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ganjawulung · 21st March 2010, 04:54 AM

Interesting topic on interesting book,

May i quote this interesting statement of Mr van Deemter on vagueness, as Alan posted in this thread:

...In the course of this book, it will become clear that vagueness is
everywhere: if you believe a concept to be completely crisp, then examine
it more closely and it will often prove to be vague. Size-denoting terms
such as ‘small’ and ‘large’ are obviously vague, for example, but so are
colour terms, at least in ordinary language, where sharp boundaries are
not artificially imposed on them...

and also,

...The aim of this book is to explore how vagueness works, and why it
pervades communication. It is part and parcel of this enterprise to ask
why vagueness is not always a bad thing: we shall see that sometimes
vagueness is simply unavoidable, while on other occasions vagueness is
actually preferable to precision. We shall also devote considerable space
to discussing the implications of our findings for the construction of
Artificially Intelligent systems, which are slowly but surely starting to be
endowed with a human-like capacity to produce and understand ordinary
language....

We deal with vagueness, everyday, in our Warung kopi here. Are we all crisp? As Waroeng itself, in the daily meaning in Jawa is also a place of "vagueness" in the sense of people in Jawanese waroeng, sometimes will talk about serious things -- whether it is political matter, or criminal matter, even moral matter -- in a vague way....

GANJAWULUNG

21st March 2010, 04:54 AM	#6
ganjawulung Member Join Date: May 2007 Location: J a k a r t a Posts: 991	Vagueness Interesting topic on interesting book, May i quote this interesting statement of Mr van Deemter on vagueness, as Alan posted in this thread: ...In the course of this book, it will become clear that vagueness is everywhere: if you believe a concept to be completely crisp, then examine it more closely and it will often prove to be vague. Size-denoting terms such as ‘small’ and ‘large’ are obviously vague, for example, but so are colour terms, at least in ordinary language, where sharp boundaries are not artificially imposed on them... and also, ...The aim of this book is to explore how vagueness works, and why it pervades communication. It is part and parcel of this enterprise to ask why vagueness is not always a bad thing: we shall see that sometimes vagueness is simply unavoidable, while on other occasions vagueness is actually preferable to precision. We shall also devote considerable space to discussing the implications of our findings for the construction of Artificially Intelligent systems, which are slowly but surely starting to be endowed with a human-like capacity to produce and understand ordinary language.... We deal with vagueness, everyday, in our Warung kopi here. Are we all crisp? As Waroeng itself, in the daily meaning in Jawa is also a place of "vagueness" in the sense of people in Jawanese waroeng, sometimes will talk about serious things -- whether it is political matter, or criminal matter, even moral matter -- in a vague way.... GANJAWULUNG Last edited by ganjawulung; 21st March 2010 at 07:32 AM.