1. Philoweb 2011
Autonomy, Scorekeeping and the Net
Raffaela Giovagnoli
Pontifical Lateran University
raffa.giovagnoli@tiscali.it
www.wix.com:80/raffagiovagnoli/raffaela-giovagnoli

3. Societies of Autonomy
• The virtual world does not break with physical and social worlds but it is a
continuum of our social world, which evolves through the process of
communication. Communication can be easily connected with a biological
explanation that takes into consideration animal and human functional
necessity to belong and then puts the desire for communication at the
basis of the development of linguistic procedures (real or virtual), which
are peculiar of human language.
• Communication can be both real and virtual: what about our standard
view of autonomy in philosophy, classically bound to individual rational
reflection for achieving objective representations or authenticity? In the
presence of a wide range of information, of reasons embedded in many
different points of view, how is the process of decentralization thinkable?

4. Societies of Autonomy
• According to the sociologist Manuel Castells (Castells 2007), it emerges a
new form of sociality based on the capacity to build personal nets of
relationships in Internet and outside Internet, by mobile telephone and by
direct physical contact, apart from the moment and the place in which we
actually are. It is not a form of negative net-individualism but a
personalized system of communication that William Mitchell defines
Me++: all begins from me and from the expansion of my ideas and desires.
• “As computerized snails we carry the home of our imaginary
and our relics, by constantly redefining the environment in
which we move according to our mental programs emerging
from the deep of ourselves”.

5. Societies of Autonomy
• The capacity to create new forms of relationships involves reflection on a
new concept of personal autonomy, which takes into consideration the
necessity of cooperation. In this sense, autonomy becomes a social notion.
• Castells intends autonomy in the sense of satisfying individual needs,
desires and preferences.
• This starting point is fundamental to conceive individual freedom, but
autonomy must be thought as a capacity for critical reflection that
develops in the use of language i.e. in a “social” space of reasons. This
shift is implied by the simple observation that we often experience
conflicts among competing desires or preferences or beliefs.

6. Scorekeeping and Autonomy
• Autonomy is a social matter, because, as a phenomenon, it emerges only
through social “attribution”.
• During the process of socialization we do not only acquire concepts by
using language, we also acquire a “dialogical competence”, i.e. a net of
discursive deontic attitudes which grounds the very possibility of
autonomy. For an agent to be autonomous she ought to internalize the
normative structure of a “dialogical” rationality.
• The model of “scorekeeping” (Brandom 1994) is useful to isolate the
fundamental speech acts involved in the process: “refusal”, “challenge”
and “query”. The accent on deontic attitudes is necessary to reformulate
the notion of autonomy in relationship with real and virtual
communication.

7. Scorekeeping and Autonomy
• Once the agent has somehow interiorized the net of attitudes in the
process of socialization she is able to play the social role of scorekeeper in
dialogical situations; moreover, she can communicate in real or virtual
discursive contexts such as the net.
• A plausible “relational” scoreboard is “perspectival” because agents have
a set of different collateral commitments so that we are forced to realize
that different reasons exist and are the source of intrasubjective and
intersubjective conflicts necessary to develop autonomy. Conflicts express
themselves in the communicative dimension of challenge which starts
from the default case i.e. assertion.

8. Scorekeeping and Autonomy
• The speech act of assertion shows the agent playing the role of
scorekeeper who undertakes a commitment (responsibility) and attributes
the entitlement to that commitment (authority) to the interlocutor or to
herself.
• Refusal, query and challenge have the same propositional content
(structured by material inferential commitments) but different force and
deserve to foster critical reflection.
• What is important for my personal idea of autonomy is how attitudes work
in the reciprocal exchange of reasons. The deontic attitudes of the
interlocutors represent a perspective on the deontic states of the entire
community.

9. Scorekeeping and Autonomy
• Let’s begin with the intercontent/infrapersonal case.
• If, for instance, B asserts “that’s blue ”, B undertakes a doxastc
commitment to an object being blue. This commitment ought to be
attributed to B by anyone who is in a position to accept or refuse it. The
sense of an assertion goes beyond the deontic attitudes of the
scorekeepers, because it possesses an inferentially articulated content
that is in relationship with other contents.
• In this sense, if by virtue of B’s assertion the deontic attitudes of A change,
as A attributes to B the commitment to the claim “that’s blue”, then A is
obliged to attribute to B also the commitment to “that’s coloured”. A
recognizes the correctness of that inference when she becomes a
scorekeeper and, therefore, consequentially binds q to p.

10. Scorekeeping and Autonomy
• Again, the incompatibility between “that’s red” and “that’s blue” means
that the commitment to the second precludes the entitlement to first.
• Then A treats these commitments as incompatible if she is disposed to
refuse attributions of entitlement to “that’s red” when A attributes the
commitment to “that’s blue”.
• In the infracontent/interpersonal case, if A thinks that B is entitled
(noninferentially or inferentially) to the claim “that’s blue”, then this can
happen because A thinks that C (an agent who listened to the assertion) is
entitled to it by testimony.

11. Scorekeeping and Autonomy
• An interesting point is to see how the inferential and incompatibility relations
among contents alter the score in conversation.
• First, The scorekeeper A must include “that’s blue” in the set of the
commitments already attributed to B.
• Second, A must include the commitment to whatever claim which is the
consequence of “that’s blue” (in committive-inferential terms) in the set of all
the claims already attributed to B. This step depends on the available auxiliary
hypothesis in relationship to other commitments already attributed to B.
• These moves determine the closure of the attributions of A to B by virtue of
the commitment-preserving inferences: starting from a prior context with a
certain score, the closure is given by whatever committive-inferential role A
associates with “that’s blue” as part of its content. Naturally, the resulting
attributions of entitlements must not be affected by material incompatibility.

12. Scorekeeping and Autonomy
• Incompatibility limits also the entitlements attributed to B.
• A can attribute entitlements to whatever claim is a consequence in
permissive-inferential terms of commitments to which B was already
entitled.
• It can be, however, the case that B is entitled to “that’s blue” because she
is a reliable reporter i.e. she correctly applies responsive capacities to
environmental stimuli. The correctness of the inference depends here on
A’s commitment, namely on the circumstances under which the deontic
status was acquired (these conditions must correspond to the ones in
which B is a reliable reporter of the content of “that’s blue”).
• Moreover, A can attribute the entitlement also by inheritance: reliability of
another interlocutor who made the assertion in a prior stage comes into
play.

13. • The scorekeeping model presents other kinds of speech acts related to the
assertive praxis that we can consider to go in depth on the competence
we research to define autonomous agency.
• The “deferrals” have the same content of assertion but different force. A
determines the deferral to C about “that’s blue”, while determining, first,
B’s entitlement to it and, second, C’s entitlement to inherit it.
• In this context, we must consider not only the compatibility between the
commitments of C and B, but also the compatibility of the commitment of
C with the entitlement of B (that allows the inheritance).

14. Scorekeeping and Autonomy
• It can be the case that the entitlement to B, according to A, depends on
the justification of “that’s blue” referring to the claim “that’s turquoise”,
whereas A thinks that C and not B is committed to some claim
incompatible with “that’s turquoise”.
• Or, it can be the case that C and not A is committed to some claim
incompatible with one of the conditions that, according to A, is necessary
to be entitled to “that’s blue””. For instance:«Thus if C takes it that B is
looking through a tinted window, A may take this to preclude C’s
inheritance of entitlement to B’s noninferential report of the colour of a
piece of cloth, even though A takes it that C is wrong about the conditions
of observation» (Making It Explicit, p. 192).

15. Scorekeeping and Autonomy
• The force of a sentence can assume also the direction of “disavowal”.
Disavowals have the function of refusing a commitment previously
undertaken or to clarify that the commitment is not acknowledged. In this
case, A thinks that B’s disavowal of “that’s blue” is successful if A stops to
attribute to B the commitment to it and rehabilitates each entitlement
already attributed but refused because incompatible with “that’s blue”.
• The disavowal can fail if (a) B earns directly the entitlement as performing
the assertion “that’s blue” or (b) B acquires indirectly the commitment as
consequence of a commitment to “that’s turquoise” in virtue of a
commitment-preserving inference. In such situations, the disavowal is
successful only if B is disposed to refuse also “that’s turquoise”. But if B
insists in asserting “that’s turquoise”, this is incompatible with the
disavowal and the disavowal of “that’s blue” cannot rehabilitate the
entitlement attributed to claims that A refuse by virtue of the mistake of
B’s entitlement corresponding to the commitment to a claim incompatible
with it.

16. Scorekeeping and Autonomy
• Another kind of speech act is the “query” that is parasitic on the acts of
acknowledgment or refusal.
• Finally, we introduce the “challenge” that appears in case of performance
of incompatible claims. A thinks that the challenge of C about the claim
“that’s blue” of B is successful if A answers with a refusal of the attribution
of the entitlement to B and with a suspension of the justification of B
(inferentially or by inheritance).
• Consequently, the assertion is not available for other interlocutors who
could otherwise inherit by testimony from B the entitlement to
commitments with the same content.

17. A Formal Schema
SK = Scorekeeper
c = commitment
e = entitlement
= incompatibility
= entailment
& = conjunction
= negation

18. A Formal Schema
ASSERTION:
c (“This is Rafa Nadal”, Bob)
JUDGMENT:
c (“This is Rafa Nadal”, SK)
c ( “This is the ‘number two’ of the international tennis ranking”, SK)
c (“This is Roger Federer”) e (“This is Rafa Nadal”), SK

19. A Formal Schema
INHERITANCE:
c (“This is Rafa Nadal”, Bob) e (“This is Rafa Nadal”, John), SK
DEFERRAL:
e (“This is Rafa Nadal”, Bob) & e (“This is Rafa Nadal”, John), SK
DEFERRAL = 0:
[c (“This is Roger Federer” , John) c (“This is the ‘number two’ of the
international tennis ranking”, John)] e (“This is Rafa Nadal”, Bob), SK
…e (“This is Rafa Nadal”, John), SK

20. A Formal Schema
REFUSAL:
c (“This is Rafa Nadal”, Bob) & e (“This is Roger Federer”, Bob), SK
REFUSAL=0
c (“This is Rafa Nadal”, Bob)
c (“This Rafa Nadal”, Bob) c (This is the ‘number two’ of the
international tennis ranking)
QUERY:
? c (“This is Rafa Nadal”, Bob), SK
CHALLENGE:
e (“This is Rafa Nadal”, Bob) & …e (“This is Rafa Nadal”, Bob), SK

21. A connection to the Web
Distributed Semantic Web Knowledge
Representation and Inferencing
(Boley 2011)

22. Introduction
Interdisciplinary approach:
Information Management, e-Business,
Social Semantic Web, ...
Knowledge
Information
Data
22
29-Sep-11

23. Three Levels of Knowledge:
Visual and Symbolic Representations
visual symbolic
predicate
Knowledge formal graph theory
logic
construction
controlled
semi- standardized
as gradual formal graphics
natural
language
formali-
zation hand natural
informal drawing language
23
29-Sep-11

24. Three Levels of Knowledge:
Described by Formal Metadata
Formal visual symbolic
knowledge
can act as predicate
metadata
formal graph theory
logic
to describe
knowledge controlled
semi- standardized
of all three natural
formal graphics
levels for language
retrieval and
inferencing hand natural
informal drawing language
with high
24
accuracy
29-Sep-11

25. Rule Responder: Reference Architecture for Distributed
Query Engines
• Enables expert finding and query-based knowledge
discovery in distributed virtual organizations
• Queries and answers exchanged in RuleML/XML
• Supported rule engines (int’l collaboration):
Prova, OO jDREW, Euler, and DR-Device
• Based on the Mule Enterprise Service Bus
• Instantiated, e.g., in deployed SymposiumPlanner and
prototyped WellnessRules2 / PatientSupporter
• Foundation for projects Radiation Exposure Monitoring and
OntoHealth at NRC. Also used in PhD projects in
Fredericton, Berlin, Vienna, and Thessaloniki
25
29-Sep-11

26. References
• Harold Boley (2011), Distributed Semantic Web. Knowledge representation and
inferencing, http://www.cs.unb.ca/~boley/talks/DistriSemWeb.ppt
• R. Brandom (1994), Making It Explicit, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• R. Brandom (2008), Between Saying and Doing. Toward an Analytic Pragmatism,
Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• M. Castells (2007), Società dell’autonomia, in «Internazionale», n. 713.
• R. Giovagnoli (2007), Autonomy. A Matter of Content, Firenze University Press,
Firenze.
• R. Giovagnoli (2007), Brief Remarks on Swindler’s “Bootstrapping Autonomy from
Individual to Sociality”, forthcoming in R. Dottori ed. (2008) Proceedings of the V
Meeting of Italian-American Philosophy Autonomy of Reason?, Lit Verlag,
München.
• S. Miller (2002), Social Institution and Individual Autonomy, contribution to the IV
Conference on “Collective Intentionality”, Rotterdam.
• J. Swindler (2008), Normativity: From Individual to Collective, «The Journal of
Social Philosophy», vol. 39 (1), pp. 116-130.