Set Theory and Fuzzy Sets Their Relationship to Natural Language An Interview with
Background: A recurring argument of scholars who advocate set theory and fuzzy sets for social science is that this framework is valuable and appropriate in part because it reflects the structure of meaning in natural language.2 George Lakoff has written extensively on these topics and is cited by these scholars as an authority. In this interview, Lakoff synthesizes a large body of research in linguistics and cognitive science, which contends that natural language is not set theoretic in structure. He also explores Lotfi Zadeh's fuzzy logic, emphasizing both its creative applications in engineering and its poor fit with most features of natural language. Finally, Lakoff discusses the basic contrast between Zadeh's fuzzy logic and Charles Ragin's fuzzy set scoring. Lakoff emphasizes that he is not in a position to judge the substantive contribution of Ragin's method. However, it does not rely on an empirically adequate account of natural language; and because the scoring is based on fixed numerical values, rather than fuzzy distributions, Ragin's scoring does not qualify as a fuzzy method.