A formal representation of normative systems: a defeasible deontic reasoning approach
Young U. Ryu · 1992
Normative systems, which are organizational or social systems implementing and managing explicit norms and guided by them, are common to every society. Normative systems purport to rationalize administration, improve the efficiency in the coordination of a large group of interdependent people sharing common and possible conflicting interests, and enforce organizational and social equity. However, as the society grows more complex, normative systems also grow more complex and become less manageable, resulting in numerous negative effects, despite their ideal, noble purposes. Since the advance of information and computing technologies and the realization of their supportive roles in the administration of complex social bodies, as a way of achieving the original purposes of normative systems and reducing negative side effects, the development of computer-based systems for normative systems has been one of the more active research areas. However, the current approaches seem to be largely unsuccessful and expressively insufficient to embody various aspects of normative systems. The main reason of such failure is the lack of jurisprudential foundations of normative systems in the current approaches. This research proposes an advanced logic-based formalism for modeling normative systems and capturing aspects of normative reasoning by investigating philosophical foundations for normative systems. It involves the specification of structure and theories of normative systems, the development of applicable logic-based modeling and reasoning methodology, and its applications. The proposed formalism can be applied to represent bureaucracy norms and legal rules, and thus can lead to a support or advisory system for managers, policy-makers, law practitioners, and customers of normative systems. An administration support system based on the proposed formalism enforces norms by preventing violations of norms or claiming remedies or sanctions as penalties of violations. An advisory system shows possible rights, privileges, duties of a person in a certain circumstance and advises courses of actions to obtain a certain goal. The proposed formalism, in short, represents norms and captures aspects of normative reasoning, playing supportive and advisory roles in the administration of organizational and social systems.