What does it mean to solve a distributed task? In Paxos, Lamport proposed a definition of solvability in which every process is split into a proposer that submits commands to be executed, an acceptor that takes care of the command execution order, and a learner that receives the outcomes of executed commands. The resulting perspective of computation in which every proposed command can be execut...

A dialogue system can present itself and/or address the user as an active agent by means of linguistic constructions in personal style, or suppress agentivity by using impersonal style. We describe how we generate and control personal and impersonal style variation in the output of SAMMIE, a multimodal in-car dialogue system for an MP3 player. We carried out an experiment to compare subjective ...

Recent studies have shown the existence of a relationship between sleep and moral judgment. In this study, we investigated whether one night of sleep deprivation affects the ability to judge the appropriateness of moral dilemmas. Forty-eight students had to judge 30 moral dilemmas at test, after a night of home sleep, and another 30 dilemmas at retest, following one night of continuous wakefuln...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Abnormalities in cognitive control and disgust responding are well-documented in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and also interfere with flexible, outcome-driven utilitarian moral reasoning. The current study examined whether individuals with OCD differ from healthy and anxious individuals in their use of utilitarian moral reasoning, and whether abnormalities in i...