Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 12:09:19 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199801181709.MAA16567@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Steven Belknap Sender: Lojban list From: Steven Belknap Subject: fuzzy bears X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-UIDL: e4a8176b79b907d9221432a50714a42b X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 3543 X-From-Space-Date: Tue Jan 20 09:51:59 1998 X-From-Space-Address: - An interesting point about lojban gismu, and by extrapolation, lojban utterances is made on page 122 of the grammer (Chapter 6 just after discussion of Example 2.8) Here it is: (The notion of a "really existing, objectively defined bear" raises certain difficulties. Is a panda bear a "real bear"? How about a teddy bear? In general, the answer is "yes". Lojban gismu are defined as broadly as possible, allowing tanru and lujvo to narrow down the definition. There probably are no necessary and sufficient conditions for defining what is and what is not a bear that can be pinned down with complete precision: the real world is fuzzy. In borderline cases, "le" may communicate better than "lo".) I believe that natlangs are fuzzy, and I am pleased to know that lojban is also fuzzy, as made explicit here in the grammer. With that in mind, I propose a formalism for statements where explicit fuzziness is required, which would be simpler than using or . This formalism would appear to require no change in the grammer, nor any cmavo other than a lojban number: "One or more of the things which are fuzzily 4/7 really bears creates the story." "One or more of the things which are mostly bearish creates the story." "One or more specific things each of which I describe as being almost entirely bearish creates the story." could have many meanings, of course. It could mean the remaining 400 pounds of bear carcass after a cougar has eaten the other 300 pounds, for example, although that would not be a very useful interpretation most of the time. But it would appear that at least one meaning would be a fuzzy set description of a somewhat bearish thing. It is already clear that one can say: le ci cribe pu finti le lisri "The three bears wrote the book." The semantic space of fractional bears are unassigned in the grammer; describing something as a fractional bear would appear to be grammatically correct but meaningless. My proposal fills this semantic space of what a fractional bear is by building on the already acknowledged fuzziness of lojban utterances and setting a convention by which fractions between 0 and 1 when applied to a gismu (for example) are making explicit the fuzzy extent of that gismu. Thus, one way of conceptualizing lojban utterances is that these are fuzzy utterances in which the explicit fuzzy extent cmavo is elided: "The bear, (whose degree of bearness is obvious or unimportant) wrote the book." This proposed use of numbers and other mekso to make explicitly fuzzy statements is separate and distinct from using li to convert mekso into sumti. I can't see any reason why these statements shouldn't parse. I often conceptualize objects and actions in the world as being explicitly fuzzy. For example, in my medical practice I do not crisply distinguish between diabetics and non-diabetics. There is a continuum of fasting blood sugars in my patients. I view a patient as being "about a 5 out of 7 fuzzily diabetic" Although some consider my conceptualization of objects to be eccentric, I believe this view more accurately reflects reality than the artificial contrivance of an arbitrary threshold above which persons are diabetic and below which they are not. co'omi'e fudji stivn Steven Belknap, M.D. Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria