The aim of this study is to demonstrate the validity of the thesis that in Indonesia one can find institutions that characterize two power-sharing models which are considered opposites of one another in political theory – centripetalism and consociationalism. In consequence, the Indonesian power-sharing system should be viewed as a hybrid, or mixed, system, and not a typically centripetal system as is usually the case in the literature. At the beginning of this article, a short analysis (...) of Indonesia’s political situation is given for the purpose of defining the factors which determined the introduction of inter-segmental power-sharing arrangements in that country. This is followed by a description of the specificity of consociationalism and centripetalism. The article goes on to discuss specific institutions of both power-sharing models that exist in Indonesia and ends with some concluding remarks on the thesis advanced at the outset. The article has been published in "Polish Political Science Yearbook" 2017, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 168–185. For more on combining institutions of different models of power-sharing see: Krzysztof Trzcinski, Hybrid Power Sharing: On How to Stabilize the Political Situation in Multi-Segmental Societies, "Politeja" 2018, vol. 56, no. 5, pp. 86-107. (shrink)

This fifth volume on Advances and Applications of DSmT for Information Fusion collects theoretical and applied contributions of researchers working in different fields of applications and in mathematics, and is available in open-access. The collected contributions of this volume have either been published or presented after disseminating the fourth volume in 2015 in international conferences, seminars, workshops and journals, or they are new. The contributions of each part of this volume are chronologically ordered. First Part of this book presents some (...) theoretical advances on DSmT, dealing mainly with modified Proportional Conflict Redistribution Rules (PCR) of combination with degree of intersection, coarsening techniques, interval calculus for PCR thanks to set inversion via interval analysis (SIVIA), rough set classifiers, canonical decomposition of dichotomous belief functions, fast PCR fusion, fast inter-criteria analysis with PCR, and improved PCR5 and PCR6 rules preserving the (quasi-)neutrality of (quasi-)vacuous belief assignment in the fusion of sources of evidence with their Matlab codes. Because more applications of DSmT have emerged in the past years since the apparition of the fourth book of DSmT in 2015, the second part of this volume is about selected applications of DSmT mainly in building change detection, object recognition, quality of data association in tracking, perception in robotics, risk assessment for torrent protection and multi-criteria decision-making, multi-modal image fusion, coarsening techniques, recommender system, levee characterization and assessment, human heading perception, trust assessment, robotics, biometrics, failure detection, GPS systems, inter-criteria analysis, group decision, human activity recognition, storm prediction, data association for autonomous vehicles, identification of maritime vessels, fusion of support vector machines (SVM), Silx-Furtif RUST code library for information fusion including PCR rules, and network for ship classification. Finally, the third part presents interesting contributions related to belief functions in general published or presented along the years since 2015. These contributions are related with decision-making under uncertainty, belief approximations, probability transformations, new distances between belief functions, non-classical multi-criteria decision-making problems with belief functions, generalization of Bayes theorem, image processing, data association, entropy and cross-entropy measures, fuzzy evidence numbers, negator of belief mass, human activity recognition, information fusion for breast cancer therapy, imbalanced data classification, and hybrid techniques mixing deep learning with belief functions as well. (shrink)

At the beginning of 2020, the world was experiencing the Covid-19 pandemic, and Indonesia was no exception. The occurrence of this affects the learning system in Indonesia, the learning system that was originally face-to-face was forced to online form, in this case the teachers are required to provide a creative, efficient and optimal learning system for students. So the purpose of this study is to find out the difference in the average learning result of elementary school students (...) during the pandemic. The method used in this study is quantitative with a posttest-only control group design. The population in this study were grade 4 elementary school students in Majalengka district, Indonesia. There were 64 samples and was taken by purposive sampling. The results of this study are that there are differences in the average student learning results where students who study with the hybrid learning system are higher than the face-to-face learning system. The hybrid learning system is very reliable in the 4.0 era as well as learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, for the record, it is necessary to look at the facilities and infrastructure considering that this system relies on technology, it is necessary to understand and be able to control the learning media for both teachers and students so that learning outcomes can be optimal and minimize the occurrence of obstacles. The present study revealed the implementation of 21st century learning. (shrink)

In 2001 the Indonesian government agreed to the introduction in the Indonesian Papua of regional, consociational elements of power-sharing, despite the fact that the dominant model of this system in Indonesia is centripetalism. The so-called special autonomy for the Indonesian Papua has never been fully implemented, however. The article seeks to test the thesis that the Indonesian authorities' institution of consociational arrangements for Papua, and their subsequent failure to fully implement those arrangements, were, in fact, tactical moves serving to (...) reduce the threat arising from growing pro-independence aspirations among the Papuans and to firmly attach Papuan territory to Indonesia. This article has been published in "Hemispheres" 2016, Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 5-20. (shrink)

Abstract— In parallel to developing technology, demand for more energy makes us seek new energy sources. Wind and solar energy are the most popular ones owing to their abundance, ease of availability and convertibility to electric energy. This work covers realization of a hybrid renewable energy system. The scheme involves conversion of solar power and wind power into usable electrical energy using solar panel and by designing a wind turbine with appropriate calculations and specifications. Battery in this (...) class='Hi'>system is charged by both solar and wind power, the DC output is then converted to AC using an inverter and fed to the load. The idea of water conservation through rain water collection and storage with the use of solar panel is also implemented. The main aim of the design is to create a system suitable to provide continuous power by utilization of non-conventional energy resources and making use of the additional advantage of the solar panel in the conservation of water. Power resources and load in the system are monitored and controlled in real time. (shrink)

Holobionts are symbiotic assemblages composed by a macrobe host plus its symbiotic microbiota. In recent years, the ontological status of holobionts has created a great amount of controversy among philosophers and biologists: are holobionts biological individuals or are they rather ecological communities of independent individuals that interact together? Chiu and Eberl have recently developed an eco-immunity account of the holobiont wherein holobionts are neither biological individuals nor ecological communities, but hybrids between a host and its microbiota. According to their account, (...) the microbiota is not a proper part of the holobiont. Yet, it should be regarded as a set of scaffolds that support the individuality of the host. In this paper, we approach Chiu and Eberl’s account from a metaphysical perspective and argue that, contrary to what the authors claim, the eco-immunity account entails that the microorganisms that compose the host’s microbiota are proper parts of the holobiont. Second, we argue that by claiming that holobionts are hybrids, and therefore, not biological individuals, the authors seem to be assuming a controversial position about the ontology of hybrids, which are conventionally characterized as a type of biological individual. In doing so, our paper aligns with the contemporary tendency to incorporate metaphysical resources to shed light on current biological debates and builds on that to provide additional support to the consideration of holobionts as biological individuals from an eco-immunity perspective. (shrink)

With the increasing degrees A.I.s and machines are applied across different social contexts, the need for implementing ethics in A.I.s is pressing. In this paper, we argue for a pluralist hybrid model for the implementation of moral A.I.s. We first survey current approaches to moral A.I.s and their inherent limitations. Then we propose the pluralist hybrid approach and show how these limitations of moral A.I.s can be partly alleviated by the pluralist hybrid approach. The core ethical decision-making (...) capacity of an A.I. based on the pluralist hybrid approach consists of two systems. The first is a deterministic algorithm system that incorporates different moral rules for making explicit moral decisions. The second is a machine learning system that calculates the value of the variables required by the application of moral principles. The pluralist hybrid system is better than the existing proposals as (i) it better addresses the moral disagreement problem of the top-down approach by including different moral principles, while (ii) it reduces the opacity of ethical decision-making compared with a bottom-up system by implementing explicit moral principles for moral decision making. (shrink)

I accept that McTaggart's A-series and B-series are not inter-reducible and that both are needed for a complete temporal description of a physical system. I consider the Wigner's Friend thought experiment. The A-series are associated with each (quantum) system, and relativity is associated with the B-series. I consider temporal evolution through this 'hybrid' time. We may define the rate of temporal flow as 1 B-series second per A-series second.

There are various ways of reducing conflicts and of stabilizing the political situation in states where society is made up of many different ethnic groups and religious communities, and where relations between these segments – or between them and the central government – are tense. A particularly important way is the establishment in those states of a political system based on power-sharing (PS), which allows members of various ethnic and religious segments to take part in the exercise of power. (...) The literature on the subject usually discusses two models of PS: consociationalism and centripetalism. A third model is encountered in practice, however, that of hybrid power-sharing (HPS), which combines the institutions of the first two. The main objective of this article is to explain the nature and origins of HPS. (shrink)

Funds and positions in philosophy should be awarded through systems that are reliable, objective, and efficient. One question usually taken to be relevant is how many publications people have in a group of well-respected journals. In the context of significant competition for jobs and funding, however, relying on quantity of publications creates a serious downside: the oft-lamented demand that we publish or perish. This article offers a systematic review of the problems involved in contemporary academic philosophy, and argues that the (...) resulting situation is bad not just for individual philosophers but also for philosophy itself: we are not working as a discipline to as high a standard as we might. The article then suggests some potential solutions, including some more detailed considerations around what seems a particularly promising option: a professional code of conduct for philosophers. (shrink)

The contribution of the data paper publishing paradigm to the knowledge generation and validation processes is becoming substantial and pivotal. In this paper, through the information-processing perspective of Mindsponge Theory, we discuss how the data article publishing system serves as a filtering mechanism for quality control of the increasingly chaotic datasphere. The overemphasis on machine-actionality and technical standards presents some shortcomings and limitations of the data article publishing system, such as the lack of consideration of (...) humanistic values, radical race for big data, and inadequate use of expertise in data evaluation. Without addressing the shortcomings and limitations, the reusability of data will be hindered, and scientific investment to facilitate data sharing will be wasted. Thus, we suggest that the current data paper publishing paradigm needs to be updated with a new philosophy of data. (shrink)

The emerging field of synthetic biology aims to engineer novel biological entities. The envisioned future bio-based economy builds largely on “cell factories”: organisms that have been metabolically engineered to sustainably produce substances for human ends. In this paper, we argue that synthetic biology’s goal of creating efficient production vessels for industrial applications implies a set of ontological assumptions according to which living organisms are machines. Traditionally, a machine is understood as a technological, isolated and controllable production unit consisting of parts. (...) But modified organisms, or hybrids, require us to think beyond the machine paradigm and its associated dichotomies between artificial and natural, organisms and artefacts. We ask: How may we conceptualise hybrids beyond limiting ontological categories? Our main claim is that the hybrids created by synthetic biology should be considered not as machines but as metabolic systems. We shall show how the philosophical account of metabolism can inform an ontology of hybrids that moves beyond what we call the “machine ontology”, considering that metabolism enables thinking beyond the dominant dichotomies and allows us to understand and design lifeforms in a bio-based economy. Thus, the aim of this paper is twofold: first, to develop the philosophical ontology of hybrids, and second, to move synthetic biology beyond the problematically limiting view of hybrids. (shrink)

The paper develops two related thought experiments exploring variations on an ‘animat’ theme. Animats are hybrid devices with both artificial and biological components. Traditionally, ‘components’ have been construed in concrete terms, as physical parts or constituent material structures. Many fascinating issues arise within this context of hybrid physical organization. However, within the context of functional/computational theories of mentality, demarcations based purely on material structure are unduly narrow. It is abstract functional structure which does the key work in characterizing (...) the respective ‘components’ of thinking systems, while the ‘stuff’ of material implementation is of secondary importance. Thus the paper extends the received animat paradigm, and investigates some intriguing consequences of expanding the conception of bio-machine hybrids to include abstract functional and semantic structure. In particular, the thought experiments consider cases of mind-machine merger where there is no physical Brain-Machine Interface: indeed, the material human body and brain have been removed from the picture altogether. The first experiment illustrates some intrinsic theoretical difficulties in attempting to replicate the human mind in an alternative material medium, while the second reveals some deep conceptual problems in attempting to create a form of truly Artificial General Intelligence. (shrink)

This paper advances a novel hybrid theory addressing a fundamental puzzle in legal philosophy: how legal statements can simultaneously have both cognitive and practical features. Drawing on contemporary developments in metaethics and philosophy of language, we argue that legal statements express both beliefs and desire-like attitudes. My analysis yields three key findings. First, I demonstrate that within any given legal system, the descriptive content of legal statements remains invariant across different contexts of use and assessment – a feature (...) that explains persistent patterns of legal disagreement, retraction and attribution of responsibility for content. Second, I show that the desire-like states expressed by legal statements are uniformly directed at the general property picked out by “It is the law that…” rather than at particular legal norms, regardless of the speaker – thereby preserving their inference-licensing property and evidential function. Third, I identify generalized conversational implicature as the mechanism through which legal statements convey desire-like states explaining their distinctive practical features. This theoretical framework offers a novel solution to the puzzle of legal motivation: rather than positing a necessary conceptual link between legal judgment and motivation, it explains their characteristic connection through the general action-guiding purpose of legal discourse and Gricean conversational principles. (shrink)

When people combine concepts these are often characterised as “hybrid”, “impossible”, or “humorous”. However, when simply considering them in terms of extensional logic, the novel concepts understood as a conjunctive concept will often lack meaning having an empty extension (consider “a tooth that is a chair”, “a pet flower”, etc.). Still, people use different strategies to produce new non-empty concepts: additive or integrative combination of features, alignment of features, instantiation, etc. All these strategies involve the ability to deal with (...) conflicting attributes and the creation of new (combinations of) properties. We here consider in particular the case where a Head concept has superior ‘asymmetric’ control over steering the resulting concept combination (or hybridisation) with a Modifier concept. Specifically, we propose a dialogical approach to concept combination and discuss an implementation based on axiom weakening, which models the cognitive and logical mechanics of this asymmetric form of hybridisation. (shrink)

DOI: 10.1080/00031305.2018.1564697 When the editors of Basic and Applied Social Psychology effectively banned the use of null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) from articles published in their journal, it set off a fire-storm of discussions both supporting the decision and defending the utility of NHST in scientific research. At the heart of NHST is the p-value which is the probability of obtaining an effect equal to or more extreme than the one observed in the sample data, given the null hypothesis and (...) other model assumptions. Although this is conceptually different from the probability of the null hypothesis being true, given the sample, p-values nonetheless can provide evidential information, toward making an inference about a parameter. Applying a 10,000-case simulation described in this article, the authors found that p-values’ inferential signals to either reject or not reject a null hypothesis about the mean (α = 0.05) were consistent for almost 70% of the cases with the parameter’s true location for the sampled-from population. Success increases if a hybrid decision criterion, minimum effect size plus p-value (MESP), is used. Here, rejecting the null also requires the difference of the observed statistic from the exact null to be meaningfully large or practically significant, in the researcher’s judgment and experience. The simulation compares performances of several methods: from p-value and/or effect size-based, to confidence-interval based, under various conditions of true location of the mean, test power, and comparative sizes of the meaningful distance and population variability. For any inference procedure that outputs a binary indicator, like flagging whether a p-value is significant, the output of one single experiment is not sufficient evidence for a definitive conclusion. Yet, if a tool like MESP generates a relatively reliable signal and is used knowledgeably as part of a research process, it can provide useful information. (shrink)

What sort of connection is there between business ethics and philosophy? The answer given here: a weak one, but it may be getting stronger. Comparatively few business ethics articles are structurally dependent on mainstream academic philosophy or on such sub-specialities thereof as normative ethics, moral theory, and social and political philosophy. Examining articles recently published in the Journal of Business Ethics that declare some dependence, the author finds that such declarations often constitute only a pro forma gesture which could be (...) omitted without detriment to the paper's content and conclusions. He also finds, however, that some authors do draw on solid philosophical work in ways that are establishing ever more meaningful interconnections between business ethics and academic philosophy. These cross-disciplinary studies, he concludes, are ground-breaking and invite creative imitation. (shrink)

In this article, the author analyzes the term "power-sharing" in the context of power exercised within a state. He first examines the term in the very general sense, in which it can be applied to all types and dimensions of sharing of power between various groups and institutional entities. Second, the author examines the meaning of the term in the narrow sense, that is, the phenomenon of systemic sharing of power by groups (segments) whose membership is based on ascribed criteria (...) such as common ancestors, relatives, or racial background, and/or cultural ones such as a common language, religion, or celebrations. The basic segmental units in this sense are nations (understood in the sociological sense), ethnic groups, or religious and denominational communities that form part of divided societies. Third, the article shows the differences between the principal models (types) of power-sharing in the narrow sense: consociationalism, centripetalism, and hybrid power-sharing. (shrink)

The belief norm of academic publishing states that researchers should believe certain claims they publish. The purpose of this paper is to defend the belief norm of academic publishing. In its defense, the advantages and disadvantages of the belief norm are evaluated for academic research and for the publication system. It is concluded that while the norm does not come without costs, academic research systemically benefits from the belief norm and that it should be counted among those (...) that sustain the practice of academic publishing. (shrink)

Sentences about logic are often used to show that certain embedding expressions, including attitude verbs, conditionals, and epistemic modals, are hyperintensional. Yet it not clear how to regiment “logic talk” in the object language so that it can be compositionally embedded under such expressions. This paper does two things. First, it argues against a standard account of logic talk, viz., the impossible worlds semantics. It is shown that this semantics does not easily extend to a language with propositional quantifiers, which (...) are necessary for regimenting some logic talk. Second, it develops an alternative framework based on logical expressivism, which explains logic talk using shifting conventions. When combined with the standard S5π+ semantics for propositional quantifiers, this framework results in a well-behaved system that does not face the problems of the impossible worlds semantics. It can also be naturally extended with hybrid operators to regiment a broader range of logic talk, e.g., claims about what laws hold according to other logics. The resulting system, called hyperlogic, is therefore a better framework for modeling logic talk than previous accounts. (shrink)

A newborn baby is an infant within the first 28 days of birth. Diagnosis and treatment of infant diseases require specialized medical resources and expert knowledge. However, there is a shortage of such professionals globally, particularly in low-income countries. To address this challenge, a knowledge-based system was designed to aid in the diagnosis and treatment of neonatal diseases. The system utilizes both machine learning and health expert knowledge, and a hybrid data mining process model was used to (...) extract knowledge from a clinical dataset. The PART algorithm achieved the highest performance result with 98.06% accuracy under 10-fold cross-validation, and the generated rules were used to develop the knowledge-based system. The system achieved 90.9% accuracy in system performance testing and 89.2% in user acceptance testing, and is intended to serve as an assistant tool for healthcare experts. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that the artificial components of hybrid bionic systems do not play a direct explanatory role, i.e., in simulative terms, in the overall context of the systems in which they are embedded in. More precisely, I claim that the internal procedures determining the output of such artificial devices, replacing biological tissues and connected to other biological tissues, cannot be used to directly explain the corresponding mechanisms of the biological component(s) they substitute (and therefore cannot be (...) used to explain the local mechanisms determining an overall biological or cognitive function replicated by such bionic models). I ground this analysis on the use of the Minimal Cognitive Grid (MCG), a novel framework proposed in Lieto (Cognitive design for artificial minds, 2021) to rank the epistemological and explanatory status of biologically and cognitively inspired artificial systems. Despite the lack of such a direct mechanistic explanation from the artificial component, however, I also argue that the hybrid bionic systems can have an indirect explanatory role similar to the one played by some AI systems built by using an overall structural design approach (but including the partial adoption of functional components). In particular, the artificial replacement of part(s) of a biological system can provide i) a local functional account of that part(s) in the context of the overall functioning of the hybrid biological–artificial system and ii) global insights about the structural mechanisms of the biological elements connected to such artificial devices. (shrink)

Background. Small and medium enterprises play an important role in economies, including Vietnam’s. The need for information systems is now necessary in every enterprise. Most of published studies on information systems have been conducted in developed countries, with little in developing or less developed countries. From those few, there was no one focusing in Vietnam. Aims. This thesis examines the experiences of seven Vietnamese small and medium enterprises when they adopted information systems. The authors investigated the reasons for, the process (...) of, and the factors influencing information system adoption. Methods. The qualitative research method was used to answer research questions. Semi-structured interviews were used as the data collection tool to explore participants’ experiences. Content analysis of the interview transcripts was used to extract answers given during the semi-structured interviews and to identify new themes that emerged from the data. The participants’ experiences were compared to what has been reported in the existing literature. Results. The analysis resulted in important findings. It confirmed some reasons and factors found in the literature concerning information system adoption in Vietnamese small and medium enterprises. Despite some similarities, the authors found some differences, such as government role, concerning the information system adoption. (shrink)

The Internet of Things (IoT) connects schemes, programs, data management, and operations, and as they continuously assist in the corporation, they may be a fresh entryway for cyber-attacks. Presently, illegal downloading and virus attacks pose significant threats to IoT security. These risks may acquire confidential material, causing reputational and financial harm. In this paper hybrid optimization mechanism and deep learning,a frame is used to detect the attack prevention in IoT. To develop a cybersecurity warning system in a huge (...) data set, the cybersecurity warning systems index system is first constructed, then the index factors are picked and measured, and finally, the situation evaluation is done.Numerous bio-inspired techniques were used to enhance the productivity of an IDS by lowering the data dimensionality and deleting unnecessary and noisy input. The Grey Wolf Optimization algorithm (GWO) is a developed bio-inspired algorithm that improves the efficacy of the IDS in detecting both regular and abnormal congestion in the network. The smart initialization step integrates the different pre-processing strategies to make sure that informative features are incorporated in the early development stages, has been improved. Researchers pick multi-source material in a big data environment for the identification and verification of index components and present a parallel reduction approach based on the classification significance matrix to decrease data underlying data characteristics. For the simulation of this situation, grey wolf optimization and whale optimization were combined to detect the attack prevention and the deep learning approach was presented. Utilizing system software plagiarism, the TensorFlow deep neural network is intended to classify stolen software. To reduce the noise from the signal and to zoom the significance of each word in the perspective of open-source plagiarism, the tokenization and weighting feature approaches are utilized. Malware specimens have been collected from the Mailing database for testing purposes. The experimental findings show that the suggested technique for measuring cyber security hazards in IoT has superior classification results to existing methods. Hence to detect the attack prevention in IoT process Whale with Grey wolf optimization (WGWO) and deep convolution network is used. (shrink)

Academic publishing refers to the action taken by individuals or organisations to make scholarly materials publicly available. The research process is not complete and relevant until research results are made available to the public through publication (Owan et al., 2021). The essence of any scholarly venture is to create knowledge or modify existing knowledge. Knowledge cannot be said to have been created if the scholarly output is stored on a personal computer accessible only to the author(s). Through publication, other (...) scholars or the general public become aware of the finished product of a scholarly venture. Scientific publications are the lifeblood of science because they serve as fertilisers for other scientists to think (Clapham, 2005). New hypotheses are generated, rebutted, or verified by publishing new information in the scientific community. In academic settings, the number of publications a person has to their name is commonly used as a proxy for their level of career success. (shrink)

The main purpose of this paper is not to create another detailed lexical definition of light in accordance to the principles of theory, but rather to examine the methodology as well as the way of defining the light as a lexical unit by scholars (Dobaczewski 1999a, 1999b, 2001a, 2001b; Dyszak 1999a, 1999b). I argue that a semantic deposit (SD) domain of lexical unit light could be understood only if supplemented with semantic units that possess a high-abstractive meaning value organized in (...) Semantic Net structure (Semantic Net hereinafter referred to as SN). Therefore, lexical unit light cannot be defined as a property of semantic primitives’ faculty. (shrink)

PARC is an "appended numeral" system of natural deduction that I learned as an undergraduate and have taught for many years. Despite its considerable pedagogical strengths, PARC appears to have never been published. The system features explicit "tracking" of premises and assumptions throughout a derivation, the collapsing of indirect proofs into conditional proofs, and a very simple set of quantificational rules without the long list of exceptions that bedevil students learning existential instantiation and universal generalization. The system (...) can be used with any Copi-style set of inference rules, so it is quite adaptable to many mainstream symbolic logic textbooks. Consequently, PARC may be especially attractive to logic teachers who find Jaskowski/Gentzen-style introduction/elimination rules to be far less "natural" than Copi-style rules. The PARC system is also keyboard-friendly in comparison to the widely adopted Jaskowski-style graphical subproof system of natural deduction, viz., Fitch diagrams and Copi "bent arrow" diagrams. (shrink)

Peer review process helps in evaluating and validating of research that is published in the journals. U.S. Office of Research Integrity reported that data fraudulence was found to be involved in 94% cases of misconduct from 228 identified articles between 1994–2012. If fraud in published article are significantly as high as reported, the question arise in mind, were these articles peer reviewed? Another report said that the reviewers failed to detect 16 cases of fabricated article of Jan Hendrick Schon. Superficial (...) peer reviewing process does not reveals suspicion of misconduct. Lack of knowledge of systemic review process not only demolish the academic integrity in publication but also loss the trust of the people of the institution, the nation, and the world. The aim of this review article is to aware stakeholders specially novice reviewers about the peer review system. Beginners will understand how to review an article and they can justify better action choices in dealing with reviewing an article. (shrink)

In the 21st century strategic environment, small states face new security challenges caused by emerging great powers. These new powers seek to achieve their political goals in small states by avoiding major military escalation and focusing on combinations of statecraft and non-military means. This “hybrid threat” has strong implications for small states’ national security. This thesis explores small states’ vulnerabilities and opportunities across the political, military, economic, social, and informational (PMESI) spectrum to outline a favorable posture toward a great (...) power hybrid threat. The hybrid threat is characterized, and small states’ opportunities and vulnerabilities are delineated. A systems-thinking approach is applied to assess how opportunities and vulnerabilities influence the relationship between large powers and small states, contributing to the small state’s ability to manage and counter a great-power hybrid threat. Three historical cases are analyzed to assess favorable or unfavorable postures for a small state and the interactive dynamics of these opportunities and vulnerabilities. Ultimately, the study shows that the great-power hybrid threat can be significantly lessened by a small state’s posture, namely by the interactions between its opportunities and vulnerabilities across the PMESI spectrum. By exploiting this systemic interaction, a small state can decisively influence a conflict with a great power and effectively limit the hybrid threat’s effects. (shrink)

Comprehensive when it was published in 1990, this guide brought together information on the broad spectrum of education and research opportunities then available in the sciences of complexity. Its purpose was to make these kinds of investigations more accessible by providing information on programs, institutions, organizations, and literature where one can learn about their principles, methods, and applications. The guide was intended to help interested students and educators locate the various academic fields, departments, institutes, and programs that offer education in (...) systems thinking and complex systems research. The guide also served professionals who are already involved in the systems sciences as a directory to general activity in what are otherwise widely separate fields. By browsing the guide one can get a snapshot of where education and research in systems science was happening at the time in both North America and Europe. The landscape has since massively changed so its value is mostly historical. (shrink)

Among all non conventional micro machining, electrochemical discharge machining ECDM is having high quality of material removal rate with zero residual stress. This machining has been accepted as a highly modern technology in micromachining. In this paper an effort has been done on micro drilling of glass using electrochemical discharge machining ECDM . A fixed tool and a step down transformer have been used to support the steady machining to increase the accuracy of work piece. The input parameters used in (...) this experiment are voltage, concentration of electrolyte, enter electrode gap and ratio of area of electrode. MRR has been investigated over the input parameters. Feed rate and electrolyte temperature has been made constant of 3µm sec and 30°c respectively. Taguchi method is used to optimize the effect of the process parameters on MRR. The signal to noise S N ratio and the ANOVA analysis are employed to find the contributions of input parameters. Vikrant Sharma | Sunil Kumar "Experimental research to Optimize Process Parameters in Machining of Non Conducting Material with hybrid non conconventional machining" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-1 | Issue-4 , June 2017. (shrink)

New trends in the economic systems management in the context of modern global challenges: collective monograph / scientific edited by M. Bezpartochnyi, in 2 Vol. // VUZF University of Finance, Business and Entrepreneurship. – Sofia: VUZF Publishing House “St. Grigorii Bogoslov”, 2020. – Vol. 1. – 309 p.

One of the most mature achievements of the Cartesian philosophy is the aim to diffuse Descartes’ thought among a wider audience by presenting his philosophy in an encyclopedic way. A relevant contribution in this field is Pierre Sylvain Régis’s Système. Régis’s contribution consists both in reconciling the new scientific discoveries with les principes de Monsieur Descartes by combining them into a scholarly manual whose aim is to stimulate the ars inveniendi and in recognizing the relevance of Arnauld’s and Nicole’s L’art (...) de penser as manual of Cartesian logic. In an article published on the «Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa», pp. 517-55: L’«Art de penser» nella logica del «Système» di Régis) I analysed Régis’s logic in order to point out that, even if L’art de penser represents its only source, La logique of the Système has not to be considered as a mere compendium of the Port-Royal Logique, but as a revision of the latter according to a specific philosophical system, characterized by the empirical interpretation of Descartes’s philosophy. In this paper I provide a synopsis of the comparison between the logic of the Système and the Logique of Port-Royal, in order to resume in a schematic way the results of my research. (shrink)

-/- [Posted here is article as originally published (same title) in ALSA Forum VI (1982) pp. 1-17 plus rebuttal by Thomas D. Barton, pp. 18-22].

(This version was submitted to Behavioral and Brain Science. A revised version was published by Biological Theory) Estimates of autism’s incidence increased 5-10 fold in ten years, an increase which cannot be genetic. Though many mutations are associated with autism, no mutation seems directly to cause autism. We need to find the direct cause. Complexity science provides a new paradigm - confirmed in biology by extensive hard data. Both the body and the personality are complex dynamic systems which spontaneously self-organize (...) from simple dynamic systems. Autism may therefore be caused by the failure of a simple dynamic system. We know that infants who cannot track their mother’s face often become autistic, that eye-contact initiates intersubjectivity which is blocked in autism, and that the infant-mother pair seems designed to promote eye-contact, as does the eye’s appearance. This author earlier proposed that failure of eye-contact might directly cause autism and that early non-maternal childcare, including television/video, would therefore be statistically linked to autism. Waldman et al. (2008; 2006) recently proved that autism is strongly linked to precipitation (indoor activity) and to the introduction of cable. The most plausible explanation? Early exposure to television/video is linked to autism. Furthermore a normal developmental cascade (blocked in autism) has been deciphered: (a) Infant-mother eye-contact triggers increased maternal attention. (b) Early maternal attention permanently increases not only baseline vasopressin but also that oxytocin release which is triggered by subsequent maternal attention. (c) Vasopressin and oxytocin promote face recognition, gazing-at-the-eyes, emotion recognition, and social bonding. The eye-contact hypothesis suggests a clinical study addressing prevention: recruit prospective parents who agree to curtail television/video/computer/wi-fi in their families; measure autism’s incidence in their children. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine the nature of the situationist concept of spectacle, especially by separating it into its philosophical elements, in order to check the effectiveness, from a systematic point of view, of situationism’s radical critique. In doing so, the main focus of our attention will be Debord’s major theoretical work: Society of the Spectacle. In fact, the concept of spectacle, repeatedly evoked in other writings, has its most far-reaching version in that small but great book, whose first edition (...) was published in 1967. (shrink)

The Genetic Ranking Optimization Algorithm (GROA) is used to rank phishing content based on multiple features by optimizing the ranking system through iterative selection and weighting. Dynamic weighting further enhances the process by adjusting the weights of features based on their importance in real-time. This hybrid approach enables the model to learn from the data, improving classification over time.

In 1985, German sociologist Niklas Luhmann published a monograph on ecology, which appeared in English translation in 1989 as Ecological Communication. It contained many original insights for ecological thinking and, despite being well-reviewed upon publication, has had a relatively minor impact on Anglophone environmental discourse. This inattention is also present in environmental law, which has recently seen an increase in legal theories that challenge its mainstream. This contribution first investigates why Ecological Communication has received scant attention, pointing to changes in (...) the climatic context in which it first appeared and the reactionary nature of its arguments. Recognising that the work nevertheless contains critical theoretical insights for environmental law scholarship, the second aim of the article is to spotlight what from Ecological Communication remains relevant at the hand of three common claims progressive researchers level against mainstream environmental law: The critique of law's marriage to Cartesian dualism, that law should be better informed by climate science,of and law's anthropocentrism. Finally, environmental lawyers are called upon not to ignore Ecological Communication but to engage with it fruitfully. (shrink)

Cometan began writing the Omnidoxy, the founding text of Astronism, at the age of seventeen in 2015 and this first great treatise of the Astronist religion was published in 2019. Since then, the world has been introduced to Astronism and its central doctrine of transcension and its worldview of cosmocentrism but the time has come to reflect on the Omnidoxy. The Astronist System explores the major themes of the Omnidoxy including cosmic organicism, astrogenism, returnism and transcension and provides rigorous (...) detail on various aspects of Astronist philosophy, theology, spirituality, eschatology and soteriology. In this reflective work, Cometan also takes the time to analyse what the founding text of Astronism achieved and the legacy it has left behind for the worldwide Astronist community. Cometan's reflections on the Omnidoxy text from his current vantage point allow him to close the chapter on the Omnidoxy so that he can move forward with his writing and eventual publication of the next great Astronist treatise titled the Astrodoxy which Cometan has already titled the central text of Astronism. (shrink)

The article examines the participation and assistance of the Orthodox Church in solving problems that allowed to give a scientific justification for the cooperation of health care and Orthodox religious institutions, to determine their role in the historical context and structure of modern healthcare in Russia. The article presents an algorithm for organizing sisters of mercy, their system of upbringing. Particular attention is given to the possibility of teaching the course "Foundations of Orthodox Culture" in secular educational institutions. -/- (...) Research materials can serve as a basis for the formation of morally sound positions of medical workers and the population on the main problems of medical activity. -/- Based on the study, the authors published a series of articles in which the experience of the work of the Orthodox Church in the charitable sphere has been summarized. This experience can be used to create new charitable institutions, including those who provided medical assistance. -/- In preparing the article, the authors used concrete historical, civilizational, formational and social methods of research that allowed us to uncover facts, phenomena and processes in the interconnection and unity of the past, present and future. (shrink)

The physiological constraints of our neuro-sensory instrumentation limit the information we receive and from which we fashion our impressions. These limitations precede the psychological issues of data generation and analysis described by Ioannidis [1]. Scientific models widely accepted for at least 50 years [2,3] suggest that the peripheral and central nervous systems do not provide direct information about phenomena as they exist in nature. Instead, perceptible phenomena stimulate sense organs to produce nerve impulses. Sensory nerve impulses are not replicas of (...) the phenomena stimulating their production. The brain, by obscure mechanisms, then fabricates personal experience from the sensory nerve impulses. The relationship of phenomena to the brain's experiential construct is unknown. Since evidence is produced by sense organs and the brain (neither of which incorporates bona fide replicas of phenomena), all scientific conclusions are likely false in the sense that they are not based on direct knowledge of phenomena as they exist in nature. (shrink)

Open access publishing delivers on the dream of centuries - the free and unfettered access to the written word - however there are multiple shades of openness. Is there a world’s best practice? And best for whom? The issue is considered from the point of view of the clientele - readers and authors. Four criteria are proposed which will generate a star rating for an open access journal - for ‘openness’ - with a star available for meeting each criterion, (...) to a maximum of four.The criteria for scoring star ratings are: (1) There is no barrier to access for the reader; (2) It is free to the author/s; (3) Copyright is retained by the author/s; and (4) The paper can be freely distributed under licence. (shrink)

The field of AI has undergone a series of transformations, each marking a new phase of development. The initial phase emphasized curation of symbolic models which excelled in capturing reasoning but were fragile and not scalable. The next phase was characterized by machine learning models—most recently large language models (LLMs)—which were more robust and easier to scale but struggled with reasoning. Now, we are witnessing a return to symbolic models as complementing machine learning. Successes of LLMs contrast with their inscrutability, (...) inaccuracy, and hallucinations, which underwrite concerns over the reliability and trustworthiness of these systems, motivating investigations into commonsense reasoning, AI explainability, and formal verification techniques. Moreover, proper assessments of hybrid machine learning/symbolic systems require novel strategies to facilitate comparisons of performance and guide future AI progress. The EDGeS AAAI 2023 Spring symposium brought together researchers focusing on novel assessments and benchmarks for evaluating hybrid and artificial general intelligence (AGI) systems. This symposium revealed what was already suspected: research concerning evaluation of machine learning/symbolic hybrids and AGI is, unfortunately, lacking. Even so, the discussion was fruitful. (shrink)

The advance of mechanism in science and philosophy in the 17th century created a great interest to machines or automata. Leibniz was no exception - in an early memoir Drôle de pensée he wrote admiringly about a machine that could walk on water, exhibited in Paris. The idea of automatic processing in general had a large role in his thought, as can be seen, for example, in his invention of the binary code and the so-called Calculemus!-model for solving controversies. In (...) metaphysics, the idea of an automata was expressed most clearly in the 1695 article New System of the Nature of Substances and their Communication, and the ensuing correspondence with, among others, Foucher, Bayle, Lamy, Jaquelot and Masham. In the article Leibniz discusses the soul as a spiritual machine in the context of pre-established harmony, arguing that God can "give to a substance at the outset a nature or internal force which could produce in it an orderly way (as in spiritual or formal automaton; but a free one, in the case of a substance which is endowed with a share of reason) everything that is going to happen to it, that is to say, all the appearances or expressions it is going to have, and all without the help of any created thing." The basic idea of Leibniz's spiritual machine is that the soul or entelechy is an autonomous and spontaneous unity, consisting of internal active force and producing its own perceptions (both confused and distinct). It is a self-moving machine, driven by its perceptions and appetites, but it follows (without being conscious of it) a lawful series or programme created by God. The entelechy remains the same despite undergoing an infinite number of changes. To Foucher he explained that each state of the individual substance is a consequence of its preceding one, "as if there were only God and the substance in the world". Despite this, the spiritual machine is related not only to God, but through the pre-established harmony to bodies or natural machines. However, as it is not dependent on them, the spiritual machine is superiot to natural machines. In this paper I concentrate on three moral themes related to the spiritual machine: moral deliberation, moral identity and the goal of moral action. All these themes are more or less implicit in the New System, but are discussed in more detail in the ensuing correspondence after the publication of the article. Finally, the themes are given an extended discussion especially in the second book of New Essays on Human Understanding (1704, published 1765), written partly at the same time as some of the correspondence and unpublished related material. I will first give an overview of Leibniz's position concerning the spiritual machine or automaton in the New System and then go on to explore the three moral themes one by one, as they feature in the subsequent correspondence and in the New Essays. I will show that the three topics are essential to the function of the spiritual machine – to Sophie Charlotte Leibniz wrote: "...let us say that everything in bodies happens mechanically, or in accordance with laws of motion, and that everything in the soul happens morally, or in accordance with perceived good or evil." There are many texts that anticipate the views in the New System (notably the unpublished memoir De Affectibus of 1679) and Leibniz continued to discuss its themes later on (in addition to correpondence, for example, in Theodicy of 1710 and Monadology and Principles of Nature and Grace of 1714). Here I focus on the short-term development of Leibniz's views on the topic (around 1695-1705), but I argue that his basic view of the spiritual machine did not change much after finishing the dialogue with Locke in 1704. (shrink)

Final instalment of a book-review symposium on: Jeff Kochan (2017), Science as Social Existence: Heidegger and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (Cambridge UK: Open Book Publishers). -- Author's response to: Paolo Palladino (2018), 'Heidegger Today: On Jeff Kochan’s Science and Social Existence,' Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 7(8): 41-46; and Adam Riggio (2018), 'The Very Being of a Conceptual Scheme: Disciplinary and Conceptual Critiques,' Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 7(11): 53-59.

Forty-two years ago, Capra published “The Tao of Physics” (Capra, 1975). In this book (page 17) he writes: “The exploration of the atomic and subatomic world in the twentieth century has …. necessitated a radical revision of many of our basic concepts” and that, unlike ‘classical’ physics, the sub-atomic and quantum “modern physics” shows resonances with Eastern thoughts and “leads us to a view of the world which is very similar to the views held by mystics of all ages and (...) traditions.“ This article stresses an analogous situation in biology with respect to a new theoretical approach for studying living systems, Integral Biomathics (IB), which also exhibits some resonances with Eastern thought. Stepping on earlier research in cybernetics1 and theoretical biology,2 IB has been developed since 2011 by over 100 scientists from a number of disciplines who have been exploring a substantial set of theoretical frameworks. From that effort, the need for a robust core model utilizing advanced mathematics and computation adequate for understanding the behavior of organisms as dynamic wholes was identified. At this end, the authors of this article have proposed WLIMES (Ehresmann and Simeonov, 2012), a formal theory for modeling living systems integrating both the Memory Evolutive Systems (Ehresmann and Vanbremeersch, 2007) and the Wandering Logic Intelligence (Simeonov, 2002b). Its principles will be recalled here with respect to their resonances to Eastern thought. (shrink)

I respond to Karola Stotz's criticisms of my previously published challenges to the inference from developmental systems theory to an extended view of cognition.

As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to expand, ensuring secure and efficient data storage and retrieval becomes a critical challenge. IoT devices, often constrained by limited computational resources, require lightweight encryption protocols that balance security and performance. This paper presents an optimized encryption protocol designed specifically for lightweight, searchable data in IoT environments. The proposed protocol utilizes advanced optimization techniques to enhance the efficiency and security of searchable encryption, enabling rapid data retrieval without compromising the integrity and confidentiality of (...) the data. The protocol leverages a hybrid cryptographic approach, combining symmetric and asymmetric encryption, to ensure robust protection against unauthorized access while maintaining low computational overhead. (shrink)