Reasoning under the Influence of Universal Distortion. Sex Offenders Case Study

We define and study the phenomenon of a universal distortion into a reasoning system or an argumentation network. Such distortions can happen for various reasons, for instance under the influence of alcohol or a fundamentalist religion, or as the result of a behavioural disorder such as paedophilia. We define the notion theoretically in the framework of abstract argumentation and present an actual case study of a sex offender. We then present a formal logical model. 1 Background and orientation This paper is a conceptual follow up to our paper [1], in which we modelled Reasoning Schemes, Expert Opinion and Critical Questions on the risk involved in the release from custody of a sex offender. Dealing with sex offenders is a high profile area of activity in any society. Once a sex offender is convicted and given a prison sentence, to apply for remission for good behaviour, the sex offender is expected to express regret and remorse and is offered the opportunity to join a therapy group in prison. This will enable the sex offender to apply for good behaviour and reduce the prison sentence by a third (in Israel). Of course it is not surprising that many sex offenders join a therapy group. What is more surprising, is that the sex Vol. 4 No. 6 2017 IFCoLog Journal of Logics and Their Applications Gabbay, Rozenberg and Rivlin offender therapists community uses logic and argumentation to treat these sex offenders. The community is not explicitly aware of this connection with the logic and argumentation community. They regard the sex offender as suffering from reasoning distortions (caused possibly by physical drives) and proceed to actually use argumentation to try to correct such distortions and reduce the temptation to re-offend. Once we, the authors, realised this, we were motivated to write the current paper and study reasoning distortions in general. Actually when you think about it, it is of great value to the logic community to have essentially a very high profile medical community using logic and argumentation. If the argumentation community could observe and model case studies from the therapy practice, this could immensely benefit both communities, as well as society in general. We envisage the argumentation community helping to improve the therapy methods of the sex offender community. Currently the therapy success rate is that out of the 100% set of sex offenders participating in therapy, 30% show significant improvement. Perhaps this success rate can be improved. We would like to explain and make it clear to the perceptive reader of the argumentation community what to expect from this paper. The authors have three possible policy options Policy Option E1 Observe the practical use of Logic and Argumentation in the sex offender therapist community, get new ideas for new theories of argumentation and write theoretical papers catering for advancing the research front of Argumentation and Computation. This is a safe bet and has serious value. To give an example from Applied Mathematics, we can observe how engineers push fluids through large pipes, miles long, and develop new theories of Turbulence. The advantage for us is that we do not have to model the application correctly or even mention it, it is enough to be inspired by observing the application, develop new theoretical logics and connect to other works of our theoretical colleagues. The disadvantage is that we give no help or better models to the sex offender therapist or the fluid engineer. Policy Option E2 The other option is to try to model the case studies and practice using our knowledge and tool box of logic and argumentation, and be of more immediate use to the practitioners and to society. Unfortunately, in the case of the argumentation community and the sex offenders therapist community, we envisage two major problems. a The theoretical COMMA (Conference on Computational Models of Argument) community does not have sufficient experience in this type of modelling.