Return-Path: Received: from SEGATE.SUNET.SE by xiron.pc.helsinki.fi with smtp (Linux Smail3.1.28.1 #1) id m0tIRgk-0000ZUC; Thu, 23 Nov 95 04:47 EET Message-Id: Received: from listmail.sunet.se by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id CF9839AF ; Thu, 23 Nov 1995 3:47:01 +0100 Date: Wed, 22 Nov 1995 20:14:19 +0000 Reply-To: ucleaar Sender: Lojban list From: ucleaar Subject: Re: scalar polarity To: Veijo Vilva Content-Length: 2018 Lines: 47 Peter: > > > > > je'ucai > > [= almost 100% true] > > > > > je'u(sai) > > > > > je'uru'e > > > > > je'ucu'i > > > > > je'unairu'e > > > > > je'unai(sai) > > > > > je'unaicai > > [= almost 0% true] > It seems bizarre to divide a statement into 100 parts and then decide how > many of those parts are true and how many are not. It seems equally > bizarre to divide it into seven parts, or nine parts, or any standard > number of parts. I agree. I didn't propose that that be done. Steve has proposed something of the sort as an *option*, but I believe that this is the sort of thing he does in his research anyway, so for him it is not bizarre to use specific numerical values. > A statement is (according to a given set of criteria) either true, false, > or made up of both true and false elements. The number of elements in a > statement is dependent on interpretation and analysis, so counting them > is not going to give consistent results. That is, true/false is not > actually a scalar dichotomy... it only looks that way if a statement > hasn't been properly analyzed. This partly-true-partly-false (which means overall false, I guess) is one of the things that gives rise to the degrees of definite truth and definite falsity, for which I proposed na + CAI and jaa + cai. - It means "how much would the world have to change in order for the truth value of this proposition to be reversed?". But many people think that a statement can be neither true nor false, but something in between. This is called fuzzy logic. For example, is the statement "I am tall" true? Well, personally I reckon it's truish. If you're convinced it must be either true or either false, then tell me how I can decide. > Scalar interpretation of truth boils down to making statements like "On a > truth scale of 1 to 10, that's a 4." How useful is that? Very useful, though I'm not a fan of using numbers like those. I prefer "almost all" "all-ish" "midway" "none-ish" "almost-none". etc. --- And