Greetings :-
Thank you, Professor Zadeh, for your reply to my inquiry. Your
remarks reinforce my impression that these exchanges would benefit from
an authentic definition of partial truth.
I confess anew that I am unable to guess the meaning from the
examples. "Check-out time is 1 pm," for instance, is laconic but clear.
After 1 pm, one has something to negotiate with the inn-keeper. The
negotiation may be trivial, and the sign does not say otherwise. The sign
simply tells when there need be no negotiation at all.
As for the count of tall men in a room with no definition of "tall," then
I imagine a situation similar to being asked for the count of men who stand
190 or more cm. with no tape measure.
Both problems dissolve if I am supplied with a standard for classification
which can actually be applied. Failing that, you will in each task get
an estimate, my estimate, rather than the count.
If you would prefer to call your estimate in either situation "the count,"
then go ahead, so long as we both know that you give an unusual
meaning to a common word; two common words, in fact, since "the"
rarely means "my" in careful speech.
I thank Professor Zadeh for moving a bit beyond examples in his
discussion suggesting that one might understand "partial truth" by
analogy to other partial things. _Partial_ is indeed a fine concept
with many varied applications.
I do not know what it means in connection with the truthfulness of
a proposition. I also do not know what it means in connection with
other categorical estates, such as pregnancy, humanness, or
left-handedness.
That prevents my understanding of partial truth by analogy to
other uses of _partial_. I am not denying that there could be a
meaning for _partial_ adjoined to any of those things, only saying
that the meaning would not be obvious, and so asking Professor Zadeh
what his meaning is in the case of partial truth.
Please define partial truth, Professor Zadeh.
Paul
