Repliek

Samenvatting

It is shown that A. Blok's contention (Wittgenstein en Elias, een methodische richtlijn voor de anthropologie [Wittgenstein and Elias, a Methodological Direction for Anthropology], Assen, 1975), that the extension of general terms need not be characterized by one property, & can be formalized using "fuzzy sets." A fuzzy set is a function from the universe of objects to the real interval [0.1] such that f(x)=y can be interpreted as "x belongs y.100% to the set f." A. de Ruijter, H. Tromp, & A. J. F. Köbben have constructed sets for which they claim Blok's theory does not allow one to determine whether some particular objects belong to the set or not. It is shown that fuzzy set theory assigns a precise value to each of the objects considered dubious, & the alleged counter-examples are dismissed. In Repliek van A. de Ruijter (Reply by A. de Ruijter) Koppelaar's argument is said to be circular. In order to assign a numerical % to an object with respect to a set, it must be previously determined precisely what properties are relevant to the set in question. If, instead of starting from a closed set of properties, one starts with a set of objects, Koppelaar's solution cannot be applied. A. Orianne.