The main purpose of this paper is to bring out some significant humanistic characteristics of Chinese religious thought. My account is limited to what is originally and typically Chinese. That is to say, it will exclude what has been influenced by Buddhism from India or Christianity from the Western world. Some of the theses of this paper are based on scholarly works, while others are drawn from the author's primary experience.

Alpha-beta pruning is a technique for pruning trees in artificial intelligence game-playing. This note draws an analogy between the technique, which is, in essence, an application of many-valued logic to the cut-off of the evaluation of conditionals in computer programs (for efficiency).

This paper uncovers a much-neglected ambiguity in Kant’s conception of rational religion, namely, a confusion regarding the public communicability of moral faith, which would in turn render faith and knowledge indistinguishable. The few scholars who have noticed this ambiguity pursue its epistemic dimensions, but this paper explores its ramifications for Kant’s claim that coherent moral agency requires religious faith, taking issue with Lawrence Pasternack’s recent interpretation. Once one notices Kant has two methods for distinguishing conviction from persuasion, one is better (...) able to understand the connection he draws between religious conviction and conscientious character, and the corresponding connection between mere persuasion and spurious faith. While Kant does not explicitly acknowledge this parallel, this paper reveals that it is in play across the Kantian corpus, and is especially perspicuous in his analysis of the biblical figures of Job and his comforters. (shrink)

The author of Governance in a Globalizing World probes the limits of American power, offering a compelling argument for the world's lone superpower to forge cooperative relationships with nations around the world.

This article argues that the disclosure, dissemination, sale, and publication of texts—such as text messages, e-mails, and letters—addressed to anyone other than the public at large are gravely and profoundly immoral. The argument has two strands, the first based on a conception of privacy largely due to Steven Davis (2009), and the second based on the concept of authorial autonomy and its reverse, authorial dilution.

Discusses how the radio button and its technological cousins, graying out and "incompletely filled out" check-box forms "not accepted," and the like, compromise ethics in the context of professional autonomy of faculty in the matter of grading. Three case studies are given, based on my personal experience as a professor and instructor. -/- The point generalizes to all contexts, however, and can be read to object to all such radio-button forms, from multiple-choice tests for students, to surveys, etc.

A second demonstration (more powerful because more subtle) of how a prevalent scope error can render a model invalid, and thus how difficult modeling really is. The prevalence indicates the difficulty, as the error is often built-in and very subtle and thus easily escapes notice.

Value-sensitive design conceived as an a priori process is necessarily uncompleted, because the foresight needed to accommodate competing values in trueaccord with consumers’ wishes is simply unavailable ab initio. True value-sensitive design is, instead, an ongoing process of market discovery which is evolutionary in nature rather than a priori. We illustrate this generality with the landline telephone.

Presents a /simple/ epistemic solution to the paradox of the surprise test, suitable for undergraduates. Given the Gazette's audience, recalcitrant versions, such as Sorenson's, would have been inappropriate to even mention. It is also classified under "logical paradoxes," because it can be argued that given the existence of logical, rather than epistemic, solutions, so also the paradox is logical, rather than epistemic. -/- The author was not sent proofs, because the /Gazette/ was then run on a "shoestring budget"; the 2009 (...) article is just as intended, and the journal is now typeset well. (shrink)

Yoga has come to be an icon of Indian culture and civilization, and it is widely regarded as being timeless and unchanging. Based on extensive ethnographic research and an analysis of both ancient and modern texts, Yoga in Modern India challenges this popular view by examining the history of yoga, focusing on its emergence in modern India and its dramatically changing form and significance in the twentieth century. Joseph Alter argues that yoga's transformation into a popular activity idolized for (...) its health value is based on modern ideas about science and medicine. Alter centers his analysis on an interpretation of the seminal work of Swami Kuvalayananda, one of the chief architects of the Yoga Renaissance in the early twentieth century. From this point of orientation he explores current interpretations of yoga and considers how practitioners of yogic medicine and fitness combine the ideas of biology, physiology, and anatomy with those of metaphysics, transcendence, and magical power. The first serious ethnographic history of modern yoga in India, this fluently written book is must reading not only for students and scholars but also practitioners who seek a deeper understanding of how yoga developed over time into the exceedingly popular phenomenon it is today. (shrink)

Chow's defense of the null-hypothesis significance- test procedure is thoughtful and compelling in many respects. Nevertheless, techniques such as meta-analysis, power analysis, effect size estimation, and confidence intervals can be useful supplements to NHSTP in furthering the cumulative nature of behavioral research, as illustrated by the history of research on the spontaneous recovery of verbal learning.

Gives what we call "Asimov's Conjecture" that ambiguity can cause lying without lying, in that read one way a statement is tautologous, while read another way presents an iron-clad promise. Solves the conjecture on Asimov's own case by showing how the statement used (as diplomatic deception) is tautologous in propositional logic and an iron-clad promise in predicate logic (with a tense variable). The motivation for the experiment by Fulda & DeFontes (1989) and "Abstracts from Logical Form I/II (2006).".

Gives a general method as well as some results (inspired by Asimov, 1951; since discovered to be in Bar-Hillel and Carnap [several versions; Charles Parsons referred me to /Language and Information/]) to recover meaning (eventually automatically) from logical form/logical probability, which are mirror images. (Sets are taken as extensions of predicates, and knowledge of the sizes is needed; to that extent the method is a posteriori).

The article is intended to, in Sections I and II, flesh out and put within a metaphilosophical framework the theoretical argument first made in 2002 in “Do Internet Stings Directed at Pedophiles Capture Offenders or Create Offenders? And Allied Questions” (Sexuality & Culture 6(4): 73–100), with some modifications (See note 14). Where there are differences, I stand by this version as the final version of the argument. Section III addresses three experimental or empirical studies which might be thought to contradict (...) or confirm the data of the 2002 study. Section IV compares what we have done with the one other jurisprudential argument made by Summer 2005. Section V discusses why, despite the evidence and the arguments, these sting operations are popular with prosecutors and the public alike. Section VI comments on why my empirical study dating to 2002 does not appear to have gained wide acceptance, and what, if anything, can be said about this. -/- Note: The unusual length (for me) of the article is justified by its being data-driven. (shrink)

We present a linear formalism which makes explicit and precise the confirming effect of independent multiple observers and repeated trials on composite ratings, taking as parameters quantitative estimates of the subjective inputs discussed. -/- Note that the subjective probability used here is so used to study the past not predict the future and is rather limited to what has been called in artificial intelligence "certainty factors," which are arbitrary, or, more well-known, the arbitrary values ascribed to predicates in fuzzy "logic." (...) This is clear because the scales themselves are arbitrary and of the radio-button type. (shrink)

Review article referring to my prior work in many contexts with the upshot that: Subject to an /extremely/ limited set of exceptions, /all/ sting operations are /per se/ gravely and deeply immoral for the simplest and plainest of reasons: They are calculated and deliberate attempts to bring out the worst in a fellow human being, to play to their weaknesses, and to pander to their blind spots. Whether performed by the government, the media, or other private organizations (for-profit or not-for-profit), (...) makes no ethical difference whatsoever, except one: When the government does it, everyone begins to think that such egregious behavior is just fine, although /it is anything but/. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Script RoseJoseph S. CatalanoLearning to read words, musical notes or numbers is a process by which we attach sounds, pictures and meanings to marks. Looked at in this way, the English script “rose” is a sign of a sound, a picture or a meaning. But when we read fluently is the word “rose” a sign? I think not; and I shall try to make a case that, to (...) the properly disposed reader, the script “rose” (hereafter written rose) is a rose.ITo have the perspective I require on reading, a quasi-Davidsonian distinction between causes and reasons may be useful. Early training in matching marks with sounds and pictures, surface irritations of light on the eye, stimulation and fixing of our entire neurological complex are all part of the causal network of our ability to read. But none of these causes are the reasons for our ability to be absorbed in reading a text.Of course, a distinction between causes and reasons does not, of itself, explain how the written page can be a world in which we find things such as roses. In order to see how the script rose got to be a rose, it is useful to suspend the usual questions that we ask about written language. Thus, we must not concern ourselves about the ambiguity that might arise because the word rose can be taken to mean a flower, a hue or a person, nor about what happens when we translate from one language to another, nor about the distinction between a sign, whether natural or artificial, and what is signified, nor whether written language [End Page 85] corresponds to something other than itself, nor the question of the meaning of meaning.IIWe created better than we knew, when we invented writing. We intended to represent the spoken word; but we made roses, dreams and lives exist as marks on a page. If this seems mysterious, it is a mystery that is present in every artifact, and what I seek is a perspective on written language precisely as an artifact.Of course, scripts are artifacts, but what I am after is the workmanship. The workmanship is both obvious and hidden. It is there for us to see; it is what we read. But we do not see it as forged over a long period of time just to serve its function as marks that are readable.In general, certain aspects of written language are similar to ordinary artifacts, others are not so. The difference is more obvious than the similarity: Scripts differ from ordinary artifacts, because we first approach them as signs of sounds, pictures or meanings: A child does not learn about sitting by looking at a chair as a sign of a chair; for example, the child does not squat on the floor, when it sees a chair. More importantly, the craftsmanship that gave us written language, especially alphabetic writing, was directed toward forging “arbitrary” marks, and a chair is certainly not an arbitrary representation of something to sit upon. In Quiddities, in the section “A” for “Alphabet,” W. V. Quine neatly summarizes the remarkable feat of discovering meaningless marks to represent sounds.... the full power of writing awaited the convergence of writing with speech, and this reached its early stages five thousand years ago. Depictions of visible objects came to be pressed into phonetic duty on the rebus principle, as if in English we were to write melancholy by depicting a melon and a collie. This expedient was rendered more flexible and powerful, if less picturesque, by devoting the phonetic representations to brief sounds—single consonants or syllables. The sound was represented by a hieroglyph depicting something whose name merely began with that sound. The rebus principle thus gave way to an acrophonic one.It was a notable step of abstraction. Finding a melon and collie in melancholy is a matter of punning with familiar words; extracting a meaningless me-, on the other hand, and meaningless lan-, and so on, calls for appreciating fugitive sounds that are not words and name nothing.(pp. 1–2)[End Page 86]Quine is right to follow the traditional claim that writing... (shrink)

BackgroundThe Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provides access to unreleased government records that can be used to enhance the transparency and integrity of biomedical research. We characterized FOIA requests to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies, including request outcomes, processing times, backlogs, and costs.MethodsUsing HHS FOIA annual reports, we extracted data on the number of FOIA requests received and processed by HHS agencies between 2008 and 2017, as well as request outcomes. Processing times were reported in three time (...) increments, < 1–20, 21–60, or 61+ days, and trends in backlog status were also described. Information about costs and fees collected were aggregated.ResultsBetween 2008 and 2017, 69.6% of 530,094 HHS FOIA requests were received by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), 18.9% by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and 11.6% by all other HHS agencies. During this period, CMS processed 374,728 requests, FDA 114,938, and other HHS agencies 61,890. CMS and FDA reduced backlogged requests by 9396 (89.7%) and 4289 (65.3%), respectively, leaving backlogs of 1081 and 2279 requests at the end of 2017. CMS fully or partially granted 60.3% of requests whereas FDA fully or partially granted 72.4%. Of all requests to CMS, 82.0% were considered simple and 18.0% complex; 82.2% of simple requests and 54.9% of complex requests were processed in 20 days, and 5.6% and 29.9% were processed in 61+ days. In contrast, 60.2% of requests to FDA were considered simple and 39.8% complex; 28.8% of simple requests and 9.0% of complex requests were processed in 20 days, and 58.3% and 81.5% were processed in 61+ days. The costs to HHS associated with FOIA requests totaled $446.4 million ($809 per processed request), increasing from $28.1 million ($423 per request) in 2008 to $53.3 million ($1544 per request) in 2017. In total, HHS collected $8.5 million in fees (1.9% of total costs).ConclusionsFOIA is frequently used to obtain information about HHS and its agencies. With growing costs, minimal fees collected, and lengthy processing times, HHS agencies’ FOIA programs might be made more efficient through greater proactive record disclosure. (shrink)