Multivalued Logic

[cbmvax!uunet!ee.mu.OZ.AU!nsn]

Message-Id: <9107312052.AA13325@BU.EDU>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 91 16:50 EDT
From: Ronald Hale-Evans <EVANS@binah.cc.brandeis.edu>
Subject: rhesponses
To: conlang@buphy.bu.edu

>Other sorts of logics (three-valued, for
>example) have been developed where there are more than two truth-values: say,
>true, false, and middle. Perhaps it would be interesting to construct a
>language (this is the constructed languages mailing list, remember? :) ) where
>there are more than two truth-values, for example, to build poly-valued logic
>into a loglan like Loglan or lojban.

The connectives might be nasty, but is there any mechanism in lojban as is
to construct such logics? John? Jim?

>doug@netcom.com writes:  
>>Someone earlier mentioned the need for words to refer to truth values other
>>than true & false. The word "mu", from the Zen tradition, means that an
>>inappropriate (possibly paradoxical, possibly not) question was asked, and
>>that the answer is neither true nor false. It means "unask the question".
>That's pretty good. The real meaning of "mu" is not "unask the question",
>though; it's 
>
>				MU!!!!!!!
>
>Be that as it may, I like "t", "f", and "m" as values in a truth table for
>three-valued logic because "m" can stand for both "middle" and "mu", and is
>also exactly halfway between "t" and "f" in the Roman alphabet. But what
>about other truth values?

Hm. Think on it, lojbanis. Though this whole Spairwhorfy thing on facility
of expression of logical doodads isn't working for me...