Reflections On The Occurrence Of Fuzziness Of Words

This paper makes an attempt to elaborate the origination of fuzziness of words. It consists of four chapters.The first chapter is an introduction. In this chapter, the author first of all reviews the traditional interpretation of words, that is, most words are considered to be composed of intensions and extensions. This interpretation leads to the inference that a word must have a trascendently fixed intension which can be accurately formulated for the purpose of establishing extensions. According to the previous study of fuzzy words, it is clear that the fuzziness of words is in most cased pursued on this basis. In other words, the fuzziness of words lies in the uncertainty on the part of either the intensions or the extensions. Since fuzziness words can't be interpreted with the pattern of intension and extension, the author turns to human cognition for the understanding of these words. Obviously, language embodies human understanding of the world, that is, it is closely related to human cognition and perception. As a result, the exploration into the fuzziness of words will call for the reexamination of the pattern of intension and extension and the involvement of human cognition and perception.For the convenience of discussion, the fuzziness of words is approached from two perspective, namely, the perspective of ontological fuzziness and the perspective of epistemological fuzziness. The second chapter is conerned with the words embodying ontological fuzziness. In this chapter, ontological fuzziness is discussed from the perspective of divisional fuzziness and categorical fuzziness, which is to be further divided into categorical fuzziness concerning conditions and categorieal fuzziness concerning degree. With the analysis on the words examplified in thischapter, the author arrives at the conclusion that it is not the intensions and extensions but huamn cognitive activities and approaches that, in actual contexts, determine the application and interpretation of these words. Now that these words cannot be fit into the framework concerning trascendently fixed intension and extension, the perplex of fuzziness naturally arises.The third chapter is about the words embodying epistemological fuzziness, which are grouped into the fuzzy words abstracted from relation and the fuzzy words representing the abstraction of perceptive images. These two types of fuzzy words are both based on some basic perceptive experiences , developing and shifting with human cognitive approaches such as metaphor, synaesthesia and transferred epithet. In view of this, we may realize that it is impossible to achieve transcendent and exact intensions of these words, because, firstly, these cognitive experiences can't be accurately formulated, and secondly, the meanings of these words keep on shifting with human cognition. Apart from that, as a result of diversity and flexibility of subjects, it is also impossible to single out certain objects as the absolute embodiments of these fuzzy words. Evidently, the occurrence of fuzziness of words arises as a result of the contrdiction between the old pattern concerning intenison and extension and actual human cognition.The fourth chapter is the conclusion. This chapter first of all points out that the deep-rooted logocentrism in human thinking leads to the binary opposion of intension and extension, while the ideal for exactness and accuracy leads people to put intensions in exact linguisitic or mathematic forms and extensions in exact and distinct scopes. Nevertheless, the occurrence , application and understanding of language heavily depend on human cognitive and perceptive activities, and are closely related to subjects and contexts. Leaving out all these factors, we would not be able to make clear what is fuzzy or what is exact. In most cases, people tend tointerpretating words by resorting the binary opposition of intension and extension, while what governs the meaning of a word is actually human cognition. Between them, there is a collision, which accounts for the occurrence of the...