Canonical forms of fuzzy truthoods by meta-theory based upon modal logic (Q5939689)

The authors propose a new natural interpretation (``meta-theory'') of fuzzy logic. This interpretation is based on the standard interpretation of modal logic via the set of all possible worlds; specifically, the authors propose to assign a weight \(w_i\) to each possible world \(i\). Then, it is natural to define a membership (``truth'') value \(\mu(A)\) of a statement \(A\) as the total relative weight \(\sum \{w_i\mid A(i)\text{\;is\;true}\}/\sum w_i\) of all the worlds \(i\) in which \(A\) is true. We can define \(\mu(A)\) for an atomic statement \(A\) and for statements \(A\) that are propositional combinations of the atomic statements; as a result, we get justifications for inequalities and equalities relating truth values \(\mu(A_i)\) of different combinations \(A_i\); e.g., \(\mu(A \& B)+\mu(A\vee B)=\mu(A)+\mu(B)\). The authors use this interpretation to analyze the relation between the truth values of a propositional formula and the truth values of its CNF and DNF forms.