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On the Interpretation of Assurance Case Arguments

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New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence (JSAI-isAI 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10091))

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Abstract

An assurance case provides a structured argument to establish a claim for a system based on evidence about the system and its environment. I propose a simple interpretation for the overall argument that uses epistemic methods for its evidential or leaf steps and logic for its reasoning or interior steps: evidential steps that cross some threshold of credibility are accepted as premises in a classical deductive interpretation of the reasoning steps. Thus, all uncertainty is located in the assessment of evidence. I argue for the utility of this interpretation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Some would allow disjunctions and general logical expressions. My opinion is that these are the hallmarks of evidential—rather than reasoning—steps.

  2. 2.

    This Latin phrase is usually translated “other things being equal”.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially funded by NASA under contract NNL13AA00B to The Boeing Company, and by SRI International. I benefited from many suggestions by Michael Holloway, our NASA contract monitor, but the content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of NASA. Thoughtful comments by the anonymous reviewers improved the presentation of this material.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Laboratory, SRI International, 333 Ravenswood Avenue, Menlo Park, California, 94025, USA

    John Rushby

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  1. John Rushby
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Correspondence to John Rushby .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Chiba University Graduate School of Engineering, Chiba, Japan

    Mihoko Otake

  2. University of Tsukuba, Tokyo, Japan

    Setsuya Kurahashi

  3. Fujitsu Laboratories, Kanagawa, Japan

    Yuiko Ota

  4. National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan

    Ken Satoh

  5. Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan

    Daisuke Bekki

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Rushby, J. (2017). On the Interpretation of Assurance Case Arguments. In: Otake, M., Kurahashi, S., Ota, Y., Satoh, K., Bekki, D. (eds) New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. JSAI-isAI 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10091. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50953-2_23

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50953-2_23

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-50952-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-50953-2

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