This article may need to be rewritten to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards. You can help. The talk page may contain suggestions.(September 2022)
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.[1] This means the concept is vague in some way, lacking a fixed, precise meaning, without however being unclear or meaningless altogether.[2] 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.[3] 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.[4]
New neuro-fuzzy computational methods make it possible to identify, measure and respond to fine gradations of significance with great precision.[5] 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.[6]
^Susan Haack, Deviant logic, fuzzy logic: beyond the formalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
^Richard Dietz & Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds.), Cuts and clouds. Vagueness, Its Nature, and Its Logic. Oxford University Press, 2009; Delia Graff & Timothy Williamson (eds.), Vagueness. London: Routledge, 2002.
^Timothy Williamson, Vagueness. London: Routledge, 1994, p. 124f; Lotfi A. Zadeh, "Quantitative fuzzy semantics". Information Sciences, Vol. 3, No. 2, April 1971, pp. 159-176.
^Bart Kosko, Fuzzy Thinking: The New Science of Fuzzy Logic. New York: Hyperion, 1993; Bart Kosko, Heaven in a chip: fuzzy visions of society and science in the digital age. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999; Daniel McNeill & Paul Freiberger, Fuzzy Logic: The Revolutionary Computer Technology that Is Changing Our World. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Charles Elkan, "The paradoxical success of fuzzy logic." IEEE Expert, August 1994.[1] A useful overview of the field is provided in: Radim Bělohlávek, Joseph W. Dauben & George J. Klir, Fuzzy Logic and Mathematics: A Historical Perspective. Oxford University Press, 2017.
^A useful overview is provided in: Enrique Ruspini et al. Handbook of fuzzy computation. Bristol & Philadelphia: Institute of Physics Publishing, 1998.
^Radim Behlohlavek & George J. Klir (eds.), Concepts and fuzzy logic. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011.
A fuzzyconcept is a kind of concept of which the boundaries of application can vary considerably according to context or conditions, instead of being...
dilemma Fuzzy architectural spatial analysis Fuzzy classification FuzzyconceptFuzzy Control Language Fuzzy control system Fuzzy electronics Fuzzy subalgebra...
analysis Fuzzyconcept General Concept Lattice Hypostatic abstraction Idea Ideasthesia Noesis Notion (philosophy) Object (philosophy) Process of concept formation...
respectively). Fuzzy logic is widely used in machine control. The term "fuzzy" refers to the fact that the logic involved can deal with concepts that cannot...
In mathematics, fuzzy sets (a.k.a. uncertain sets) are sets whose elements have degrees of membership. Fuzzy sets were introduced independently by Lotfi...
is inferred from other phenomena. Operationalization thus defines a fuzzyconcept so as to make it clearly distinguishable, measurable, and understandable...
sans organes or CsO) is a fuzzyconcept used in the work of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The concept describes the unregulated...
possible to know only little but exactly. Essentially contested conceptFuzzyconcept Unconstitutional vagueness Obfuscation Relevance Understanding Imprecise...
sandwich Butterbrot – Buttered bread, a German staple food Finger food Fuzzyconcept § Sandwich example List of bread dishes List of sandwiches List of American...
by the weaker property of monotonicity. The central concept of fuzzy measure theory is the fuzzy measure (also capacity, see ), which was introduced by...
Fuzzy mathematics is the branch of mathematics including fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic that deals with partial inclusion of elements in a set on a...
word (figure of speech) Doublespeak Fallacy of quoting out of context Fuzzyconcept Jargon Mind games Obfuscated code Obscurantism Plain English Politics...
popularized the concept of sustainable development. Some other key concepts to illustrate the meaning of sustainability include: It may be a fuzzyconcept but in...
Virginia M. McDermott, understand interpersonal communication as a fuzzyconcept that manifests in degrees. In this view, an exchange varies in how interpersonal...
<FuzzyVariable> defines the fuzzyconcept; <FuzzyTerm> defines a linguistic term describing the fuzzyconcept; a set of tags defining a shape of fuzzy...
Fuzzy differential equation are general concept of ordinary differential equation in mathematics defined as differential inclusion for non-uniform upper...
ideology, by way of her political and family ties. Gandhi personally had a fuzzyconcept of socialism. In one of the early interviews she had given as Prime...
vary depending on context, qualifying happiness as a polyseme and a fuzzyconcept. A further issue is when measurement is made; appraisal of a level of...
concept lattices, and seems to be difficult. Voutsadakis has studied the n-ary case. Fuzzyconcept analysis: Extensive work has been done on a fuzzy version...
ideology by way of her political and family ties. Gandhi personally had a fuzzyconcept of socialism. In one of the early interviews she gave as prime minister...
Sex. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0-201-44232-8. Hanage, William P. (2013), "Fuzzy species revisited", BMC Biology, 11 (41): 41, doi:10.1186/1741-7007-11-41...
science, approximate string matching (often colloquially referred to as fuzzy string searching) is the technique of finding strings that match a pattern...
Philosophy portal Psychology portal Ambiguity Boiling frog Closed conceptFuzzyconcept I know it when I see it Imprecise language List of fallacies Loki's...
Fuzzy differential inclusion is tha culmination of Fuzzyconcept and Differential inclusion introduced by Lotfi A. Zadeh which became popular. x ′ ( t...
Global Information