From - Mon Mar 04 09:36:37 1996 Received: from VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (vms.dc.lsoft.com [205.186.43.2]) by locke.ccil.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) with ESMTP id DAA14965 for ; Sat, 2 Mar 1996 03:22:05 -0500 Message-Id: <199603020822.DAA14965@locke.ccil.org> Received: from PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM (205.186.43.4) by VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id 95AA7CB3 ; Sat, 2 Mar 1996 2:44:04 -0500 Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 23:40:23 -0600 Reply-To: "Steven M. Belknap" Sender: Lojban list From: "Steven M. Belknap" Subject: TECH: fuzzy: vs. To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 5434 &: >Steven appears to be getting excited about {fiui} as a way to do what >he's been wanting to. lojbab asked me to explore existing ways to fuzz in lojban, and I am making a good-faith effort to do this. Besides trying , (which is an existing part of lojban in the sense that addition of this cmavo would not affect the YACC grammer very much), my efforts have included: 1. Exploring the and proposal made by &. 2. Working with the subscripted formalism suggested by John Cowan as an alternative to . I don't like it, as it is idiomatic under the current definition of 3. coining and for "fuzzy" and "continuous" as applied to logic and sets. 4. Making a (possibly foolish) suggestion that might be one way of making a fuzzy property abstractor. 5. Surveying experts in linguistics who have studied the issue of fuzziness in non-Western languages. 6. Trying to correct various misunderstandings about fuzzy sets. >It may well do what he wants, but if so then even >without {fiui} there have existed ways to do {fiui}'s work. {fiui} is >in MOI. Every MOI can be translated into a suitable lujvo with an extra >{li} sumti. This is understood. I have never said it was *impossible* to invoke fuzziness in lojban. I have instead asserted that it is rather difficult and cumbersome to do so. There are two issues: complexity and generality. I argue that fuzziness should be both very simple to express, and that fuzzy operators ought to also be very general. Zipf reported that word frequencies were inversely proportional to number of syllables. Sapir and Whorf (and before them von Herder and von Humboldt) hypothesized that speakers of different languages will view the world in different ways due to the differing structures of their respective languages. If these observations/hypotheses are correct, then the use of fuzziness will be impeded if the fuzzy operators are long and complex; the use of fuzziness may also be impeded if the fuzzy operators are not generalizable. Why should we worry about whether fuzzy logic is easily expressed in lojban? The reason was given by lojbab in his recent post: >Only in the firm insistance on inclusion of the apparatus of logic does Lojban >strongly deviate from metaphysical parsimony, because that is the supposed >basis of the Sapir-Whorf test. Thus we in theory have a middle ground on all >issues except one in which we have an extreme ground, and thus we presume that >strong deviations from norms can be attributed to the extreme logical >metaphysics. I myself don't really buy this, but it is an assumption of the >project, and even I don't feel at liberty to change fundamental design >assumptions and goals; besides, it serves as a useful basis for making >decisions - when in doubt, split the difference and be "neutral". lojban is a logical language. Fuzzy logic is an important generalization of fuzzy logic. Failure to include operators which would allow elegant, general means of expressing fuzzy logic would be a serious flaw, making the language less attractive to potential speakers and possibly culturally biased. I believe that natlangs may obscure cognitive distortions and logical fallacies. One type of cognitive distortion, the false dichotomy, may be clarified through the use of fuzzy logic. Certainly if lojban were helpful in treating mental disorders, that would be of interest to Sapir-Whorf testers. I am more optimistic than lojbab about the possibility of using lojban to test Sapir-Whorf. I have already thought of some experiments using automatic English->lojban->English translation by which this could be done. (In months rather than centuries!) >So, if {fiui} does the trick then there was no need for >Steven to agitate for it: the resources - i.e. a lujvo scarcely more >verbose than {fiui} - already existed (potentially) to do the job. I fail to see how a lujvo alone gives us a general and elegant fuzzifier. Are you talking about something like lojbab's ? As you pointed out, this is a metalinguistic construct, has the wrong semantics, and does not work in subordinate bridi. We need more than a lujvo here. Logic is at the heart of lojban, and we need a fuzzifier cmavo to have a complete logic. lojbab claims that lojban isn't very good at second order predicate logic, thus denying that *all* logical things must be easily expressible in lojban. I consider this a false analogy. Fuzzy logic is a lot more basic than second order predicate logic. My enthusiasm for was engendered by my apparently mistaken impression that did everything did. Selmaho of the class MOI take numerical expressions and yield ordinals. Selmaho of the class XOI take numerical expressions and yield a NA. What is the implication of this difference? (Apparently I am misunderstanding something rather major here.) Is less general than ? (For example, will work in subordinate selbri>)? Can ? I plead ignorance. cohomihe la kamkuspe stivn Steven M. Belknap, M.D. Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria email: sbelknap@uic.edu Voice: 309/671-3403 Fax: 309/671-8413