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xorxes:
> la pycyn cusku di'e
>
> > Your move has the unpleasnat effect that the truth
> > value of "X is tall" never reaches 1 (have to leave room for
> someone taller
> > coming along) -- and maybe not 0 neither. Even with fuzzy values,
> which meet
> > your problem somewhat. As a practical matter, we generally do draw
> lines on
> > these issues and, if further distinctions are needed, shift to
> modifiers like
> > "very," with a longer 0 and a shorter 1 and a shallower incline.
>
> I think it would be useful to work out how we can make these
> distinctions in Lojban. In some cases, we work with only
> two truth vales but allow a greater or lesser degree of
> proximity to the boundary between true and false:
>
> FALSE almost | barely ... rather ... very ... indeed TRUE
>
> "He almost did it": It is false that he did it:
> truth value of "he did it" = 0
> "He barely did it": It is true that he did it:
> truth value of "he did it" = 1
>
> For these situations a definite boundary is crucial, because
> otherwise being close to the boundary makes no sense. Fuzzy
> truth values don't help here. In Lojban we can do these with:
>
> ja'acai: very/indeed (true, definitely)
> ja'aru'e: barely (true, just made it)
> naru'e: almost (false, just missed)
> nacai: not at all (false, definitely)
>
> In other cases we really want fuzzy values. A fuzzy value
> of .9 does not correspond to "almost true", it corresponds
> to something like "quite true". I don't see a problem in
> not having any statements that would get a full 1 or a full
> 0 for selbri like "is tall" under this fuzzy modality.
>
> We can do this in Lojban with {ja'axipiso} and the like.
> Presumably indefinites like {ja'axipiso'i} will also give
> this kind of fuzzy statement.
>
> ko'a ja'axipiso'u clani
> He is not all that tall.
>
> ko'a ja'axipiso'i clani
> He is rather tall.
>
> ko'a ja'axipiso'a clani
> He is plenty tall.
>
> Would that work?
I don't disagree with anything you've said (except that it needs
to be clarified, IMO, that .9 entails "not (wholly) true").
A further point: you are suggesting that {ko'a clani} is a
proposition that is never wholly true. That may be right, but
I would also like to introduce a further example that sometimes
needs fuzzy values and sometimes doesn't.
1. He is in the room.
If he is half in the room and half out, then he is sort of in
the room -- the truth value of "he is in the room" is between
pi no and pi ro. If he is entirely in the room, but only by a
few inches, then the truth value is pi ro, but nonetheless he
is barely in the room, and he is 'less in the room' than
someone standing further from the doorway.
--And.