Restricted Boltzmann machine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restricted_Boltzmann_machine

Diagram of a restricted Boltzmann machine with three visible units and four hidden units (no bias units)

A restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) (also called a restricted Sherrington–Kirkpatrick model with external field or restricted stochastic Ising–Lenz–Little model) is a generative stochastic artificial neural network that can learn a probability distribution over its set of inputs.

RBMs were initially proposed under the name Harmonium by Paul Smolensky in 1986, and rose to prominence after Geoffrey Hinton and collaborators used fast learning algorithms for them in the mid-2000s. RBMs have found applications in dimensionality reduction, classification, collaborative filtering, feature learning, topic modelling, immunology, and even many‑body quantum mechanics.

They can be trained in either supervised or unsupervised ways, depending on the task.

As their name implies, RBMs are a variant of Boltzmann machines, with the restriction that their neurons must form a bipartite graph:

• a pair of nodes from each of the two groups of units (commonly referred to as the "visible" and "hidden" units respectively) may have a symmetric connection between them; and
• there are no connections between nodes within a group.

By contrast, "unrestricted" Boltzmann machines may have connections between hidden units. This restriction allows for more efficient training algorithms than are available for the general class of Boltzmann machines, in particular the gradient-based contrastive divergence algorithm.

Restricted Boltzmann machines can also be used in deep learning networks. In particular, deep belief networks can be formed by "stacking" RBMs and optionally fine-tuning the resulting deep network with gradient descent and backpropagation.

Structure

The standard type of RBM has binary-valued (Boolean) hidden and visible units, and consists of a matrix of weights ${\displaystyle W}$ of size ${\displaystyle m\times n}$. Each weight element ${\displaystyle (w_{i,j})}$ of the matrix is associated with the connection between the visible (input) unit ${\displaystyle v_i}$ and the hidden unit ${\displaystyle h_j}$. In addition, there are bias weights (offsets) ${\displaystyle a_i}$ for ${\displaystyle v_i}$ and ${\displaystyle b_j}$ for ${\displaystyle h_j}$. Given the weights and biases, the energy of a configuration (pair of Boolean vectors) (v,h) is defined as

${\displaystyle E(v,h)=-\sum _i{a}_i{v}_i-\sum _j{b}_j{h}_j-\sum _i\sum _j{v}_i{w}_{i,j}{h}_j}$

or, in matrix notation,

${\displaystyle E(v,h)=-a^{\mathrm{T}}v-b^{\mathrm{T}}h-v^{\mathrm{T}}Wh.}$

This energy function is analogous to that of a Hopfield network. As with general Boltzmann machines, the joint probability distribution for the visible and hidden vectors is defined in terms of the energy function as follows,

${\displaystyle P(v,h)=\frac{1}{Z}{e}^{-E(v,h)}}$

where ${\displaystyle Z}$ is a partition function defined as the sum of ${\displaystyle e^{-E(v,h)}}$ over all possible configurations, which can be interpreted as a normalizing constant to ensure that the probabilities sum to 1. The marginal probability of a visible vector is the sum of ${\displaystyle P(v,h)}$ over all possible hidden layer configurations,

${\displaystyle P(v)=\frac{1}{Z}\sum _{\{h\}}{e}^{-E(v,h)}}$,

and vice versa. Since the underlying graph structure of the RBM is bipartite (meaning there are no intra-layer connections), the hidden unit activations are mutually independent given the visible unit activations. Conversely, the visible unit activations are mutually independent given the hidden unit activations. That is, for m visible units and n hidden units, the conditional probability of a configuration of the visible units v, given a configuration of the hidden units h, is

${\displaystyle P(v|h)=\prod _{i=1}^{m}P(v_i|h)}$.

Conversely, the conditional probability of h given v is

${\displaystyle P(h|v)=\prod _{j=1}^{n}P(h_j|v)}$.

The individual activation probabilities are given by

${\displaystyle P(h_j=1|v)=\sigma \left(b_j+\sum _{i=1}^m{w}_{i,j}{v}_i\right)}$ and ${\displaystyle P(v_i=1|h)=\sigma \left(a_i+\sum _{j=1}^n{w}_{i,j}{h}_j\right)}$

where ${\displaystyle \sigma }$ denotes the logistic sigmoid.

The visible units of Restricted Boltzmann Machine can be multinomial, although the hidden units are Bernoulli. In this case, the logistic function for visible units is replaced by the softmax function

${\displaystyle P(v_i^k=1|h)=\frac{\exp (a_i^k+{\mathrm{\Sigma }}_j{W}_{ij}^k{h}_j)}{{\mathrm{\Sigma }}_{k^{\prime }=1}^K\exp (a_i^{k^{\prime }}+{\mathrm{\Sigma }}_j{W}_{ij}^{k^{\prime }}{h}_j)}}$

where K is the number of discrete values that the visible values have. They are applied in topic modeling, and recommender systems.

Relation to other models

Restricted Boltzmann machines are a special case of Boltzmann machines and Markov random fields.

The graphical model of RBMs corresponds to that of factor analysis.

Training algorithm

Restricted Boltzmann machines are trained to maximize the product of probabilities assigned to some training set ${\displaystyle V}$ (a matrix, each row of which is treated as a visible vector ${\displaystyle v}$),

${\displaystyle \arg \underset{W}{max}\prod _{v\in V}P(v)}$

or equivalently, to maximize the expected log probability of a training sample ${\displaystyle v}$ selected randomly from ${\displaystyle V}$:

${\displaystyle \arg \underset{W}{max}\mathbb{E}\left[\log P(v)\right]}$

The algorithm most often used to train RBMs, that is, to optimize the weight matrix ${\displaystyle W}$, is the contrastive divergence (CD) algorithm due to Hinton, originally developed to train PoE (product of experts) models. The algorithm performs Gibbs sampling and is used inside a gradient descent procedure (similar to the way backpropagation is used inside such a procedure when training feedforward neural nets) to compute weight update.

The basic, single-step contrastive divergence (CD-1) procedure for a single sample can be summarized as follows:

1. Take a training sample v, compute the probabilities of the hidden units and sample a hidden activation vector h from this probability distribution.
2. Compute the outer product of v and h and call this the positive gradient.
3. From h, sample a reconstruction v' of the visible units, then resample the hidden activations h' from this. (Gibbs sampling step)
4. Compute the outer product of v' and h' and call this the negative gradient.
5. Let the update to the weight matrix ${\displaystyle W}$ be the positive gradient minus the negative gradient, times some learning rate: ${\displaystyle \mathrm{\Delta }W=ϵ(v{h}^{\mathsf{T}}-v^{\prime }{h}^{\prime \mathsf{T}})}$.
6. Update the biases a and b analogously: ${\displaystyle \mathrm{\Delta }a=ϵ(v-v^{\prime })}$, ${\displaystyle \mathrm{\Delta }b=ϵ(h-h^{\prime })}$.

A Practical Guide to Training RBMs written by Hinton can be found on his homepage.

Stacked Restricted Boltzmann Machine

See also: Deep belief network

• The difference between the Stacked Restricted Boltzmann Machines and RBM is that RBM has lateral connections within a layer that are prohibited to make analysis tractable. On the other hand, the Stacked Boltzmann consists of a combination of an unsupervised three-layer network with symmetric weights and a supervised fine-tuned top layer for recognizing three classes.
• The usage of Stacked Boltzmann is to understand Natural languages, retrieve documents, image generation, and classification. These functions are trained with unsupervised pre-training and/or supervised fine-tuning. Unlike the undirected symmetric top layer, with a two-way unsymmetric layer for connection for RBM. The restricted Boltzmann's connection is three-layers with asymmetric weights, and two networks are combined into one.
• Stacked Boltzmann does share similarities with RBM, the neuron for Stacked Boltzmann is a stochastic binary Hopfield neuron, which is the same as the Restricted Boltzmann Machine. The energy from both Restricted Boltzmann and RBM is given by Gibb's probability measure: ${\displaystyle E=-\frac{1}{2}\sum _{i,j}{w}_{ij}{s}_i{s}_j+\sum _i{\theta }_i{s}_i}$. The training process of Restricted Boltzmann is similar to RBM. Restricted Boltzmann train one layer at a time and approximate equilibrium state with a 3-segment pass, not performing back propagation. Restricted Boltzmann uses both supervised and unsupervised on different RBM for pre-training for classification and recognition. The training uses contrastive divergence with Gibbs sampling: Δw_ij = e*(p_ij - p'_ij)
• The restricted Boltzmann's strength is it performs a non-linear transformation so it's easy to expand, and can give a hierarchical layer of features. The Weakness is that it has complicated calculations of integer and real-valued neurons. It does not follow the gradient of any function, so the approximation of Contrastive divergence to maximum likelihood is improvised.

Philosophical aspects of the abortion debate

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_aspects_of_the_abortion_debate

The philosophical aspects of the abortion debate are logical arguments that can be made either in support of or in opposition to abortion. The philosophical arguments in the abortion debate are deontological or rights-based. The view that all or almost all abortion should be illegal generally rests on the claims that (1) the existence and moral right to life of human beings (human organisms) begins at or near conception-fertilization; that (2) induced abortion is the deliberate and unjust killing of the embryo in violation of its right to life; and that (3) the law should prohibit unjust violations of the right to life. The view that abortion should in most or all circumstances be legal generally rests on the claims that (1) women have a right to control what happens in and to their own bodies; that (2) abortion is a just exercise of this right; and that (3) the law should not criminalize just exercises of the right to control one's own body and its life-support functions.

Although both sides are likely to see the rights-based considerations as paramount, some popular arguments appeal to consequentialist or utilitarian considerations. For example, anti-abortion groups sometimes cite alleged medical and psychological risks of abortion, such as the existence of post-abortion syndrome or the abortion–breast cancer hypothesis. On the other side, abortion-rights groups say that criminalizing abortion will lead to the deaths of many women through "back-alley abortions", that unwanted children have a negative social impact, or conversely cite the legalized abortion and crime effect, and that reproductive rights are necessary to achieve the full and equal participation of women in society and the workforce. Consequentialist arguments on both sides tend to be vigorously disputed, although they are not widely discussed in the philosophical literature.

Contemporary philosophical literature contains two kinds of arguments concerning the morality of abortion. One family of arguments relates to the moral status of the embryo—whether or not the embryo has a right to life, in other words whether the embryo is a person in a moral sense. An affirmative answer would support the (1) claim in the central anti-abortion argument, while a negative answer would support the (1) claim in the central abortion-rights argument. Another family of arguments relates to bodily rights—the question of whether the woman's bodily rights justify abortion even if the embryo has a right to life. A negative answer would support claim the (2) claim in the central anti-abortion argument, while an affirmative answer would support the (2) claim in the central abortion-rights argument.

Philosophical argumentation on the moral issue

Arguments based on criteria for personhood

Further information: Beginning of human personhood

Since there is a continuous progression from zygote to embryo to fetus to baby, questioning the beginning of personhood could lead to an instance of the sorites paradox, also known as the paradox of the heap. Mary Anne Warren, in her article arguing for the permissibility of abortion, holds that moral opposition to abortion is based on the following argument:

1. It is wrong to kill innocent human beings.
2. The embryo is an innocent human being.
3. Hence it is wrong to kill the embryo.

Warren thinks that "human being" is used in different senses in (1) and (2). In (1), "human being" is used in a moral sense to mean a "person", a "full-fledged member of the moral community". In (2), "human being" means "biological human". Warrens holds that while the embryo being a biologically human organism or animal is uncontroversial, it does not follow that the embryo is a person, and it is persons that have rights, such as the right to life. To help make a distinction between "person" and "biological human", Warren observes that humans should respect the lives of highly intelligent aliens even if they are not biological humans. She thinks there is a cluster of properties that characterize persons:

1. Consciousness of objects and events external and/or internal to the being, and in particular the capacity to feel pain.
2. Reasoning, the developed capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems.
3. Self-motivated activity, which is relatively independent of either genetic or direct external control.
4. The capacity to communicate, by whatever means, messages of an indefinite variety of types, that is, not just with an indefinite number of possible contents but on indefinitely many possible topics.
5. The presence of self-concepts, and self-awareness, either individual or racial, or both.

A person does not have to have each of these but if something has all five, then it definitely is a person whether it is biologically human or not, while if it has none or perhaps only one, then it is not a person, whether it is biologically human or not. The fetus has at most one, consciousness and this only after it becomes susceptible to pain—the timing of which is disputed, and hence is not a person. Other writers apply similar criteria, concluding that the embryo lacks a right to life because it lacks self-consciousness, or rationality and self-consciousness, or "certain higher psychological capacities" including "autonomy". Others conclude that personhood should be based on the brain birth concept, which is in essence the reversal of the brain death used as a modern definition of medical death. Under this proposal, presence of brain waves would be enough to grant personhood, even with other features lacking. Based on whether brain activity in the brain stem, or just in the cerebral cortex, is relevant for personhood, two concepts of brain birth emerge, namely at the first appearance of brain waves in lower brain (brain stem), or about 6–8 weeks of gestation (paralleling "whole brain death"), and at the first appearance of brain waves in higher brain (cerebral cortex), or about 22–24 or 24–28 weeks of gestation (paralleling "higher brain death"). Different writers place brain birth at numerous points, from as early as 25–40 days to as high as 32–36 weeks, with 8 weeks and 22–24 weeks as alternatives. For other writers, the concept itself is open to question. For example, a 1989 review of previous discussions of the concept, which placed brain birth at various points between 12 days' and 20 weeks' gestation and emphasized the symmetry of brain birth and brain death, concluded that "if the concept of brain birth is a valid one, it should be placed at 24–28 weeks' gestation. More importantly, it is concluded that the differences between brain development and brain death throw doubt on the concept itself."

Although these writers disagree on precisely which features confer a right to life, they agree those features must be certain developed psychological or physiological features which the embryo lacks. Warren's arguments face two main objections. The comatose patient objection claims that as patients in a reversible coma do not satisfy Warren's or some other criteria—they are not conscious, do not communicate, and so on—therefore they would lack a right to life on her view. One response is that "although the reversibly comatose lack any conscious mental states, they do retain all their unconscious [or dispositional] mental states, since the appropriate neurological configurations are preserved in the brain." This may allow them to satisfy some of Warren's criteria. The comatose also still possess brain activity (brain waves), so this objection does not apply to brain birth theories. Finally, there are some post-natal humans who are unable to feel pain due to genetic disorders, and thus do not satisfy all of Warren's criteria. The infanticide objection argues that infants (up to about one year of age, since it is only around then that they begin to outstrip the abilities of non-human animals) have only one of Warren's characteristics—consciousness—and hence would have to be accounted non-persons on her view, and thus it is argued that her view would permit not only abortion but infanticide. Warren agrees that infants are non-persons and so killing them is not strictly murder but denies that infanticide is generally permissible. Once a human being is born, Warren argues that there is no longer a conflict between it and the woman's rights, since the human being can be given up for adoption. Killing such a human being would be wrong not because it is a person but because it would go against the desires of people willing to adopt the infant and to pay to keep the infant alive. This clarification has critics of its own, as beef cattle, chickens, or any other livestock raised for meat—or even some plants—have supporters who would pay to keep them alive. A response to these supports might be that, while livestock, plants, and infants are all not morally persons, the infant is the only life that can be designated a human being, and thus Warren's argument suggests an inherent value for the life of human beings that are not persons over lives that do not have the potential for becoming a person. Warren grants that her argument entails as a logical consequence that infanticide would be morally acceptable under some circumstances, such as those of a desert island. Philosopher Peter Singer similarly concludes that infanticide, particularly of severely disabled infants, is justifiable under certain conditions. Jeff McMahan grants that, under very limited circumstances, it may be permissible to kill one infant to save the lives of several others. Opponents may see these concessions as a reductio ad absurdum of these writers' views, while supporters may see them merely as examples of unpleasant acts being justified in unusual cases. Since brain waves appear in the lower brain (brain stem) in 6–8 weeks of gestation and in the higher brain (cerebral cortex) in 19–20 weeks of gestation, both "whole brain" and "higher brain" brain birth personhood concepts based on the presence of brain waves do not permit infanticide.

Natural capacities view

Some opponents of Warren's view believe that what matters morally is not that one be actually exhibiting complex mental qualities of the sort she identifies but rather that one have in oneself a self-directed genetic propensity or natural capacity to develop such qualities. In other words, what is crucial is that one be the kind of entity or substance that, under the right conditions, actively develops itself to the point of exhibiting Warren's qualities at some point in its life, even if it does not actually exhibit them because of not having developed them yet (embryo, infant) or having lost them (severe Alzheimer's). Because human beings have this natural capacity—and have it essentially—therefore, according this argument, they essentially have a right to life and could not possibly fail to have a right to life. Furthermore, since modern embryology shows that the embryo begins to exist at conception and has a natural capacity for complex mental qualities, it is argued that the right to life begins at fertilization. Grounding the right to life in essential natural capacities rather than accidental developed capacities is said to have several advantages. As developed capacities are on a continuum, admitting of greater and lesser degrees—for example, some are more rational and self-conscious than others—therefore (1) the "developed capacities" view must arbitrarily select some particular degree of development as the cut-off point for the right to life—whereas the natural capacities view is non-arbitrary; (2) those whose capacities are more developed would have more of a right to life on the "developed capacities" view—whereas the natural capacities view entails that all humans have an equal right to life; and (3) the continuum of developed capacities makes the exact point at which personhood ensues vague, and human beings around that point, say between one and two years of age, will have a shadowy or vague moral status—whereas there is no such indeterminacy on the natural capacities view.

Some defenders of Warren-style arguments grant that these problems have not yet been fully solved; at the same time, they reply that the natural capacities view fares no better. For example, it is argued that as human beings vary significantly in their natural cognitive capacities (due to the inheritance of intelligence, some are naturally more intelligent than others), and as one can imagine a series or spectrum of species with gradually diminishing natural capacities (for example, a series from humans down to amoebae with only the slightest differences in natural capacities between each successive species), the problems of arbitrariness and inequality will apply equally to the natural capacities view. In other words, there is a continuum not only of developed but of natural capacities, and so the natural capacities view will inevitably face these problems as well. Some critics reject the natural capacities view on the basis that it takes mere species membership or genetic potential as a basis for respect (in essence a charge of speciesism), or because it entails that anencephalic infants and the irreversibly comatose have a full right to life. Moreover, some theories of personal identity would support the view that the embryo will never itself develop complex mental qualities (rather, it will simply give rise to a distinct substance or entity that will have these qualities), in which case the natural capacities argument would fail. Respondents to this criticism argue that the noted human cases in fact would not be classified as persons, as they do not have a natural capacity to develop any psychological features.

Deprivation argument

A seminal essay by Don Marquis argues that abortion is wrong because it deprives the embryo of a valuable future. Marquis begins by arguing that what makes it wrong to kill a normal adult human being is the fact that the killing inflicts a terrible harm on the victim. The harm consists in the fact that "when I die, I am deprived of all of the value of my future", and is being deprived of all the valuable "experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments" that they would otherwise have had. Thus, if a being has a highly valuable future ahead of it—a "future like ours"—then killing that being would be seriously harmful and hence seriously wrong. As a standard embryo have a highly valuable future, it is argued that killing it is seriously wrong, and so "the overwhelming majority of deliberate abortions are seriously immoral" and are "in the same moral category as killing an innocent adult human being". A consequence of this argument is that abortion is wrong in all the cases where killing a child or adult with the same sort of future as the embryo would be wrong. For example, if involuntary euthanasia of patients with a future filled with intense physical pain is morally acceptable, aborting embryos whose future is filled with intense physical pain will also be morally acceptable. Following this logic, it would not be morally permissible to invoke the fact that some embryo's future would involve such things as being raised by an unloving family, since it is not considered to be acceptable to kill a five-year-old just because their future involves being raised by an unloving family. Similarly, killing a child or adult may be permissible in exceptional circumstances such as self-defense or perhaps capital punishment, although these are irrelevant to standard abortions. Marquis's argument has prompted several objections. The contraception objection claims that if Marquis's argument is correct, then since sperm and ova (or perhaps a sperm and ovum jointly) have a future like human beings, contraception would be as wrong as murder; as this conclusion is considered to be absurd—even those who believe contraception is wrong do not believe it is as wrong as murder—the argument must be unsound. One response is that neither the sperm, nor the egg, nor any particular sperm-egg combination, will ever itself live out a valuable future, and what will later have valuable experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments is a new entity, a new organism, that will come into existence at or near conception, and it is this entity, not the sperm or egg or any sperm-egg combination, that has a future like human beings.

Marquis's argument requires that what will later have valuable experiences and activities is the same entity, the same biological organism, as the embryo. The identity objection rejects this assumption. On certain theories of personal identity (generally motivated by thought experiments involving brain or cerebrum transplants), each human beings is not a biological organism but rather an embodied mind or a person (in John Locke's sense) that comes into existence when the brain gives rise to certain developed psychological capacities. If either of these views is correct, Marquis's argument will fail, for the embryo (even the early fetus, lacking the relevant psychological capacities) would not itself have a future of value but would merely have the potential to give rise to a different entity, an embodied mind or a person, that would have a future of value. The success of Marquis's argument thus depends on one's favored account of personal identity. The interests objection argues that what makes murder wrong is not just the deprivation of a valuable future but the deprivation of a future that one has an interest in. The embryo has no conscious interest in its future, and so it is argued that to kill it is not wrong. The defender of Marquis-style arguments may give the counterexample of the suicidal teenager who takes no interest in their future but killing whom is nonetheless wrong and murder. If the opponent responds that one can have an interest in one's future without taking an interest in it, then the defender of the Marquis-style argument can claim that this applies to the embryo. Similarly, if an opponent argues that what is crucial is having a valuable future which one would, under ideal conditions, desire to preserve (whether or not one desires to preserve it), then the defender may ask why the embryo would not, under ideal conditions, desire to preserve its future. The equality objection argues that Marquis's argument leads to unacceptable inequalities. If killing is wrong because it deprives the victim of a valuable future, as Marquis argues, then since some futures appear to contain much more value than others—a 9-year-old has a much longer future than a 90-year-old and a middle class person's future has much less gratuitous pain and suffering than someone in extreme poverty—some killings would turn out to be much more wrong than others. As this is strongly counterintuitive (most people believe all killings are equally wrong, all other things being equal), Marquis's argument must be mistaken. Some writers argued that the wrongness of killing arises not from the harm it causes the victim (since this varies greatly among killings) but from the killing's violation of the intrinsic worth or personhood of the victim. Such accounts may themselves face problems of equality, and so the equality objection may not be decisive against Marquis's argument. The psychological connectedness objection claims that a being can be seriously harmed by being deprived of a valuable future only if there are sufficient psychological connections—sufficient correlations or continuations of memory, belief, desire, and the like—between the being as it is now and the being as it will be when it lives out the valuable future. As there are few psychological connections between the embryo and its later self, it is concluded that depriving it of its future does not seriously harm it, and hence is not seriously wrong. A defense of this objection is likely to rest, as with certain views of personal identity, on thought experiments involving brain or cerebrum swaps, and this may render it implausible to some readers.

Bodily rights argument

See also: Artificial womb

In her well-known and influential article "A Defense of Abortion", Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that abortion is in some circumstances permissible even if the embryo is a person and has a right to life because the embryo's right to life is overtrumped by the woman's right to control her body and its life-support functions; in short, Thomson's argument is that the right to life does not include or entail the right to use someone else's body. Her central argument involves a thought experiment where an individual, named Bob, wakes up in bed next to a famous violinist. He is unconscious with a fatal kidney ailment, and because only Bob happens to have the right blood type to help, the Society of Music Lovers kidnapped Bob and plugged his circulatory system into the violinist's so that Bob's kidneys can filter poisons from his blood, as well as his own. If the violinist is disconnected from Bob, he will die but in nine months will recover and can be safely disconnected. Thomson takes it that one may permissibly unplug oneself from the violinist even though this will kill him. According to Thomson, the right to life does not entail the right to use another person's body, and so in disconnecting the violinist one does not violate his right to life but merely deprives him of something—the use of another person's body—to which he has no right. Similarly, even if the fetus has a right to life, it does not have a right to use the pregnant woman's body and life-support functions against her will, and so aborting the pregnancy is permissible in at least some circumstances. Thomson observes that the woman's right to abortion does not include the right to directly insist upon the death of the child should the fetus happen to be viable, that is, capable of surviving outside the womb.

Critics of this argument generally agree that unplugging the violinist is permissible but say that there are morally relevant disanalogies between the violinist scenario and typical cases of abortion. The most common objection is that the violinist scenario, involving a kidnapping, is analogous only to abortion after rape. In most cases of abortion, the pregnant woman was not raped but had intercourse voluntarily, and thus has either tacitly consented to allowing the embryo to use her body (the tacit consent objection), or else has a duty to sustain the embryo because the woman herself caused it to stand in need of her body (the responsibility objection). Other common objections turn on the claim that the embryo is the pregnant woman's child whereas the violinist is a stranger (the stranger versus offspring objection); that abortion kills the embryo whereas unplugging the violinist merely lets him die (the killing versus letting die objection); or similarly that abortion intentionally causes the embryo's death whereas unplugging the violinist merely causes death as a foreseen but unintended side-effect (the intending versus foreseeing objection). Defenders of Thomson's argument, most notably David Boonin. reply that the alleged disanalogies between the violinist scenario and typical cases of abortion do not hold, either because the factors that critics appeal to are not genuinely morally relevant, or because those factors are morally relevant but do not apply to abortion in the way that critics have claimed. Critics have in turn responded to Boonin's arguments. Alternative scenarios have been put forth as more accurate and realistic representations of the moral issues present in abortion. John Noonan proposes the scenario of a family who was found to be liable for frostbite finger loss suffered by a dinner guest whom they refused to allow to stay overnight, although it was very cold outside and the guest showed signs of being sick. It is argued that just as it would not be permissible to refuse temporary accommodation for the guest to protect them from physical harm, it would not be permissible to refuse temporary accommodation of a fetus.

Other critics argue that there is a difference between artificial and extraordinary means of preservation, such as medical treatment, kidney dialysis, and blood transfusions, and normal and natural means of preservation, such as gestation, childbirth, and breastfeeding. They argue that if a baby was born into an environment in which there was no replacement available for her mother's breast milk, and the baby would either breastfeed or starve, the mother would have to allow the baby to breastfeed. The mother would never have to give the baby a blood transfusion, no matter what the circumstances were. The difference between breastfeeding in that scenario and blood transfusions is the difference between gestation and childbirth on the one hand, and using one's body as a kidney dialysis machine on the other.

Respect for human life

See also: Virtue ethics

One argument against the right to abortion appeals to the secular value of a human life. The thought is that all forms of human life, including the fetus, are inherently valuable because they are connected to human thoughts on family and parenthood, among other natural aspects of humanity. Thus, abortion can express the wrong attitudes towards humanity in a way that manifest vicious character. This view is represented by some forms of humanism and by moral philosopher Rosalind Hursthouse in her widely anthologized article "Virtue Theory and Abortion". According to Hursthouse, thinking about abortion in this way shows the unimportance of rights because one can act viciously in exercising a moral right. For example, she argues that the ending of a human life is always a serious matter and that abortion, when it is wrong, is wrong because it violates a respect for human life. She says: "Love and friendship do not survive their parties' constantly insisting on their rights, nor do people live well when they think that getting what they have a right to is of preeminent importance; they harm others, and they harm themselves."

World Bank Group

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Bank_Group 

The World Bank Group building (Washington, DC)
Established	4 July 1944; 80 years ago
Type	Intergovernmental organization
Legal status	Treaty
Purpose	Economic development, poverty elimination
Headquarters	1818 H Street Northwest, Washington D.C., U.S.
Membership	189 states (188 UN countries and Kosovo)
President	Ajay Banga
MD & CFO	Anshula Kant
Main organ	Board of Directors
Parent organization	United Nations
Website	worldbank.org

The World Bank Group (WBG) is a family of five international organizations that make leveraged loans to developing countries. It is the largest and best-known development bank in the world and an observer at the United Nations Development Group. The bank is headquartered in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It provided around $98.83 billion in loans and assistance to "developing" and transition countries in the 2021 fiscal year. The bank's stated mission is to achieve the twin goals of ending extreme poverty and building shared prosperity. Total lending as of 2015 for the last 10 years through Development Policy Financing was approximately $117 billion. Its five organizations are:

• the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD),
• the International Development Association (IDA),
• the International Finance Corporation (IFC),
• the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and
• the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

The first two are sometimes collectively referred to as the World Bank.

The activities of the World Bank (the IBRD and IDA) focus on developing countries, in fields such as human development (e.g. education, health), agriculture and rural development (e.g. irrigation and rural services), environmental protection (e.g. pollution reduction, establishing and enforcing regulations), infrastructure (e.g. roads, urban regeneration, and electricity), large industrial construction projects, and governance (e.g. anti-corruption, legal institutions development). The IBRD and IDA provide loans at preferential rates to member countries, as well as grants to the poorest countries. Loans or grants for specific projects are often linked to wider policy changes in the sector or the country's economy as a whole. For example, a loan to improve coastal environmental management may be linked to the development of new environmental institutions at national and local levels and the implementation of new regulations to limit pollution. Furthermore, the World Bank Group is recognized as a leading funder of climate investments in developing countries.

History

Founding

The WBG came into formal existence on 27 December 1946 following international ratification of the Bretton Woods agreements, which emerged from the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference (1–22 July 1944). It also provided the foundation of the Osiander Committee in 1951, responsible for the preparation and evaluation of the World Development Report. Commencing operations on 25 June 1946, it approved its first loan on 9 May 1947 (USD 250M to France for postwar reconstruction, in real terms the largest loan the bank has issued to date).

Membership

World Bank Group:

  Member states of all five WBG organizations

  Member states of four WBG organizations

  Member states of three WBG organizations

  Member states of two WBG organizations

  Member states only of the IBRD

All of the 188 UN members and Kosovo that are WBG members participate at a minimum in the IBRD. As of May 2016, all of them also participate in some of the other four organizations (IDA, IFC, MIGA, and ICSID).

WBG members by the number of organizations in which they participate:

1. Only in the IBRD:
2. The IBRD and one other organization: San Marino, Nauru, Tuvalu, Brunei
3. The IBRD and two other organizations: Antigua and Barbuda, Suriname, Venezuela, Namibia, Marshall Islands, Kiribati
4. The IBRD and three other organizations: India, Mexico, Belize, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, Ecuador, Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, South Africa, Seychelles, Libya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Bahrain, Qatar, Iran, Malta, Bulgaria, Poland, Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Palau, Tonga, Vanuatu, Maldives, Bhutan, Myanmar
5. All five WBG organizations: the rest of the 138 WBG members

Non-members are Andorra, Cuba, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Palestine, the Holy See (Vatican City), Taiwan, and North Korea.

The Republic of China joined the World Bank on December 27, 1945. After the Chinese Civil War, the government fled to Taiwan and continued its membership in the WBG until April 16, 1980, when the People's Republic of China replaced the ROC. Since then, it uses the name "Taiwan, China".

Excluded from the list are the following de facto states: Abkhazia, Northern Cyprus, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Somaliland, South Ossetia, and Transnistria.

Organizational structure

The World Bank Group Building in Washington, D.C.

The World Bank Sign on the building

Together with four affiliated agencies created between 1957 and 1988, the IBRD is part of the World Bank Group. The group's headquarters are in Washington, D.C. It is an international organization owned by member governments; although it makes profits, they are used to support continued efforts in poverty reduction.

Technically the World Bank is part of the United Nations system, but its governance structure is different: each institution in the World Bank Group is owned by its member governments, which subscribe to its basic share capital, with votes proportional to shareholding. Membership gives certain voting rights that are the same for all countries but there are also additional votes that depend on financial contributions to the organization. The president of the World Bank is nominated by the president of the United States and elected by the bank's Board of Governors. As of 15 November 2009, the United States held 16.4% of total votes, Japan 7.9%, Germany 4.5%, the United Kingdom 4.3%, and France 4.3%. As changes to the bank's Charter require an 85% supermajority, the U.S. can block any major change in the bank's governing structure. Because the U.S. exerts formal and informal influence over the bank as a result of its vote share, control over the presidency, and the bank's headquarters location in Washington, D.C., friends and allies of the U.S. receive more projects with more lenient terms.

World Bank Group agencies

The World Bank Group consists of

• the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), established in 1944, which provides debt financing based on sovereign guarantees;
• the International Finance Corporation (IFC), established in 1956, which provides various forms of financing without sovereign guarantees, primarily to the private sector;
• the International Development Association (IDA), established in 1960, which provides concessional financing (interest-free loans or grants), usually with sovereign guarantees;
• the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), established in 1965, which works with governments to reduce investment risk;
• the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), established in 1988, which provides insurance against certain types of risk, including political risk, primarily to the private sector.

The term "World Bank" generally refers to just the IBRD and IDA, whereas the term "World Bank Group" or "WBG" is used to refer to all five institutions collectively.

The World Bank Institute is the capacity development branch of the World Bank, providing learning and other capacity-building programs to member countries.

The IBRD has 189 member governments, and the other institutions have between 153 and 184. The institutions of the World Bank Group are all run by a board of governors meeting once a year. Each member country appoints a governor, generally its minister of finance. Daily, the World Bank Group is run by a board of 25 executive directors to whom the governors have delegated certain powers. Each director represents either one country (for the largest countries), or a group of countries. Executive directors are appointed by their respective governments or the constituencies.

The agencies of the World Bank are each governed by their Articles of Agreement that serves as the legal and institutional foundation for all their work.

The activities of the IFC and MIGA include investment in the private sector and providing insurance, respectively.

Presidency

Traditionally, the bank president has been a U.S. citizen nominated by the president of the United States, the bank's largest shareholder. The nominee is subject to confirmation by the executive directors, to serve a five-year, renewable term.

Current president

Ajay Banga is the current and 14th President of the World Bank Group.

Managing director

The managing director of the World Bank is responsible for organizational strategy; budget and strategic planning; information technology; shared services; Corporate Procurement; General Services and Corporate Security; the Sanctions System; and the Conflict Resolution and Internal Justice System. The present managing director, Shaolin Yang, assumed the office after Sri Mulyani resigned to become finance minister of Indonesia. The managing director and World Bank Group chief financial officer is Anshula Kant since 7 October 2019.

Extractive Industries Review

After longstanding criticisms from civil society of the bank's involvement in the oil, gas, and mining sectors, the World Bank in July 2001 launched an independent review called the Extractive Industries Review (EIR—not to be confused with Environmental Impact Report). The review was headed by an "Eminent Person", Emil Salim (former Environment Minister of Indonesia). Salim held consultations with a wide range of stakeholders in 2002 and 2003. The EIR recommendations were published in January 2004 in a final report, "Striking a Better Balance". The report concluded that fossil fuel and mining projects do not alleviate poverty, and recommended that World Bank involvement with these sectors be phased out by 2008 to be replaced by investment in renewable energy and clean energy. The World Bank published its Management Response to the EIR in September 2004 after extensive discussions with the board of directors. The Management Response did not accept many of the EIR report's conclusions, but the EIR served to alter the World Bank's policies on oil, gas, and mining in important ways, as the World Bank documented in a recent follow-up report. One area of particular controversy concerned the rights of indigenous peoples. Critics point out that the Management Response weakened a key recommendation that indigenous peoples and affected communities should have to provide 'consent for projects to proceed; instead, there would be 'consultation'. Following the EIR process, the World Bank issued a revised Policy on Indigenous Peoples.

Criticism

Main article: World Bank § Criticisms and controversy

A young World Bank protester in Jakarta, Indonesia

World Bank/IMF protesters smashed the windows of this PNC Bank branch located in the Logan Circle neighbourhood of Washington, D.C.

The World Bank has long been criticized by a range of non-governmental organizations and academics, notably including its former chief economist Joseph Stiglitz, who is equally critical of the International Monetary Fund, the US Treasury Department, and the US and other developed country trade negotiators. Critics argue that the so-called free market reform policies—which the bank advocates in many cases—in practice are often harmful to economic development if implemented badly, too quickly ("shock therapy"), in the wrong sequence, or in very weak, uncompetitive economies. World Bank loan agreements can also force procurements of goods and services at uncompetitive, non-free-market, prices. Other critical writers, such as John Perkins, label the international financial institutions as 'illegal and illegitimate and a cog of coercive American diplomacy in carrying out financial terrorism.

Defenders of the World Bank contend that no country is forced to borrow its money. The bank provides both loans and grants. Even the loans are concessional since they are given to countries that have no access to international capital markets. Furthermore, the loans, both to poor and middle-income countries, are below market-value interest rates. The World Bank argues that it can help development more through loans than grants because money repaid on the loans can then be lent for other projects.

Criticism was also expressed towards the IFC and MIGA and their way of evaluating the social and environmental impact of their projects. Critics state that even though IFC and MIGA have more of these standards than the World Bank, they mostly rely on private-sector clients to monitor their implementation and miss an independent monitoring institution in this context. This is why an extensive review of the institutions' implementation strategy of social and environmental standards is demanded.

Allegations of corruption

The World Bank's Integrity Vice Presidency (INT) is charged with the investigation of internal fraud and corruption, including complaint intake, investigation, and investigation reports.

Investments

The World Bank Group has also been criticized for investing in projects with human rights issues.

The Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO) criticized a loan the bank made to the palm oil company Dinant after the 2009 Honduran coup d'état. There have been numerous killings of Campesinos in the region where Dinant was operating.

Other controversial investments include loans to the Chixoy Hydroelectric Dam in Guatemala while it was under military dictatorship, and to Goldcorp (then Glamis Gold) for the construction of the Marlin Mine.

In 2019, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China questioned the World Bank about a loan in Xinjiang, China, that was used to buy high-end security gear, including surveillance equipment. The bank launched an internal investigation in response to the allegation. In August 2020, U.S. lawmakers questioned the continued disbursement of the loan.

List of presidents

Main article: President of the World Bank Group

• Eugene Meyer (18 June 1946 – 18 December 1946)
• John J. McCloy (17 March 1947 – 30 June 1949)
• Eugene R. Black, Sr. (1 July 1949 – 31 December 1962)
• George D. Woods (1 January 1963 – 31 March 1968)
• Robert McNamara (1 April 1968 – 30 June 1981)
• Alden W. Clausen (1 July 1981 – 30 June 1986)
• Barber Conable (1 July 1986 – 31 August 1991)
• Lewis T. Preston (1 September 1991 – 4 May 1995) (on leave from February)
• Ernest Stern (1 February 1995 – 31 May 1995) (Interim)
• James Wolfensohn (1 June 1995 – 31 May 2005)
• Paul Wolfowitz (1 June 2005 – 30 June 2007)
• Robert Zoellick (1 July 2007 – 30 June 2012)
• Jim Yong Kim (1 July 2012 – 1 February 2019)
• Kristalina Georgieva (1 February 2019 – 8 April 2019) (Interim)
• David Malpass (9 April 2019 – 1 June 2023)
• Ajay Banga (2 June 2023 – Present)

List of chief economists

Main article: World Bank Chief Economist

• Hollis B. Chenery (1972–1982)
• Anne Osborn Krueger (1982–1986)
• Stanley Fischer (1988–1990)
• Lawrence Summers (1991–1993)
• Michael Bruno (1993–1996)
• Joseph E. Stiglitz (1997–2000)
• Nicholas Stern (2000–2003)
• François Bourguignon (2003–2007)
• Justin Yifu Lin (June 2008 – June 2012)
• Martin Ravallion - (June 2012 – October 2012)
• Kaushik Basu (October 2012 – July 2016)
• Paul Romer (August 2016 – January 2018)
• Shanta Devarajan (January 2018 – November 2018) (Acting)
• Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg (November 2018 – February 2020)
• Aart Kraay (March 2020 – June 2020) (Acting)
• Carmen Reinhart (June 2020 – June 2022)
• Indermit Gill (September 2022 – present)

List of World Bank Directors-General of Evaluation

Main article: World Bank Director-General Evaluation

• Christopher Willoughby, Successively Unit Chief, Division Chief, and Department Director for Operations Evaluation (1970–1976)
• Mervyn L. Weiner, First Director-General, Operations Evaluation (1975–1984)
• Yves Rovani, Director-General, Operations Evaluation (1986–1992)
• Robert Picciotto, Director-General, Operations Evaluation (1992–2002)
• Gregory K. Ingram, Director-General, Operations Evaluation (2002–2005)
• Vinod Thomas, Director-General, Evaluation (2005–2011)
• Caroline Heider, Director-General, Evaluation (2011–present)