reasoning situation, and led us to discover that the notion of commitment is more useful to model the agreement process than that of acceptance/rejection, as it more closely relates to the unfolding of negotiation.

Different Notions of Commitment ( Iltizam ) and Committed Literature ( al-adab al-multazim ) in the Literary Circles of the Mashriq

Different Notions of Commitment ( Iltizam ) and Committed Literature ( al-adab al-multazim ) in the Literary Circles of the Mashriq

Different notions of commitment (Iltizam) and committed literature (al‐adab al‐multazim) in the literary circles of the Mashriq

Different notions of commitment (Iltizam) and committed literature (al‐adab al‐multazim) in the literary circles of the Mashriq

Criminal justice and ethical ideology: an exploration of a loyalty-truthfulness dilemma

The notion of loyalty is well established in the criminological literature pertaining to ethics, ethical decision making, and ethical and ideological orientations. The present research addresses the topic of ethics and loyalty in an attempt to address three research questions germane to these areas within criminal justice and criminology. Using two samples equivalent in characteristics other than academic major, this research examines: (1) what impact gender, college major, and the ethical perspective of the observer and the nature of the actor’s action have upon the observer’s attitude toward the action (specific act of deception/truth); (2) what impact gender, college major, and the ethical perspective of the observer and the nature of the actor’s action have upon the observer’s perception of the social attractiveness of the deceiver; and (3) what impact gender, college major, the ethical perspective of the observer, and the nature of the actor’s action have upon the observer’s perception of the task attractiveness of the deceiver. Using a vignette design in this exploratory research, attempts are made to shed light on the impact of gender, major (criminal justice v. others), and ethical orientation on perceptions of an actor confronted with an ethical dilemma of loyalty versus disloyalty involving deception.

The dynamics of professional commitment: Immigrant physicians from the former Soviet Union in Israel

The paper examines professional commitment among physicians who immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union during the early 1990s. This population faces severe limits regarding occupational continuity because of the highly saturated market in which non-negligible groups will, in the long run, of necessity undergo occupational change. The theoretical background for the analysis is drawn from the literature regarding recent changes in professional roles with particular reference to the shifting meaning of work in post-modern societies and its consequences for occupational commitment. The professional context of medical practice in the former Soviet Union and the social and economic constraints of Israeli society in the 1990s set the scene for the analysis. Several dimensions of professional commitment are examined empirically, on the assumption that there are a variety of ways to consider the notion of commitment and that no one measure tells a complete story. Prolonged processes of depressionalization of medicine in the Soviet Union, suggest that medicine for most immigrant physicians is not so much a ‘calling’ to which they are devoted; rather it is a necessary means to gain a livelihood, the only occupation for which they have been trained for many years after stringent selection to medical school and the only job in which they have worked consistently since completing their formal training. Two and a half years after arrival in Israel the immigrant doctors are characterized by a short-range time perspective which makes them unwilling to accept the constraints of the saturated market; intense efforts are made by most to obtain a license despite the fact that only a fraction of them will be able to work in their profession on a regular basis. Despite this over-riding reality, many hope that they will be among the selected few who will be able to obtain a medical post.

Moral sense and utopian sensibility

One of the oddest things about cultural relativism is its almost perverse obsession with the specific content of moral systems as opposed to general form. The anthropologists I talk to who have done fieldwork in exotic societies and are committed social relativists or social constructivists will never tire of pointing out to me how the content of moral rules is quite different in their societies from ours and how this proves the essential soundness of relativistic premisses. I then ask them if they know of any society that does not have moral rules, and an elaborate moral surrounding them. They do not. I ask them if their societies have rules about, for example, the fair distribution of resources. They do. Those rules are different from our rules, but they have them. I ask if they have rules about the legitimate use of violence. They do. Again those are different from our rules, but they have them. I ask if they have a theory of blame - of the attribution of responsibility for breaking the rules. They do, different again, but they have it. I ask if they have a system of rewards for keeping the rules and punishments for breaking them. They do. I ask if they have standards for assessing personal worth, and a system of moral for evaluating it. Well, yes, they do. There are good people and bad people and ways of distinguishing them - but of course the standards are not ours. Of course not. I ask if children, at different stages of lives, show a different understanding of the nature of the rules. Well, yes, they do. I ask if this is taken into consideration by the adults in assigning responsibility to children. Well, yes, it is - but not in the same way as we do it. No, certainly not. I then ask them why they think people might be so stupid as to apply completely non-applicable moral rules to themselves? Surely they will only apply relevant ones? Rules against embezzlement are useless in a society without money, but rules against the unfair use of property there will surely be and sure enough there are. And does this not depend on some notion of fairness that is independent of the actual content of the rules? Similarly, does not the praise-blame system depend on some notion of responsibility independent of what is actually praised or blamed? And if there is some concept of treachery (and there always is), then does this not depend on some notion of loyalty regardless of the boundaries of the unit (that is, those to whom treachery is a crime)? I could add to the list of queries, but you have the idea by now and can add to it yourselves. I usually succeed in driving my colleague away rather than driving my point home. There is a profoundly curious reluctance to conduct the debate at this level. The anthropologist wants to keep it at the level of specific rules to illustrate the vast differences between moral systems: I want to move quickly to general features of moral systems to illustrate how they are all fundamentally about the same things, even if the casuistry differentiates them. But my colleague suspects that I am going to spring a trap about universals and then grab him with some nonsense about innate moral propensities or the like, and he either backs off, accusing my universal framework of moral discourse argument of vagueness or something such or, if he has done Philosophy 101 at some point in his career, will trump my ace with accusations of the naturalistic fallacy. I do not let him get away with that one since I did Philosophy 201 and rapidly point out that I am not saying anything about prescriptions following logically from descriptions at afl. I am simply saying that we know of no societies where there is not a recognizable framework of moral discourse, and that the contents of this are pretty much the same everywhere, even if the actual prescriptions differ a lot - which one would expect, since people are not totally out to lunch and so will usually make specific rules relative to actual situations. …

POSSIBLE WORLDS SEMANTICS FOR DEFAULT LOGICS

We introduce a uniform semantical framework for various default logics in terms of Kripke structures. This possible worlds approach provides a simple but meaningful instrument for comparing existing default logics in a unified setting. The possible worlds semantics is introduced by means of constrained default logic. Also, it easily deals with Brewka's cumulative default logic. The semantics is then extended to Reiter's original default logic as well as Lukaszewicz' variant. The possible worlds approach remedies several difficulties encountered in former proposals aiming at individual default logics. Notably, it provides the first pure model-theoretic semantics for Lukaszewicz' variant of default logic. Since the semantical framework is presented from the perspective of “commitment to assumptions” we also obtain a very natural modal interpretation of the notion of commitment.

An Attributional Analysis of Decisions about Making Commitments

Abstract Although attributions have been implicated in the decision to invest resources in a course of action following success and failure feedback, they have not been systematically examined. A tripartite notion of commitment (i.e., escalation, perseverance, and diminution of commitment) is introduced and hypothesized to vary with the nature of the attributions made for past performance. An examination of 298 sequential product-investment decisions made by groups of American business administration students in a simulated business environment indicated that good luck, bad luck, high ability, low effort, and easy task attributions distinguished the three levels of reinvestment.