All of YKY's Comments + Replies

YKY-10

A conjecture (seems easy to prove):

"If, in a fuzzy logic where truth values range from [0,1], we allow logical operators (which are maps from [0,1] to [0,1]) or predicates that does not intersect the slope=1 line, then we can always construct a Liar's Paradox."

An example is the binary predicate "less-than", which has a discontinuity at 0.5 and hence does not intersect the y=x line.

YKY00

Yes, I have worked out a fuzzy logic with probability distributions over fuzzy values.

YKY00

Yes, we all know that ;)

But under this approach the binary logic is NOT operating at a fundamental level -- it is subsumed by a probability theory. In other words, what is true in the binary logic is not really true; it depends on the probability assigned to the statement, which is external to the logic. In like manner, I can assign fuzzy values to a binary logic which are external to the binary logic.

YKY10

About the so-called "discontinuous truth values", I think the culprit is not that the truth value is discontinuous (it doesn't make sense to say a point-value is continuous or not), but rather that we have a binary predicate, "less-than", which is a discontinuous truth functional mapping.

The statement "less-than(tv, 0.5)" seems to be a binary statement. If we make that predicate fuzzy, it becomes "approximately less than 0.5", which we can visualize as a sigmoidal curve, and this curve intersects with the slope=1 li... (read more)

YKY00

By the way, how would you incorporate probabilities into binary logic? Either you can include statements about probabilities in binary logic ("probability on top of logic"), or you can assign probabilities to binary logic statements ("logic on top of probability theory"). The situation is just analogous to that of fuzziness. If you do #1, that means binary logic is the most fundamental layer. If you do #2, I can also do an analogous thing with fuzziness.

0Cyan
The rules of probability reduce to the rules of binary logic when the probabilities are all zero or one, so you get binary logic for free just by using probability.
YKY00

It's good that you pointed out Kripke's fixed point theory of truth as a solution to the Liar's paradox. It seems to be an acceptable solution.

On the other hand, I also agree that "fuzziness as a matter of degree" can be added on top of a binary logic. That would be very useful for dealing with commonsense reasoning -- perhaps even indispensable.

What is particularly controversial is whether turth should be regarded as a matter of degree, ie, the development of a fuzzy-valued logic. At this point, I am kinda 50-50 about it. The advantage of do... (read more)

YKY,

The problem with Kripke's solution to the paradoxes, and with any solution really, is that it still contains reference holes. If I strictly adhere to Kripke's system, then I can't actually explain to you the idea of meaningless sentences, because it's always either false or meaningless to claim that a sentence is meaningless. (False when we claim it of a meaningful sentence; meaningless when we claim it of a meaningless one.)

With the fuzzy way out, the reference gap is that we can't have discontinuous functions. This means we can't actually talk about ... (read more)

0fburnaby
Call it "expected" truth, analagous to "expected value" in prob and stats. It's effectively a way to incorporate a risk analysis into your reasoning.
YKY00

Several things. First, you're claiming "probabilistic is a special case of fuzzy" but that does not imply "fuzzy is a special case of probabilistic" which was the original point of contention.

Secondly, you probably have confused fuzzy logic with "possibility theory". There can be many types of fuzzy logic, and the issue we're currently debating is whether "truth" can be regarded as a matter of degree, ie, fuzziness as degree of truth. Possibility theory is a special type of fuzzy theory which results from giving up the probability axiom #3, "finite additivity". That is probably what your author is referring to.

YKY10

I guess not. The point is that "matters of degree" are inherently different from probabilities, and the former cannot be reduced to the latter. To best clarify this point, we need a formal semantics of fuzzy logic (where fuzziness is treated as matters of degree). I'm not sure if there's such research in the literature, I'll have a look when I have time...

0billswift
I'm not sure they are inherently different. I read Kosko's popular book on Fuzzy Logic many years ago and can't remember the details of the argument, but he claimed that probabilistic logic is a special case of fuzzy logic, as propositional logic is a special case of probabilistic logic (ie, with probabilities of 0 and 1).