Conceptual knowledge inspires imagination. On the other hand, it is a claim to power as well. Multiple knowledge claims often, therefore, are engaged in a contest. This contest can take the form of several discourses. Extant power structures play a significant role in lending (or not lending) a voice to one or several such discourses. To one with the power to govern, knowledge claims flowing from abstract concepts generated in an elite discourse not only inspires imagination but also often leads (...) to ‘norms’ and ‘rules’ that drive governance in the system which leads to action. Norms and rules define actionability of the conceptual knowledge claim. However, for the one weighed by powerlessness in being governed, knowledge claims often get generated only in action, since an autonomous discourse is often lacking. Yet the sheer powerlessness of the authors of such knowledge claims generated in action leads to its non-celebration. It fails to get elevated. It might also wither away. Such actionable knowledge claims of the powerless often then gets manifested as something like an ‘unvoiced’ or an ‘unvoicable’ discourse, in macabre forms of subversion of ‘norms’ and ‘rules’ of the system that leads to a sense of failure in governance among those with power as well. Power, thus, brings actionable knowledge to the fore, but in two different forms. For the power-holder, it takes the form of a ‘deviation’ from norms and rules in the actionable domain through subversion by the powerless, revealing a gap between knowledge in the conceptual and actionable domain that is reluctantly (often tacitly) tolerated. For the powerless, on the other hand, actionable knowledge is living; negotiating on the ‘deviation’ is an existential requirement. This paper is an attempt to explore these dichotomies, how power (and the lack of it) alters the significance and implications of actionable knowledge. (shrink)

Commentary on the Śabdakhaṇḍa of Tattvacintāmaṇi, work on verbal epistemology of the neo-Nyaya school in Indic philosophy.

Ascorbic acid is a redox regulator in many physiological processes. Besides its antioxidant activity, many intriguing functions of ascorbic acid in the expression of immunoregulatory genes have been suggested. Ascorbic acid acts as a co‐factor for the Fe+2‐containing α‐ketoglutarate‐dependent Jumonji‐C domain‐containing histone demethylases (JHDM) and Ten eleven translocation (TET) methylcytosine dioxygenasemediated epigenetic modulation. By influencing JHDM and TET, ascorbic acid facilitates the differentiation of double negative (CD4−CD8−) T cells to double positive (CD4+CD8+) T cells and of T‐helper cells to different (...) effector subsets. Ascorbic acid modulates plasma cell differentiation and promotes early differentiation of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) to NK cells. These findings indicate that ascorbic acid plays a significant role in regulating both innate and adaptive immune cells, opening up new research areas in Immunonutrition. Being a water‐soluble vitamin and a safe micro‐nutrient, ascorbic acid can be used as an adjunct therapy for many disorders of the immune system. (shrink)

Product acceptance determination using similarity measure index by neutrosophic statistics / Muhammad Aslam and Rehan Ahmed Khan Sherwani -- New concepts of strongly edge irregular interval-valued neutrosophic graphs / A.A.Talebi, Hossein Rashmanlou and Masoomeh Ghasemi -- The link between neutrosophy and learning : through the related concepts of representation and compression / Philippe Schweizer -- Neutrosophic soft cubic M-subalgebras of B-algebras / Mohsin Khalid, Neha Andaleeb Khalid and Hasan Khalid -- Alpha, beta and gamma product of neutrosophic graphs / Nasir (...) Shah, Said Broumi, Abdul Raheem and Tahir Imran -- Neutrosophic cubic normal ideal and neutrosophic cubic closed normal ideal of PS-algebra / Mohsin Khalid, Hasan khalid and Neha Andaleeb Khalid -- Neutrosophic multisets : an overview / Vakkas Uluçay -- Neutrosophy as a model for knowledge : the influence of representative models on thinking / Philippe Schweizer -- When neutrosophic theory meets three-way decisions / Rui Ren, Chao Zhang and Deyu Li -- Neutrosophic economic order quantity model with more than one price breaks / R. Surya, M. Mullai and G. Madhan Kumar -- General non-square systems of linear equations in single-valued triangular neutrosophic number environment / S.A. Edalatpanah -- Hesitant neutrosophic soft set relations / Abhijit Saha -- Computer application of neutrosophic set operations / S. Saranya, M. Vigneshwaran, Said Broumi -- Triangular bipolar neutrosophic based transportation problem / Avishek Chakraborty -- Studying neutrosophic variables / Rafif Alhabib and Ahmad Salama -- Decision making for logistics center location selection in trapezoidal neutrosophic environment / Kalyan Mondal and Surapati Pramanik -- Weighted similarity measure and decision making model for clinical application of single valued neutrosophic set / R.Binu and P. Isaac -- Rough neutrosophic set : an overview / Surapati Pramanik -- Some new concepts on normalized SVTN-number and multiple criteria decision making / İrfan Deli and Emel Kırmızı Öztürk. (shrink)

This thirteenth volume of Collected Papers is an eclectic tome of 88 papers in various fields of sciences, such as astronomy, biology, calculus, economics, education and administration, game theory, geometry, graph theory, information fusion, decision making, instantaneous physics, quantum physics, neutrosophic logic and set, non-Euclidean geometry, number theory, paradoxes, philosophy of science, scientific research methods, statistics, and others, structured in 17 chapters (Neutrosophic Theory and Applications; Neutrosophic Algebra; Fuzzy Soft Sets; Neutrosophic Sets; Hypersoft Sets; Neutrosophic Semigroups; Neutrosophic Graphs; Superhypergraphs; Plithogeny; (...) Information Fusion; Statistics; Decision Making; Extenics; Instantaneous Physics; Paradoxism; Mathematica; Miscellanea), comprising 965 pages, published between 2005-2022 in different scientific journals, by the author alone or in collaboration with the following 110 co-authors (alphabetically ordered) from 26 countries: Abduallah Gamal, Sania Afzal, Firoz Ahmad, Muhammad Akram, Sheriful Alam, Ali Hamza, Ali H. M. Al-Obaidi, Madeleine Al-Tahan, Assia Bakali, Atiqe Ur Rahman, Sukanto Bhattacharya, Bilal Hadjadji, Robert N. Boyd, Willem K.M. Brauers, Umit Cali, Youcef Chibani, Victor Christianto, Chunxin Bo, Shyamal Dalapati, Mario Dalcín, Arup Kumar Das, Elham Davneshvar, Bijan Davvaz, Irfan Deli, Muhammet Deveci, Mamouni Dhar, R. Dhavaseelan, Balasubramanian Elavarasan, Sara Farooq, Haipeng Wang, Ugur Halden, Le Hoang Son, Hongnian Yu, Qays Hatem Imran, Mayas Ismail, Saeid Jafari, Jun Ye, Ilanthenral Kandasamy, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, Darjan Karabašević, Abdullah Kargın, Vasilios N. Katsikis, Nour Eldeen M. Khalifa, Madad Khan, M. Khoshnevisan, Tapan Kumar Roy, Pinaki Majumdar, Sreepurna Malakar, Masoud Ghods, Minghao Hu, Mingming Chen, Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Mohamed Talea, Mohammad Hamidi, Mohamed Loey, Mihnea Alexandru Moisescu, Muhammad Ihsan, Muhammad Saeed, Muhammad Shabir, Mumtaz Ali, Muzzamal Sitara, Nassim Abbas, Munazza Naz, Giorgio Nordo, Mani Parimala, Ion Pătrașcu, Gabrijela Popović, K. Porselvi, Surapati Pramanik, D. Preethi, Qiang Guo, Riad K. Al-Hamido, Zahra Rostami, Said Broumi, Saima Anis, Muzafer Saračević, Ganeshsree Selvachandran, Selvaraj Ganesan, Shammya Shananda Saha, Marayanagaraj Shanmugapriya, Songtao Shao, Sori Tjandrah Simbolon, Florentin Smarandache, Predrag S. Stanimirović, Dragiša Stanujkić, Raman Sundareswaran, Mehmet Șahin, Ovidiu-Ilie Șandru, Abdulkadir Șengür, Mohamed Talea, Ferhat Taș, Selçuk Topal, Alptekin Ulutaș, Ramalingam Udhayakumar, Yunita Umniyati, J. Vimala, Luige Vlădăreanu, Ştefan Vlăduţescu, Yaman Akbulut, Yanhui Guo, Yong Deng, You He, Young Bae Jun, Wangtao Yuan, Rong Xia, Xiaohong Zhang, Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas, Zayen Azzouz Omar, Xiaohong Zhang, Zhirou Ma.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬. (shrink)

This twelfth volume of Collected Papers includes 86 papers comprising 976 pages on Neutrosophics Theory and Applications, published between 2013-2021 in the international journal and book series “Neutrosophic Sets and Systems” by the author alone or in collaboration with the following 112 co-authors (alphabetically ordered) from 21 countries: Abdel Nasser H. Zaied, Muhammad Akram, Bobin Albert, S. A. Alblowi, S. Anitha, Guennoun Asmae, Assia Bakali, Ayman M. Manie, Abdul Sami Awan, Azeddine Elhassouny, Erick González-Caballero, D. Dafik, Mithun Datta, Arindam Dey, (...) Mamouni Dhar, Christopher Dyer, Nur Ain Ebas, Mohamed Eisa, Ahmed K. Essa, Faruk Karaaslan, João Alcione Sganderla Figueiredo, Jorge Fernando Goyes García, N. Ramila Gandhi, Sudipta Gayen, Gustavo Alvarez Gómez, Sharon Dinarza Álvarez Gómez, Haitham A. El-Ghareeb, Hamiden Abd El-Wahed Khalifa, Masooma Raza Hashmi, Ibrahim M. Hezam, German Acurio Hidalgo, Le Hoang Son, R. Jahir Hussain, S. Satham Hussain, Ali Hussein Mahmood Al-Obaidi, Hays Hatem Imran, Nabeela Ishfaq, Saeid Jafari, R. Jansi, V. Jeyanthi, M. Jeyaraman, Sripati Jha, Jun Ye, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, Abdullah Kargın, J. Kavikumar, Kawther Fawzi Hamza Alhasan, Huda E. Khalid, Neha Andalleb Khalid, Mohsin Khalid, Madad Khan, D. Koley, Valeri Kroumov, Manoranjan Kumar Singh, Pavan Kumar, Prem Kumar Singh, Ranjan Kumar, Malayalan Lathamaheswari, A.N. Mangayarkkarasi, Carlos Rosero Martínez, Marvelio Alfaro Matos, Mai Mohamed, Nivetha Martin, Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Mohamed Talea, K. Mohana, Muhammad Irfan Ahamad, Rana Muhammad Zulqarnain, Muhammad Riaz, Muhammad Saeed, Muhammad Saqlain, Muhammad Shabir, Muhammad Zeeshan, Anjan Mukherjee, Mumtaz Ali, Deivanayagampillai Nagarajan, Iqra Nawaz, Munazza Naz, Roan Thi Ngan, Necati Olgun, Rodolfo González Ortega, P. Pandiammal, I. Pradeepa, R. Princy, Marcos David Oviedo Rodríguez, Jesús Estupiñán Ricardo, A. Rohini, Sabu Sebastian, Abhijit Saha, Mehmet Șahin, Said Broumi, Saima Anis, A.A. Salama, Ganeshsree Selvachandran, Seyed Ahmad Edalatpanah, Sajana Shaik, Soufiane Idbrahim, S. Sowndrarajan, Mohamed Talea, Ruipu Tan, Chalapathi Tekuri, Selçuk Topal, S. P. Tiwari, Vakkas Uluçay, Maikel Leyva Vázquez, Chinnadurai Veerappan, M. Venkatachalam, Luige Vlădăreanu, Ştefan Vlăduţescu, Young Bae Jun, Wadei F. Al-Omeri, Xiao Long Xin.‬‬‬‬‬‬. (shrink)

This eleventh volume of Collected Papers includes 90 papers comprising 988 pages on Physics, Artificial Intelligence, Health Issues, Decision Making, Economics, Statistics, written between 2001-2022 by the author alone or in collaboration with the following 84 co-authors (alphabetically ordered) from 19 countries: Abhijit Saha, Abu Sufian, Jack Allen, Shahbaz Ali, Ali Safaa Sadiq, Aliya Fahmi, Atiqa Fakhar, Atiqa Firdous, Sukanto Bhattacharya, Robert N. Boyd, Victor Chang, Victor Christianto, V. Christy, Dao The Son, Debjit Dutta, Azeddine Elhassouny, Fazal Ghani, Fazli (...) Amin, Anirudha Ghosha, Nasruddin Hassan, Hoang Viet Long, Jhulaneswar Baidya, Jin Kim, Jun Ye, Darjan Karabašević, Vasilios N. Katsikis, Ieva Meidutė-Kavaliauskienė, F. Kaymarm, Nour Eldeen M. Khalifa, Madad Khan, Qaisar Khan, M. Khoshnevisan, Kifayat Ullah,, Volodymyr Krasnoholovets, Mukesh Kumar, Le Hoang Son, Luong Thi Hong Lan, Tahir Mahmood, Mahmoud Ismail, Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Siti Nurul Fitriah Mohamad, Mohamed Loey, Mai Mohamed, K. Mohana, Kalyan Mondal, Muhammad Gulfam, Muhammad Khalid Mahmood, Muhammad Jamil, Muhammad Yaqub Khan, Muhammad Riaz, Nguyen Dinh Hoa, Cu Nguyen Giap, Nguyen Tho Thong, Peide Liu, Pham Huy Thong, Gabrijela Popović‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬, Surapati Pramanik, Dmitri Rabounski, Roslan Hasni, Rumi Roy, Tapan Kumar Roy, Said Broumi, Saleem Abdullah, Muzafer Saračević, Ganeshsree Selvachandran, Shariful Alam, Shyamal Dalapati, Housila P. Singh, R. Singh, Rajesh Singh, Predrag S. Stanimirović, Kasan Susilo, Dragiša Stanujkić, Alexandra Şandru, Ovidiu Ilie Şandru, Zenonas Turskis, Yunita Umniyati, Alptekin Ulutaș, Maikel Yelandi Leyva Vázquez, Binyamin Yusoff, Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas, Zhao Loon Wang.‬‬‬‬. (shrink)

Existing research posits that decision makers use specific cognitive frames to manage tensions in sustainability. However, we know less about how the cognitive frames of individuals at different levels in organization interact and what these interactions imply for managing sustainability tensions, such as in Bottom of the Pyramid projects. To address this omission, we ask do organizational and project leaders differ in their understanding of tensions in a BOP project, and if so, how? We answer this question by drawing on (...) a 5-year study of a BOP project of a global pharmaceutical company in India. In line with the existing research, we found three kinds of frames—paradoxical, business case, and business—held differently across organizational levels and over time. We also found that the shift in frames of both project and organizational leaders was mediated by the decision-making horizon. The initial divergence across organizational levels, seen in paradoxical and business frames, was mediated by long-term decision-making horizon. However, there was an eventual convergence toward business frames associated with the shift from long- to shorter-term decision-making horizons and one that led to the project’s closure. We contribute by proposing a dynamic model of cognitive frames in sustainability, where the research has either alluded to top-down or bottom-up understanding. (shrink)

Whistleblowing is the act of disclosing information from a public or private organization in order to reveal cases of corruption that are of immediate or potential danger to the public. Blowing the whistle involves personal risk, especially when legal protection is absent, and charges of betrayal, which often come in the form of legal prosecution under treason laws. In this article we argue that whistleblowing is justified when disclosures are made with the proper intent and fulfill specific communicative constraints in (...) addressing issues of public interest. Three communicative constraints of informativeness, truthfulness and evidence are discussed in this regard. We develop a ‘harm test’ to assess the intent for disclosures, concluding that it is not sufficient for justification. Along with the proper intent, a successful act of whistleblowing should provide information that serves the public interest. Taking cognizance of the varied conceptions of public interest, we present an account of public interest that fits the framework of whistleblowing disclosures. In particular, we argue that whistleblowing is justified inter alia when the information it conveys is of a presumptive interest for a public insofar as it reveals an instance of injustice or violation of a civil or political right done against and unbeknown to some members of a polity. (shrink)

Monitoring of clinical trials is important to ensure adherence to protocol, to safeguard the rights of research participants and to achieve compliance with principles of good clinical practice. Recent regulatory changes in India require Ethics Committees to keep an oversight of ongoing clinical trials including on-site monitoring. In this article, we share the experience of on-site monitoring of clinical trials by the Ethics Committee of a tertiary care, academic and research centre in India. We found a large number of shortcomings (...) in the areas of informed consent, adverse events, insurance and reimbursement, which would not have been detected by off-site document review. Interestingly, many shortcomings were also not detected by on-site monitoring arranged by clinical trial sponsors. We therefore conclude that on-site monitoring of ongoing clinical trials is a highly important activity for Indian Ethics Committees. (shrink)

This paper contains two traditions of diagrammatic studies namely one, the Euler–Venn–Peirce diagram and the other, following tradition of Aristotle, the square of oppositions. We put together both the traditions to study representations of singular propositions, their negations and the inter relationship between the two. Along with classical negation we have incorporated negation of another kind viz. absence. We have also considered the changes that take place in the context of open universe.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Pains And Gains Of Rural Health Practice:Lessons Books Never TaughtSridevi Seetharam, Bindu Balasubramaniam, G. S. Kumar, and M. R. SeetharamHow The Journey BeganIn the early 1980s, as fresh graduates from Mysore Medical College in southern India, we were brimming with a zeal to "cure the sick" and "change the world." We had an ideal of evidence-based, rational, ethical and equitable health care and set out to serve rural (...) and under-served communities which included displaced forest-based tribes. In the initial years, with the naivety of the inexperienced, we believed that by correcting the dehydration of the doe-eyed six-year-old Mare and giving her a free course of antibiotics, we had made health care accessible to her. Much to our dismay, within a month, Mare was back in the outpatient clinic, with diarrhea all over again and looking thinner than ever. We realized that it was a losing battle to keep her healthy as long as she continued to drink water from the same contaminated stream, live in unhygienic surroundings, and eat only the paltry meals that her family could barely afford. We gradually began to connect these living examples to what our preventive medicine text books had stressed all along—there are many social determinants of health which, if left unaddressed, do not permit realization of the vision of health for all.Such instances continually pulled us out of the hospital building and into the villages and tribal hamlets. We discovered that our textbook of Preventive and Social Medicine (Park, 1986) (P&SM as we used to call it), was our most valuable possession. [End Page 106] We devoured the descriptions of national health programs, sanitation procedures, water treatment protocols, and maintenance of cold chain for vaccines with a completely new perspective. We discovered the Manual of Basic Techniques for a Health Laboratory, (World Health Organization, 1980) detailing how to set up a laboratory with low cost, reliable and simple methods. We learned to drive a jeep to haul supplies and patients. To step up the level of clinical care, some of us pursued post-graduate programs and equipped ourselves to provide more specialized care too. It has been over two decades since we embarked on this journey. We have encountered a variety of perplexing dilemmas with no clear solutions. We have sometimes been compelled to adopt health practices that were not really evidence-based, seemingly irrational, inequitable and even downright unethical. This narration describes only a few of our thousands of cases, and hopefully conveys our periods of self-doubt, despair and hope, as well as, the challenges we face to reconcile with the difficult choices we are forced to make every day.Unforeseen Challenges in Saving Mothers and ChildrenHigh maternal and child mortality rates have been one of the most disturbing aspects of the health care scenario in rural India. To ensure immunization of all children, health workers with vaccine carriers go from village to village and hamlet to hamlet to reach those infants that would have missed visits to the immunization clinics. Our grass-root workers facilitate these visits by identifying households with such children. Occasionally, they encounter families who spirit away the infant into the adjoining woods as soon as the health worker is seen approaching, and blandly proclaim that the child is not at home. Despite reassurance and counseling about the safety and necessity of the vaccine, their apprehensions and misconceptions are insurmountable. What is the extent of the responsibility of the health worker? Is it ethical to hunt down the child and force the administration of the vaccine in view of the public health gains, besides the child's welfare?A few months ago, a pre-term neonate was admitted to our hospital, but worsened and needed referral to a higher centre in the city. The family refused to go despite repeated persuasion and detailed explanation about the technical limitations of care at our centre. From the family's perspective, the variety of social, cultural, and monetary challenges they would face in the city were themselves limitations for care. We were compelled to retain the baby and continue giving the best care we could.Two... (shrink)

Description: Knowledge, Truth and Realism is a collection of essays written by Pranab Kumar Sen over a period of ten years (from 1989 to 1998). The essays deal mainly with issues in Philosophy of Language and Theory of Knowledge from the standpoint of analytical philosophy. They bring forth Sen's realist philosophical position and his attempt to weave together specific questions concerning meaning, reference, truth, knowledge and objectivity in this realistic framework. By responding to and by making use of the (...) ideas of Philosophers like, Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, W.V. Quine, Donald Davidson, Peter Strawson, H.P. Grice, Michael Dummett, John McDowell, Sen develops his distinctive theory of meaning and understanding along with his theory of knowledge/knowing. In doing so he also addresses the larger issue regarding the nature of philosophical analysis. The essays are a testimony to the painstaking and lifelong engagement of the Philosopher with some of the central and contemporary debates in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

This book introduces the theory of graded consequence and its mathematical formulation. It also compares the notion of graded consequence with other notions of consequence in fuzzy logics, and discusses possible applications of the theory in approximate reasoning and decision-support systems. One of the main points where this book emphasizes on is that GCT maintains the distinction between the three different levels of languages of a logic, namely object language, metalanguage and metametalanguage, and thus avoids the problem of violation of (...) the principle of use and mention; it also shows, gathering evidences from existing fuzzy logics, that the problem of category mistake may arise as a result of not maintaining distinction between levels. (shrink)

The inclusion of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and increased research and development (R&D) capabilities in the most recent outline of the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) international pandemic instrument signals an opportunity to reshape pharmaceutical R&D system in favour of antimicrobial product development. This article explains why the current innovation ecosystem has disadvantaged the creation of antimicrobial products for human use. It also highlights how the COVID-19 pandemic experience can inform and stimulate international cooperation to implement innovative R&D incentives to bring new, (...) life-saving antimicrobial products to the market. (shrink)

Indian logic is mainly devoted to the study of nyaya the logical structure of which is analogous to that of a categorical syllogism. In a nyaya it is inferred that since the probans (similar to the middle term) is pervaded by or never exists without the probandum (similar to the major term) and since the probans belongs to the inferential subject (similar to the minor term), the probandum belongs to the inferential subject. Many modern scholars hold that in early Indian (...) logic a nyaya was an analogical argument from particular to particular. We disagree. Early Nyaya works say explicitly that what deviates is a pseudo-probans; this implies that a probans is non-deviant or pervaded by the probandum and thus that a universal premise stating the pervasion of the probans by the probandum is needed. Such a universal premise is also found in articulated arguments. Further, a counterargument based on mere analogy to a nyaya based on a universal connection is viewed as a pseudo-refutation. (shrink)

Indian logic is mainly devoted to the study of nyaya the logical structure of which is analogous to that of a categorical syllogism. In a nyaya it is inferred that since the probans (similar to the middle term) is pervaded by or never exists without the probandum (similar to the major term) and since the probans belongs to the inferential subject (similar to the minor term), the probandum belongs to the inferential subject. Many modern scholars hold that in early Indian (...) logic a nyaya was an analogical argument from particular to particular. We disagree. Early Nyaya works say explicitly that what deviates is a pseudo-probans; this implies that a probans is non-deviant or pervaded by the probandum and thus that a universal premise stating the pervasion of the probans by the probandum is needed. Such a universal premise is also found in articulated arguments. Further, a counterargument based on mere analogy to a nyaya based on a universal connection is viewed as a pseudo-refutation. (shrink)

: Classical Sāmkhya, as represented by Īśvarakrsna's Sāmkhya-kārikā, is well known for its attempt to prove not only the reality but the plurality of selves (purusa-bahutva). The Sāmkhya argument, since it proceeds from the reality of the manyness of the bodies as its basic premise, approximates, even if not in every detail, the 'argument from analogy' in its traditional form (which the essay tries to explicate). One distinguished modern interpreter, K. C. Bhattacharyya, however, not satisfied with this account, attempts to (...) interpret and expound Sāmkhya pluralism in terms of a radically different strategy consisting of showing that the self is known in buddhi in its pure asmita function as an infinite I and so as necessarily involving all Is or selves. This solution, which in the process offers reflections on such issues as infinity, universals, the role of 'I', the individuality (of self ), et cetera, is examined and criticized at length with respect to some of its basic assumptions, with a brief focus on the idea of 'self-consciousness', which according to some (Western) philosophers presupposes 'other'-consciousness and which in certain respects seems to inform Bhattacharyya's thoughts on the main issue. (shrink)

. Software testing is a very important phase in the development of software. Testing includes the generation of test cases which, if done manually, is time consuming. To automate this process and generate optimal test cases, several meta-heuristic techniques have been developed. These approaches include genetic algorithm, cuckoo search, tabu search, intelligent water drop, etc. This paper presents an effective approach for test data generation using the cuckoo search and tabu search algorithms. It combines the cuckoo algorithm's strength of converging (...) to the solution in minimal time along with the tabu mechanism of backtracking from local optima by Lévy flight. The experimental results show that the algorithm is effective in generating test cases optimally and its performance is better than various earlier proposed approaches. (shrink)

Vowel phonemes are a part of any acoustic speech signal. Vowel sounds occur in speech more frequently and with higher energy. Therefore, vowel phoneme can be used to extract different amounts of speaker discriminative information in situations where acoustic information is noise corrupted. This article presents an approach to identify a speaker using the vowel sound segmented out from words spoken by the speaker. The work uses a combined self-organizing map - and probabilistic neural network -based approach to segment the (...) vowel phoneme. The segmented vowel is later used to identify the speaker of the word by matching the patterns with a learning vector quantization -based code book. The LVQ code book is prepared by taking features of clean vowel phonemes uttered by the male and female speakers to be identified. The proposed work formulates a framework for the design of a speaker-recognition model of the Assamese language, which is spoken by ∼3 million people in the Northeast Indian state of Assam. The experimental results show that the segmentation success rates obtained using a SOM-based technique provides an increase of at least 7% compared with the discrete wavelet transform-based technique. This increase contributes to the improvement in overall performance of speaker identification by ∼3% compared with earlier related works. (shrink)

I think, from the standpoint of present experience, one can fairly start by saying that all experience is lived embodied experience, though it is clear that such a statement, if wholly unqualified, would mean a commitment of extensive implications. 1 Some of these implications I will briefly try to spell out toward the end of this essay. I don’t say our body sets limits to how far our imagination can really go, for clearly, if our imagination were wholly controlled by (...) our body as presented to us, dreams, for example, would not be possible. 2 But dreams are not only possible, they are a matter of everyday experience. Nay, even the limits of imagination do not determine the limits of possibility. .. (shrink)

Societies are always gathered around a particular object or an idea that serves as its totem and its driving principle. This conscious arrangement of society, especially around an ideal, has been termed in history as utopias, which consciously moulds an individual’s behaviour inhabiting it for the desired future goal. However, in the hyper-humanistic period, called by James Scott as High-modernism, we can see a drastic truncation in the scope and range of those desired future forms, limited only to economic and (...) material wellbeing. The aim of this paper therefore is to look into an example of the utopian experiment that substantially differs from a high-modernist worldview. The paper will analyse one such futuristic spiritual experiment at Auroville and try to trace its similarities as well as its difference from the hyper-humanistic ideals of modernity. (shrink)

In the last decade, formal concept analysis in a fuzzy setting has received more attention for knowledge processing tasks in various fields. The hierarchical order visualisation of generated formal concepts is a major concern for the practical application of FCA. In this process, a major issue is the huge number of formal concepts generated from ‘a large context’, and another problem is their ‘storage’ complexity. To deal with these issues a method is proposed in this paper based on Shannon entropy (...) and Huffman coding. The proposed method is illustrated using crisply generated concepts such that the changes between obtained concepts can be measured using Levenshtein distance. The analysis derived from the proposed method is illustrated with an example for FCA in a fuzzy setting. (shrink)

This article presents a novel control approach, hybrid neuro-fuzzy, for the load frequency control of a four-area interconnected power system. The advantage of this controller is that it can handle nonlinearities, and at the same time, it is faster than other existing controllers. The effectiveness of the proposed controller in increasing the damping of local and inter-area modes of oscillation is demonstrated in a four-area interconnected power system. Areas 1 and 2 consist of a thermal reheat power plant, whereas Areas (...) 3 and 4 consist of a hydropower plant. Performance evaluation is carried out by using fuzzy, artificial neural network, adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system, and conventional proportional and integral control approaches. Four different models with different controllers are developed and simulated, and performance evaluations are carried out with said controllers. The result shows that the intelligent HNF controller has improved dynamic response and is at the same time faster than ANN, fuzzy, and conventional PI controllers. (shrink)

Geosciences have been increasingly interested in ethics due to the challenges thrown by advancements of studies and researches in the area of geosciences towards global community. This results in the emergence of a new discipline during the last decade of 20th century named ‘Geo-Ethics’. The great task assigned to this discipline is to provide an ethical face to geosciences so that these may be maximum useful to global community. Although it is very difficult to define any growing discipline and that (...) is the case with geo-ethics, this paper aims to discuss the nature and core principles of this emerging discipline, an amalgamation of geosciences and ethics. Geo-ethics, an application of a value-system in the area of studies and researches of geosciences, is a part of applied ethics. Its proposed principles are: Refrain from superstitions and supernatural affairs, Interconnectedness, Rationality, Non-rigidness and Coherence, Non-maleficence, Beneficence, Justice. (shrink)

For many decades, cognition has been viewed as a computational process in the brain. For cognition, the brain, body and the interaction with the environment are important. Conventional views are inclined towards the existence of discrete and internal representations realised by highly specific mechanisms in the brain. The Embodied approach challenges this view and accepts the evolution of cognitive abilities. There is a shift in focus from the belief that the brain is solely responsible for cognition to the thought that (...) the body is somehow deeply integrated into cognition. However, it does not deny the central position of the brain in the process of cognition but opens the doors for other factors for integration. At the basic level, there are three ways in which an agent’s body can be utilised for the cognitive process. An agent’s body may help to generate, operate and distribute the cognitive processes. As a result, this approach tries to diminish the monopoly of the brain by taking into account the importance of the body and the environment for cognition. (shrink)

Most of the theories of rights propounded by philosophers, right from the beginning till the twentieth century, conceive rights either as a claim against the state or an obligation upon the state. Certainly such a conception has had something to do with the prevailing social, political and economic systems of the time concerned. Social, political and economic systems also had a particular relationship amongst them. Change in individual and social perspectives, values, priorities and beliefs has affected the philosophy of right. (...) From the ages of Locke and Hobbes when natural right was taken in obvious terms to the times of communitarians like Michael Sandel and thinkers like Ronald Dworkin the term “Right” has earned many dimensions. Progress and changing arrangements of systems complicates the status of a philosophical theory of rights propounded at a particular time, in the sense that its losses its teeth in any new found milieu. This paper evaluates the notion of abstract universalism of individual rights in the light of Gandhian notion of duty. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to see the similarity between the Shankara’s notion of Ätman and Husserl’s Transcendental Ego. Both thinkers, Husserl and Shankara trace true knowledge to the transcendental self. The former describes the self as the embodiment of absolute knowledge that transcends the limitations of the body, the senses and the intellect. In the state of bondage and ignorance, this Transcendental Ego is oblivious of its ontological and cognitive priority or transcendence and seeks knowledge in the natural world (...) of relative truths. It forgets that this world is merely an appearance (vivarta) rooted in the Ᾱtman which is identical with Brahman. (shrink)

Anthropology of Consciousness, EarlyView.

Anthropology of Consciousness, Volume 32, Issue 2, Page 208-224, Autumn 2021.

A Nyaya definition the major purpose of which is efficient use of words and avoiding ambiguities and errors, is the statement of a unique feature that belongs to each definiendum and nothing else so that there is none of the three faults of overcoverage, undercoverage and failure to belong to any definiendum. There should be no circularity that is of three kinds, self-dependence (where the definiendum appears in the definiens); mutual dependence (where the definiendum and the definiens are used in (...) the definition of each other) and defining in a circle. A definition should also be economical: there are mainly three kinds of economy; economy in constitution (that avoids including anything superfluous or unnecessary to distinguish the definiendum from everything else), economy in relation (the directly related is preferable to the indirectly related) and economy in cognition (something cognitively prior is preferable to something posterior). While more than one definition is possible that need not state the essence, the test of economy is in place to avoid redundancy and provide criteria of preference among defining features that are unique and non-circular. (shrink)

The paper has two main parts. The first part is devoted to the traditional Hindu viewpoint on the existence and permanence of the self as an immaterial substance. Various arguments offered by Hindu philosophers against the materialist view that the body is the self as well as arguments against the Buddhist view of the self as a stream of constantly changing states are discussed critically with reference to recent philosophical perspectives. The second part is devoted to the doctrine of karma (...) and rebirth. A number of traditional arguments for the doctrine are studied analytically and critically as well as relevance of the doctrine for addressing the problem of evil that for many is a serious issue facing the creationist position. Finally, the major arguments of Plato who also held that the self is eternal and goes through reincarnation are critiqued from a comparative standpoint. (shrink)