FUZZY-SETS - A CONVENIENT FICTION FOR MODELING VAGUENESS AND POSSIBILITY

This paper is a reply to Laviolette and Seaman's critical discussion of fuzzy set theory. Rather than questioning the interest of the Bayesian approach to uncertainty, some reasons why Bayesian find the idea of a fuzzy set not palatable are laid bare. Some links between fuzzy sets and probability that Laviolette and Seaman seem not to be aware of are pointed out. These;links suggest that, contrary to the claim sometimes found in the literature, probability theory is not a special case of fuzzy set theory. The major objection to Laviolette and Seaman is that they found their critique on as very limited view of fuzzy sets, including debatable papers, while they fail to account for significant works pertaining to axiomatic derivation of fuzzy set connectives, possibility theory, fuzzy random variables, among others.