Re: Numbers and math

On Fri, 22 Sep 2000, H. S. Teoh wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 22, 2000 at 08:55:59AM -0400, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> [snip]
> > Set theory isn't my strength; I'm assiduously avoiding the semester class
> > in Zermelo-Fraenkel (I hope I spelled that right) set theory.
>
> Hehe... I like set theory as a subject to admire from a distance (eg. pick
> out neat interesting properties to show off to others about) but doing
> rigorous proofs about set properties myself isn't exactly how I'd like to
> spend my time. Especially once you get beyond the elementary stuff. My
> worst nightmare is constructing bijections that are so abstract that
> sometimes you have a hard time being convinced by a rigorous proof! :-)
(fervently)  Amen.

> [snip]
> > What would be *really* fun to encode in a conlang in terms of
> > conjunctions/conditionals (and, but, if...?  I'm never sure if I have the
> > right terminology), would be fuzzy logic, a.k.a multivalent logic (and
> > yes, it's an area of math, and no, it isn't *that* fuzzy).  So you could
> > have ways to express (A and not-A) without being inconsistent, because
> > you have the in-between shades.  I only wish I knew more about the field;
> > I'm probably going to stick to more tame conjunctions/conditionals for
> > Chevraqis, like XOR and OR and so on.
> [snip]
>
> If I'm gonna do logic in my conlang, it has to be at least trivalent
> (since the culture is obsessed with the number 3). The hard part is, how
> to build this into the syntactic/semantic structure of the language in a
> way that actually makes sense...
Multivalent can go from 3 and up, is my understanding (but I haven't read
any formal treatments of the subject, only Bart Kosko's lamentably
not-detailed-enough-in-the-math-darnit! _Fuzzy Logic_ and various other
mentions).  If Chevraqis did this it would be 5-valent...though
evidentiality only goes 3 ways, so maybe I screwed up there, or maybe I'm
getting too obsessed about number symbolism.  :-/  Sometime when my life
is more sane (I'm denying reality right now...I've got half an hour
before algebra...) I'll go look for an introductory text on
fuzzy/multivalent logic and see if I can get anything out of that and
pass it on to would-be conlang logicians.

YHL