In this concise book based on his Arne Ryde Lectures in 2002, Young suggests a conceptual framework for studying strategic learning and highlights theoretical developments in the area. He discusses the interactive learning problem; reinforcement and regret; equilibrium; conditional no-regret learning; prediction, postdiction, and calibration; fictitious play and its variants; Bayesian learning; and hypothesis testing. Young's framework emphasizes the amount of information required to implement different types of learning rules, criteria for evaluating their performance, and alternative notions of equilibrium to (...) which they converge. He also stresses the limits of what can be achieved: for a given type of game and a given amount of information, there may exist no learning procedure that satisfies certain reasonable criteria of performance and convergence. In short, Young has provided a valuable primer that delineates what we know, what we would like to know, and the limits of what we can know, when we try to learn about a system that is composed of other learners. (shrink)

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.; The DeChristianization of Christian Health Care Institutions, or, How the Pursuit of Social Justice and Excellence can Obscure the.

Receptor‐mediated stimulation induces massive actin polymerization and cyto‐skeletal reorganization. The activity of a potent actin‐modulating protein, gelsolin, is regulated both by Ca2+ and polyphos‐phoinositides, and it may have a pivotal role in restructuring the actin cytoskeleton in response to agonist stimulation. Structure‐function analysis of gelsolin has (1) indicated that its NH2‐terminal half is primarily responsible for modulating actin filament length and polymerization; and (2) elucidated mechanisms by which Ca2+ and phospholipids may regulate such functions. Gelsolin is functionally and structurally similar (...) to villin, another Ca2+‐activated actin‐severing protein found in microvilli, suggesting that gelsolin may be a prototype of this family of actin‐modulating proteins. A molecular variant of gelsolin is secreted and may be involved in the clearance of actin filaments released during tissue damage. The two forms of gelsolin are encoded by a single gene, and distinct messages are derived by alternative message splicing. (shrink)

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.; Roman Catholic Social Teaching and Religious Hospital Identity in a Post-Christian Age, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies.

A part of relativistic dynamics is axiomatized by simple and purely geometrical axioms formulated within first-order logic. A geometrical proof of the formula connecting relativistic and rest masses of bodies is presented, leading up to a geometric explanation of Einstein's famous E = mc² . The connection of our geometrical axioms and the usual axioms on the conservation of mass, momentum and four-momentum is also investigated.

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.; Can Philosophy Save Christianity? Are the Roots of the Foundations of Christian Bioethics Ecumenical? Reflections on the Nature of.

A fundamental link between system theory and statistical mechanics has been found to be established by the Kolmogorov entropy K. By this quantity the temporal evolution of dynamical systems can be classified into regular, chaotic, and stochastic processes. Since K represents a measure for the internal information creation rate of dynamical systems, it provides an approach to irreversibility. The formal relationship to statistical mechanics is derived by means of an operator formalism originally introduced by Prigogine. For a Liouville operator L (...) and an information operator $\tilde M$ acting on a distribution in phase space, it is shown that i[L, $\tilde M$ ]≡KI (I=identity operator). As a first consequence of this equivalence, a relation is obtained between the chaotic correlation time of a system and Prigogine's concept of a “finite duration of presence.” Finally, the existence of chaos in quantum systems is discussed with respect to the existence of a quantum mechanical time operator. (shrink)

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.; Discerning the Signs of the Times: Recognizing the Dangers of Reckless Social Justice and Advocating With Responsibility, Christian.

Study of Islamic philosophy of Yaḥyá ibn Ḥabash Suhrawardī, 1152 or 1153-1191.

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.; Medicine, Philosophy, and Theology: Christian Bioethics Reconsidered, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morali.

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.; Medicine and the Biomedical Sciences After God: Do Right-Worshipping Christians Know More Than Others About the Content of Morality.

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.; Bioethics after the Enlightenment, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume 8, Issue 3, 1 January 20.

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.; Controversies, Conflicts, and Consensus: A Concluding, Untheological Postscript, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Med.

Aristotle was the first philosopher in the Western tradition to address politics systematically and empirically, and he remains a central figure in political theory. This essential volume presents Aristotle's complete political writings—including his Politics, Economics, and Constitution of Athens—in their most authoritative translations, taken from the complete works that is universally recognized as the standard English edition. Edited by Jonathan Barnes, one of the world’s leading scholars of ancient philosophy, and with an illuminating introduction by Melissa Lane, an authority on (...) ancient political philosophy, this compact but comprehensive volume will be invaluable for all students of politics, philosophy, classics, or Western thought. (shrink)

Professor H. James Birx shows how the never-ending controversy of human evolution came to be. He details the events that caused thinkers like Charles Darwin to develop his theory of evolution, and what ideas caused some people to reconcile a somewhat mystical theology with a concrete model of the universe. He tells you how Darwin's work infuriated everybody from "God-fearing" Christians to the church heirarchies. Birx explains how scientific advances and philosophical arguments have made beliefs about divine intervention as the (...) origin of man a moot point. He shows how creationism ignores proven scientific facts, and how human evolution remains a much sounder truth. You'll read how some western religions are starting to accept evolution as the process which creates life on earth. You'll also learn why scientific evolution and creationism have not been accepted together and how bold attempts to merge the two ideas have failed miserably. (shrink)

Background The consistency of codes governing disclosure of terminal illness to patients and families in Islamic countries has not been studied until now. Objectives To review available codes on disclosure of terminal illness in Islamic countries. Data source and extraction Data were extracted through searches on Google and PubMed. Codes related to disclosure of terminal illness to patients or families were abstracted, and then classified independently by the three authors. Data synthesis Codes for 14 Islamic countries were located. Five codes (...) were silent regarding informing the patient, seven allowed concealment, one mandated disclosure and one prohibited disclosure. Five codes were silent regarding informing the family, four allowed disclosure and five mandated/recommended disclosure. The Islamic Organization for Medical Sciences code was silent on both issues. Conclusion Codes regarding disclosure of terminal illness to patients and families differed markedly among Islamic countries. They were silent in one-third of the codes, and tended to favour a paternalistic/utilitarian, family-centred approach over an autonomous, patient-centred approach. (shrink)