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A fuzzy concept is a concept of which the content or boundaries of application vary according to context or conditions. Usually this means the concept is vague, lacking a fixed, precise meaning, without being meaningless altogether. It does have a meaning, or multiple meanings, which however can become clearer only through further elaboration and specification.

Fuzzy concepts play a role in the creative process of forming new concepts to understand something. In the most primitive sense, this can be observed in infants who, through practical experience, learn to identify, discriminate and generalise the correct application of a concept.

However, fuzzy concepts may also occur in scientific, journalistic and scholarly activity, when a thinker is in the process of clarifying and defining a newly emerging concept which is based on distinctions which, for one reason or another, cannot (yet) be more exactly specified.

It could be argued that some concepts (e.g. "love" or "God") are inherently or intrinsically fuzzy concepts, to the extent that their meaning cannot be completely and exactly specified with logical operators or objective terms, and can have multiple interpretations, which may be partly subjective only. It may also be possible to specify one personal meaning for the concept, without however placing restrictions on a different use of the concept in other contexts (as when, for example, one says "this is what I mean by X" in contrast to other possible meanings).

Fuzzy concepts can be used deliberately to create ambiguity and vagueness, as an evasive tactic, or to mediate what is otherwise a contradiction of terms. This could be a failure or refusal to be more precise, but also could be a prologue to a more exact formulation of a concept.

The word 'social' is one of the most well used fuzzy words.

• fuzzy logic
• dialectic
• meaning