"The patient is young" is true to some degree – the lower the age of the patient (measured e.g. in years), the more the sentence is true. The word Advaita is a composite of two Sanskrit words: Advaita is often translated as "non-duality," but a more apt translation is "non-secondness." Advaita has several meanings: As Gaudapada states, when a distinction is made between subject and object, people grasp to objects, which is samsara. By realizing one's true identity as Brahman, there is no more grasping, and the mind comes to rest. Nonduality of Atman and Brahman, the famous diction of Advaita Vedanta that Atman is not distinct from Brahman; the knowledge of this identity is liberating. Monism: there is no other reality than Brahman, that "Reality is not constituted by parts," that is, ever-changing 'things' have no existence of their own, but are appearances of the one Existent, Brahman; and that there is in reality no duality between the "experiencing self" (jiva) and Brahman, the Ground of Being. The word Vedānta is a composition of two Sanskrit words: The word Veda refers to the whole corpus of vedic texts, and the word "anta" means 'end'. The meaning of Vedānta can be summed up as "the end of the vedas" or "the ultimate knowledge of the vedas". Vedānta is one of six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy. Truth of a fuzzy proposition is a matter of degree. I recommend to everybody interested in fuzzy logic that they sharply distinguish fuzziness from uncertainty as a degree of belief (e.g. probability). Compare the last proposition with the proposition "The patient will survive next week". This may well be considered as a crisp proposition which is either (absolutely) true or (absolutely) false; but we do not know which is the case. We may have some probability (chance, degree of belief) that the sentence is true; but probability is not a degree of truth. In metrology (the science of measurement), it is acknowledged that for any measure we care to make, there exists an amount of uncertainty about its accuracy, but this degree of uncertainty is conventionally expressed with a magnitude of likelihood, and not as a degree of truth. In 1975, Lotfi A. Zadeh introduced a distinction between "Type 1 fuzzy sets" without uncertainty and "Type 2 fuzzy sets" with uncertainty, which has been widely accepted. Simply put, in the former case, each fuzzy number is linked to a non-fuzzy (natural) number, while in the latter case, each fuzzy number is linked to another fuzzy number.Problems of vagueness and fuzziness have probably always existed in human experience. From ancient history, philosophers and scientists have reflected about those kinds of problems. The ancient Sorites paradox first raised the logical problem of how we could exactly define the threshold at which a change in quantitative gradation turns into a qualitative or categorical difference. With some physical processes this threshold is relatively easy to identify. For example, water turns into steam at 100 °C or 212 °F (the boiling point depends partly on atmospheric pressure, which decreases at higher altitudes). With many other processes and gradations, however, the point of change is much more difficult to locate, and remains somewhat vague. Thus, the boundaries between qualitatively different things may be unsharp: we know that there are boundaries, but we cannot define them exactly. The Nordic myth of Loki's wager suggested that concepts that lack precise meanings or precise boundaries of application cannot be usefully discussed at all.[9] However, the 20th-century idea of "fuzzy concepts" proposes that "somewhat vague terms" can be operated with, since we can explicate and define the variability of their application by assigning numbers to gradations of applicability. This idea sounds simple enough, but it had large implications. The intellectual origins of the species of fuzzy concepts as a logical category have been traced back to a diversity of famous and less well-known thinkers,[10] including (among many others) Eubulides, Plato, Cicero, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,[11] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hugh MacColl,[13] Charles S. Peirce, Max Black,[15] Jan Łukasiewicz,[16] Emil Leon Post, Alfred Tarski,Georg Cantor, Nicolai A. Vasiliev,[19] Kurt Gödel, Stanisław Jaśkowski[20] and Donald Knuth. Across at least two and a half millennia, all of them had something to say about graded concepts with unsharp boundaries. This suggests at least that the awareness of the existence of concepts with "fuzzy" characteristics, in one form or another, has a very long history in human thought. Quite a few logicians and philosophers have also tried to analyze the characteristics of fuzzy concepts as a recognized species, sometimes with the aid of some kind of many-valued logic or substructural logic. An early attempt in the post-WW2 era to create a theory of sets where set membership is a matter of degree was made by Abraham Kaplan and Hermann Schott in 1951. They intended to apply the idea to empirical research. Kaplan and Schott measured the degree of membership of empirical classes using real numbers between 0 and 1, and they defined corresponding notions of intersection, union, complementation and subset.[22] However, at the time, their idea "fell on stony ground".[23] J. Barkley Rosser Sr. published a treatise on many-valued logics in 1952, anticipating "many-valued sets".[24] Another treatise was published in 1963 by Aleksandr A. Zinov'ev and others In 1964, the American philosopher William Alston introduced the term "degree vagueness" to describe vagueness in an idea that results from the absence of a definite cut-off point along an implied scale (in contrast to "combinatory vagueness" caused by a term that has a number of logically independent conditions of application). The German mathematician Dieter Klaua [de] published a German-language paper on fuzzy sets in 1965, but he used a different terminology (he referred to "many-valued sets", not "fuzzy sets"). Two popular introductions to many-valued logic in the late 1960s were by Robert J. Ackermann and Nicholas Rescher respectively.] Rescher's book includes a bibliography on fuzzy theory up to 1965, which was extended by Robert Wolf for 1966–1974.[30] Haack provides references to significant works after 1974.[31] Bergmann provides a more recent (2008) introduction to fuzzy reasoning.
According to the modern idea of the continuum fallacy, the fact that a statement is to an extent vague, does not automatically mean that it is invalid. The problem then becomes one of how we could ascertain the kind of validity that the statement does have.Nondualism is a fuzzy concept, for which many definitions can be found. According to David Loy, since there are similar ideas and terms in a wide variety of spiritualities and religions, ancient and modern, no single definition for the English word "nonduality" can suffice, and perhaps it is best to speak of various "nondualities" or theories of nonduality.[10] Loy sees non-dualism as a common thread in Taoism, Mahayana Buddhism, and Advaita Vedanta,distinguishes "Five Flavors Of Nonduality":
Advaita, nondual awareness, the nondifference of subject and object, or nonduality between subject and object. According to Loy, in the Upanishads " It is most often expressed as the identity between Atman (the self) and Brahman.". Monism, the nonplurality of the world. Although the phenomenal world appears as a plurality of "things", in reality they are "of a single cloth". Brahmanical and non-Brahmanical ascetic traditions of the first millennium BCE developed in close interaction, utilizing proto-Samkhya enumerations (lists) analyzing experience in the context of meditative practices providing liberating insight into the nature of experience. The first millennium CE saw a movement towards postulating an underlying "basis of unity," both in the Buddhist Madhyamaka and Yogacara schools, and in Advaita Vedanta, collapsing phenomenal reality into a "single substrate or underlying principle." From Dualism to Oneness in Psychoanalysis: A Zen Perspective on the Mind-Body Question focuses on the shift in psychoanalytic thought, from a view of mind-body dualism to a contemporary non-dualistic perspective. The Perennial philosophy has its roots in the Renaissance interest in neo-Platonism and its idea of The One, from which all existence emanates. Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) sought to integrate Hermeticism with Greek and Jewish-Christian thought, discerning a Prisca theologia which could be found in all age Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94) suggested that truth could be found in many, rather than just two, traditions. He proposed a harmony between the thought of Plato and Aristotle, and saw aspects of the Prisca theologia in Averroes, the Koran, the Cabala and other sources. Agostino Steuco (1497–1548) coined the term philosophia perennis."Dual" comes from Latin "duo," two, prefixed with "non-" meaning "not"; "non-dual" means "not-two." When referring to nondualism, Hinduism generally uses the Sanskrit term Advaita, while Buddhism uses Advaya (Tibetan: gNis-med, Chinese: pu-erh, Japanese: fu-ni). "Advaita" (अद्वैत) is from Sanskrit roots a, not; dvaita, dual. As Advaita, it means "not-two." or "one without a second," and is usually translated as "nondualism", "nonduality" and "nondual". The term "nondualism" and the term "advaita" from which it originates are polyvalent terms. "Advaya" (अद्वय) is also a Sanskrit word that means "identity, unique, not two, without a second," and typically refers to the two truths doctrine of Mahayana Buddhism, especially Madhyamaka.
The English term "nondual" was informed by early translations of the Upanishads in Western languages other than English from 1775. These terms have entered the English language from literal English renderings of "advaita" subsequent to the first wave of English translations of the Upanishads. These translations commenced with the work of Müller (1823–1900), in the monumental Sacred Books of the East (1879). Max Müller rendered "advaita" as "Monism", as have many recent scholars. However, some scholars state that "advaita" is not really monism. Nondual awareness, also called pure consciousness or awareness, contentless consciousness, consciousness-as-such, and Minimal Phenomenal Experience, is a topic of phenomenological research. As described in Samkhya-Yoga and other systems of meditation, and referred to as, for example, Turya and Atman, pure awareness manifests in advanced states of meditation. Unitarian Universalism had a strong impact on Ram Mohan Roy and the Brahmo Samaj, and subsequently on Swami Vivekananda. Vivekananda was one of the main representatives of Neo-Vedanta, a modern interpretation of Hinduism in line with western esoteric traditions, especially Transcendentalism, New Thought and Theosophy. His reinterpretation was, and is, very successful, creating a new understanding and appreciation of Hinduism within and outside India, and was the principal reason for the enthusiastic reception of yoga, transcendental meditation and other forms of Indian spiritual self-improvement in the West. Narendranath Datta (Swami Vivekananda) became a member of a Freemasonry lodge "at some point before 1884" and of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj in his twenties, a breakaway faction of the Brahmo Samaj led by Keshab Chandra Sen and Debendranath Tagore.Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833), the founder of the Brahmo Samaj, had a strong sympathy for the Unitarians, who were closely connected to the Transcendentalists, who in turn were interested in and influenced by Indian religions early on. It was in this cultic milieu that Narendra became acquainted with Western esotericism. Debendranath Tagore brought this "neo-Hinduism" closer in line with western esotericism, a development which was furthered by Keshubchandra Sen, who was also influenced by transcendentalism, which emphasised personal religious experience over mere reasoning and theology. Sen's influence brought Vivekananda fully into contact with western esotericism, and it was also via Sen that he met Ramakrishna. Vivekananda's acquaintance with western esotericism made him very successful in western esoteric circles, beginning with his speech in 1893 at the Parliament of Religions. Vivekananda adapted traditional Hindu ideas and religiosity to suit the needs and understandings of his western audiences, who were especially attracted by and familiar with western esoteric traditions and movements like Transcendentalism and New thought. In 1897 he founded the Ramakrishna Mission, which was instrumental in the spread of Neo-Vedanta in the west, and attracted people like Alan Watts. Aldous Huxley, author of The Perennial Philosophy, was associated with another neo-Vedanta organisation, the Vedanta Society of Southern California, founded and headed by Swami Prabhavananda. Together with Gerald Heard, Christopher Isherwood, and other followers he was initiated by the Swami and was taught meditation and spiritual practices. Neo-Vedanta was well-received among Theosophists, Christian Science, and the New Thought movement; Christian Science in turn influenced the self-study teaching A Course in Miracles.Pure consciousness is distinguished from the workings of the mind, and "consists in nothing but the being seen of what is seen." Gamma & Metzinger (2021) present twelve factors in their phenomenological analysis of pure awareness experienced by meditators, including luminosity; emptiness and non-egoic self-awareness; and witness-consciousness.A main modern proponent of perennialism was Aldous Huxley, who was influenced by Vivekananda's Neo-Vedanta and Universalism. This popular approach finds supports in the "common-core thesis". According to the "common-core thesis", different descriptions can mask quite similar if not identical experiences:
According to Elias Amidon there is an "indescribable, but definitely recognizable, reality that is the ground of all being." According to Renard, these are based on an experience or intuition of "the Real". According to Amidon, this reality is signified by "many names" from "spiritual traditions throughout the world": [N]ondual awareness, pure awareness, open awareness, presence-awareness, unconditioned mind, rigpa, primordial experience, This, the basic state, the sublime, buddhanature, original nature, spontaneous presence, the oneness of being, the ground of being, the Real, clarity, God-consciousness, divine light, the clear light, illumination, realization and enlightenment. According to Renard, nondualism as common essence prefers the term "nondualism", instead of monism, because this understanding is "nonconceptual", "not graspapable in an idea" Even to call this "ground of reality", "One", or "Oneness" is attributing a characteristic to that ground of reality. The only thing that can be said is that it is "not two" or "non-dual": [N]o unmediated experience is possible, and that in the extreme, language is not simply used to interpret experience but in fact constitutes experience. The idea of a common essence has been questioned by Yandell, who discerns various "religious experiences" and their corresponding doctrinal settings, which differ in structure and phenomenological content, and in the "evidential value" they present. The specific teachings and practices of a specific tradition may determine what "experience" someone has, which means that this "experience" is not the proof of the teaching, but a result of the teaching. The notion of what exactly constitutes "liberating insight" varies between the various traditions, and even within the traditions. Bronkhorst for example notices that the conception of what exactly "liberating insight" is in Buddhism was developed over time. Whereas originally it may not have been specified, later on the Four Truths served as such, to be superseded by pratityasamutpada, and still later, in the Hinayana schools, by the doctrine of the non-existence of a substantial self or person. And Schmithausen notices that still other descriptions of this "liberating insight" exist in the Buddhist canon.nsight (prajna, kensho, satori, gnosis, theoria, illumination), especially enlightenment or the realization of the illusory nature of the autonomous "I" or self, is a key element in modern western nondual thought. It is the personal realization that ultimate reality is nondual, and is thought to be a validating means of knowledge of this nondual reality. This insight is interpreted as a psychological state, and labeled as religious or mystical experience. According to Hori, the notion of "religious experience" can be traced back to William James, who used the term "religious experience" in his book, The Varieties of Religious Experience. The origins of the use of this term can be dated further back. In the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, several historical figures put forth very influential views that religion and its beliefs can be grounded in experience itself. While Kant held that moral experience justified religious beliefs, John Wesley in addition to stressing individual moral exertion thought that the religious experiences in the Methodist movement (paralleling the Romantic Movement) were foundational to religious commitment as a way of life. Wayne Proudfoot traces the roots of the notion of "religious experience" to the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), who argued that religion is based on a feeling of the infinite. The notion of "religious experience" was used by Schleiermacher and Albert Ritschl to defend religion against the growing scientific and secular critique, and defend the view that human (moral and religious) experience justifies religious beliefs. Such religious empiricism would be later seen as highly problematic and was – during the period in-between world wars – famously rejected by Karl Barth. In the 20th century, religious as well as moral experience as justification for religious beliefs still holds sway. Some influential modern scholars holding this liberal theological view are Charles Raven and the Oxford physicist/theologian Charles Coulson. The notion of "religious experience" was adopted by many scholars of religion, of which William James was the most influential. The notion of "experience" has been criticised. Robert Sharf points out that "experience" is a typical Western term, which has found its way into Asian religiosity via western influences.Insight is not the "experience" of some transcendental reality, but is a cognitive event, the (intuitive) understanding or "grasping" of some specific understanding of reality, as in kensho,or anubhava. "Pure experience" does not exist; all experience is mediated by intellectual and cognitive activity A pure consciousness without concepts, reached by "cleaning the doors of perception", would be an overwhelming chaos of sensory input without coherence.A major force in the mutual influence of eastern and western ideas and religiosity was the Theosophical Society.It searched for ancient wisdom in the east, spreading eastern religious ideas in the west One of its salient features was the belief in "Masters of Wisdom", "beings, human or once human, who have transcended the normal frontiers of knowledge, and who make their wisdom available to others". The Theosophical Society also spread western ideas in the east, aiding a modernisation of eastern traditions, and contributing to a growing nationalism in the Asian colonies.Transcendentalism was an early 19th-century liberal Protestant movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the Eastern region of the United States. It was rooted in English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Herder and Schleiermacher, and the skepticism of Hume. The Transcendentalists emphasised an intuitive, experiential approach of religion. Following Schleiermacher, an individual's intuition of truth was taken as the criterion for truth. In the late 18th and early 19th century, the first translations of Hindu texts appeared, which were read by the Transcendentalists and influenced their thinking. The Transcendentalists also endorsed universalist and Unitarianist ideas, leading to Unitarian Universalism, the idea that there must be truth in other religions as well, since a loving God would redeem all living beings, not just Christians.Western esotericism (also called esotericism and esoterism) is a scholarly term for a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements which have developed within Western society. They are largely distinct both from orthodox Judeo-Christian religion and from Enlightenment rationalism. The earliest traditions which later analysis would label as forms of Western esotericism emerged in the Eastern Mediterranean during Late Antiquity, where Hermetism, Gnosticism, and Neoplatonism developed as schools of thought distinct from what became mainstream Christianity. In Renaissance Europe, interest in many of these older ideas increased, with various intellectuals seeking to combine "pagan" philosophies with the Kabbalah and with Christian philosophy, resulting in the emergence of esoteric movements like Christian theosophy."Dual" comes from Latin "duo," two, prefixed with "non-" meaning "not"; "non-dual" means "not-two." When referring to nondualism, Hinduism generally uses the Sanskrit term Advaita, while Buddhism uses Advaya (Tibetan: gNis-med, Chinese: pu-erh, Japanese: fu-ni). "Advaita" (अद्वैत) is from Sanskrit roots a, not; dvaita, dual. As Advaita, it means "not-two."[1][8] or "one without a second,"[8] and is usually translated as "nondualism", "nonduality" and "nondual". The term "nondualism" and the term "advaita" from which it originates are polyvalent terms. "Advaya" (अद्वय) is also a Sanskrit word that means "identity, unique, not two, without a second," and typically refers to the two truths doctrine of Mahayana Buddhism, especially Madhyamaka. The English term "nondual" was informed by early translations of the Upanishads in Western languages other than English from 1775. These terms have entered the English language from literal English renderings of "advaita" subsequent to the first wave of English translations of the Upanishads. These translations commenced with the work of Müller (1823–1900), in the monumental Sacred Books of the East (1879). Max Müller rendered "advaita" as "Monism", as have many recent scholars. However, some scholars state that "advaita" is not really monism
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism
A fuzzy concept is a kind of concept of which the boundaries of application can vary considerably according to context or conditions, instead of being fixed once and for all. This means the concept is vague in some way, lacking a fixed, precise meaning, without however being unclear or meaningless altogether.It has a definite meaning, which can be made more precise only through further elaboration and specification - including a closer definition of the context in which the concept is used. The study of the characteristics of fuzzy concepts and fuzzy language is called fuzzy semantics. The inverse of a "fuzzy concept" is a "crisp concept" (i.e. a precise concept).
A fuzzy concept is understood by scientists as a concept which is "to an extent applicable" in a situation. That means the concept has gradations of significance or unsharp (variable) boundaries of application. A fuzzy statement is a statement which is true "to some extent", and that extent can often be represented by a scaled value. The term is also used these days in a more general, popular sense – in contrast to its technical meaning – to refer to a concept which is "rather vague" for any kind of reason. In the past, the very idea of reasoning with fuzzy concepts faced considerable resistance from academic elites. They did not want to endorse the use of imprecise concepts in research or argumentation. Yet although people might not be aware of it, the use of fuzzy concepts has risen gigantically in all walks of life from the 1970s onward. That is mainly due to advances in electronic engineering, fuzzy mathematics and digital computer programming. The new technology allows very complex inferences about "variations on a theme" to be anticipated and fixed in a program. New neuro-fuzzy computational methods make it possible to identify, measure and respond to fine gradations of significance with great precision. It means that practically useful concepts can be coded and applied to all kinds of tasks, even if ordinarily these concepts are never precisely defined. Nowadays engineers, statisticians and programmers often represent fuzzy concepts mathematically, using fuzzy logic, fuzzy values, fuzzy variables and fuzzy sets."There exists strong evidence, established in the 1970s in the psychology of concepts... that human concepts have a graded structure in that whether or not a concept applies to a given object is a matter of degree, rather than a yes-or-no question, and that people are capable of working with the degrees in a consistent way. This finding is intuitively quite appealing, because people say "this product is more or less good" or "to a certain degree, he is a good athlete", implying the graded structure of concepts. In his classic paper, Zadeh called the concepts with a graded structure fuzzy concepts and argued that these concepts are a rule rather than an exception when it comes to how people communicate knowledge. Moreover, he argued that to model such concepts mathematically is important for the tasks of control, decision making, pattern recognition, and the like. Zadeh proposed the notion of a fuzzy set that gave birth to the field of fuzzy logic..."Hence, a concept is generally regarded as "fuzzy" in a logical sense if:defining characteristics of the concept apply to it "to a certain degree or extent" (or, more unusually, "with a certain magnitude of likelihood").
or, the boundaries of applicability (the truth-value) of a concept can vary in degrees, according to different conditions.
or, the fuzzy concept itself straightforwardly consists of a fuzzy set, or a combination of such sets.
The fact that a concept is fuzzy does not prevent its use in logical reasoning; it merely affects the type of reasoning which can be applied (see fuzzy logic). If the concept has gradations of meaningful significance, it is necessary to specify and formalize what those gradations are, if they can make an important difference. Not all fuzzy concepts have the same logical structure, but they can often be formally described or reconstructed using fuzzy logic or other substructural logics.The advantage of this approach is, that numerical notation enables a potentially infinite number of truth-values between complete truth and complete falsehood, and thus it enables - in theory, at least - the greatest precision in stating the degree of applicability of a logical rule..In philosophical logic and linguistics, fuzzy concepts are often regarded as vague concepts which in their application, or formally speaking, are neither completely true nor completely false, or which are partly true and partly false; they are ideas which require further elaboration, specification or qualification to understand their applicability (the conditions under which they truly make sense). The "fuzzy area" can also refer simply to a residual number of cases which cannot be allocated to a known and identifiable group, class or set if strict criteria are used. The collaborative written works of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari refer occasionally to fuzzy sets in conjunction with their idea of multiplicities. In A Thousand Plateaus, they note that "a set is fuzzy if its elements belong to it only by virtue of specific operations of consistency and consolidation, which themselves follow a special logic", and in What Is Philosophy?, a work dealing with the functions of concepts, they write that concepts as a whole are "vague or fuzzy sets, simple aggregates of perceptions and affections, which form within the lived as immanent to a subject" In mathematics and statistics, a fuzzy variable (such as "the temperature", "hot" or "cold") is a value which could lie in a probable range defined by some quantitative limits or parameters, and which can be usefully described with imprecise categories (such as "high", "medium" or "low") using some kind of scale or conceptual hierarchy.n mathematics and computer science, the gradations of applicable meaning of a fuzzy concept are described in terms of quantitative relationships defined by logical operators. Such an approach is sometimes called "degree-theoretic semantics" by logicians and philosophers, but the more usual term is fuzzy logic or many-valued logic. The novelty of fuzzy logic is, that it "breaks with the traditional principle that formalisation should correct and avoid, but not compromise with, vagueness". The basic idea of fuzzy logic is that a real number is assigned to each statement written in a language, within a range from 0 to 1, where 1 means that the statement is completely true, and 0 means that the statement is completely false, while values less than 1 but greater than 0 represent that the statements are "partly true", to a given, quantifiable extent. Susan Haack comments: "Whereas in classical set theory an object either is or is not a member of a given set, in fuzzy set theory membership is a matter of degree; the degree of membership of an object in a fuzzy set is represented by some real number between 0 and 1, with 0 denoting no membership and full membership." ..."Truth" in this mathematical context usually means simply that "something is the case", or that "something is applicable". This makes it possible to analyze a distribution of statements for their truth-content, identify data patterns, make inferences and predictions, and model how processes operate. Petr Hájek claimed that "fuzzy logic is not just some "applied logic", but may bring "new light to classical logical problems", and therefore might be well classified as a distinct branch of "philosophical logic" similar to e.g. modal logics.Fuzzy logic offers computationally-oriented systems of concepts and methods, to formalize types of reasoning which are ordinarily approximate only, and not exact. In principle, this allows us to give a definite, precise answer to the question, "To what extent is something the case?", or, "To what extent is something applicable?". Via a series of switches, this kind of reasoning can be built into electronic devices. That was already happening before fuzzy logic was invented, but using fuzzy logic in modelling has become an important aid in design, which creates many new technical possibilities. Fuzzy reasoning (i.e., reasoning with graded concepts) turns out to have many practical uses. It is nowadays widely used in:
The programming of vehicle and transport electronics, household appliances, video games, language filters, robotics, and driverless vehicles. Fuzzy logic washing machines are gaining popularity. All kinds of control systems that regulate access, traffic, movement, balance, conditions, temperature, pressure, routers etc. Electronic equipment used for pattern recognition, surveying and monitoring (including radars, satellites, alarm systems and surveillance systems).
Cybernetics research, artificial intelligence,[54] virtual intelligence, machine learning, database design and soft computing research. "Fuzzy risk scores" are used by project managers and portfolio managers to express financial risk assessments. It looks like fuzzy logic will eventually be applied in almost every aspect of life, even if people are not aware of it, and in that sense fuzzy logic is an astonishingly successful invention.[58] The scientific and engineering literature on the subject is constantly increasing.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_concept
Advaita Vedanta (/ʌdˈvaɪtə vɛˈdɑːntə/; Sanskrit: अद्वैत वेदान्त, IAST: Advaita Vedānta) is a Hindu sādhanā, a path of spiritual discipline and experience, and the oldest extant tradition of the orthodox Hindu school Vedānta. The term Advaita (literally "non-secondness", but usually rendered as "nondualism",and often equated with monism[note 3]) refers to the idea that Brahman alone is ultimately real, while the transient phenomenal world is an illusory appearance (maya) of Brahman. In this view, jivatman, the experiencing self, is ultimately non-different ("na aparah") from Ātman-Brahman, the highest Self or Reality.The jivatman or individual self is a mere reflection or limitation of singular Ātman in a multitude of apparent individual bodies. In the Advaita tradition, moksha (liberation from suffering and rebirth),is attained through recognizing this illusoriness of the phenomenal world and disidentification from the body-mind complex and the notion of 'doership',[note 5] and acquiring vidyā (knowledge) of one's true identity as Atman-Brahman, self-luminous (svayam prakāśa)[note 6] awareness or Witness-consciousness. Upanishadic statements such as tat tvam asi, "that['s how] you are," destroy the ignorance (avidyā) regarding one's true identity by revealing that (jiv)Ātman is non-different from immortal[note 8] Brahman. While the prominent 8th century Vedic scholar and teacher (acharya) Adi Shankara emphasized that, since Brahman is ever-present, Brahman-knowledge is immediate and requires no 'action', that is, striving and effort,[15][16][17] the Advaita tradition also prescribes elaborate preparatory practice, including contemplation of the mahavakyas and accepting yogic samadhi as a means to knowledge, posing a paradox which is also recognized in other spiritual disciplines and traditions. Advaita Vedānta adapted philosophical concepts from Buddhism, giving them a Vedantic basis and interpretation,and was influenced by, and influenced, various traditions and texts of Indian philosophy, While Adi Shankara is generally regarded as the most prominent exponent of the Advaita Vedānta tradition,[26] his early influence has been questioned, as his prominence started to take shape only centuries later in the 14th century, with the ascent of Sringeri matha and its jagadguru Vidyaranya (Madhava, 14th cent.) in the Vijayanagara Empire.[note 11] While Shankara did not embrace Yoga,[37] the Advaita Vedānta tradition in medieval times explicitly incorporated elements from the yogic tradition and texts like the Yoga Vasistha and the Bhagavata Purana, culminating in Swami Vivekananda's full embrace and propagation of Yogic samadhi as an Advaita means of knowledge and liberation. In the 19th century, due to the influence of Vidyaranya's Sarvadarśanasaṅgraha, the importance of Advaita Vedānta was overemphasized by Western scholarship,[42] and Advaita Vedānta came to be regarded as the paradigmatic example of Hindu spirituality, despite the numerical dominance of theistic Bhakti-oriented religiosity. In modern times, Advaita views appear in various Neo-Vedānta movements. While "a preferred terminology" for Upanisadic philosophy "in the early periods, before the time of Shankara" was Puruṣavāda,[50][note 13] the Advaita Vedānta school has historically been referred to by various names, such as Advaita-vada (speaker of Advaita), Abheda-darshana (view of non-difference), Dvaita-vada-pratisedha (denial of dual distinctions), and Kevala-dvaita (non-dualism of the isolated). It is also called māyāvāda by Vaishnava opponents, akin to Madhyamaka Buddhism, due to their insistence that phenomena ultimately lack an inherent essence or reality,[ According to Richard King, a professor of Buddhist and Asian studies, the term Advaita first occurs in a recognizably Vedantic context in the prose of Mandukya Upanishad.[51] In contrast, according to Frits Staal, a professor of philosophy specializing in Sanskrit and Vedic studies, the word Advaita is from the Vedic era, and the Vedic sage Yajnavalkya (8th or 7th-century BCE is credited to be the one who coined it] Stephen Phillips, a professor of philosophy and Asian studies, translates the Advaita containing verse excerpt in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, as "An ocean, a single seer without duality becomes he whose world is Brahman.While the term "Advaita Vedanta" in a strict sense may refer to the scholastic tradition of textual exegesis established by Shankara, "advaita" in a broader sense may refer to a broad current of advaitic thought, which incorporates advaitic elements with yogic thought and practice and other strands of Indian religiosity, such as Kashmir Shaivism and the Nath tradition. The first connotation has also been called "Classical Advaita" and "doctrinal Advaita," and its presentation as such is due to mediaeval doxographies,the influence of Orientalist Indologists like Paul Deussen, and the Indian response to colonial influences, dubbed neo-Vedanta by Paul Hacker, who regarded it as a deviation from "traditional" Advaita Vedanta.Yet, post-Shankara Advaita Vedanta incorporated yogic elements, such as the Yoga Vasistha, and influenced other Indian traditions, and neo-Vedanta is based on this broader strand of Indian thought. This broader current of thought and practice has also been called "greater Advaita Vedanta," "vernacular advaita,"and "experiential Advaita." It is this broader advaitic tradition which is commonly presented as "Advaita Vedanta," though the term "advaitic" may be more apt.The nondualism of Advaita Vedānta is often regarded as an idealist monism. According to King, Advaita Vedānta developed "to its ultimate extreme" the monistic ideas already present in the Upanishads. In contrast, states Milne, it is misleading to call Advaita Vedānta "monistic," since this confuses the "negation of difference" with "conflation into one."Advaita is a negative term (a-dvaita), states Milne, which denotes the "negation of a difference," between subject and object, or between perceiver and perceived. According to Deutsch, Advaita Vedānta teaches monistic oneness, however without the multiplicity premise of alternate monism theories.According to Jacqueline Suthren Hirst, Adi Shankara positively emphasizes "oneness" premise in his Brahma-sutra Bhasya 2.1.20, attributing it to all the Upanishads. Nicholson states Advaita Vedānta contains realistic strands of thought, both in its oldest origins and in Shankara's writings.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta#Svayam_prakāśa_(self-luminosity)
