From jcowan@reutershealth.com Mon Jun 19 09:15:38 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 7368 invoked from network); 19 Jun 2000 16:15:36 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 19 Jun 2000 16:15:36 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail.reutershealth.com) (204.243.9.36) by mta1 with SMTP; 19 Jun 2000 16:15:36 -0000 Received: from reutershealth.com (IDENT:cowan@skunk.reutershealth.com [204.243.9.153]) by mail.reutershealth.com (Pro-8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA01621 for ; Mon, 19 Jun 2000 12:15:31 -0400 (EDT) Sender: cowan@mail.reutershealth.com Message-ID: <394E4714.F18F00A1@reutershealth.com> Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 12:15:16 -0400 Organization: Reuters Health Information X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.5-15 i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "lojban@onelist.com" Subject: Re: [lojban] Trivalent logic [was: Re: the logical language] References: <394D00C4.1750631A@bilkent.edu.tr> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: John Cowan Robin wrote: > For example, let's say we give the statement "Foobars like to be > globbed" a truth value of 0.8 . The trouble with your reanalysis is that we can do it for ordinary truth values too. Consider "snow is white" (true). > I would interpret this as either > >  "80% of foobars like to be globbed" "100% of snow is white." > or > > "There is 80% certainty that all foobars like to be globbed" It is certain that snow is white. > or > > "A typical foobar, if asked to express its liking for being globbed on > a scale from 0 to 1, would give an answer of 0.8" ?When we ask snow whether it is white, it replies "Yes". ?When we ask anyone whether snow is white, he/she replies "Yes". We can get rid of truth, at least singly, by employing quotation instead: snow is white if and only if "snow is white" is true. Unfortunately this does not extend to quantified uses of it: (Ex) (x is true) cannot be disposed of in such a way, and no more can (Ex) (x is 80% true). -- Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis um dies! || John Cowan Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau, || http://www.reutershealth.com Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau, || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Und trank die Milch vom Paradies. -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)