Law, Logic, Language and Artificial Intelligence

This thesis concerns the application of artificial intelligence in law in the formalisation of legislation. Certain aspects of statute law are identified as posing particular problems for representation in logic. The problems are exposed as the result of attempting to represent meta-level notions in the object language. The consequence of incorporating meta-level statements in a formalisation of statute law is that formalisations must be hierarchical and reflect the structure of the text of the legislation. This is counter to presuppositions of formalisation, and therefore constitutes an argument that formalisation of statute law is not possible. The reasons for this unintelligibility are identified in two stages. Firstly, a unifying explanation is given for the problems of statute law and for other known representational problems. This is that formal logic is unable to represent perspectival aspects of thought. Secondly, it is argued that the fundamental misconception which is operative here is the view of language as a representational calculus. An alternative view of language which emphasises the role of language in social interaction and as a repository of tradition permits both the representational difficulties of traditional artificial intelligence, and the limitations of a new paradigm in Al to be understood. This thesis has made a contribution to the subfield of artificial intelligence and law by resolving important representational issues, but also presents wider considerations concerning the development and methodology of artificial intelligence itself.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

PhD

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

De Montfort University

Year dc:date.issued

1996

Author dc:creator

• Routen, Tom

Licence

• https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/bitstreams/38762434-54e7-4ae8-945b-2832e8496073/download