Bridging the Gap in Common Ground When Talking about Voices

Despite the negative impact of voice-hearing often being bound up in what is said, there has been a distinct lack of attention paid to exploring the linguistic content of voices and/or the language voice-hearers use to describe their experiences. In this chapter, I will take a close look at how voice-hearers in the Voices in Psychosis (VIP) transcripts use language non-literally in order to convey their complex experiences, and what that might tell us about the nature of voice-hearing experiences, as well as about the function of different forms of figurative language. The topic of figurative language is a vast area of debate and theorizing, with many different accounts of what is involved. For my purposes here, it suffices to say that figurative language is a way of talking about something (the primary subject/topic or tenor) by using words or phrases that do not typically, conventionally, or literally refer to that thing (the secondary subject or vehicle). Although they are often treated as synonyms, I take ‘figurative language’ to be a slightly narrower category than ‘non-literal language’. In other words, all instances of figurative language are instances of non-literal language, but not vice versa. Metaphors and similes are both instances of figurative language, and hence also of non-literal language. However, hyperbole (exaggeration) and approximation are non-literal, but they are not fully figurative in my sense (they could be described as ‘loose use’, or ‘less than literal’). An understanding of figurative language requires a more complicated and lateral inference than simply understanding that someone is overstating for effect (hyperbole) or drawing a close approximation. That is, in part, why figurative language is so widely used in literature: it is a more adventurous use of language. It is more open to communicative failure, or to being interpreted differently by different people, but the pay-off can be great, with metaphors having the potential to yield rich and open-ended interpretations

INVESTIGATION OF INDUSTRY 5.0 HURDLES AND THEIR MITIGATION TACTICS IN EMERGING ECONOMIES BY TODIM ARITHMETIC AND GEOMETRIC AGGREGATION OPERATORS IN SINGLE VALUE NEUTROSOPHIC ENVIRONMENT

Industry 5.0 acceptance is accelerating, but research is still in its infancy, and existing research covers a small subset of context-specific obstacles. This study aims to enumerate all potential obstacles, quantitatively rank them, and assess interdependencies at the organizational level for Industry 5.0 adoption. To achieve this, we thoroughly review the literature, identify obstacles, and investigate causal relationships using a multi-criteria decision-making approach called single value Neutrosophic TODIM. Single-valued Neutrosophic sets (SVNS) ensembles are employed in a real-world setting to deal with uncertainty and indeterminacy. The suggested strategy enables the experts to conduct group decision-making by focusing on ranking the smaller collection of criterion values and the comparison with the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory method (DEMATEL). According to the findings, the most significant hurdles are expenses and the funding system, capacity scalability, upskilling, and reskilling of human labor. As a result, a comfortable atmosphere is produced for decision-making, enabling the experts to handle an acceptable amount of data while still making choices

Entrepreneurs as strategic transformation managers: Exploring micro-foundations of digital transformation in small and medium internationalisers

This paper is set to explore the role of individual-level behaviours and actions in the digital transformation of international SMEs. This is particularly important since little is known regarding the extent to which entrepreneurs and decision-makers manage the digitalisation process. Thus, building on the theory of planned behaviour, this research focuses on individual-level micro-foundations in the digital transformation of small and medium internationalisers. The paper benefits from a mixed-method synthesis. First, through a systematic review of literature, we identified twenty-seven factors in four inclusive categories. Then, they have been narrowed down to the top seven individual-level micro-foundations, using Intuitionistic Fuzzy Delphi based on Normalised Hamming Distance. Subsequently, Intuitionistic Fuzzy Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory analysis is applied to disentangle the causality and effectuality as well as conceptual framework to depict their interrelationships. Our findings contribute to the digital transformation research by developing six prepositions that explore the relationships between SMEs’ micro-foundations at the individual level

Fuzzy Techniques for Decision Making 2018

Zadeh's fuzzy set theory incorporates the impreciseness of data and evaluations, by imputting the degrees by which each object belongs to a set. Its success fostered theories that codify the subjectivity, uncertainty, imprecision, or roughness of the evaluations. Their rationale is to produce new flexible methodologies in order to model a variety of concrete decision problems more realistically. This Special Issue garners contributions addressing novel tools, techniques and methodologies for decision making (inclusive of both individual and group, single- or multi-criteria decision making) in the context of these theories. It contains 38 research articles that contribute to a variety of setups that combine fuzziness, hesitancy, roughness, covering sets, and linguistic approaches. Their ranges vary from fundamental or technical to applied approaches

The Encyclopedia of Neutrosophic Researchers - vol. 1

This is the first volume of the Encyclopedia of Neutrosophic Researchers, edited from materials offered by the authors who responded to the editor’s invitation. The authors are listed alphabetically. The introduction contains a short history of neutrosophics, together with links to the main papers and books. Neutrosophic set, neutrosophic logic, neutrosophic probability, neutrosophic statistics, neutrosophic measure, neutrosophic precalculus, neutrosophic calculus and so on are gaining significant attention in solving many real life problems that involve uncertainty, impreciseness, vagueness, incompleteness, inconsistent, and indeterminacy. In the past years the fields of neutrosophics have been extended and applied in various fields, such as: artificial intelligence, data mining, soft computing, decision making in incomplete / indeterminate / inconsistent information systems, image processing, computational modelling, robotics, medical diagnosis, biomedical engineering, investment problems, economic forecasting, social science, humanistic and practical achievements

Fuzzy Mathematics

This book provides a timely overview of topics in fuzzy mathematics. It lays the foundation for further research and applications in a broad range of areas. It contains break-through analysis on how results from the many variations and extensions of fuzzy set theory can be obtained from known results of traditional fuzzy set theory. The book contains not only theoretical results, but a wide range of applications in areas such as decision analysis, optimal allocation in possibilistics and mixed models, pattern classification, credibility measures, algorithms for modeling uncertain data, and numerical methods for solving fuzzy linear systems. The book offers an excellent reference for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in applied and theoretical fuzzy mathematics. Researchers and referees in fuzzy set theory will find the book to be of extreme value

Using Pythagorean Fuzzy Sets (PFS) in Multiple Criteria Group Decision Making (MCGDM) Methods for Engineering Materials Selection Applications

The process of materials’ selection is very critical during the initial stages of designing manufactured products. Inefficient decision-making outcomes in the material selection process could result in poor quality of products and unnecessary costs. In the last century, numerous materials have been developed for manufacturing mechanical components in different industries. Many of these new materials are similar in their properties and performances, thus creating great challenges for designers and engineers to make accurate selections. Our main objective in this work is to assist decision makers (DMs) within the manufacturing field to evaluate materials alternatives and to select the best alternative for specific manufacturing purposes. In this research, new hybrid fuzzy Multiple Criteria Group Decision Making (MCGDM) methods are proposed for the material selection problem. The proposed methods tackle some challenges that are associated with the material selection decision making process, such as aggregating decision makers’ (DMs) decisions appropriately and modeling uncertainty. In the proposed hybrid models, a novel aggregation approach is developed to convert DMs crisp decisions to Pythagorean fuzzy sets (PFS). This approach gives more flexibility to DMs to express their opinions than the traditional fuzzy and intuitionistic sets (IFS). Then, the proposed aggregation approach is integrated with a ranking method to solve the Pythagorean Fuzzy Multi Criteria Decision Making (PFMCGDM) problem and rank the material alternatives. The ranking methods used in the hybrid models are the Pythagorean Fuzzy TOPSIS (The Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) and Pythagorean Fuzzy COPRAS (COmplex PRoportional Assessment). TOPSIS and COPRAS are selected based on their effectiveness and practicality in dealing with the nature of material selection problems. In the aggregation approach, the Sugeno Fuzzy measure and the Shapley value are used to fairly distribute the DMs weight in the Pythagorean Fuzzy numbers. Additionally, new functions to calculate uncertainty from DMs recommendations are developed using the Takagai-Sugeno approach. The literature reveals some work on these methods, but to our knowledge, there are no published works that integrate the proposed aggregation approach with the selected MCDM ranking methods under the Pythagorean Fuzzy environment for the use in materials selection problems. Furthermore, the proposed methods might be applied, due to its novelty, to any MCDM problem in other areas. A practical validation of the proposed hybrid PFMCGDM methods is investigated through conducting a case study of material selection for high pressure turbine blades in jet engines. The main objectives of the case study were: 1) to investigate the new developed aggregation approach in converting real DMs crisp decisions into Pythagorean fuzzy numbers; 2) to test the applicability of both the hybrid PFMCGDM TOPSIS and the hybrid PFMCGDM COPRAS methods in the field of material selection. In this case study, a group of five DMs, faculty members and graduate students, from the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, were selected to participate as DMs. Their evaluations fulfilled the first objective of the case study. A computer application for material selection was developed to assist designers and engineers in real life problems. A comparative analysis was performed to compare the results of both hybrid MCGDM methods. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to show the robustness and reliability of the outcomes obtained from both methods. It is concluded that using the proposed hybrid PFMCGDM TOPSIS method is more effective and practical in the material selection process than the proposed hybrid PFMCGDM COPRAS method. Additionally, recommendations for further research are suggested

A review of fuzzy AHP methods for decision-making with subjective judgements

Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a broadly applied multi-criteria decision-making method to determine the weights of criteria and priorities of alternatives in a structured manner based on pairwise comparison. As subjective judgments during comparison might be imprecise, fuzzy sets have been combined with AHP. This is referred to as fuzzy AHP or FAHP. An increasing amount of papers are published which describe different ways to derive the weights/priorities from a fuzzy comparison matrix, but seldomly set out the relative benefits of each approach so that the choice of the approach seems arbitrary. A review of various fuzzy AHP techniques is required to guide both academic and industrial experts to choose suitable techniques for a specific practical context. This paper reviews the literature published since 2008 where fuzzy AHP is applied to decision-making problems in industry, particularly the various selection problems. The techniques are categorised by the four aspects of developing a fuzzy AHP model: (i) representation of the relative importance for pairwise comparison, (ii) aggregation of fuzzy sets for group decisions and weights/priorities, (iii) defuzzification of a fuzzy set to a crisp value for final comparison, and (iv) consistency measurement of the judgements. These techniques are discussed in terms of their underlying principles, origins, strengths and weakness. Summary tables and specification charts are provided to guide the selection of suitable techniques. Tips for building a fuzzy AHP model are also included and six open questions are posed for future work

Investigating Potential Interventions on disruptive impacts of Industry 4.0 technologies in Circular Supply chains: Evidence from SMEs of an Emerging Economy

As a transversal theme, the intertwining of digitalization and sustainability has crossed all Supply Chains (SCs) levels dealing with widespread environmental and societal concerns. This paper investigates the potential interventions and disruptive impacts that Industry 4.0 technologies may have on pharmaceutical Circular SCs (CSCs). To accomplish this, a novel method involving a literature review and Pythagorean fuzzy-Delphi has initially been employed to identify and screen categorized lists of Industry 4.0 Disruptive Technologies (IDTs) and their impacts on pharmaceutical CSC. Subsequently, the weight of finalized impacts and the performance score of finalized IDTs have simultaneously been measured via a novel version of Pythagorean fuzzy SECA (Simultaneously Evaluation of Criteria and Alternatives). Then, the priority of each intervention for disruptive impacts of Industry 4.0 has been determined via the Hanlon method. This is one of the first papers to provide in-depth insights into advancing the study of the disruptive action of Industry 4.0 technologies cross-fertilizing CE throughout pharmaceutical SCs in the emerging economy of Iran. The results indicate that digital technologies such as Big Data Analytics, Global Positioning Systems, Enterprise Resource Planning, and Digital Platforms are quite available in the Irans' pharmaceutical industry. These technologies, along with four available interventions, e.g., environmental regulations, subsidy, fine, and reward, would facilitate moving towards a lean, agile, resilient, and sustainable supply chain through the efficient utilization of resources, optimized waste management, and substituting the human workforce by machines