"Chinese philosophy before our Christian era is emphasized in this nontechnical summary of Chinese thought. Professor Creel also deals with Confucianism, the ideas of Mo-tsu and Mencius, Taoism, Legalism, and their variations and adaptations. As an introduction for the general reader, this book stands among the best."—_China: A Resource and Curriculum Guide_ "There exists nowhere else such a well-written presentation of the main trends in Chinese thought in so brief a space. The text is not cluttered with Chinese names (...) and the pages are not weighed down with footnotes—but the references are there for those who want them, with suggestions for further readings. This is a book which can be understood by those who have never read anything else about China."—_The New York Times Book Review _. (shrink)

What Is Taoism? traces, in nontechnical language, the history of the development of this often baffling doctrine. Creel shows that there has not been one "Taoism," but at least three, in some respects incompatible and often antagonistic.

本书共分十六章, 包括研究孔子的依据, 孔子时代的中国, 生平事迹, 弟子们, 学者, 哲学家, 改革者, 从人到神, 儒学与西方民主, 孔子与中华民国等内容.

Built-in decision thresholds for AI diagnostics are ethically problematic, as patients may differ in their attitudes about the risk of false-positive and false-negative results, which will require that clinicians assess patient values.

In this creative and innovative work Creel Froman establishes a fascinatingly new way of looking at human behavior. His principal themes are: What does life mean? How do we arrive at answers to such a question? What is the answer? In a skillful blending of fiction and scholarship, using dialogue, prose, and poetry, he makes his points regarding the human condition and how we come to know about it. The book is made up of two parts: the “manuscript” of (...) Hugo Potts—a five-act play interspersed with letters, poems, and notes—and, second, the “life” of Hugo Potts—a professor of sociology —his career, love, marriage, and developing intellectual life. The two parts provide a fascinating story with brilliant insights and profound conclusions. A unique and mind-expanding book, addressed to general interested readers as well as students of social sciences, humanities, and fine arts. (shrink)

Scientists depend on complex computational systems that are often ineliminably opaque, to the detriment of our ability to give scientific explanations and detect artifacts. Some philosophers have s...

In this second volume, Book III looks at another irreal language, that of games/sports, and discusses how it functions metaphorically to serve power's interests. Book IV offers an analysis of language as multiple forms of oppression (racism, sexism, classism, ageism, speciesism [humanism]}. It reveals how such a language is constructed, both in formal as well as in individual language. It also shows how power is a consequence of structured inequalities built into language itself, producing, in its "wake," languages of resistance. (...) Book V brings together a number of themes, including play, language as commanding, institutional power, and proper names. (shrink)

A few years ago I ran across a statement by Jean-Paul Sartre which seemed to imply that if there is a God, then there can be no human freedom. That thesis struck me as questionable, but at the time I did not pause to examine it. More recently I ran across a similar, more explicit statement by Kurt Baier, and I decided the time to pause had come. My knee-jerk response to Baier – and I confess it was probably nothing (...) more – was, ‘Why can't there be human freedom if there is a God? Indeed, can there be human freedom if there isn't a God ?’ The second of these questions has proved to be the more provocative to me, for the more I have thought about it, the more it has seemed to me that it is the atheist and not the theist who should be on the defensive about libertarianism, i.e. the position that human beings do act, that human actions are not determined, that we are the sole cause of our actions, and that all things remaining the same, we could have done otherwise. Indeed, the more I thought about that question – Can there be human freedom if there is no God? – the more convinced I became that the atheist has no good reason for believing in libertarianism. Note: I am not saying that atheism is logically incompatible with libertarianism. Perhaps it is, but if it is, that is not yet obvious to me. Rather, I am saying that an atheist who believes in libertarianism must believe in it on the basis of faith and must hold this faith in opposition to the only type of evidence that is available to him. Hence, by denying the existence of God, Baier and Sartre do not make room for human freedom; they make belief in human freedom irrational. By contrast, I shall argue, the theist does have a good reason for believing that humans are free. Let's take separate looks at Baier and Sartre; then I shall summarize the substance of my position. (shrink)

While reflecting one day on the enormous difficulties that men have in knowing that there is a God, a completely unexpected and unfamiliar question drifted into my purview – perhaps as a kind of ultimate expression of my philosophical frustration. ‘Indeed’, the question asked, ‘can even God know that he is God?’ At first I thought this query merely amusing. ‘Wouldn't it be funny if God cannot know that he is God! But of course he can.’ So my mind wandered (...) on to other things. The question did not leave me alone, though. It insisted that I take it seriously, and the more I did, the more legitimate, complex, and significant it came to seem - and still does. (shrink)

While feminist critiques of AI are increasingly common in the scholarly literature, they are by no means new. Alison Adam’s Artificial Knowing (1998) brought a feminist social and epistemological stance to the analysis of AI, critiquing the symbolic AI systems of her day and proposing constructive alternatives. In this paper, we seek to revisit and renew Adam’s arguments and methodology, exploring their resonances with current feminist concerns and their relevance to contemporary machine learning. Like Adam, we ask how new AI (...) methods could be adapted for feminist purposes and what role new technologies might play in addressing concerns raised by feminist epistemologists and theorists about algorithmic systems. In particular, we highlight distributed and federated learning as providing partial solutions to the power-oriented concerns that have stymied efforts to make machine learning systems more representative and pluralist. (shrink)

This article examines the complaint that arbitrary algorithmic decisions wrong those whom they affect. It makes three contributions. First, it provides an analysis of what arbitrariness means in this context. Second, it argues that arbitrariness is not of moral concern except when special circumstances apply. However, when the same algorithm or different algorithms based on the same data are used in multiple contexts, a person may be arbitrarily excluded from a broad range of opportunities. The third contribution is to explain (...) why this systemic exclusion is of moral concern and to offer a solution to address it. (shrink)

Changes in health care have created a variety of new roles and opportunities for nurses in advanced practice. One of these changes is the increasing number of advanced practice nurses carrying out independent consultation. Differences in goals between business and health care may create ethical dilemmas for nurse consultants. The purpose of this article is to describe possible ethical pitfalls that nurse consultants may encounter and strategies to prevent or solve these dilemmas. Three themes related to nursing codes of ethics (...) will be discussed: the duty to uphold human rights, the duty to fulfill commitments, and the duty to practice the profession competently. (shrink)