NGO Duties in Relation to Human Rights. A Closer Look at One Proposal

This paper investigates the moral duties that human rights NGOs, such as Amnesty International, and development NGOs, such as Oxfam, have in relation to human rights – especially in relation to the human right to a decent standard of living. The mentioned NGOs are powerful new agents on the global scene, and according to many they might be duty-bearers in relation to human rights. However, until now their moral duties have hardly been investigated. The present paper investigates NGO duties in relation to human rights by looking in particular to a moral theory recently proposed by Leif Wenar, a theory which has some similarities to utilitarianism. In applying this theory, a case for human-rights duties of NGOs is developed mainly by considering the indispensable role that civil society plays in protecting human rights. The paper concludes that, at least, NGOs bear duties with regard to human rights when, as in certain real-life cases, NGO involvement is the only way to achieve acceptable protection against standard threats to certain goods, such as a decent standard of living.

Kiirastorstai-ilta yläsalissa : Kirkon viestintä pääsiäiseen valmistavissa jumalanpalveluksissa Leif Åbergin viestintäajattelun mukaan

Tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli selvittää Leif Åbergin viestintäajattelun valossa, miten Suomen evankelis-luterilainen kirkko viestii pääsiäiseen valmistavien jumalanpalvelusten otsikoissa, pyhäpäivän kuvauksissa ja evankeliumiteksteissä. Åbergin tulosviestinnän mallissa perustoimintojen tuki on viestinnän tärkein tehtävä. Se on viestintää, jonka avulla asiat saadaan sujumaan. Jumalanpalveluksen otsikko ja päivän kuvaus antavat mahdollisuuden tarvittaessa kertoa jumalanpalveluksen kulusta, vaikkakin otsikko ja päivän kuvaus ovat lähinnä materiaalia liturgille. Useimmiten päivän kuvaus kertoo ja kehottaa seurakuntaa ajattelemaan tai uskomaan tietyllä tavalla. Toinen Åbergin tulosviestinnän mallin ulottuvuus on informointi. Yhteisö tarvitsee tiedon siitä, mitä sille tapahtuu juuri nyt ja tulee tapahtumaan. Erityisesti syvän paastonajan jumalanpalveluksiin valitut tekstit valmistavat tulevaan ja antavat välineitä kohdata haasteita. Otsikot ja päivän kuvaukset ovat viestinnän kannalta selvästi niukempia, hiljaisella viikolla vain ydintapahtuman toteavia otsikoita. Joinakin pyhinä kirkko menee informoinnissaan pitkälle ja kertoo tapahtumien lopputuloksen. Silloin se vie kuulijalta mahdollisuuden omaan tulkintaan ja oivallukseen. Kolmas tulosviestinnän mallin elementti on kiinnittäminen. Kiinnittäminen on kirkon tapauksessa vuosituhansien perspektiivissä onnistunut. Kirkko on onnistunut luomaan maailmanlaajat symbolit ja niille merkityksen, joka joka kantaa kirkon keskeistä sanomaa ja joita vahvistetaan jokaisessa jumalanpalveluksessa. Kristittyjen yhteisö kautta maailman hyväksyy ehtoollisenvieton koodin ja siihen liittyvät merkit, leivän ja viinin. Neljäs Åbergin tulosviestinnän mallin elementti on profilointi. Se on yhteisökuvan pitkäjänteistä rakentamista ja sisältää yhteisön perusviestit. Jumalanpalvelukset viestivät kirkon ydinsanomaa, mutta tutkimusaineistoon kuuluvien pyhien otsikoiden ja kuvausten ja evankeliumitekstien välillä on ristiriitoja. Ymmärrettävyys on viestinnän onnistumisen kannalta oleellinen tekijä. Kirkko käyttää monissa pyhän otsikoissa ja kuvauksissa Raamatun kieltä ja evankeliumien tapahtumien aikaan sijoittuvia mielikuvia. Ymmärrettävämpää viestintää olisi käyttää kuulijoiden elämänpiiriin kuuluvia kuvia. Vuorovaikutteisuus on viestinnän tehokkuuden näkökulmasta merkittävä tekijä. Kysymysten ja vastausten – kommunikaation – myötä sanoma tavoittaa vastaanottajan tehokkaammin. Monet kirkon valitsemat evankeliumitekstit kuvaavat vuorovaikutteisia tilanteita, mutta otsikot ja päivän kuvaukset eivät rohkaise jumalanpalveluksen toimittajia ja seurakuntaa pohdintaan ja vuorovaikutukseen.

David Tovey, Thomas Britanyak, George Young, Leif Bjaland & Director Leonard Johnson

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Is there something quantum-like about the human mental lexicon?

This talk proceeds from the premise that IR should engage in a more substantial dialogue with cognitive science. After all, how users decide relevance, or how they chose terms to modify a query are processes rooted in human cognition. Recently, there has been a growing literature applying quantum theory (QT) to model cognitive phenomena. This talk will survey recent research, in particular, modelling interference effects in human decision making. One aspect of QT will be illustrated - how quantum entanglement can be used to model word associations in human memory. The implications of this will be briefly discussed in terms of a new approach for modelling concept combinations. Tentative links to human adductive reasoning will also be drawn. The basic theme behind this talk is QT can potentially provide a new genre of information processing models (including search) more aligned with human cognition.

How quantum theory is developing the field of information retrieval

This position paper provides an overview of work conducted and an outlook of future directions within the field of Information Retrieval (IR) that aims to develop novel models, methods and frameworks inspired by Quantum Theory (QT).

Hydrogeological Features of the Lockyer Valley

The Lockyer Valley is situated 80 km west of Brisbane and is bounded on the sou th and west by the Great Dividing Range. The valley is a major western sub - catchment of the larger Brisbane River drainage system and is drained by the Lockyer Creek. The Lockyer catchment forms approximately 20% of the total Brisbane River catchment and has an area of around 2900 km2. The Lockyer Creek is an ephemeral drainage system, and the stream and associated alluvium are the main source for irrigation water supply in the Lockyer Valley. The catchment is comprised of a number of well -defined, elongate tributaries in the south, and others in the north, which are more meandering in nature.

Using the quantum probability ranking principle to rank interdependent documents

A known limitation of the Probability Ranking Principle (PRP) is that it does not cater for dependence between documents. Recently, the Quantum Probability Ranking Principle (QPRP) has been proposed, which implicitly captures dependencies between documents through “quantum interference”. This paper explores whether this new ranking principle leads to improved performance for subtopic retrieval, where novelty and diversity is required. In a thorough empirical investigation, models based on the PRP, as well as other recently proposed ranking strategies for subtopic retrieval (i.e. Maximal Marginal Relevance (MMR) and Portfolio Theory(PT)), are compared against the QPRP. On the given task, it is shown that the QPRP outperforms these other ranking strategies. And unlike MMR and PT, one of the main advantages of the QPRP is that no parameter estimation/tuning is required; making the QPRP both simple and effective. This research demonstrates that the application of quantum theory to problems within information retrieval can lead to significant improvements.

Estimating interference in the QPRP for subtopic retrieval

The Quantum Probability Ranking Principle (QPRP) has been recently proposed, and accounts for interdependent document relevance when ranking. However, to be instantiated, the QPRP requires a method to approximate the interference" between two documents. In this poster, we empirically evaluate a number of different methods of approximation on two TREC test collections for subtopic retrieval. It is shown that these approximations can lead to significantly better retrieval performance over the state of the art.

Revisiting logical imaging for information retrieval

Retrieval with Logical Imaging is derived from belief revision and provides a novel mechanism for estimating the relevance of a document through logical implication (i.e. P(q -> d)). In this poster, we perform the first comprehensive evaluation of Logical Imaging (LI) in Information Retrieval (IR) across several TREC test Collections. When compared against standard baseline models, we show that LI fails to improve performance. This failure can be attributed to a nuance within the model that means non-relevant documents are promoted in the ranking, while relevant documents are demoted. This is an important contribution because it not only contextualizes the effectiveness of LI, but crucially ex- plains why it fails. By addressing this nuance, future LI models could be significantly improved.

The interactive PRP for diversifying document rankings

The assumptions underlying the Probability Ranking Principle (PRP) have led to a number of alternative approaches that cater or compensate for the PRP's limitations. In this poster we focus on the Interactive PRP (iPRP), which rejects the assumption of independence between documents made by the PRP. Although the theoretical framework of the iPRP is appealing, no instantiation has been proposed and investigated. In this poster, we propose a possible instantiation of the principle, performing the first empirical comparison of the iPRP against the PRP. For document diversification, our results show that the iPRP is significantly better than the PRP, and comparable to or better than other methods such as Modern Portfolio Theory.

Back to the roots : mean-variance analysis of relevance estimations

Recently, mean-variance analysis has been proposed as a novel paradigm to model document ranking in Information Retrieval. The main merit of this approach is that it diversifies the ranking of retrieved documents. In its original formulation, the strategy considers both the mean of relevance estimates of retrieved documents and their variance. How- ever, when this strategy has been empirically instantiated, the concepts of mean and variance are discarded in favour of a point-wise estimation of relevance (to replace the mean) and of a parameter to be tuned or, alternatively, a quantity dependent upon the document length (to replace the variance). In this paper we revisit this ranking strategy by going back to its roots: mean and variance. For each retrieved document, we infer a relevance distribution from a series of point-wise relevance estimations provided by a number of different systems. This is used to compute the mean and the variance of document relevance estimates. On the TREC Clueweb collection, we show that this approach improves the retrieval performances. This development could lead to new strategies to address the fusion of relevance estimates provided by different systems.

Developing the quantum probability ranking principle

In this work, we summarise the development of a ranking principle based on quantum probability theory, called the Quantum Probability Ranking Principle (QPRP), and we also provide an overview of the initial experiments performed employing the QPRP. The main difference between the QPRP and the classic Probability Ranking Principle, is that the QPRP implicitly captures the dependencies between documents by means of quantum interference". Subsequently, the optimal ranking of documents is not based solely on documents' probability of relevance but also on the interference with the previously ranked documents. Our research shows that the application of quantum theory to problems within information retrieval can lead to consistently better retrieval effectiveness, while still being simple, elegant and tractable.

An analysis of ranking principles and retrieval strategies

The assumptions underlying the Probability Ranking Principle (PRP) have led to a number of alternative approaches that cater or compensate for the PRP’s limitations. All alternatives deviate from the PRP by incorporating dependencies. This results in a re-ranking that promotes or demotes documents depending upon their relationship with the documents that have been already ranked. In this paper, we compare and contrast the behaviour of state-of-the-art ranking strategies and principles. To do so, we tease out analytical relationships between the ranking approaches and we investigate the document kinematics to visualise the effects of the different approaches on document ranking.

Has portfolio theory got any principles?

Recently, Portfolio Theory (PT) has been proposed for Information Retrieval. However, under non-trivial conditions PT violates the original Probability Ranking Principle (PRP). In this poster, we shall explore whether PT upholds a different ranking principle based on Quantum Theory, i.e. the Quantum Probability Ranking Principle (QPRP), and examine the relationship between this new model and the new ranking principle. We make a significant contribution to the theoretical development of PT and show that under certain circumstances PT upholds the QPRP, and thus guarantees an optimal ranking according to the QPRP. A practical implication of this finding is that the parameters of PT can be automatically estimated via the QPRP, instead of resorting to extensive parameter tuning.