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The evolution of the understanding of evidence-based proof and decision processes in the law, especially criminal law, and standards of proof in this area, has a long-standing and controversial history. Competing accounts cause the legal scholarship to engage in critical and thoughtful exchanges. Some of the divergent views reflect different methodological perspectives similarly recognized in other fields, such as applied psychology and economy, and the broader interdisciplinary research fields of judgment and decision-making, system analysis and decision science. One such methodological perspective asserts that accounts of juridical proof should provide a description and explanation of how the legal system actually works as a whole. Other—more mathematical and analytical accounts—concentrate on how, ideally, legal decision-making under uncertainty ought to be made in order be considered sensible. This paper focuses on the relative plausibility (RP) account advocated by Professors Allen and Pardo as an example of the former perspective. Its logical structure and argumentative implications are analysed using elements of decision theory, which is the prime representative of the latter, more mathematical approach to legal proof. Using formal diagrammatic schemes to depict the structural relationships between the core elements of the two accounts, it is demonstrated in what sense they can be considered logically related and congruent. The demonstration shows that the principal disagreements among the proponents of the two examined theories derive from differences in (1) the criteria used to judge the adequacy of competing accounts of legal decision-making, and (2) the level of formalization of the bases of decisions in each candidate account. This structural analysis supports the view that adherence to one or the other of the examined perspectives does not imply a contradiction, but reflects the coverage of different aspects of the same overall decision architecture. Using decision-theoretic notions, our analyses also provide a way to explain RP decisions through an explicit criterion, thus providing a reply to the recurrent critique that RP theory lacks specific means to justify its decisional framework.

One of the most striking developments in the penal system in England and Wales is the increasing use of the polygraph by probation services. Despite severe criticism from scientific institutions and academic discourse, the legal order increasingly deploys the long-discredited polygraph in order to extract adverse statements from released offenders. Our article is structured as follows: First, we summarise the statutory and regulatory framework for the current use of the polygraph in the monitoring of sex offenders released on licence, and the proposed expansion of the polygraph testing regime as set out in the Domestic Abuse Bill and the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill respectively. We then review our findings in respect of governing policies and procedures uncovered by our FOI-based research, highlighting the concerning lack of consistency in respect of both practice and procedure. In the subsequent sections we set out the main arguments deployed by polygraph proponents, and posit our view that none of these arguments can withstand scrutiny. We conclude by proposing a moratorium on any further use of the polygraph by the State, in order to thoroughly evaluate its effect on the integrity of the legal order, human rights and, more generally, the Rationalist aspirations of the penal system. In addition, and given already existing law, we propose a process of independent oversight and scrutiny of the use of the polygraph in licence recall decisions and other situations impacting individual rights, especially police investigations triggered by polygraph test results.

In a paper published recently in this journal, Dror and Scurich (2020) [20] critically discuss the notions of “inconclusive evidence” (i.e., test items for which it is difficult to render a categorical response) and “inconclusive decisions” (i.e., experts’ conclusions or responses) in the context of forensic science error rate studies. They expose several ways in which the understanding and use of “inconclusives” in current forensic science research and practice can adversely affect the outcomes of error rate studies. A main cause of distortion, according to Dror and Scurich, is what they call “erroneous inconclusive” decisions, in particular the lack of acknowledgment of this type of erroneous conclusion in the computation of error rates. To overcome this complication, Dror and Scurich call for a more explicit monitoring of “inconclusives” using a modified error rate study design. Whilst we agree with several well-argued points raised by the authors, we disagree with their framing of “inconclusive decisions” as potential errors. In this paper, we argue that referring to an “inconclusive decision” as an error is a contradiction in terms, runs counter to an analysis based on decision logic and, hence, is questionable as a concept. We also reiterate that the very term “inconclusive decision” disregards the procedural architecture of the criminal justice system across modern jurisdictions, especially the fact that forensic experts have no decisional rights in the criminal process. These positions do not ignore the possibility that “inconclusives” – if used excessively – do raise problems in forensic expert reporting, in particular limited assertiveness (or, overcautiousness). However, these drawbacks derive from inherent limitations of experts rather than from the seemingly erroneous nature of “inconclusives” that needs to be fixed. More fundamentally, we argue that attempts to score “inconclusives” as errors amount to philosophical claims disguised as forensic methodology. Specifically, these attempts interfere with the metaphysical substrate underpinning empirical research. We point this out on the basis of the law of the excluded middle, i.e. the principle of “no third possibility being given” (tertium non datur).

The present article proceeds from the mainstream view that the conceptual framework underpinning adversarial systems of criminal adjudication, i.e. a mixture of common-sense philosophy and probabilistic analysis, is unsustainable. In order to provide fact-finders with an operable structure of justification, we need to turn to epistemology once again. The article proceeds in three parts. First, I examine the structural features of justification and how various theories have attempted to overcome Agrippa’s trilemma. Second, I put Inferential Contextualism to the test and show that a defeasible structure of justification allocating epistemic rights and duties to all participants of an inquiry manages to dissolve the problem of scepticism. Third, I show that our epistemic practice already embodies a contextualist mechanism. Our problem was not that our Standard of Proof is inoperable but that it was not adequately conceptualized. Contextualism provides the framework to articulate the abovementioned practice and to treat ‘reasonable doubts’ as a mechanism which we can now describe in detail. The seemingly insurmountable problem with our efforts to define the concept “reasonable doubts” was the fact that we have been conflating the surface features of this mechanism and its internal structure, i.e. the rules for its use.

Despite the apparent importance of mental fatigue detection, a reliable application is hindered due to the incomprehensive understanding of the neural mechanisms of mental fatigue. In this paper, we investigated the topological alterations of functional brain networks in the theta band (4 - 7 Hz) of electroencephalography (EEG) data from 40 male subjects undergoing two distinct fatigue-inducing tasks: a low-intensity one-hour simulated driving and a high-demanding half-hour sustained attention task [psychomotor vigilance task (PVT)]. Behaviorally, subjects demonstrated a robust mental fatigue effect, as reflected by significantly declined performances in cognitive tasks prior and post these two tasks. Furthermore, characteristic path length presented a positive correlation with task duration, which led to a significant increase between the first and the last five minutes of both tasks, indicating a fatigue-related disruption in information processing efficiency. However, significantly increased clustering coefficient was revealed only in the driving task, suggesting distinct network reorganizations between the two fatigue-inducing tasks. Moreover, high accuracy (92% for driving; 97% for PVT) was achieved for fatigue classification with apparently different discriminative functional connectivity features. These findings augment our understanding of the complex nature of fatigue-related neural mechanisms and demonstrate the feasibility of using functional connectivity as neural biomarkers for applicable fatigue monitoring.

Forensic science is currently undergoing a transformation and expansion to include modern types of evidence, such as evidence generated by digital investigations. This development is said to raise a series of challenges, both in operational and conceptual dimensions. This paper reviews and discusses a series of convoluted conceptual hurdles that are encountered in connection with the use of digital evidence as part of evidence and proof processes at trial, in contradistinction to investigative uses of such types of evidence. As a recent example raising such hurdles, we analyse and discuss assertions and proposals made in the article “Digital Evidence Certainty Descriptors (DECDs)” by Graeme Horsman (32 Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation (2020) 200896).

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Sophocles offers a comprehensive account of the reception of Sophocles’ plays over the centuries, across cultures and within a range of different fields, such as literature, intellectual history, visual arts, music, dance, stage and cinema.

Ambiguity is one of the most significant problems in Natural Language Processing. This difficulty may not be apparent to native speakers because of their natural ability at resolving it using contextual information and common sense knowledge. In contrast, current computer applications are still lacking the ability to disambiguate complex texts efficiently. The most common type of ambiguity is lexical ambiguity, and this is noticed even in highly inflectional languages such as Greek. In the present article, all the patterns of predictable lexical ambiguity in Modern Greek Language are registered, verified and quanti- fied as occurred in the Neurolingo computational lexicon, after a study of morpho-syntactic characteristics that differentiate the ambiguous words.

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Sophocles offers a comprehensive account of the reception of Sophocles’ plays over the centuries, across cultures and within a range of different fields, such as literature, intellectual history, visual arts, music, dance, stage and cinema.

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Euripides offers a comprehensive account of the reception of Euripides’ plays over the centuries, across cultures and within a range of different fields, such as literature, intellectual history, visual arts, music, dance, stage and cinema.

The automation of Directory Assistance Services (DAS) through speech is one of the most difficult and demanding applications of human-computer interaction because it deals with very large vocabulary recognition issues. In this paper, we present a spoken dialogue system for automating DAS.1 Taking into account the major difficulties of this endeavor a stepwise approach was adopted. In particular, two prototypes D1.1 (basic approach) and D1.2 (improved version) were developed successively. The results of D1.1 evaluation were used to refine D1.1 and gradually led to D1.2 that was also improved using a feedback approach. Furthermore, the system was extended and optimized so that it can be utilized in real-world conditions. We describe the general architecture and the three stages of the system's development in detail. Evaluation results concerning both the speech recognizer's accuracy and the overall system's performance are provided for all prototypes. Finally, we focus on techniques that handle large vocabulary recognition issues. The use of Directed Acyclic Word Graphs (DAWGs) and context-dependent phonological rules resulted in search space reduction and therefore in faster response, and also in improved accuracy.

Selected Contents: Introduction Kyriakos N. Demetriou And Antis Loizides 1. The Platonic Moment: Political Transpositions Of Power, Reason, And Ethics John R. Wallach 2. Political Knowledge And Human Excellence In Aristotelian Political Science Ryan Balot 3. Cicero On Expertise In Governance Walter Nicgorski 4. Political Wisdom And The City Of God: St. Augustine Of Hippo Miles Hollingworth 5. Bringing Morality Down To Earth: Machiavelli's Contribution To Scientific Statesmanship Joseph V. Femia 6. Hobbes And The Science Of Metaphor Victoria Kahn 7. Montesquieu And The Paradoxes Of The Art Of Statesmanship Rebecca Kingston 8. Kant And The Moral Politicians Paul Guyer 9. Adam Ferguson On Human Nature And Enlightened Governance Alexander Broadie 10. The American Founders' New Science Of Politics Terence Ball 11. Edmund Burke, The "Science Of Man," And Statesmanship Daniel O'neill 12. Scientific Socialism: The Case Of Robert Owen David Leopold 13. Alexis De Tocqueville On Science, Statesmanship And Political Philosophy Aristide Tessitore 14. The Rule Of Sociological Method: Auguste Comte's Positive Politics Before The Systeme De Politique Positive Vincent Guillin 15. Science And Partisanship In Max Weber-A Problematic Distinction Or A Means Of Restraining Professorial Authority?

The aim of this paper is to present a useful and friendly electronic tool (grammar checker) which will carry out the morphological and syntactic analysis of sentences, phrases and words in order to correct syntactic, grammatical and stylistic errors. We also present the formalism used (the Mnemosyne’s Kanon) and also the particularities of the Greek language that hinder the computational processing. Given that the major problem of modern Greek is the lexical ambiguity we designed the Greek tagger grounded on linguistic criteria for those cases where the lexical ambiguity impede the imprint of the errors in Greek language. The texts that were given for correction to the grammar checker were also corrected by a person. In a very large percentage the grammar checker approximates in accuracy the human-corrector.

From the early 1930s to the early 1960s many scholars, whether liberalminded or socialist ideologues, Marxist or scientific positivists, classical scholars or political theorists and historians, have shown a widespread consensus in discrediting and assailing the man and political philosopher Plato. Such an extensive assault led the ‘Platonic Legend’ to an unprecedented crisis. Philosophically, it was a reaction to the undisguised Platonolatry coming from Oxford and the school of the British Idealists. Ideologically, the appropriation of Plato by Nazi apologists fostered further this vehement indictment. But a lot of other causes worked to the same effect. The general anguish and humanistic anxiety on the eve ofWorldWar II and the postwar traumas led scholars to reconsider the meaning of history and historicism, the psychology of the masses and the ethical responsibility of the citizen, the role of propaganda and state education. Such complementary elements converged in sustained anti-Platonic polemics, which in turn provoked a vigorous defence. Here an attempt is made to offer a preliminary survey of this complex debate and to provide a general intellectual framework in terms of which that controversy can be further explored.

Contents Notes on Contributors Introduction Kyriakos N. Demetriou 1 George Grote, The Philosophic Radical and Politician Bruce Kinzer 2 James Mill and George Grote: A Benthamite Defence of "Theoretic Reform" Antis Loizides 3 George Grote and Natural Religion John R. Gibbins 4 Bentham, Mill, Grote, and An Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind Catherine Fuller + 5 A Regular Politician in Breeches: The Life and Work of Harriet Lewin Grote Sarah Richardson 6 Grote's Athens: The Character of Democracy James Kierstead 7 The Comparative Approach in Grote's History of Greece Peter Liddel 8 Grote's Sparta/Sparta's Grote Paul Cartledge 9 Grote's Plato Catherine Zuckert 10 The Sophists in Context: George Grote's Reappraisal Giovanni Giorgini 11 Grote on Alexander the Great Pierre Briant 12 Grote on Aristotle's Logic Robin Smith 13 Grote's Moral Philosophy and its Context Jerome B. Schneewind Appendix: George Grote on James Mill's "Government" Transcribed and edited by Antis Loizides Index of Names and Subjects

The history of classical scholarship abounds with examples of metaphors that function as organic links between past and present. As vehicles for contemporary emulation or allies of particular moral and political ideologies, interpretations of ancient life have mirrored the anxieties and controversies of their times. Alexander the Great has been a prominent figure in such historically contextualized interpretations. A comparative study of the reception of this legendary hero by two leading nineteenth-century historians, George Grote and Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos, provides a platform for reflecting on the influence that different versions of Hellenism have had on the construction of historical narratives. Two contrasting Alexanders emerge from the works of the Victorian radical and the Greek national historiographer. Grote's Alexander was the deadly enemy of ancient liberalism and conqueror of a glorious civilization that was never to be resurrected. Paparrigopoulos's Alexander, in contrast, was a national heroic ancestor who bridged the classical with the Byzantine in the Hellenic world. In this form, Alexander emerged as a symbol of national unity and his achievement became the historical analogue of nation-building.

In April 1889 a deputation of Cypriots, headed by the Archbishop Sophronios and consisting of eminent citizens of the island, was received in London by the Colonial Office. Their purpose had been to recount the general state of affairs in the island after almost twelve years of British rule. The picture was gloomy: despite the hopes which the Cypriots naturally indulged in and which many Englishmen cherished of improving the material prosperity and moral constitution of toe people, the island was going ‘to certain ruin’. In the words of the Colonial Secretary, Lord Knutsford, ‘[t]he principal demands of the Memorial and of the Deputation are based upon a deterioration in the economical condition of Cyprus which is supposed to have taken place since the British occupation. In the opinion of the Deputation that condition is appreciably worse than under the Turkish administration, and is likely to end in the final ruin of the community’. The deputation informed the Secretary that the ‘loyal and peace...

In 1821 George Grote wrote a lengthy manuscript essay entitled “On the Athenian Government,” in which he asserted that the short treatise On the Athenian Constitution (which he attributes to Xenophon) “proves incontestably that the Athenian Government was the best at that time existing in Greece.”1 Grote quite ingeniously tried to deduce from a hostile witness evidence in favour of Athenian democracy as compared to the constitution the author of this treatise would have preferred to see operating.2 At that time Grote was 27 years old, that is only two years after he met James Mill who changed his political convictions and his philosophical outlook forever. From that year onwards Grote was devoted to writing a pamphlet on “Parliamentary Reform” (1821), an “Essay on Magick,”3 an essay on “Natural Religion” (1822),4 and an article entitled “Institutions of Ancient Greece” for the Westminster Review (1826) - his formal debut in Greek historiography.5 The elder Mill had a profound influence on Grote, directing the powers of this admirable polymath in the service of the utilitarian cause for political reform and moral enlightenment along with a large group of enthusiasts and activists who addressed an inveterate scepticism towards all the institutions, norms and practices of organized society.

Theorizing Political Participation.- The Internet and Political Participation.- Case Studies.

In the present work we have implemented the Edit Distance (also known as Levenshtein Distance) on a dictionary-based algorithm in order to achieve the automatic induction of the normalized form (lemma) of regular and mildly irregular words with no direct supervision. The algorithm combines two alignment models based on the string similarity and the most frequent inflexional suffixes. In our experiments, we have also examined the language-independency (i.e. independency of the specific grammar and inflexional rules of the language) of the presented algorithm by evaluating its performance on the Modern Greek and English languages. The results were very promising as we achieved more than 95 % of accuracy for the Greek language and more than 96 % for the English language. This algorithm may be useful to various text mining and linguistic applications such as spell-checkers, electronic dictionaries, morphological analyzers, search engines etc.

In this paper, a probabilistic framework for acquiring domain knowledge from heterogeneous corpora is introduced. The acquired information is used for intelligent human-computer interaction through the web. The application selected for the framework experimentation was education on issues of chemotherapy of nosocomial and community acquired pneumonia. Contrasting to existing educational dialogue engines which use handcrafted knowledge of the application domain, our approach utilizes automatic encoding of the semantic model of the application, based on learning Bayesian networks from past user questions. The structure of the networks as well as the conditional probability distributions are computed automatically from dialogue corpora, thus eliminating the tedious process of manual insertion of domain knowledge. Furthermore, we attempt to overcome the significant issue of limited vocabulary by incorporating a methodology which estimates semantic similarities of words not found within the system’s vocabulary and probabilistically associates them with those who appear.

Anyone engaging in proselytization shall be liable to imprisonment and a fine of between 1,000 and 50,000 drachmas; he shall, moreover, be subject to police supervision for a period of between six months and one year to be fixed by the court when convicting the offender.By “proselytization” is meant, in particular, any direct or indirect attempt to intrude on the religious beliefs of a person of a different religious persuasion (eterodoxos), with the aim of undermining those beliefs, either by any kind of inducement or promise of an inducement or moral support or material assistance, or by fraudulent means or by taking advantage of the other person’s inexperience, trust, need, low intellect or naivete.The commission of such an offence in a school or other educational establishment or philanthropic institution shall constitute a particularly aggravating circumstance.”

For many observers neither EU-democracy nor e-democracy exist in any meaningful sense. With regard to the latter this is certainly the case, though this does not mean that we are not witnessing innovative experimentation with information and communication technologies (ICT) in the democratic realm. This chapter focuses on the prospects for e-democratic experimentation in the EU political setting. Drawing on normative democratic theory we look at four dimensions of e-democratic innovation: ICT techniques aimed at improving mechanisms of (1) representation, (2) participation and (3) deliberation and (4) opening new channels of contestation. The aim of the chapter is to survey some recent e-democratic innovations within the framework of these four broader normative visions and, in doing so, investigate the potential impact of ICT driven innovation on EU democratisation.