sfrthomas@yahoo.com (S. F. Thomas) writes:> Here again, I for one disagree. I maintain that natural language > fuzziness is not sufficient to cause LEM and LC to fail. For example, > the term "tall" everyone would agree is fuzzy in the sense earlier > described. But no witness would testify that her attacker was "tall > and not tall" > without inviting the derision of the court, and the fuzziness of the > term will not come to her rescue. I conclude that LC holds in natural > language even for fuzzy terms. Clearly, Earl has a different take on > the matter, but I have been pointing out this simple thought > experiment for a long time now, and I have encountered not a word in > response from anyone suggesting I am wrong. Fuzziness does not failure > of LEM or LC entail.
The problem with this example is that in ordinary speech, short does not mean ``not tall.'' Likewise, while the witness might be asked ``was he tall?'' she would never be asked ``was he (not tall)?'' (not tall) corresponds more closely to (short or average) than it does to short. So while a witness who said the assailant was ``kind of tall and kind of short'' would indeed be laughed at, a witness who described him as ``kind of tall and kind of average'' would have said something we all recognize as reasonable. -- Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr., Ph.D. Phone -- (505) 646-1605 Department of Computer Science FAX -- (505) 646-1002 New Mexico State University http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer SWNMRSEF: http://www.nmsu.edu/~scifair