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Fig. 3.15
Headline of article [66]
3.6.1
The Fuzzification of the State of Health
In “Fuzzy Health, Illness, and Disease” Sadegh-Zadeh presented the following
framework: “With
being the set of human beings at a particular time we have
a fuzzy subset
P
(the set of patients) of
Ω
whose members are to various extents
characterized by discomfort, pain, endogenously threatened life, loss of autonomy,
loss of vitality, and loss of pleasure. The extent to which an individual is a member
of this fuzzy set
P
is called the degree of patienthood.” [66, p. 612] The membership
function
Ω
μ
P
(
x
)
∈
[
0
,
1
]
indicates the degree of patienthood of the individual
x
∈
Ω
.
H
, the set of healthy people, is the complement of
P
. He continued:
μ
p
(
x
)=
degree of patienthood of
x
,
(3.23)
μ
h
(
x
)=
degree of health of
x
,
by definition
is the fuzzy set
health
.
Basing on this view, “wellness” and “illness” are particular fuzzy states of health:
ill health and well health -- and there are many others, because Sadegh-Zadeh de-
fined the linguistic variable
state-of-health
, “whose term set may be conceived of
as something like:
T
state-of-health
=
{
μ
h
(
x
)=
1
−
μ
p
(
x
)
,and
H
=(
x
,
μ
h
(
x
))
|
x
∈
Ω
well
,
not well
,
very well
,
very very well
,
ex-
tremely well
,
ill
,
not ill
,
more or less ill
,
very ill
,
very very ill
,
extremely ill
,
not
well and not ill
, ...
”This
state-of-health
operates over the fuzzy set
H
(health) and it assigns to degrees of health,
etc.
...
}
μ
(
x
)
values, elements of the term set
H
T
state-of-health
(see Fig. 3.16).
3.6.2
On Nosology - The Fuzzification of Diseases
“Despite all paradigm shifts in the last three millennia, no rational human bing since
Hippocrates' times would deny that ther are instances of death caused by dramatic
life events such as heart attack, stroke, and breast cancer, or would disagree with
labeling such a real-life drama as a
dis
-ease = disease. That means that obviously
there are some anthropological constants which all rational human beings would
be prepared to label a 'disease' by pointing to them and declaring, 'look: this is a
disease!'. Why not use such generally accepted, demonstrable prototypes as a point
of departure?” Sadegh-Zadeh asked the readers of his article [66, p. 621] and then
