Re: Logical Vulcan take II Rob Zook Fri, 09 Jan 1998 11:51:07 -0600 At 08:50 AM 1/9/98 -0600, you wrote: >From: Rob Zook >Date: Wednesday, January 07, 1998 5:53 PM > >>In a complex logical argument, one could do as one does in prepositional >>calculus, and assign a variable to a statement. So I propose using the >>Vulcan consonants, plus uu, as basic variables: puu, tuu, buu..,etc. > >Might they, when writing, do as we do and use just the consonants' >letters? So, p, t, b, etc.? But when reading something so written, or >speaking ex tempore, pronounce any isolated consonant as itself+/uu/? That's what I was getting at yes. I should have been more specific. We should also pick some consonent, or set of consonents to use when speaking of an isolated vowel. >>The -cee suffix I created to act as a categorical non-logical >>connective. It roughly means, "is a member of a catagory/class". > >So, your original syllogism translates something like: > > MAJOR Vulcan-UNIVERSAL blue-green blood-GEN > MINOR Vulcan Spock-MEMBER > CONCLUSION Spock blue-green blood-GEN > >Unfortunately, the construction "Vulcan blood-GEN" makes "Vulcan" a >possession of "blood." The genitive suffix works a lot like the English >apostraphe-S. So it should probably be attached to Vulcan in the major >premise and to Spock in the conclusion. Yup. I goofed there. >However, this is great stuff. My only suggestion would be to make these >connectives prefixes, to help distinguish them from syntactic markers. In >other words, > > ats diiwhl'q'nat krupat'oram plak > its whl'q'n ceespok > aaz spokat krupat'oram plak > > MAJOR all-Vulcan-'s blue-green blood > MINOR Vulcan include-Spock > CONCLUSION Spock-'s blue-green blood Well, I don't have a real problem with it per say, I just did the two affirmation particles as suffixes to make them isomorphic to the -a particle which seems to be some kind of less formal affirmative. Also, the way you used include- here more closely matches what I mean than using a set operator on the word Vulcan here. >>"If Spock is a Vulcan then Spock has green blood. If Spock has >>green blood then Spock is not a human. Therefore if Spock is a >>Vulcan then Spock is not a Human." >> >>puu ci whl'q'n spok,cee ic >>tuu ci spok krupat'oram plak'at ic >>buu ci komi spok,nicee ic >>puu'ek tuu'ek ^ tuu'ek buu'ek aaz puu'ek buu'ek > >I'm a little confused by your use of singular entities in these examples. > seems tied a little too closely in form to "Spock is a >Vulcan." Could we use your universal affirmation marker to indicate "the set >of?" So, Well, as I said above this -cee means "in the category of or class of", associating some actual entity with some abstract category, like "Spock is a Vulcan". A set connective would have a different meaning. "Spock is a Vulcan" was just shorter English gloss of this. Since, Vulcan has a dD rule, then as I used it above Vulcan modifies the expression Spock is a member of a category, and thus the d must be a category. Do you think it necessary to qualify an abstract category word as a set? That seems kind of redundant. Keep in mind that a word like Vulcan is already an abstract category, just like stone, or Human, or tree. Which reminds me, it's a little out of place here, but I suspect that when Vulcans would refer to a non-proper named instance of a category, like a specific stone, they would use a subscript particle. Which I kind of intended to deal with, when we got into Vulcan Mathematics, but this would be another good use for such a particle. So a Vulcan might say, "See how this (Stone-1) differs from that (Stone-2)" and thereafter simply refer to them as stone-1 and stone-2 with the demonstrative prefix implied. >>Also one can easily >>tell the mood and figure of each syllogism. The above would be: AII-1 >>form of syllogism, which is valid, and therefore grammatically correct. > >The logical forms in the earlier examples also stand out well. >Presenting an argument looks much like a geometry proof, consisting of a >series of theorems used to transform given expressions into the >conclusion. In this case, propositions are assigned to variables and >then a known logical form is stated using the same variables. It's also shorter to say. >I agree completely. Now I have a bit of a question. How would this >apply in a conversational situation, something like... > >Speaker A: ats ci diiwhl'q'nat krupat'oram plak ic. its qa ci diiwhl'q'n > ceespok ic? I cannot think in Vulcan so I'll translate as you did. Speaker A: [major premise] ( All Vulcan's have green blood) [minor premise] Is it true that? (Spock is a Vulcan) >Speaker B: itsa. Now affirming an interrogative statement does not make sense to me. I would say that Speaker B would agree with , "yes/true". This also, brings up another thing that kind of bugs me. In English, one can ask about 10 or so categories of questions, why generalize one particle to refer to them all? Why not have a particle to represent all of them? >Speaker A: aaz ci spokat krupat'oram plak ic. Speaker A: Therefore, (Spock's blood is green). You know, the parenthesis seem superfluous. ats, its and aaz I intended as free particles, and when speaking and writing everything between ats and its will naturally be the major premise, everything between its and aaz the minor, and everything after aaz (to the end of the sentence) would be the conclusion. So I suppose that a variable being a free particle also, parenthesis would not be needed with them either, unless you had a more complex argument and you needed to define a specific order of evaluation. Also, naturally in a case like: ^ci whl'q'n ceespok icek ci spok'at krupat'oram plak icek ^ci spok'at krupat'oram plak icek ci komi niceespok icek aaz ci whl'q'n ceespok icek ci komi niceespok icek You have to use the parenthesis to show what the logical connectives apply to. As an afterthought, I think that putting ^- before each premises in a non-syllogism, instead of separating the premises, makes everything more self-consistant. Oooh! I neat thought just hit me in the back of the head! The particle cee is a non-logical connective. We could make all the non-logical connectives prefixes to contrast them with the logical connective which are all suffixes. However, I still think that the affirmatives and negatives should remain isomorphic with one another (so suffixes and prefixes, respectively). BTW, A non-logical connective was what I meant when I said prepositional connective. I was going to post about some of them next. I have come up with a list, but I think I'm leaving out some possibilities. Rob Z. -------------------------------------------------------- Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx