Robotic Societies and Law: A Plea for a Robotic and Simulation Science of Legal Phenomena

• Autore: Domenico Parisi
• Pagine: 39-40

Robotic Societies and Law: A Plea for a Robotic

and Simulation Science of Legal Phenomena

DOME NIC O PARIS I∗

Today, computers are everywhere and they are increasingly invading the

life of human beings and the functioning of their societies. This has both

positive and negative aspects but one certainly positive aspect is that com-

puters can be scientif‌ic tools that let us better understand all aspects of re-

ality, including human beings and human societies. Computers can collect

enormous quantities of data and f‌ind all sorts of regularities in the data but

it is not clear that these “big data”, although useful, do not really explain

reality. A more interesting use of computers as scientif‌ic tools is that they

can be used to construct artifacts that behave like human beings and live

in artif‌icial societies which are like human societies. The artifacts are theo-

ries of human behaviour and human societies. Scientif‌ic theories of human

behaviour and human societies are traditionally formulated by using words

but words have unclear and ambiguous meaning, and their meaning remains

unclear and ambiguous even when they are def‌ined or re-def‌ined by using

other words. Theories as computer-based artifacts are entirely clear and un-

ambiguous because, otherwise, the artifact cannot be constructed and one

can always “open” the artifact and see how it is structured and functions.

The behaviour of the artifacts are the empirical predictions which are de-

rived from the theory which has been used to construct the artifacts. If the

artifacts behave like human beings and reproduce human societies, the the-

ory is conf‌irmed and the artifacts capture what underlies human behaviour

and human societies and explains them.

To exploitthe advantages of this approach, one should follow the princi-

ple “one artifact (one theory)/many phenomena”. The same artifact should

be able to reproduce (explain) as many different human phenomena as possi-

ble. In fact, computers make it possible to develop a non-disciplinary science

of human beings and human societies. Reality is a very large ensemble of

different phenomena but all these phenomena are connected together and,

often, to explain the phenomena which are studied by one discipline, it is

necessary to look at the phenomena studied by other disciplines. Hence, to

∗The Author is former director of the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies,

National Research Council of Italy (ISTC-CNR),Rome and associate researcher at the same

Institute.

“Informatica e diritto”, Vol. XXII, 2013, n. 1, pp. 39-45

XXXIX annata – Seconda Serie - Fasc. monografico S. Faro, N. Lettieri (a cura di), "Law and Computational Social Science", ESI, Napoli, 2013, 352 p.