responses on fuzzies from last month

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

Slowly catching up,Steven wrote last month:
>This is an important issue.  There is a great book by Samuel Delaney
>called Babel-17 which suggests that language can overcome psychology.
>The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is one reason Loglan was allegedly created;
>if the hypothesis is true, couldn't it be said that language does
>overcome psychology?

Not having read Delaney, I don't think this necessarily follows.
Language might be PART of psychology - i.e. our psychology develops in
conjunction with our language.

This would mean that a language too alien to our psychology could not be
fully learned, and those portions that we do not fully learn might not
affect our thinking per the SWH.  Thus it is possible that, say Lojban
attitudinals might lead to an exhibited Sapir-Whorf effect, but the
formal logic stuff in Lojban might never be properly used at a
language-fluent level.

>>The most important events in our lives are binary - birth, death,
>>marriage.  There exists some plausible fuzziness even for these
>>(especially where it concerns medical ethics), but for everyday people
>>who are the ones who make the language work, fuzziness just makes it
>>harder to make decisions, even if it would make the decisions more
>>rational.
>
>I think many people would agree with lojbab that birth is binary.
>Having observed a fair number of births, I would see things another way.
>The actual birthing might be said to begin when cervical dilation
>starts, and end when the placenta is delivered.  This may last for 12
>hours!

True, but we do not say that a person is BORN until tthe process is
complete by some standard.  If the infant dies during the course of
childbirth, and the process is complete, I presume that the result is
termed a stillbirth - the child is born dead.  If the mother dies, and
the doctors complete the birthing surgically, the child is still "born".
If mother and child die in the middle of the process, I presume that the
child is NOT born.

I agree that doctprs might find it useful to have a fuzzy scalar concept
of birthing ot talk about steps during the process.  But I resist the
idea that such a scale necessarily be quantifiable.  ".4 born" or even
"4 on a scale of 8 born" seems like pure nonsense to me unless you
explicitly refer to the specific scale.

On the other hand, I kknow that just such an explicit scale is standard
in discussing degrees of coma, because when Athelstan was comatose, all
of the discussion wwas in terms of where on the scale his responses were
at a particular time.  But even there it seemed clear that the value on
the scale itself neeeded to be "fuzzy", and this is the flaw I see in
quantifying fuzzy logic:  if you are going to rule out binary thinking
as inappropriate, why is trinary/quarternary/quintary thinking any more
appropriate.  You are still choosing an arbitraryscale, just one with
more steps, and demanding that the function be evaluated as being within
one of those step-values.

A true fuzzy system would allow or even encourage the evaluator to
assign a range or a probability distribution rather than a specific
number to the truth value.

>I would suggest that birth is not the crucial step of
><new-human-production>, rather, gastrulation is!  There is still a
>raging controversy about the ethics of abortion.  The strident
>"right-to-lifers" say that termination of pregnancy is absolutely wrong,
>the "woman's-right-to-choosers" say that termination of pregnancy is a
>woman's choice, and is not wrong, or at least should not be illegal.
>Both sides would generally agree that infantacide is clearly "wrong"
>(but then there is the troubling Chinese situation...).

And the answer is that the moral rightness of abortion (or infaniticide)
is a fuzzy VALUE - one that cannot be quantified with a specific number.

>I deal with death every day and I don't think it is binary.

There is still a time when the patient is unquestionably dead.  The only
real question is whether we are ever fully "alive" given that our bodies
are loaded with all manner of dead or inactive cells and other parts.

Peter wrote:
<There seems to be a continuing misunderstanding, which perhaps I can
<correct here.  Tall is not defined with respect to "not-tall".  It is
<defined against the speaker's criteria for tallness.  This criteria are
<essentially the "ideal" that you refer to.  Note that different cultures
<have different criteria, and even different people have different
<criteria.  This may be very annoying, but it's the reality.

I think that in the case of "tall", as with "old" and other scalar
measures, there is no "ideal"; i.e. there is no ultimate ideal of
"tallest" because we can always envision someone taller, likewise
"oldest".  Furthermore, the standards for these not only vary from
individual to individual, but they may vary with time and circumstances
for a single individual.  I may think of a person as "old" when that
person is around a lot of younger people (hey, I FEEL old when I am
around my kids %^), but around others, that person may be young.  My
kids think I am "tall", but if we were in a room with some basketball
players, I would NOT be tall.

So I disagree - these scalar measures are defined in terms of the
boundary between them and their scalar negations, and not in terms of an
ideal.  Others, like "beautiful" may be a mixture of scalar and ideal.
While "blue" is probably defined almost entirely by relative closeness
to an ideal.

<> In that sense Steve is right.  For any person A that everyone agrees IS
<> "tall", we can envision the possibility of someone B who is "more" tall.
<> It is not clear whether we would mark the statement "A is tall" as being
<> less than perfectly true MERELY because B exists.
<
<The statement "A is tall" is a semantic shorthand for "A seems tall to
<me based on the criteria I use to judge tallness."  If B is taller than
<A, the statement "B is tall" does not in any way contradict or support
<"A is tall" because it also means "B seems tall to me based on the
<criteria I use to judge tallness."  This is true even if A is taller
<than B.

But when a taller B enters the room, I may if asked again, no longer say
that A is tall.

Steve again:
>I again challenge Peter's insistence that he is the one true source of
>information about the proper use of language.  I do not see any hint of
>a consensus among speakers of English supporting Peter's assertion that
><tall> is purely subjective, although Peter certainly believes that this
>is how he uses language.

I don't think Peter is claiming that "tall" is *purely* subjective, at
least not in the sense that you are taking it.  Rather I think it is
that "tall" is "circumstantial",a nd also has a subjective component to
it.  You can reduce the circumstantial portion by eliminating contextual
variables as much as possible.  You can also reduce the subjective
component by distancing the observer from the evaluation ("would most
people say that x is tall"), as well as from avoiding using the
evaluator themselves as a basis for comparison.

>Apparently the human comedy is a fairly consistent experience.

Undeniably.