Zones of Thought: Reflections on the Theories of Thought

Abstract

Let us reflect on the zones of thought and how they are related to the fuzzy and classical paradigms and laws of thought in cognition as the cognitive agents journey on the epistemological highway of knowing to the house of knowledge. The epistemological space is defined by the type of information structure assumed which in turn defines the type of the set of laws of thought needed for its processing. The relevant variables characterizing the information contents for the epistemic processing will be made explicit and the conditions for representational exactness and inexactness will be stated for true-false acceptance in the relevant zones of thought. The knowledge content of the processed information in each zone will be examined and related to the epistemic conditionality. In the previous chapter, we examined exactness of inexact science and how it relates to the concepts of opposite, duality, continuum and the justification for the use of the fuzzy paradigm with its laws of thought and mathematics. It may be noticed that the fuzzy laws of thought satisfy its internal requirement for true-false acceptance in all conditions of the knowledge production in that every epistemic element contains true-false characteristics including the statement of the fuzzy laws of thought. The classical laws of thought cannot satisfy its condition of true-false evaluation as observed by Russell which leads to many philosophical discussions on the principle of excluded middle.