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pc: > a.rosta@hidden.email writes: > << > > I think there are three degrees of truth: true, sort-of and false. > Degrees of quantity map to these degrees of truth, so that > scale of quantity can be divided up into portions corresponding > to the three degrees of truth. > > If we distinguish quantities that correspond to different truth > degrees, we can collapse truth and quantity. E.g. "X is true" > can be understood as "X has a quantity in the True range", > while "the quantity (in True range) of X exceeds the quantity > (in the True range) of Y" can be paraphrased as "X is truer than > Y". > > >> > I'm with you to the last sentence, then you throw it all away. Then delete the last sentence. I made that point in the first place only because I wanted to indicate the validity of the points made in the previous sentences. > There > are only three truth values (say). If two claims have the same truth > value, they have the same amount of truth, whatever that is (T, 0, F, > say). One may have more of the quantified matter that makes for > truth than another, but given both have enough to be true, then both > are equally true. They are also, obviously, unequal in that > quantitative aspect -- one has more of what makes for truth, but > having made truth, it doesn't make more. (All of this is based on a > very simple relation between quantitative aspects of an event and > truth of propositions about events, and probably -- in thinking it > through, anyhow -- has mixed together to some extent quantities in > the event with quantities of the event. Thus, in much of the talk > about "He is inside the room," much of what leads up to Truth as > presented (implicitly at least) in terms of feet and inches from the > door to some significant part of his body (nearest, farthest or > specific part). These are quantities in the situation, but not off > the situation, although almost certainly relevant to the latter, but > maybe not decisively so (from another example, skinny people are tall > shorter than fat people). And, of course, the quantity(ies) of the > situation are likely relevant to the truth of the claim about it, but > not necessarily decisive.) Of course, there are functions that will > distinguish cases with different underlying factors "barely," > "totally," and so on. I'm sorry to have put you to the trouble of writing this, but I accept it all as correct. > > << > "ja'a cai" = "it's very very true that (he's moving)", which > implies that he's moving a lot, or fast, or suchlike. It is > not a robust way to assert that he is moving fast, but it's > a convenient shorthand. > >> > Well, literally "strongly true," though what emotion truth is is > unclear (but it passes the parser, so we can find a use for it > somehwere). Now, maybe we have a slough (?slue?, slew?) of truth > values, a half dozen or so, and this is a comment to the effect that > "He's moving" is evaluated at a fairly hight member of the set: above > "very true" but, perhaps, below "totally true." [Remember though > that the comment may be wrong.] Just to make sure we are on the same wavelength here: {na ku ko'a ja'a cai bajra} means "It is not the case that he is very much running (but he might nonetheless be running to some other (lesser? -- details yet to be thrashed out) extent", IMO. That is, the information added by {cai} falls within the scope of the negation. > This means that he the conditions > for perfect moving to a high degree (xorxes' style, I think) and/or > the quantity of the event as a case of him moving is very high and/or > some quantifiable physical features of the event which are > significant for his moving have high values or the truth value > ddepends on a bunch of other factors altogether. My preferred scale is "how much the world would have to change for p to become false", with all further details of how that is to be measured glorked from context or general cognition. > But, even if these > more or less quantitative factors are significant, it may be that the > high truth status comes from something else -- grace in motion, say, > rather than speed in any of its several senses here (largely matching > the various senses of "moving"). Now, if we are agreed on a > particular set of connections among these various notions and those > connections allow it, then we can infer back from a high truth value > to certain levels in other factors. But I don't think that the > relations implicit in the shorthand here are so obviously the natural > ones that we can assume they are in use as defaults, whatever "moving > fast" or "moving a lot" mean. Well, in English, "very true" means pretty much what I want "ja'a cai" to mean. That is, "It's very true that she's beautiful" does not *encode* the same meaning as "She's very beautiful", but the former would tend to be understood as the latter, to an extent that I find satisfactory. --And.