Message-Id: <199602131454.JAA17328@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Tue, 13 Feb 1996 05:32:41 -0500
Reply-To: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Subject:      Re: *old response to And on fuzzy proposals
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: O
Content-Length: 2858

>> To which I'll add
>>    sei li {quantifier} ninjetnu [se'u]
>> which can be attached to ja'a, je'a, na, na'e, and a bunch of other
>> things as needed, requires no grammar change, but does require agreement
>> on the appropriate lujvo (which need no be ninjetnu).
>
>... and has completely the wrong semantics, so is not what is wanted at
>all. {sei} adds metalinguistic comment. It does not override semantics
>of jaa, nae or whatever. It does not work in subordinate bridi.

Metalinguistic bridi can override ANYTHING.  The classic example is
"sei ti jitfa" embedded in a sentence (this sentence is a lie).

Attaching to a construct (x is the degree of truth) similarly makes a
specific claim about the truth value.  I would probably NOT attach it to
ja'a or na but to "cu". But you can also attach it to an individual word.
And you can also attach it to a subordinate bridi, in which case it is a claim
about the subordinate bridi.

>> Being fond of cu'o, which I certainly expected/intended to have
>> application to fuzzy logic expression,
>
>then how come the maoste says it does probabilities? Isn't probability
>to do with degrees of certainty, while fuzz is to do with degrees of
>truth or of appropriacy of categorization?

Because I didn't know diddlesquat about fuzzy logic, and interpreted fuzzy
set memmbership as a probability that an element was a member of the set.
I still don't know diddlesquat about fuzzy logic and still don't know the
fallacy in this analogy to probablilty.  I would probably use cu'o for a
variety of other scales that range from 0 to 1 as well, which I think was
my basic idea.  Back when I introduced cu'o we did not give it a place
structure BTW, so the fuzziness of the cmavo was itself suffcient to make
any problems easy to gloss over.

But Cowan thinks that cu'o is useful as is, and that a different cmavo is a
more sound approach, so I will succumb to his greater awareness of the
status quo in both Lojban and fuzzy logic.


>They (the ones I understand) are of no use.


Any comments on the truth or falsity of the currnet bridi or components
therof areexactly what we had in mind for metaplingusitics.  Indeed any
bridi that could have the current text or its referent as a sumti is
appropropriate.  I do not see why they are of no use, since I could use
metalinguistics to express contradictory negation, as I understand it using
the-in-Lojban-non-paradoxical "This sentence is false" that I referred to
above.

>Ignore the {fiu}, which isn't quite right.

The interpretation of a string of digits, of which fi'u is one, is a matter of
convention, so it is impossible to say that it is "not right".

>(But can >{bio} conjoin selbri?)

It (with possible add-ons) is a member of the JOI grammar category, and can
be used anywhere that JOI can fit, which in turn is anywhere that JE or E
can fit.

lojbab