The Latin American Neutrosophic Science Association was created in 2018 as a result of the initiative of a group of university professors from Mexico and Ecuador. The Association has developed an intense work in the investigative context, expression of the capacity that neutrosophy has as a tool for understanding and transformation of reality in social benefit. Neutrosophic sets as a generalization fuzzy set (especially intuitionistic fuzzy sets), allows handling a greater number of situations that occur in reality and becomes a facilitator of the approach to the studied object without undermining its complex and multivariate essence. In this special edition, researchers from six Ecuadorian universities show the results of research projects addressing a wide range of topics related to the social environment of these Higher Education Institutions. The contents include law, criminology, public and administrative management, evaluation of pedagogical scenarios, prospective analysis, artificial intelligence, among other topics. They are many different texts with a common denominator, the social sciences, and their relationship with neutrosophy. The progress of these investigations originates a significant change in the ways of validating and reasoning the proposals, the appreciation of neutrality increases the interpretability and the inferential efficacy from the analysis of the results, which enunciates a methodological, perceptive and objective enrichment in the humanistic sciences in Latin American geographical region.
Neutrosophy as science has inclusive attributes that make possible to extract the contributions of neutral values in the analysis of data sets; it builds a unified field of logic for transdisciplinary studies that transcend the boundaries between natural and social sciences. Neutral philosophy seeks to solve the problems of indeterminacy that appear universally, to reform the current natural or social sciences, with an open methodology to promote innovation. The research products related in this special issue start from the premise that the difficulty is not the complexity of the social environment, but the instrumental obsolescence to observe, interpret and manage that complexity, there are bold approaches and proposals for valid solutions that come to enrich the universe of resolution through the use of neutral methods. In the last year, the use of tools related to neutrosophy and its application to the social sciences, modeling of social phenomena based on simulation agents, problems associated with health, psychology, education, environmental management and sustainability solutions and legal sciences has increased in the events organized by the Asociacion Latinoamericana de Ciencias Neutrosoficas (ALCN in Spanish). The methods of higher incidence are cognitive maps, neutral Iadovs, neutral Delphi, analytical hierarchy process methods, neutral statistics, neutral personality models, among the most significant. In this special issue, there is a predominance of research from Ecuadorian universities, demonstrating how neutrosophy and its methods are consolidated as instruments of analysis, inference and research validation.
The main objective of this special issue is to divulge the applicability of the Neutrosophic Theory and to explore the possibilities and advantages of neutrosophic tools, through both the presentation of thorough research and case studies in solving social problems in Latin America. The best presentations discussed at the III International Congress of Educational Research and University Innovation, turned into papers, show us the capacity for socialization of neutrosophic knowledge and its link with this science of validation and consolidation of scientific knowledge. This publication with authors from 11 countries that we place in the hands of the international scientific community, constitutes an example of how in Latin America the Neutrosophy is contributing to complex solutions based on the results of scientific research carried out by teachers and students committed to the social responsibility of continuing to progress for the benefit of humanity.
This special issue reflects the impact of neutrosophic theory in Latin America, especially after creating the Latin American Association of Neutrosophic Sciences. Among the areas of publication most addressed in the region are found in the interrelation of social sciences and neutrosophy, presenting outstanding results in these research areas. The main objective of this special issue is to divulge the impact publication related to the Neutrosophic theory and explore new areas of research and application in the region. The SI reflects the influence of the neutrosophic publications in Latin America by opening new research areas mainly related to Neutrosophic Statistics, Plithogeny, and NeutroAlgebra. Furthermore, it is worth mentioning the incorporation of authors from new countries in the region, such as Paraguay, Uruguay, and Panama, to have authors in total from 15 countries, 12 of them from the Latin American region.
The assessment of greenhouse gases emitted to and removed from the atmosphere is high on the international political and scientific agendas. Growing international concern and cooperation regarding the climate change problem have increased the need for policy-oriented solutions to the issue of uncertainty in, and related to, inventories of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The approaches to addressing uncertainty discussed here reflect attempts to improve national inventories, not only for their own sake but also from a wider, systems analytical perspective — a perspective that seeks to strengthen the usefulness of national inventories under a compliance and/or global monitoring and reporting framework. These approaches demonstrate the benefits of including inventory uncertainty in policy analyses. The authors of the contributed papers show that considering uncertainty helps avoid situations that can, for example, create a false sense of certainty or lead to invalid views of subsystems. This may eventually prevent related errors from showing up in analyses. However, considering uncertainty does not come for free. Proper treatment of uncertainty is costly and demanding because it forces us to make the step from “simple to complex” and only then to discuss potential simplifications. Finally, comprehensive treatment of uncertainty does not offer policymakers quick and easy solutions.
Reasoning under uncertainty is always based on a specified language or for malism, including its particular syntax and semantics, but also on its associated inference mechanism. In the present volume of the handbook the last aspect, the algorithmic aspects of uncertainty calculi are presented. Theory has suffi ciently advanced to unfold some generally applicable fundamental structures and methods. On the other hand, particular features of specific formalisms and ap proaches to uncertainty of course still influence strongly the computational meth ods to be used. Both general as well as specific methods are included in this volume. Broadly speaking, symbolic or logical approaches to uncertainty and nu merical approaches are often distinguished. Although this distinction is somewhat misleading, it is used as a means to structure the present volume. This is even to some degree reflected in the two first chapters, which treat fundamental, general methods of computation in systems designed to represent uncertainty. It has been noted early by Shenoy and Shafer, that computations in different domains have an underlying common structure. Essentially pieces of knowledge or information are to be combined together and then focused on some particular question or domain. This can be captured in an algebraic structure called valuation algebra which is described in the first chapter. Here the basic operations of combination and focus ing (marginalization) of knowledge and information is modeled abstractly subject to simple axioms.
Everyday we face decisions that carry an element of risk and uncertainty. The ability to analyse, communicate and control the level of risk entailed by these decisions remains one of the most pressing challenges to the analyst, scientist and manager. This book presents the foundational issues in risk analysis ? expressing risk, understanding what risk means, building risk models, addressing uncertainty, and applying probability models to real problems. The principal aim of the book is to give the reader the knowledge and basic thinking they require to approach risk and uncertainty to support decision making. Presents a statistical framework for dealing with risk and uncertainty. Includes detailed coverage of building and applying risk models and methods. Offers new perspectives on risk, risk assessment and the use of parametric probability models. Highlights a number of applications from business and industry. Adopts a conceptual approach based on elementary probability calculus and statistical theory. Foundations of Risk Analysis provides a framework for understanding, conducting and using risk analysis suitable for advanced undergraduates, graduates, analysts and researchers from statistics, engineering, finance, medicine and the physical sciences, as well as for managers facing decision making problems involving risk and uncertainty.
Uncertainty is a circumstance in one’s life. Individual differ in their approach to handle uncertainty. Intolerance to uncertainty is influenced by various factors, such as personality, cognitive aspects and uncertainty, neuro biological aspects of uncertainty. When one understands how intolerance to uncertainty is developed and makes individual vulnerable. We can strength the psychological mind set to face uncertainty.
The subject “Systems sciences and cybernetics” is the outcome of the convergence of a number of trends in a larger current of thought devoted to the growing complexity of (primarily social) objects and arising in response to the need for globalized treatment of such objects. This has been magnified by the proliferation and publication of all manner of quantitative scientific data on such objects, advances in the theories on their inter-relations, the enormous computational capacity provided by IT hardware and software and the critical revisiting of subject-object interaction, not to mention the urgent need to control the efficiency of complex systems, where “efficiency” is understood to mean the ability to find a solution to many social problems, including those posed on a planetary scale. The result has been the forging of a new, academically consolidated scientific trend going by the name of Systems Theory and Cybernetics, with a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary focus and therefore apt for understanding realities still regarded to be inescapably chaotic. This subject entry is subdivided into four sections. The first, an introduction to systemic theories, addresses the historic development of the most commonly used systemic approaches, from new concepts such as the so-called “geometry of thinking” or the systemic treatment of “non-systemic identities” to the taxonomic, entropic, axiological and ethical problems deriving from a general “systemic-cybernetic” conceit. Hence, the focus in this section is on the historic and philosophical aspects of the subject. Moreover, it may be asserted today that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, problems, in particular problems deriving from human interaction but in general any problem regardless of its nature, must be posed from a systemic perspective, for otherwise the obstacles to their solution are insurmountable. Reaching such a perspective requires taking at least the following well-known steps: a) statement of the problem from the determinant variables or phenomena; b) adoption of theoretical models showing the interrelationships among such variables; c) use of the maximum amount of – wherever possible quantitative – information available on each; d) placement of the set of variables in an environment that inevitably pre-determines the problem. That epistemology would explain the substantial development of the systemic-cybernetic approach in recent decades. The articles in the second section deal in particular with the different methodological approaches developed when confronting real problems, from issues that affect humanity as a whole to minor but specific questions arising in human organizations. Certain sub-themes are discussed by the various authors – always from a didactic vantage –, including: problem discovery and diagnosis and development of the respective critical theory; the design of ad hoc strategies and methodologies; the implementation of both qualitative (soft system methodologies) and formal and quantitative (such as the “General System Problem Solver” or the “axiological-operational” perspective) approaches; cross-disciplinary integration; and suitable methods for broaching psychological, cultural and socio-political dynamisms. The third section is devoted to cybernetics in the present dual meaning of the term: on the one hand, control of the effectiveness of communication and actions, and on the other, the processes of self-production of knowledge through reflection and the relationship between the observing subject and the observed object when the latter is also observer and the former observed. Known as “second order cybernetics”, this provides an avenue for rethinking the validity of knowledge, such as for instance when viewed through what is known as “bipolar feedback”: processes through which interactions create novelty, complexity and diversity. Finally, the fourth section centres around artificial and computational intelligence, addressing sub-themes such as “neural networks”, the “simulated annealing” that ranges from statistical thermodynamics to combinatory problem-solving, such as in the explanation of the role of adaptive systems, or when discussing the relationship between biological and computational intelligence.
