Message-Id: <199511230254.VAA28656@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Wed, 22 Nov 1995 20:14:19 +0000
Reply-To: ucleaar <ucleaar%ucl.ac.uk@UKACRL.BITNET>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: ucleaar <ucleaar%ucl.ac.uk@UKACRL.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: scalar polarity
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR

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