Machine learning algorithms pervade contemporary society. They are integral to social institutions, inform processes of governance, and animate the mundane technologies of daily life. Consistently, the outcomes of machine learning reflect, reproduce, and amplify structural inequalities. The field of fair machine learning has emerged in response, developing mathematical techniques that increase fairness based on anti-classification, classification parity, and calibration standards. In practice, these computational correctives invariably fall short, operating from an algorithmic idealism that does not, and cannot, address systemic, Intersectional (...) stratifications. Taking present fair machine learning methods as our point of departure, we suggest instead the notion and practice of algorithmic reparation. Rooted in theories of Intersectionality, reparative algorithms name, unmask, and undo allocative and representational harms as they materialize in sociotechnical form. We propose algorithmic reparation as a foundation for building, evaluating, adjusting, and when necessary, omitting and eradicating machine learning systems. (shrink)

The Central Bank of China is testing its Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP) in the cities of Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu and Xunan with the involvement of four large state-owned banks in the...

The COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020 has changed the conventional learning mode for most students at schools all over the world, and the e-learning at home has become a new trend. Taking Chinese college students as the research subject and drawing on the stimulus–organism–response model, this paper examines the relationship between the peer referent, perceived closeness, and perceived control and the learning engagement. Using data from 377 college students who have used e-learning, this study shows that perceived closeness, (...) perceived control, and peer referents in e-learning have a positive effect on the self-efficacy and well-being of students, thus improving students’ enthusiasm for learning. Our intent is to assist researchers, instructors, designers, and others in identifying effective methods to conceptualize and measure student engagement in e-learning. (shrink)

This paper combines two classes of generalized logics, one of which is the class of weakly implicative logics introduced by Cintula and the other of which is the class of gaggle logics introduced by Dunn. For this purpose we introduce implicational tonoid logics. More precisely, we first define implicational tonoid logics in general and examine their relation to weakly implicative logics. We then provide algebraic semantics for implicational tonoid logics. Finally, we consider relational semantics, called Routley–Meyer–style semantics, for finitary those (...) logics. (shrink)

Implicational tonoid logics and their relational semantics have been introduced by Yang and Dunn. This paper extends this investigation to implicational partial Galois logics. For this, we first define some implicational partial gaggle logics as special kinds of implicational tonoid logics called “implicational partial Galois logics.” Next, we provide Routley–Meyer-style relational semantics for finitary those logics.

Throughout the millennia since the composition of the Analects, orthodox scholars have maintained that Confucius faithfully passed down the thought of early eras, particularly those of Yao and Shun: ‘I transmit but do not create ideas.’ This paper shows that Confucius actually subverted the essence of orthodox thought represented mainly by Yao and Shun. His subversion of orthodox thought compels perforce the idea of ‘ren,’ which concerns itself with the human world, to stand out with the near exclusion of otherworldliness (...) in his teaching. As a result of the misunderstanding of Confucius’ heritage, scholars in the past tended to equate Confucius’ idea of ‘ren’ with specific moral attributes. Again taking exception to the interpretations of bygone eras, this essay demonstrates that humanity in Confucius’ theory signifies a dynamic process rather than a specific attribute or a static rule, changing constantly with different people, different places, and different times. (shrink)

BackgroundBreast cancer patients are at elevated risk of depression during treatment, thus provoking the chance of poor clinical outcomes. This retrospective cohort study aimed to investigate whether integrating Chinese herbal medicines citation into conventional cancer therapy could decrease the risk of depression in the long-term breast cancer survivors.MethodsA cohort of patients aged 20–70 years and with newly diagnosed breast cancer during 2000–2008 was identified from a nationwide claims database. In this study, we focused solely on survivors of breast cancer at (...) least1 year after diagnosis. After one-to-one matching for age, sex, and baseline comorbidities, breast cancer patients who received and did not receive CHM treatment were enrolled. The incidence rate and hazard ratio citation for depression between the two groups was estimated at the end of 2012. A Cox proportional hazard model was constructed to examine the impact of the CHM use on the risk of depression.ResultsDuring the study period, the incidence rate of depression was significantly lower in the treated cohort than in the untreated cohort [8.57 compared with 11.01 per 1,000 person-years citation], and the adjusted HR remained significant at 0.74 in a Cox proportional hazards regression model. The corresponding risk further decreasing to 43% among those using CHM for more than 1 year.ConclusionFinding from this investigation indicated that the lower risk of depression observed in breast cancer patients treated with CHM, suggesting that CHM treatment should be considered for disease management toward breast cancer. Yet, the optimal administered dose should be determined in further clinical trials. (shrink)

The European Union Commission’s whitepaper on Artificial Intelligence proposes shaping the emerging AI market so that it better reflects common European values. It is a master plan that builds upon the EU AI High-Level Expert Group guidelines. This article reviews the masterplan, from a culture cycle perspective, to reflect on its potential clashes with current societal, technical, and methodological constraints. We identify two main obstacles in the implementation of this plan: the lack of a coherent EU vision to drive future (...) decision-making processes at state and local levels and the lack of methods to support a sustainable diffusion of AI in our society. The lack of a coherent vision stems from not considering societal differences across the EU member states. We suggest that these differences may lead to a fractured market and an AI crisis in which different members of the EU will adopt nation-centric strategies to exploit AI, thus preventing the development of a frictionless market as envisaged by the EU. Moreover, the Commission aims at changing the AI development culture proposing a human-centred and safety-first perspective that is not supported by methodological advancements, thus taking the risks of unforeseen social and societal impacts of AI. We discuss potential societal, technical, and methodological gaps that should be filled to avoid the risks of developing AI systems at the expense of society. Our analysis results in the recommendation that the EU regulators and policymakers consider how to complement the EC programme with rules and compensatory mechanisms to avoid market fragmentation due to local and global ambitions. Moreover, regulators should go beyond the human-centred approach establishing a research agenda seeking answers to the technical and methodological open questions regarding the development and assessment of human-AI co-action aiming for a sustainable AI diffusion in the society. (shrink)

Online data collection methods are expanding the ease and access of developmental research for researchers and participants alike. While its popularity among developmental scientists has soared during the COVID-19 pandemic, its potential goes beyond just a means for safe, socially distanced data collection. In particular, advances in video conferencing software has enabled researchers to engage in face-to-face interactions with participants from nearly any location at any time. Due to the novelty of these methods, however, many researchers still remain uncertain about (...) the differences in available approaches as well as the validity of online methods more broadly. In this article, we aim to address both issues with a focus on moderated data collected using video-conferencing software. First, we review existing approaches for designing and executing moderated online studies with young children. We also present concrete examples of studies that implemented choice and verbal measures and looking time across both in-person and online moderated data collection methods. Direct comparison of the two methods within each study as well as a meta-analysis of all studies suggest that the results from the two methods are comparable, providing empirical support for the validity of moderated online data collection. Finally, we discuss current limitations of online data collection and possible solutions, as well as its potential to increase the accessibility, diversity, and replicability of developmental science. (shrink)

In amblyopia, abnormal visual experience during development leads to an enduring loss of visual acuity in adulthood. Physiological studies in animal models suggest that intracortical GABAergic inhibition may mediate visual deficits in amblyopia. To better understand the relationship between visual cortical γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and perceptual suppression in persons with amblyopia (PWA), we employed magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to quantify GABA levels in both PWA and normally-sighted persons (NSP). In the same individuals, we obtained psychophysical measures of perceptual suppression for (...) a variety of ocular configurations. In PWA, we found a robust negative correlation between the depth of amblyopia (the difference in visual acuity between the amblyopic and non-amblyopic eyes) and GABA concentration that was specific to visual cortex and was not observed in a sensorimotor cortical control region. Moreover, lower levels of visual cortical GABA were associated with weaker perceptual suppression of the fellow eye by the amblyopic eye and stronger suppression of the amblyopic eye by the fellow eye. Taken together, our findings provide evidence that intracortical GABAergic inhibition is an important component of the pathology of human amblyopia and suggest possible therapeutic interventions to restore vision in the amblyopic eye through enhancement of visual cortical GABAergic signaling in PWA. (shrink)

Chengbing WangShanxi University, Taiyuan, ChinaMichael A. PetersBeijing Normal University, Beijing, ChinaContemporary Chinese Marxism is not only an important theory in the humanities and social sc...

BackgroundDepression and anxiety create a large health burden and increase the risk of premature mortality. Mental health screening is vital, but more sophisticated screening and monitoring methods are needed. The Ellipsis Health App addresses this need by using semantic information from recorded speech to screen for depression and anxiety.ObjectivesThe primary aim of this study is to determine the feasibility of collecting weekly voice samples for mental health screening. Additionally, we aim to demonstrate portability and improved performance of Ellipsis’ machine learning (...) models for patients of various ages.MethodsStudy participants were current patients at Desert Oasis Healthcare, mean age 63 years. Two non-randomized cohorts participated: one with a documented history of depression within 24 months prior to the study, and the other without depression. Participants recorded 5-min voice samples weekly for 6 weeks via the Ellipsis Health App. They also completed PHQ-8 and GAD-7 questionnaires to assess for depression and anxiety, respectively.ResultsProtocol completion rate was 61% for both groups. Use beyond protocol was 27% for Group Positive and 9% for Group Negative. The Ellipsis Health App showed an AUC of 0.82 for the combined groups when compared to the PHQ-8 and GAD-7 with a threshold score of 10. Performance was high for senior participants as well as younger age ranges. Additionally, many participants spoke longer than the required 5 min.ConclusionThe Ellipsis Health App demonstrated feasibility in using voice recordings to screen for depression and anxiety among various age groups and the machine learning models using Transformer methodology maintain performance and improve over LSTM methodology when applied to the study population. (shrink)

Western philosophy treats cognition/belief/reason and emotion as entirely separable in the mind, but the Chinese concept of heart-mind strongly suggests otherwise. This can be validated by considering what belief involves. All cognitive functioning involves believing something. It is clear that confidence that p is an epistemic emotion, and many dictionaries define confidence as strong belief. Belief thus requires less strongly positive epistemic emotion. It is shown further that all elements in a functioning mind are instances of emotion, and emotion turns (...) out to be a yin/yang phenomenon, where yin and yang are conceived as mutually complementary rather than, more familiarly, as contraries. Irrational or non-virtuous states of xin can be viewed as distortions of yin/yang emotion, and the mind or, better, heart-mind is best conceptualized as an emotional yin/yang entity. The West has a great deal to learn from China. (shrink)

The East Asian notion of a heart-mind is arguably more accurate to our psychology than the Western term “mind” and its equivalents are: the latter term implies the possibility of psychological functioning in the absence of all emotion, and it can be shown that that is impossible. But then it turns out that we can update the traditional Chinese notions of yin 陰 and yang 陽 in such a way as to help us philosophically explain how our functioning psychology (...) involves emotion and why any possible psychology has to rest on such a basis. Yin-yang is the essence of heart-mind, and heart-mind is essential to any functioning psychology. (shrink)

Feminists have argued that autonomous thought and decision-making are attained through respectful parenting and are blighted or destroyed when the parenting is disrespectful or abusive. However, it can be argued that young children are already capable of thinking and deciding things for themselves, so when sexist or abusive parenting leads to an adult incapable of such autonomy, the parenting or other social influences have destroyed what was originally there. It turns out, too, that the thinking and deciding sides of autonomy (...) are actually inseparable aspects of one and the same personal trait/virtue, and it can be shown that the other major human virtues—and human rationality as a whole—also have this dual aspect. We can go on to see that this duality is best interpreted in terms of the indissoluble complementarity of yin 陰 and yang 陽. (shrink)

Ethicists haven’t paid much attention recently to the Chinese complementarity of yin and yang. That complementarity can be updated to take into account and also form the basis for some of our contemporary ethical thinking. In my From Enlightenment to Receptivity, I argue that Western thought has overemphasized rational control/autonomy at the expense of the countervailing virtue of receptivity, and it turns out that the yin/yang complementarity can be profitably viewed as anticipating and clarifying a complementarity between receptivity (...) and rational control that recent developments in Western philosophical thought point us toward. But just as Western philosophy has overemphasized rational autonomy, Chinese thinking hasn’t sufficiently appreciated its importance. Both Chinese and Western thought need to seek a more even balance between autonomy/control and receptivity, but the idea of such balance comes more from yin and yang than from anything in previous Western philosophy. (shrink)

Kwong-loi Shun argues that our reactions to situations of danger to others needn’t be understood in terms of empathy for those others, but can be fully anchored in what is bad about the situations themselves. My reply begins by pointing out cases where the desire to help and/or emotional reactions to what is bad for others don’t seem to involve empathy and then showing how empathy actually works in those cases. It goes on to argue that empathy allows a deeper (...) and more nuanced explanation of our responses and non-responses to dire situations than the appeal to the badness of those situations makes possible. Bringing in empathy forces one to go beyond Shun’s attempt to stay within Chinese tradition.However, the reply to Shun goes on to demonstrate how our understanding of empathy and of many other aspects of our moral psychology can be deepened and enhanced by bringing in the distinctive Chinese ideas of yin and yang—conceived as complementary rather than as opposites or contraries. Via a revived and fine-tuned notion of yin/yang Chinese thought has much to teach Western philosophers. (shrink)

Despite the scathing criticisms leveled at Han philosophy by orthodox Neo-Confucians and their latter-day scholastic followers, the most accurate characterization of many extant pieces of Han philosophical writing would be "critical" (rather than "superstitious") and "probing" (rather than "derivative"). In defense of this statement, three major Han philosophical works are examined, with particular emphasis on the treatment in these works of classical tradition and classical learning. The three works are the "Fa yen" (ca. A.D. 9) by Yang Hsiung, the (...) "Lun heng" (ca. A.D. 80) by Wang Ch'ung, and the "Feng su t'ung yi" (ca. A.D. 200) by Ying Shao. All three works are profoundly critical of beliefs and practices endemic to mainstream state-sponsored Confucianism in the Han. Good reasons lead Yang Hsiung, Wang Ch'ung, and Ying Shao to employ the dialogue, rather than the expository essay. Also, the particular styles of dialogue chosen by Yang, Wang, and Ying directly relate to the specific content of their varying critiques of contemporary forms of Confucian theorizing and practice. (shrink)

Confucian thinkers seem to have had something like our present concept of empathy long before that notion was self-consciously available in the West. Wang Yang-Ming’s talk of forming one body with others and similar ideas in the writings of Cheng Hao and, much earlier, of Mengzi make it clear that the Confucian traditions not only had the idea of empathy but saw its essential relation to phenomena like compassion, benevolence, and sympathy that are constitutive of the altruistic side of (...) morality. Nowadays, there is increasing interest among Western psychologists and philosophers in the phenomenon of empathy, and it would be lovely and welcome if, having originated these ideas, Chinese philosophers would now take up and help develop what has recently been said and done about empathy, and its relation to altruism, in the West. (shrink)

Personal reflection on the failure of liberal religion and on religious and secular ideologies.

The idea of taiji 太極 as the supreme ultimate of the universe has been largely avoided by Chinese philosophers over the past several hundred years, and the same is true of the notions of yin 陰, yang 陽, and qi 氣. The main objection seems to be that these notions operate in a way inconsistent with modern science, but the present essay argues that when we view yin and yang as complements rather than opposites, they can be applied (...) consistently with modern science and in a way that takes in both mental and physical instances. This can lead us to recognize the similarity between the mental and the physical along lines that permit us to revive the notion of qi and treat it as not only in keeping with modern ideas but as also allowing a new kind of validity to the ancient notion of taiji. The West has a lot to learn from a proper modernized account of these concepts, but these are lessons that Westernizing Chinese thinkers also need to learn. (shrink)

Just about a decade ago, at the very beginning of what has proven now to be a staggeringly long midlife crisis, I wrote a little book about the religious significance of boredom. (I think of this as yin to the yang of more commonplace considerations of the religious significance of beauty.) That book concluded with a brief meditation on “waiting,” in which I distinguished between waiting for meaning and the more proactively creative exercise of waiting on meaning. Daniel Dombrowski’s (...) splendid book on Charles Hartshorne’s aesthetics is of the latter sort, a real service to meaning, both a careful attentiveness to meaning as it is embodied in Hartshorne’s writing and the insightful extension of the latter’s .. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe is an Aristotelian, but her insights allow one to make a better case for moral sentimentalism. The sentimentalist tradition emphasizes both the empathic and the active sides of compassion, benevolence, and other such sentiments, but hasn’t previously allowed us to see how these two aspects of the moral sentiments necessarily work together. However, Anscombe’s idea that one cannot simply desire a saucer of mud allows the sentimentalist to argue that compassion, e.g., as a motive cannot exist all on (...) its own but requires empathic feeling. It can also be argued that empathy doesn’t merely lead to compassionate motivation but entails it. The two sides of compassion are necessarily tied together, and the paper ends by showing us how we might more deeply understand such a moral sentiment and others in terms of the traditional Chinese idea of the necessary complementarity of yin and yang. (shrink)

Partisan historiographic intervention has strongly shaped what we know of the life and writings of the controversial Northern Song dynasty official Wang Anshi. Thus, interpreting his surviving textual legacy presents a significant challenge. The two monographs under review offer very different approaches to this challenge. Yang Xiaoshan explores the history of the interpretive issues, while Jonathan Pease takes a very personal approach to a lifetime of reflection on Wang Anshi’s life and works.

Exemplary Figures (sometimes translated as Model Sayings) is an unabridged, annotated translation of Fayan, one of three major works by the Chinese court poet-philosopher Yang Xiong (53 BCE-18 CE). Yang sought to "renew the old" by patterning these works on earlier classics, drawing inspiration from the Confucian Analects for Exemplary Figures. In this philosophical masterwork, constructed as a dialogue, Yang poses and then answers questions on philosophical, political, ethical, and literary matters. Michael Nylan's rendering of this (...) text, which is laden with word play and is extraordinarily difficult to translate, is a joy to read-at turns wise, cautionary, and playful. (shrink)

Enrique Dussel telah lama dikenal secara luas sebagai seorang filsuf dari Amerika Latin, yang memperkenalkan “filsafat pembebasan”. Buku Ethics of Liberation ini merupakan elaborasi gagasan sentralnya “pembebasan”. Dussel saat ini menjadi profesor filsafat di Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa dan di Universidad Nacional Autóma de México di Mexico City. Dalam karya ini ia mencoba mengatasi berbagai sistem etika yang berlatar belakang filsafat kontinental, yang ia sebut sebagai filsafat yang berbasis filsafat Yunani atau disebut juga “hellenosentrisme” atau “eropasentrisme. (...) Filsafat dan sistem etika ini tidak memadai lagi untuk mendorong pembebasan korban peminggiran oleh globalisasi dan kapitalisme neo-liberal. Dussel mengawali bukunya sepanjang 715 halaman ini dengan menyajikan uraian mengenai sistem etika dalam sejarah dunia, yang dipandang sebagai filsafat yang datang dari pinggiran, periferi. Dari sinilah Dussel mengembangkan etika dari perspektif korban yang tereksklusi. Pada Bagian I Dussel membahas “Fondasi Etika” (h. 53-186) yang terdiri dari tiga komponen. Pertama, etika material atau isi dari etika, yaitu reproduksi dan pengembangan kehidupan secara sadar. Dussel memulai uraiannya dengan pandangan antropologisnya, dimana digambarkan tingkat-tingkat kesatuan hidup manusia. Ia mengaitkan padangannya mengenai manusia dengan “neuroscience. Kemudian dibahas beberapa aliran dalam etikla material;, seperti utilitarianisme dan komunitarianisme (A. MacEntyre, Charles Tay;or, M. Walzer), konsep eudaimonis dari Aristoteles, Sittlichkeit dari Hegel, etika matrial dari Max Scheler, gagasan Xavier Zubiri.. Dari uraian yang sifatnya deskriptif itu, Dussel beranjak kepada perumusan universal, yang merupakan komponen kedua. Yang memberi pembenaran atas norma yang telah dirumuskan. Rumusan universal itu dicapai melalui suatu diskursus dari partisipan yang setara, dalam suatu komunitas komunikasi. Itulah syarat tercapainya kesahihan antarsubjektif. Yang dibahas Dussel adalah sistem etika Kant. John Rawls, Karel Otto-Apel dan J. Habermas. Tahap ketiga dibahas komponen kelayakan berhadapan dengan berbagai kendala.............. Buku Ethics of Liberation memuat uraian yang sangat kaya akan berbagai sistem etika, terutama sistem etika yang diajukan oleh berbagai filsuf kontemporer. Sistem itu tidak ditolak, tetapi harus dilengkap dengan sistem etika-kritis, yeng mendorong mereka yang menjadi korban untuk membebaskan diri. Untuk memperdalam analisisnya Dussel banyak mengacu kepada Marx, Sekolah Frankurt, Nietzsche dan Freud. Pandangan Freire mengenai dialog dan “raising consciousness” melengkap apa yang disebut “konsensus” dalam sistem etrika Habermasian. Dialog menjadi penting untuk membangun komunikasi dalam masyarakat yang asimetris. Ini diperkaya dengan pengalaman tumbuhnya kesadaran sebagaimana diuraikan oleh Rigoberto Menchú Sistem etika Emmanuel Levinas memberikan perspektif baru mengenai keharusan “pengakuan” (recognition) dan tanggung jawab terhadap yang lain. Buku Dussel ini akan memperkaya pandangan para dosen etika, yang pada umumnya terpaku pada sistem etika “Eropasentris.” (M. Sastrapratedja, Program Pascasarjana, Sekolah Tinggi Filsafat Driyarkara, Jakarta). (shrink)

_A wide ranging consideration of the work of contemporary ethicist David Wong._.

The first part of this paper argues that if Craver’s ([2007a], [2007b]) popular mutual manipulability account (MM) of mechanistic constitution is embedded within Woodward’s ([2003]) interventionist theory of causation--for which it is explicitly designed--it either undermines the mechanistic research paradigm by entailing that there do not exist relationships of constitutive relevance or it gives rise to the unwanted consequence that constitution is a form of causation. The second part shows how Woodward’s theory can be adapted in such a way that (...) (MM) neither undermines the mechanistic paradigm nor reduces constitution to causation. However, it turns out that this modified theoretical embedding of (MM) makes it impossible to produce empirical evidence for constitutive relations. The paper ends by suggesting an additional criterion, the fat-handedness criterion, which, when combined with (MM), generates indirect empirical evidence for constitutive relevance. (shrink)

Inspired by the work of Wilfrid Sellars, Michael Williams launches an all-out attack on what he calls "phenomenalism," the idea that our knowledge of the world rests on a perceptual or experiential foundation.

In epistemic logic, the beliefs of an agent are modeled in a way very similar to knowledge, except that they are fallible. Thus, the pattern of an agent’s true beliefs is an interesting subject to study. In this paper, we conduct a systematic study on a novel modal logic with the bundled operator ⊡ϕ:=□ϕ∧ϕ as the only primitive modality, where ⊡ captures the notion of true belief. With the help of a novel notion of ⊡-bisimulation, we characterize the expressivity of (...) this new language on relational models, and offer various completeness results. We also discuss some interesting connections between our work and previous works on reflexive-insensitive logics and the so-called boxdot conjecture. Finally, we study two generalizations of the ⊡-operator: one is the iterated true belief operator □nϕ:=ϕ∧□ϕ∧⋯∧□nϕ, the other is the neighborhood semantics for the ⊡-operator. (shrink)