Classical Answer Research Articles

An introduction to fuzzy answer set programming

In this paper we show how the concepts of answer set programming and fuzzy logic can be successfully combined into the single framework of fuzzy answer set programming (FASP). The framework offers the best of both worlds: from the answer set semantics, it inherits the truly declarative non-monotonic reasoning capabilities while, on the other hand, the notions from fuzzy logic in the framework allow it to step away from the sharp principles used in classical logic, e.g., that something is either completely true or completely false. As fuzzy logic gives the user great flexibility regarding the choice for the interpretation of the notions of negation, conjunction, disjunction and implication, the FASP framework is highly configurable and can, e.g., be tailored to any specific area of application. Finally, the presented framework turns out to be a proper extension of classical answer set programming, as we show, in contrast to other proposals in the literature, that there are only minor restrictions one has to demand on the fuzzy operations used, in order to be able to retrieve the classical semantics using FASP.

Bellum Sacrum, Bellum Justum, Bellum Optimum

What determines the national security policy of a state? One classic answer posits a spectrum of three schools of thought on this subject. The first stands for the proposition that the national security apparatus is responsive almost exclusively to domestic pressures such as class conflicts, with its primary objective self-perpetuation in power. The second school focuses on bureaucratic processes and organizational behavior in response to external pressures. And the third school argues that national security policy is largely responsive to the behavior of other, predominantly state actors on the international arena - to foreign policy, in other words. We adopt this trichotomy and advance two central theses. The first one is the positive claim that national security decisionmaking - and more narrowly, the framework for a state's decision to go to war - is largely a function of the specific form of government the state has. We consider the doctrine of bellum sacrum and its particular suitability to totalitarian modalities of government, ranging from ancient monarchies to modern non-state actors such as terrorist organizations. By contrast, the notion of bellum justum, we argue, is uniquely suitable for majoritarian states. We also suggest that nations with a republican form of government - possessing a strong, but elected executive - can aspire to improve on the bellum justum model. Our second thesis is the fundamentally normative proposition that a set of rules - similar to that devised by ancient societies for retributive punishment of crimes and torts - constitute an optimal strategy for a decision to go to war. These rules, which we term bellum optimum, are welfare-maximizing and distinct from the ostensibly dominant status quo policy for the use of force based loosely on the historical notion of bellum justum. We conclude with the conjecture that the explicit adoption of welfare-maximizing objectives in U.S. national security decisionmaking may plausibly yield policies of improved efficiency and consistent with our proposed notion of bellum optimum.

State neutrality and Islamic headscarf laws in France and Germany

Neutrality has been the classic answer of the liberal state to religious and cultural difference. A number of multicultural critics recently debunked it as “myth” and group power in disguise. Comparing Islamic headscarf laws in France and Germany, I argue that neutrality is more complex and multifaceted than this. The comparison shows that neutrality leaves space for particularistic and universalistic, unity- and rights-oriented stances, the first located in the sphere of democratic politics, the second in the legal–constitutional sphere. Recent headscarf laws may then be understood as political backlash against the rights-oriented neutrality that has emerged in the legal spheres of both countries.

Zero asymptotic Lipschitz distance and finite Gromov-Hausdorff distance

We give an example which shows that the Burago’s bounded distance theorem does not hold in a non-intrinsic metric case. The argument is based on the classical answer to the densest circle packing problem in ℝ2.

Wigner distribution for operators at different times

The paper considers the problem of finding the joint probability distribution of position, P(q 0,q 1,…, qN ), at the different times t 0,t 1, …, tN . The problem is addressed both classically and quantum mechanically. The characteristic function approach is used and it is shown that for certain cases the quantum mechanical answer is the same as the classical answer with replacement of the initial classical probability distribution by the Wigner distribution of the initial wave function. This is the case for taking a certain form of the quantum characteristic function. Other choices are also discussed.

Electronic polarity of nanoclusters: Quantum and many-body effects

Interesting electrical polarity in nanoclusters usually requires the polarizability to exceed the value ${R}^{3}$ of the classical sphere of radius $R$. We clarify how this occurs naturally in single electron quantum systems, and relate it to the giant polarizability of ${\mathrm{Na}}_{14}{\mathrm{F}}_{13}$, and to spontaneous dipole formation on niobium clusters. Many-body effects generally reduce the polarizability through screening. The usual random phase approximation (RPA) treatment retrieves the classical answer, but it significantly overestimates screening in few-electron systems. The system of two electrons on the surface of a sphere is solved numerically, to account for the Coulomb repulsion. At high densities, numerical results agree with the RPA model with properly subtracted self-interaction effects. At low densities, the system performs quantum oscillations around the classical ground state. We calculate the lowest anharmonic correction to the polarizability, which also agrees well with numerical evaluation of the polarizability.

The Non-omission of Nonfinite Be

It has long been known that children learning English optionally omit finite forms of the verb <em>be</em> (both copula and auxiliary). What makes <em>be</em> omissions possible? A classic answer is that <em>be</em> is semantically empty, hence a good choice to omit under performance-related pressures. What would this hypothesis lead us to expect about the infinitive form of <em>be</em>? In terms of semantic vacuity, nonfinite <em>be</em> is an even better choice for omission than finite <em>be</em> , since it does not carry tense or agreement information—most such deletions would be completely recoverable. Thus, the <em>semantic vacuity hypothesis</em> would lead us to expect omission of nonfinite <em>be</em> to be at least as frequent as omission of finite <em>be</em> . This is contrasted with the suggestion that <em>be</em> omission be incorporated into the Root/Optional Infinitive phenomenon. The latter <em>finiteness hypothesis</em> makes different predictions from the semantic vacuity hypothesis with respect to the relative rate of nonfinite <em>be</em> omission. The finding is that, in each relevant transcript, omission of finite <em>be</em> is attested, use of nonfinite <em>be</em> is attested, but there are no instances of omission of nonfinite <em>be</em> , contra the prediction of the semantic vacuity hypothesis. I develop an analysis within the Agreement/Tense Omission Model of the underspecification of Infl (cf. Schütze 1997). I claim that finite forms of <em>be</em> in (adult and child) English are <em>fused</em> V+I heads, in the sense of Halle & Marantz’s (1993) Distributed Morphology. Their locus for vocabulary insertion has values for person/number, tense, and lexical category. The fused vocabulary items cannot be inserted in a syntactic structure in which INFL features have been underspecified. Overt <em>be</em> arises only when both AgrS and Tense are fully specified. Null <em>be</em> , i.e. Ø, the default member of the paradigm, arises from underspecification of Tense and/or underspecification of AgrS.

Explaining Peasant-Farmer Hegemony in Redistributive Politics: Class-, Trade-, and Asset-Based Approaches

What are the most important cleavages created by political struggles over redistributive economic policies? What are the likely policy outcomes of these struggles? The classic answer to the first question is that the most important cleavage is that of class, dividing rich and poor. The class-based model is usually not taken to yield clear predictions about outcomes, because rich and poor would be expected to engage in an inconclusive bidding war for the support of the median voter or pivotal middle stratum. A more recent answer is that the most important cleavages will reflect the position of a given country in the international economy, pitting those benefiting from international trade against those hurt by it. This trade-based model yields stronger predictions about outcomes, since there is usually a clear majority that either does or does not benefit from international trade. Finally, there is a long, though loose, tradition that largely grows out of empirical observation. This emphasizes the pivotal role that the agricultural population appears to play in the more important political battles concerning institutional development and economic policy.

Making a good decision: Value from fit.

The classic answer to what makes a decision good concerns outcomes. A good decision has high outcome benefits (it is worthwhile) and low outcome costs (it is worth it). I propose that, independent of outcomes or value from worth, people experience a regulatory fit when they use goal pursuit means that fit their regulatory orientation, and this regulatory fit increases the value of what they are doing. The following postulates of this value from fit proposal are examined: (a) People will be more inclined toward goal means that have higher regulatory fit, (b) people's motivation during goal pursuit will be stronger when regulatory fit is higher, (c) people's (prospective) feelings about a choice they might make will be more positive for a desirable choice and more negative for an undesirable choice when regulatory fit is higher, (d) people's (retrospective) evaluations of past decisions or goal pursuits will be more positive when regulatory fit was higher, and (e) people will assign higher value to an object that was chosen with higher regulatory fit. Studies testing each of these postulates support the value-from-fit proposal. How value from fit can enhance or diminish the value of goal pursuits and the quality of life itself is discussed.

Multiculturalism, Censorship, and the Postmodern Assault on the Canon: Classical Answers to Contemporary Dilemmas

Multiculturalism, Censorship, and the Postmodern Assault on the Canon: Classical Answers to Contemporary Dilemmas

“Chemical Comforting” and the Theology of John C. Ford, SJ: Classic Answers to a Contemporary Problem

ABSTRACT This article is an historical and thematic study of the theological ethics of John C. Ford, SJ, regarding alcohol abuse and chemical dependency. Retrieving “classic” perspectives on these problems is seen as important for helping the churches to address this challenging “sign of the times” today. Ford's involvement in the fledgling “recovery movement” and his collaboration in early addiction science are documented. His main theological views regarding addiction are reviewed. Three themes are addressed: the nature of addictive illness, the role of a “spiritual” component in addiction, and the notions of sin and personal responsibility in relation to abuse and dependency.

What is Enlightenment?: Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions

Reviewed by: What Is Enlightenment?: Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions Géza Von Molnár James Schmidt, ed. What Is Enlightenment?: Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Pp. 563. $50.00 cloth, 24.95 paper. Over two hundred years ago, the question that stirred many of the foremost minds in German-speaking lands was the one to which the title of this book refers. Its potential readers will easily recognize it, and most will also instantly associate with it Kant’s classic answer. How right they are in doing so is contained in the pages before them. Whatever answers may have been forthcoming since that central question was posed, Kant’s statement remains the explicit or implicit referent for all further debate. Characteristic for this debate is the profusion of differing opinions long current in all matters regarding the Enlightenment, and since these differences have recently surfaced with unusual intensity over a broad range of animated discussions inside of academe and out, it is high time to take stock, as the editor of this volume does, and ask again: “What is Enlightenment?” James Schmidt succeeds in fashioning a well-ordered chorus from the clamor of voices received in reply by presenting them in three distinct groupings that comprise: “The Eighteenth-Century Debate,” “Historical Reflections,” and “Twentieth-Century Questions.” All of this is preceded by an expert “Introduction,” which brings every contributor into clear focus, from an overall perspective and within each respective group. Quite generally speaking, one must, indeed, keep in mind that the question and the debate as to what Enlightenment is bears a distinctly German stamp. As the “Introduction” makes clear: “For reasons that defy explanation, neither French philosophes nor Scottish moralists (to name only the two most likely parties) were as concerned as their German-speaking colleagues of what enlightenment was” (ix). The texts that follow, however, make evident that much of the debate beyond its most initial phase takes place against the background of events in France and rapidly assumes a critical dimension of political self-definition. The historical record, even beyond the confines of this volume, would indicate that deliberations on the question “What is Enlightenment?” actually become implicitly ever more concerned with the question of what is German. Since the editor justifiably contends that these as well as other aspects of the debate on Enlightenment “came to be determined by the stance one took toward the Revolution” (15), the differing critical positions that have arisen since then hold only their ignorance in common “of the enlightenment’s own efforts at self-definition” [End Page 537] (16). The contributions assembled in part 1, “The Eighteenth-Century Debate,” are to furnish this missing link and thus do so successfully by introducing material generally unfamiliar to an English speaking reading public. For that matter, some of the authors who are cited here will not be all that familiar to German scholars. This part 1, which takes up a good third of the volume, constitutes a remarkable editorial achievement from which students of cultural history will benefit for a long time to come. The translations are to be equally commended for rendering texts that are not especially readable in the original into readable English. Among the most difficult are the selections by Hamann, but it may be the challenge his manner of writing presents that will, at times, lead scholars to read too much into the text. Part 2 presents “Historical Reflections” on the intellectual panorama that has been unfolded for us in part 1, and Hamann is made the subject of one of the articles. In it, he is referred to as “proto-Marxist” (296–97) and praised in very modern terms for his opposition to political oppression by absolute monarchs like Frederick II (296 ff.). Of course, he is nothing of the sort; he is a Christian, foremost and last, and if contemporary vocabulary is to be employed, he is a born-again Christian with political attitudes to fit. His basic objections are directed against a government so powerful that it can be dismissive of religion. His point of attack is consequently the base of power that...

Civil War News: How Popular Culture Rewrites History

When we look at human memory and the mental objects stocked within it, we observe that beyond all possible classifications (for a general survey, see Robin 1990), a fundamental tension between two extremes systematically occurs. Memory works indeed with two different types or tools of representation. The first one could be called that of the encyclopedic model. With this term, I refer to all discourses, whether they be texts or images, which principally tend to give not only a complete view, but also an explanation of the past, even for those who do not yet have a knowledge of it. The second type, then, could be called that of the detail. With this term, I refer to all isolated units or segments which can evoke the past, but only in a subjective and metonymical way: they can do so for those who already know or still remember that particular past the details belong to, whereas the others will find those details mute and incomprehensible. Encyclopedia on the one hand and detail on the other hand, of course, cooperate in many ways. Their interaction is the rule, not the exception. Encyclopedic representations are, for instance, better understood, or are modified, thanks to the integration of details, whereas details cease to be incomprehensible when placed in the larger encyclopedic context they help to build. But what do we have to do with a detail or a set of details when for some reason the encyclopedia is missing? The classic answer is that one has to wait for further information and that until then anything goes, probably because nothing seriously works (for the role of encyclopedic knowledge in interpretation, see van de Velde 1993). This is, of course, not false, and everybody who has studied or practiced intercultural communication will know how difficult it is to manage such details. But I also believe that encyclopedia is not the only possible way to detail comprehension, and that an internal reading of details is not always a methodological error. On the one hand, I would like to argue that in some cases something of the initial shock caused by the detail resists to its encyclopedic integration, and that too great an insistence on the integrative capacities of the encyclopedia could possibly mask or erase what is really important in the details we are interested in (for further details, see the concept of effacement complementaire in Ricardou 1982). On the other hand, I would like to argue also that encyclopedia is itself an historically shifting object, and that any detail interpretation is therefore a neverending process which possibly only after a while establishes the initial strangeness of a detail, or charges it afterwards with an unforeseen opacity. For both reasons, I think it is also useful to analyze a detail in itself, even when in practice such a mental and methodological restriction is hard to realize. Around the mid-sixties, as so many other boys of my age, I passionately collected all types of bubble gum cards, i.e., cards used to merchandize small and pink chewing gum leaves (cards of movie stars, of great scenes of national history, of planes, of football players and so on). But also cards of the American Civil War: a set of 88 cards retracing mostly the battles of a conflict historians call the first modern, i.e., industrial war (Trachtenberg 1989). In those years I didn't understand a single word of English and was probably completely ignorant of what had happened in the U.S. between 1861 and 1865. Moreover, not having a television set at home, I was not daily exposed to certain mass-culture influences which could have helped me to decode my bubble gum cards. So the Civil War News, as the name of my collection was, appeared in my life a kind of cultural UFO, and I am really tempted to believe that this is still the case. In spite of all I have now learned on the subject, I go on thinking that the Civil War News remains an enigma. Even the recent discovery of the author of the series, Len Brown, has not really changed this point of view (Brown 1987). …

Noninformative Bayesian testing and neutral Bayes factors

In contrast with usual point estimation settings, there is no well-defined notion of noninformative Bayesian, procedures for tests of two-sided hypotheses. In this paper, we examine the behavior of the answers associated with the (point estimation) Jeffreys priors and show that, in some cases, they coincide numerically with the classical p-values. This partial equivalence between noninformative and classical answers is also exhibited with neutral Bayes factors. This new evaluation, which determines the cut-off point between acceptance and rejection of the null hypothesis, actually leads to a procedure similar to the (so-called) Jeffreys answere and thus supports the use of a noninformative improper prior. This interpretation thus brings a partial rehabilitation of some p-values as noninformative answers.

Alternative Approach for the Exact Solution of the Forced Vibrations of Beams

The present work is an extension of a tool vastly used by the authors to solve static boundary problems in one, two, and even three dimensions. It consists in a so-called generalized solution with special trigonometric Fourier functions to solve the equations of motion of beams. An important theorem that guarantees that the classic answer is attained through an alternative way is demonstrated. In other words, it is a variational methodology to solve differential equations in engineering. An example solved numerically completes the present proposal.

Magnetoresistance for the Sondheimer‐Wilson Model in a Metal and for a Mixed Nondegenerate Semiconductor

AbstractThe overlapping two‐band model for the transverse magnetoresistance, originally proposed by Sondheimer and Wilson (1947), and the magnetoresistance in a mixed nondegenerate semiconductor with contributions from both the conduction and the valence bands is reconsidered. It is shown that the classical answers for both cases are readily obtained by using the tensor‐relaxation time formalism. introduced by Van Vliet and Marshak (1976). More detailed extensions are also given.

Complements of Intersections in Constructive Mathematics

We examine, from a constructive perspective, the relation between the complements of S, T, and S ∩ T in X, where X is either a metric space or a normed linear space. The fundamental question addressed is: If x is distinct from each element of S ∩ T, if s ϵ S, and if t ϵ T, is x distinct from s or from t? Although the classical answer to this question is trivially affirmative, constructive answers involve Markov's principle and the completeness of metric spaces. Mathematics Subject Classification: 03F65, 46S30.

The current, direct value of internal research

Managers of many companies in our business are asking themselves and their staffs the question: “Why should we be investing in research?” They have been receiving mainly the classical answer: “Research generates the new technology that we will depend on for profitability in the future.” That answer has been sufficient for decades, through good times and bad.

Ideology and candidate evaluation

How does the expressed political ideology of voters influence their evaluation of presidential candidates? The classic answer to this question is provided by the spatial theory of electoral choice in which utility for a candidate is a function of the proximity between the voter and candidate positions on the liberal-conservative continuum. We have argued elsewhere that spatial theory, while intellectually appealing, is inadequate as an empirical model of mass behavior. We have developed a directional theory of issue voting that we believe provides a more realistic accounting of how specific policy issues influence utility for a candidate. Directional theory is based on the view that for most voters issues are understood as a dichotomous choice between two alternative positions. While ideology is widely understood as a continuum of positions, the directional model can be applied to the relationship between ideology and candidate evaluation. In this paper we compare the two theories using National Election Study data from 1972 to 1988. The results tend to favor the directional model over the traditional proximity model. We conclude by briefly tracing out the implications of this finding.

Explicit stresses under rectangular detached footings with biaxial bending

The calculation of stresses under rectangular footings with biaxial bending is carried out by solving the 3-equations system that sets up the load and soil stresses equilibrium. When a planar soil stresses distribution is assumed, and the area is in full compression, the above system is linear and its solution immediate. With increasing eccentricities, some corners of the footing can get detached from the soil, the system becoming nonlinear, and difficulties arise in its resolution. Classic answers to this problem have been found through the numerical (iterative) solution of the system, or by getting nondimensional graphs for direct calculation, whose sketches also require a numerical solution. In the paper an analytical alternative is presented which will lead to obtaining explicit solutions for these stresses and neutral axis location.