Employing Fuzzy Logic to Analyze the Structure of Complex Biological and Epidemic Spreading Models

Complex networks constitute a new field of scientific research that is derived from the observation and analysis of real-world networks, for example, biological, computer and social ones. An important subset of complex networks is the biological, which deals with the numerical examination of connections/associations among different nodes, namely interfaces. These interfaces are evolutionary and physiological, where network epidemic models or even neural networks can be considered as representative examples. The investigation of the corresponding biological networks along with the study of human diseases has resulted in an examination of networks regarding medical supplies. This examination aims at a more profound understanding of concrete networks. Fuzzy logic is considered one of the most powerful mathematical tools for dealing with imprecision, uncertainties and partial truth. It was developed to consider partial truth values, between completely true and completely false, and aims to provide robust and low-cost solutions to real-world problems. In this manuscript, we introduce a fuzzy implementation of epidemic models regarding the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) spreading in a sample of needle drug individuals. Various fuzzy scenarios for a different number of users and different number of HIV test samples per year are analyzed in order for the samples used in the experiments to vary from case to case. To the best of our knowledge, analyzing HIV spreading with fuzzy-based simulation scenarios is a research topic that has not been particularly investigated in the literature. The simulation results of the considered scenarios demonstrate that the existence of fuzziness plays an important role in the model setup process as well as in analyzing the effects of the disease spread.

Digital Life: Creative and Open-ended

Digitization? What does the term mean; and why does it matter? One can occasionally read in news or social media that the United States and the Netherlands were among the first countries in the world to be digitized, while most other countries stayed behind, much to their own disadvantage. However, such statements only reflect a partial truth. They only reflect how digital computers and the Internet swept the globe. Yet, digital computers and the Internet are only the latest wave of digitization. To understand what is happening in the long run, let us put this latest wave of digitization into its broader context. We will understand that almost all life is fundamentally digital. The consequences are of hallmark importance: Everywhere we look (into cities, geography, culture, virtual spaces, language, ecosystems, epidemics, virus infections, etc.) life can be studied with the same mathematical tools; and almost everywhere the same theories apply.

Structure, NeutroStructure, and AntiStructure in Science

In any science, a classical Theorem, defined on a given space, is a statement that is 100% true (i.e. true for all elements of the space). To prove that a classical theorem is false, it is sufficient to get a single counter-example where the statement is false. Therefore, the classical sciences do not leave room for partial truth of a theorem (or a statement). But, in our world and in our everyday life, we have many more examples of statements that are only partially true, than statements that are totally true. The NeutroTheorem and AntiTheorem are generalizations and alternatives of the classical Theorem in any science. More general, by the process of NeutroSophication, we have extended any classical Structure, in no matter what field of knowledge, to some NeutroStructure, and by the process of AntiSophication to some AntiStructure

Similar but Superior: Rhetoric of Coexistence Employed by Religions in Jeju Island, Korea

Religions in Jeju, South Korea, have sometimes been in conflict with each other, but have generally coexisted peacefully. In a situation where diverse religions share an island that is isolated from the mainland, they have emphasized that they are similar yet superior to their rivals. Religions that were imported to Jeju, including Confucianism, Buddhism, and Christianity, have tried to make themselves look familiar to Jeju people on the basis of people’s knowledge of preexisting religions. These religions sometimes embraced rituals of preexisting religions to which people were strongly attached. The Jeju indigenous religion has also acknowledged that the ideas and practices of Buddhism and Confucianism have remarkable similarities to those of its own. Simultaneously, each religion in Jeju has claimed its superiority over others. Religions in Jeju have argued that other religions’ partial truth and limited value are in sharp contrast with the complete truth and superior value of their own. They have asserted that only they can provide the proper way of keeping the order of the universe or attaining salvation of human beings. This common rhetoric that “my religion is similar but superior to other religions” has been repeated in Jeju, in order to persuade people outside the religion to accept or at least approve it on the one hand, and to maintain the peaceful coexistence with other religions on the other hand.

The Role Of Truth In Explanatory Understanding

This paper discusses the polemical question of whether explanations that produce understanding must be true. It argues positively for the role of truth in reaching explanatory understanding, by presenting three lines of criticism of alternative accounts. The first is that by rejecting truth as a criterion for evaluating explanations, any non-factual account thereby effectively cuts ties with the central theories of explanations, which provide at least partial criteria for explanatory understanding. The second line of criticism is that some of the most well-known non-factual accounts implicitly operate over a notion of partial-truth, and as such, they do not provide a valid alternative. The final critical argument is that, in the place of truth evaluations, these accounts often offer a multiplicity of other criteria, and by changing a unitary criterion such as truth for a collection of other requirements, these non-factive theories introduce a level of ad hoc-ness, which diminishes their normative value.

Buddhist Wizards (Weizzā/Weikza) of Myanmar

Supernatural wizards with magical powers to heal the sick and who inhabit the minds and bodies of men, women, and children, as well as defend religion from the forces of evil: this is not the popular vision of Buddhism. But this is exactly what one finds in the Buddhist country of Myanmar, where the majority of people abide by Theravāda Buddhism—a form of Buddhism generally perceived as staid, lacking religious devotion and elements of the supernatural. Known as “weizzā,” the beliefs and practices associated with this religion have received little scholarly attention, especially when compared with research done on other aspects of Buddhism in Myanmar. Reasons for this are varied, but two stand out. Firstly, because such phenomena have been labeled by scholars and Buddhists alike as “popular” and “syncretic” forms of religion, scholars of Buddhism in Myanmar have tended to focus their research on aspects of Buddhism considered orthodox and normative, such as vipassana and abhidhamma. Secondly, the academic study of religion has been slow to develop new interpretive strategies for studying religious phenomena that do not readily fit existing categories of what constitutes “religion.” These two dilemmas will be confronted by introducing and employing the framework of “lived religion” to examine the religious lives of those who engage the world of Buddhist wizards, as well as the experiences these individuals consider central to their lives—along with the varied rituals that make up their personal religious expressions. The reader is invited to think of religion dynamically, reconsidering the landscape of Myanmar religion in terms of practices linked to specific social contexts. After delineating a genealogy of scholarly approaches to the study of Buddhism-as-lived and the ways in which scholars have constituted the subject of their studies, the article will examine aspects of Myanmar religious life from the perspectives of those whose experiences are often misrepresented or ignored entirely, not only in Western academic works on religion but also in Myanmar historical monographs and other written, oral, and pictorial sources. In addition to increasing our understanding of the lived religious experiences and practices of the weizzā and their devotees, this approach to religious studies also enriches our investigation of the complex interrelationship between these experiences and practices and the wider social world they are enacted in. Acknowledging that any lens we study religion through offers only a partial truth, an improved religious studies approach to the weizzā and similar phenomena can get closer to the truths that people make in their own lives: thus, moving further from the contested boundaries that scholars and practitioners of religion place on religious worlds.

Partial Truth in Aristotle’s Metaphysics

This paper explores the status of partial truths, i.e., statements that are partially true and partially false, in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Contrary to what some scholars have suggested, it argues that partial truths are not confined to reputable opinions (endoxa) that have not yet been clarified and disambiguated. Rather, they have a more central role in Aristotle’s investigation. First, I propose that the fundamental question of being, namely, “What is substance?” is such that even our best attempts to answer it may never yield a full or complete truth. Second, at least in some instances, Aristotle does not seem interested in disambiguating the assertions of previous thinkers to attain propositions that are fully true or fully false. This is the case because our capacity to gain insights into the nature of things is mediated by our reflections on previous theories and on the problems that they incur. It may thus be desirable to retain some partial truths that, owing to their very ambiguity, force us to interrogate the nature of things more deeply.