Vougiouklis & Vougiouklis have proposed the replacement of Likert scales, usually used in questionnaires, with a bar. With this proposal a discrete situation is replaced by a fuzzy one. There are identified certain advantages concerning the use of the bar as compared to that of a scale during both the stages of filling-in as well as processing a questionnaire. The main advantage is the fact that it is much quicker to fill in and much easier to explain to participants. The (...) bar provides the potential for different types of processing Likert scales cannot offer. Therefore the researchers are allowed to ascertain that the given answers follow the Gauss or a parabola distribution, and they have the opportunity to ‘correct’ this tendency. In this research it is offered a possibility of choosing amongst a number of alternatives by utilizing fuzzy logic in the same way as it has already been done in industry and combining mathematical models with multivalued operations. Finally, the suggested method is applied in a Course and Teaching Evaluation process by the students of Democritus University of Thrace. (shrink)

Negative probabilities were several times proposed in the literature as a way to reconcile violation of Bell-type inequalities with the premise of local realism. It is argued that instead of using negative probabilities that have no physical meaning one can use for this purpose fuzzy probabilities that have sound and unambiguous interpretation.

It, is shown that Birkhoff –von Neumann quantum logic (i.e., an orthomodular lattice or poset) possessing an ordering set of probability measures S can be isomorphically represented as a family of fuzzy subsets of S or, equivalently, as a family of propositional functions with arguments ranging over S and belonging to the domain of infinite-valued Łukasiewicz logic. This representation endows BvN quantum logic with a new pair of partially defined binary operations, different from the order-theoretic ones: Łukasiewicz intersection and union (...) of fuzzy sets in the first case and Łukasiewicz conjunction and disjunction in the second. Relations between old and new operations are studied and it is shown that although they coincide whenever new operations are defined, they are not identical in general. The hypothesis that quantum-logical conjunction and disjunction should be represented by Łukasiewicz operations, not by order-theoretic join and meet is formulated and some of its possible consequences are considered. (shrink)

On the basis of Mackey's axiomatic approach to quantum physics or, equivalently, of a “state-event-probability” (SEVP) structure, using a quite standard “fuzzification” procedure, a set of unsharp events (or “effects”) is constructed and the corresponding “state-effect-probability” (SEFP) structure is introduced. The introduction of some suitable axioms gives rise to a partially ordered structure of quantum Brouwer-Zadeh (BZ) poset; i.e., a poset endowed with two nonusual orthocomplementation mappings, a fuzzy-like orthocomplementation, and an intuitionistic-like orthocomplementation, whose set of sharp elements is an (...) orthomodular complete lattice. As customary, by these orthocomplementations the two modal-like necessity and possibility operators are introduced, and it is shown that Ludwig's and Jauch-Piron's approaches to quantum physics are “interpreted” in complete SEFP. As a marginal result, a standard procedure to construct a lot of unsharp realizations starting from any sharp realization of a fixed observable is given, and the relationship among sharp and corresponding unsharp realizations is studied. (shrink)

It has seemed natural to model phenomena related to vagueness in terms of graded membership. However, so far no satisfactory answer has been given to the question of what graded membership is nor has any attempt been made to describe in detail a procedure for determining degrees of membership. We seek to remedy these lacunae by building on recent work on typicality and graded membership in cognitive science and combining some of the results obtained there with a version of the (...) conceptual spaces framework. (shrink)

We outline the rationale and preliminary results of using the State Context Property (SCOP) formalism, originally developed as a generalization of quantum mechanics, to describe the contextual manner in which concepts are evoked, used, and combined to generate meaning. The quantum formalism was developed to cope with problems arising in the description of (1) the measurement process, and (2) the generation of new states with new properties when particles become entangled. Similar problems arising with concepts motivated the formal treatment introduced (...) here. Concepts are viewed not as fixed representations, but entities existing in states of potentiality that require interaction with a context---a stimulus or another concept---to `collapse' to observable form as an exemplar, prototype, or other (possibly imaginary) instance. The stimulus situation plays the role of the measurement in physics, acting as context that induces a change of the cognitive state from superposition state to collapsed state. The collapsed state is more likely to consist of a conjunction of concepts for associative than analytic thought because more stimulus or concept properties take part in the collapse. We provide two contextual measures of conceptual distance---one using collapse probabilities and the other weighted properties---and show how they can be applied to conjunctions using the pet fish problem. (shrink)

This essay shows that truth cannot be divorced from human experience and an individual’s world view, his or her weltanschauung. There exist different weltanschauungen that favour alternative truths. Thus, loosely speaking, truth is determined by context. It may be socially acceptable to prefer one among the alternative truths as truly true, but this goal necessarily involves taking an ideological perspective on what is perceived and accepted as the sole truth. In other words, it is prejudiced. The truth value assigned to (...) the proposition God exists starkly illustrates this claim, but in the course of this essay I demonstrate that alternative truths are widespread and that conflicting truths can co-exist within a community even when they create dissension. A hegemonic group will assert a preference for one truth over its alternatives, but that does not eliminate the existence of alternative truths. Alternative weltanschauungen need to be managed somehow, and the recognition that alternative truths exist is one step in their management. (shrink)

Mitigation is a pragmatic-linguistic category traditionally related to the theory of verbal politeness. Previous work on this issue has shown that conversational hedging is largely conditioned by the speaker’s identity (Albelda 2012, Cestero 2011, Samper 2017), that is why a deeper understanding of attenuating phenomena requires close attention to the social context underpinning communicative interactions. This paper advances some preliminary results from the ongoing research on discursive mitigation in the Malaga-PRESEEA spoken corpus. The analysis is centered on the underlying mitigating (...) functions in the speech performance of a group of speakers with university education. Since one of our main objectives is contrastive, and previous solid research on attenuation has been carried out within the PRESEEA context, its methodological basis has been assumed (Albelda 2012, Cestero 2011, Samper 2017). Results of multifactorial logistic regression analysis from our data are partially similar to those obtained in previous studies: mitigation formulas are frequent among the well-educated speakers we have studied, especially those related to self-protection functions. Women—more than men—, and younger speakers—more than every other age-group—, tend to lead this use. (shrink)

This is the first part of a two-part paper in which I conclude the process, initiated elsewhere, of tracking objective conditions of vagueness of representation from language to pictures, from philosophy to imaging science, from vagueness to approximation, from representation to reasoning, with a focus on the application of fuzzy set theory and its challenges.

Our research aims to address the difficulties faced by small online retailers trying to provide meaningful recommendations to their customers. We hypothesize that fuzzy technology can be used to produce meaningful recommendations even in an environment with extremely sparse data. To set up our test, we found a small to mid-sized e-shop with no repetition, an online travel agency. In other words, our test subject was an e-shop operating in a crowded market that it did not dominate selling a product (...) where individual purchases were highly infrequent, often only annual. Its lack of dominance meant that it could not require pre-purchase registration, depriving it of one type of user-identifiable data. The purchase infrequency meant it could not assume cookie survival, depriving it of another source of user identifiable data. The only user identifiable data available was thus information mined using scripts or other time volatile techniques. To test our hypothesis, we first use fuzzy sets interpreted as user preference degree - preference indicators. Next we evaluated user-item data behavior using fuzzy preference indicators designed to build a rating for each new user. Next, we used content-based preference learning to expand this rating and so it could be used to infer preferences for yet unvisited items. Finally, we tuned the attribute preferences using the parametric families of t-conorms so that calculated user specific preference ordering could be extended to all available items. The quality of the solution was measured on top-k in several order sensitive metrics. To evaluate the effectiveness of our approach, we developed an off-line experimental framework that allowed us to test the results of our hypothesis against the actual data collected by the SMEnR´s web site. Based on our testing, we can conclude that a significant improvement in recommendation was achieved. (shrink)

There are several ways to extend the classic logical connectives for fuzzy truth degrees in such a way that their behavior for the values 0 and 1 work exactly as in the classical one. For each fuzzy semantics the formulas which are always true can change. But these sets are always a subset of the classical tautologies. The fuzzy semantics whose tautologies are identical to the classical tautologies are called here by “classic-like fuzzy semantics”. In this paper we will prove (...) that there are uncountable classes of classic-like fuzzy semantics and we will provide a characterization of them, i.e. we will determine a necessary and sufficient condition for a fuzzy semantic be classic-like. We also define a generic consequence semantic relation for fuzzy semantics and we will prove that for the classic-like fuzzy semantics, this notion coincides with the classical one. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce the notions of -fuzzy filters and -fuzzy Boolean filters in R0-algebras and investigate some of their related properties. Some characterization theorems of these generalized fuzzy filters are derived. In particular, we prove that a fuzzy set in R0-algebras is an -fuzzy Boolean filter if and only if it is an -fuzzy implicative filter. Finally, we consider the concepts of implication-based fuzzy Boolean filters of R0-algebras.

IDSSs should contribute to the enhancement of human performance, but their effectiveness can be guaranteed only in the case of certain decision types. The issues explored in this paper show that they can help to overcome some human limitations, especially in complex data and information processes, in uncertainty management, and in coherent reasoning. Integrating human and machine expertise is clearly beneficial, nevertheless with the aim of building intelligent solutions we should not ignore the role of human factors and the problems (...) deriving from the integration of knowledge of multiple experts. The risk is that the systems will become clumsy and vulnerable to embarrassing failures.The paper explores the opportunities for exploitation of IDSSs to provide intelligent advice, intelligent analysis and intelligent evaluation. Some suggestions for research have been proposed looking at the ideas put forward in a recent research project dealing with the development of a system supporting local government authorities on environmental impact assessment procedure. (shrink)

In the aftermath of a normalized Foucaultian world with an all encompassing web of biopower, one remaining hope is to cultivate nimbleness. Nimbleness is an embodied aesthetic sensitivity to the material presence. Cultivating nimbleness is a particular style of cultivation; it is to willfully gather together one’s self in the wake of a formative force far richer than the derivative web of living power relationships of human embeddness within a horizon of social, economical, political and historical subjectivating power relations; which (...) are chronicled and labeled by Michel Foucault as the normalizing practices of biopower. In other words to have freedom, one must start by rejecting the categories and labels normally internalized in order to relearn to learn from the material presence. Such a style of cultivation is a means of resisting normalizing power relations which co-opt cultivating practices to engross their own dominance which has had the by-product of an impotence to negate the gross material injustices present. This normalizing style of cultivation is a prevalent, corrupted, semblance which denies the importance of beauty for that of efficiency, rejects non-human purposiveness, and limits its measure of ethics to short term economical pragmatism. The thesis acknowledges that something is awry with the world and that giving care to beauty might help. The aim is to examine the event of Beauty as depicted by the philosopher Immanuel Kant and to apply this characterization to elective architectural spaces such that it may motivate individuals to cultivate their own nimbleness in relation to a formative force of nature. However given the revealed need for sensitivity to the particular material presence, the thesis can not be a rule book or catalog for beautiful design. Rather it is a rehabilitation for architects who are already heterospatially curious, with the desired outcome of architects cultivating their own nimbleness to reflectively judge as a ground up, multi-node, rhizomatic means of resistance to normalizing power practices as manifest in bad architecture. (shrink)

This paper investigates the influence that social ties can have on behavior. After defining the concept of social ties that we consider, we introduce an original model of social ties. The impact of such ties on social preferences is studied in a coordination game with outside option. We provide a detailed game theoretical analysis of this game while considering various types of players, i.e., self-interest maximizing, inequity averse, and fair agents. In addition to these approaches that require strategic reasoning in (...) order to reach some equilibrium, we also present an alternative hypothesis that relies on the concept of team reasoning. After having discussed the differences between the latter and our model of social ties, we show how an experiment can be designed so as to discriminate among the models presented in the paper. (shrink)

Philosophers, linguists and others interested in problems concerning natural language frequently employ tools from logic and model theory. The question arises as to the proper interpretation of the formal methods employed—of the relationship between, on the one hand, the formal languages and their set-theoretic models and, on the other hand, the objects of ultimate interest: natural language and the meanings and truth conditions of its constituent words, phrases and sentences. Two familiar answers to this question are descriptivism and instrumentalism. More (...) recently, a third answer has been proposed: the logic as modelling view. This paper seeks to clarify and assess this view of logic. The conclusion is that we can successfully adopt the modelling perspective on a given piece of logical machinery only if we have to hand some other machinery to which we take the descriptive attitude. Thus, logic as modelling is not a full-fledged alternative to the descriptive view— for it cannot stand alone: it can at best be an addition to the descriptive perspective. The paper first presents the argument in a general, abstract form, before working through a detailed case study. The case examined is the one with respect to which the logic as modelling view has been developed in the greatest detail in the literature: the case of fuzzy model theory as an account of vagueness in natural language. (shrink)

Combating the identity problem is crucial and urgent as false identity has become a common denominator of many serious crimes, including mafia trafficking and terrorism. Without correct identification, it is very difficult for law enforcement authority to intervene, or even trace terrorists’ activities. Amongst several identity attributes, personal names are commonly, and effortlessly, falsified or aliased by most criminals. Typical approaches to detecting the use of false identity rely on the similarity measure of textual and other content-based characteristics, which are (...) usually not applicable in the case of highly deceptive, erroneous and unknown descriptions. This barrier can be overcome through analysis of link information displayed by the individual in communication behaviours, financial interactions and social networks. In particular, this paper presents a novel link-based approach that improves existing techniques by integrating multiple link properties in the process of similarity evaluation. It is utilised in a hybrid model that proficiently combines both text-based and link-based measures of examined names to refine the justification of their similarity. This approach is experimentally evaluated against other link-based and text-based techniques, over a terrorist-related dataset, with further generalization to a similar problem occurring in publication databases. The empirical study demonstrates the great potential of this work towards developing an effective identity verification system. (shrink)

The degree to which abundances are evenly divided among the species of a given community is a basic property of any biological community. Several evenness indices have thus far been proposed in ecological literature. However, despite their vast potential applicability in ecological research, none seems to be generally preferred. In this paper, I first summarize the basic requirements that evenness measures should meet to adequately behave in ecological studies. Then, I discuss the major drawbacks of these requirements and propose an (...) alternative family of measures that are based on the notion of specificity used in fuzzy set theory for measuring the uncertainty associated with a fuzzy set. (shrink)

A number of reasons, both historical and philosophical, has caused Technology and Human Sciences to be perceived as disjoint domains. Contrary to this claim, we propose as a thesis that there exists a strong methodological affinity between these apparently disconnected fields of knowledge. Our view is further corroborated by the emergence, in the setting of Information Sciences of new scientific concepts and tools such as fuzziness. Comparing the ways in which both technology and literature offer a “model of reality” we (...) shall see that their approach is mainly descriptive, in opposition to the Hard Science’s approach that is markedly Galileian and proceeds by making bold hypotheses, not necessarily linked to the surface description of reality. Moreover, we will discuss the fact that, surprisingly, fuzzy logic can be applied in a very similar way in both Technology and Human Sciences – while its eventual embodiment in Hard Sciences is of a very different nature. (shrink)

In this research article, we presented the idea of intuitionistic fuzzy incidence graphs along with their certain properties. The number of operations including Cartesian product, composition, tensor product, and normal product in an IFIGs are also investigated. The method to compute the degree of IFIGs obtained by CP, composition, tensor product, and the normal product is discussed. Some important theorems to calculate the degree of the vertices of IFIGs acquired by CP, composition, tensor product, and normal product are elaborated. An (...) application of CP and composition of two IFIGs in the textile industry to find the best combinations of departments expressing the highest percentage of progress and the lowest percentage of nonprogress is provided. A comparative analysis of our study with the existing study is discussed. Our study will be beneficial to comprehend and understand the further characteristics of IFIGs in detail. Another advantage of our study is that it will be helpful to find the maximum percentage of progress and minimum percentage of nonprogress in different departments of universities, garment factories, and hospitals. (shrink)

This paper explores relationships between many-valued logic and fuzzy topology from the viewpoint of duality theory. We first show a fuzzy topological duality for the algebras of Łukasiewicz n -valued logic with truth constants, which generalizes Stone duality for Boolean algebras to the n -valued case via fuzzy topology. Then, based on this duality, we show a fuzzy topological duality for the algebras of modal Łukasiewicz n -valued logic with truth constants, which generalizes Jónsson-Tarski duality for modal algebras to the (...) n -valued case via fuzzy topology. We emphasize that fuzzy topological spaces naturally arise as spectrums of algebras of many-valued logics. (shrink)

In this paper we propose a multi-criteria model based on the fuzzy preferences approach which can be implemented in the prenegotiation phase to evaluate the negotiations packages. The applicability of some multi-criteria ranking methods were discussed for building a scoring function for negotiation packages. The first one is Simple Additive Weighting technique which determines the sum of the partial satisfactions from each negotiation issue and aggregate them using the issue weights. The other one is Distance Based Methods, with its extension (...) based on the distances to ideal or anti-ideal package, i.e. the TOPSIS procedure. In our approach the negotiator's preferences over the issues are represented by fuzzy membership functions and next a selected multi-criteria decision making method is adopted to determine the global rating of each package. The membership functions are used here as the equivalents of utility functions spread over the negotiation issues, which let us compare different type of data. One of the key advantages of the approach proposed is its usefulness for building a general scoring function in the ill-structured negotiation problem, namely the situation in which the problem itself as well as the negotiators preferences cannot be precisely defined, the available information is uncertain, subjective and vague. Secondly, all proposed variants of scoring functions produce consistent rankings, even though the new packages are added and do not result in rank reversal. (shrink)

What is Computational Intelligence (CI) and what are its relations with Artificial Intelligence (AI)? A brief survey of the scope of CI journals and books with ``computational intelligence'' in their title shows that at present it is an umbrella for three core technologies (neural, fuzzy and evolutionary), their applications, and selected fashionable pattern recognition methods. At present CI has no comprehensive foundations and is more a bag of tricks than a solid branch of science. The change of focus from methods (...) to challenging problems is advocated, with CI defined as a part of computer and engineering sciences devoted to solution of non-algoritmizable problems. In this view AI is a part of CI focused on problems related to higher cognitive functions, while the rest of the CI community works on problems related to perception and control, or lower cognitive functions. Grand challenges on both sides of this spectrum are addressed. (shrink)

The multiobjective optimization on the basis of ratio analysis method captures diverse features such as the criteria and alternatives of appraising a multiple criteria decision-making problem. At the same time, the multiple criteria problem includes a set of decision makers with diverse expertise and preferences. In fact, the literature lists numerous approaches to aid in this problematic task of choosing the best alternative. Nevertheless, in the MCDM field, there is a challenge regarding intangible information which is commonly involved in multiple (...) criteria decision-making problem; hence, it is substantial in order to advance beyond the research related to this field. Thus, the objective of this paper is to present a fused method between multiobjective optimization on the basis of ratio analysis and Pythagorean fuzzy sets for the choice of an alternative. Besides, multiobjective optimization on the basis of ratio analysis is utilized to choose the best alternatives. Finally, two decision-making problems are applied to illustrate the feasibility and practicality of the proposed method. (shrink)

We show that it is possible to base fuzzy control on fuzzy logic programming. Indeed, we observe that the class of fuzzy Herbrand interpretations gives a semantics for fuzzy programs and we show that the fuzzy function associated with a fuzzy system of IF-THEN rules is the fuzzy Herbrand interpretation associated with a suitable fuzzy program.

We explore the social context of mathematical knowledge: Even though, the community of mathematicians may look homogeneous from the outside, it is actually structured into various sub-communities that differ in preferred notations, the choice of basic assumptions, or e.g. in the choice of motivating examples. We contend that we cannot manage mathematical knowledge for human recipients if we do not take these factors into account. As a basis for a future extension of MKM systems, we analyze the social context of (...) information in terms of Communities of Practice (CoP; a concept from learning theory) and present a concrete extensional model for CoPs in mathematics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It is well-known that Artificial Intelligence requires Logic. But its Classical version shows too many insufficiencies. So, it is very necessary to introduce more sophisticated tools, as may be Fuzzy Logic, Modal Logic, Non-Monotonic Logic, and so on. When you are searching the possible precedent of such new ideas, we may found that they are not totally new, because some ancient thinkers have suggested many centuries ago similar concepts, certainly without adequate mathematical formulation, but in the same line: against (...) the dogmatism and the dualistic vision of the world: absolutely true vs. absolutely false, black vs. white, good or bad by nature, 0 vs.1, etc. We attempt to analyze here some of these greatly unexplored, and very interesting early origins. (shrink)

In this paper a novel term is introduced to cover for a parameter already investigated in a number of experiments conducted in the Democritus University, without, yet, being identified with a specific name. The aim of all those studies was to investigate the learning strategies frequency of use in correlation with the confidence of the subjects as to whether and to what extent such strategies enhance their language learning. In the specific experiment forty eight students from the first three grades (...) in a State Secondary school, in Thrace, Greece, were recruited through convenience sampling, twenty four Greek native speakers and twenty four Turkish native speakers with Greek as their second language. There were sixteen learners out of each grade, eight of low and eight of high level in English, four male, four female, forty eight learners altogether, twenty four male and twenty four female students. The students had to indicate not only the level of frequency of strategy use but also their confidence in those strategies’ effectiveness; this is the introduced term Confidence Hypothesis about Efficiency of Specific Strategies. Furthermore, the students used the Vougiouklis & Vougiouklis bar instead of the widely used Likert scale for the filling in of the questionnaires minimizing time and effort. The questionnaire used was the translated in Greek and validated SILL questionnaire with 50 items. Each of the 50 questions was followed by two bars: on the first bar the students had to specify the frequency of use of each strategy and on the second their confidence about each strategy’s effectiveness. (shrink)