Not exactly [electronic resource] : in praise of vagueness / Kees van Deemter.
Deemter, Kees van.
2010
P325.5.A46 D44 2010eb
Available Online

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Title Not exactly [electronic resource] : in praise of vagueness / Kees van Deemter.
Author Deemter, Kees van.
ISBN 9780191572883 (electronic bk.)
9780199545902
0199545901
Publication Details Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, c2010.
Language English
Description 1 online resource (xvi, 341 p.) : ill.
Call Number P325.5.A46 D44 2010eb
Summary "Our daily lives are full of vagueness or fuzziness. When we describe someone as "tall," for example, it is as though there is a particular height beyond which a person can be considered "tall." In this stimulating book, Kees Van Deemter cuts across various disciplines--including artificial intelligence, logic, and computer science - to illuminate the nature and importance of vagueness. Van Deemter shows why vagueness is both unavoidable and useful, and he demonstrates how tempting - and how wrong--it often is to think in terms of black and white, instead of the richly graded spectrum of the world around us. Vagueness, the author argues, allows us to focus on what matters, leaving out irrelevant details, and adding texture to what would otherwise be unintelligible facts. The embrace of vagueness, however, comes at a price, for when degrees of grey are accepted, concepts like truth, belief, and proof lose their power, and we are banished from that paradise in which truth and falsity are the only possibilities' -- Publisher's description.
Note Description based on print version record.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references and index.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
Available in Other Form Not exactly.
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Introduction : False clarity : Vagueness ; Paradox ; Academic perspectives on vagueness
Part I. Vagueness, where one least expects it : Sex and similarity: on the fiction of species : What is a species? ; The Ensatina salamander ; Lessons learned
Measurements that matter : A short history of the metre ; Obesity ; Poverty ; Intelligence ; Dialogue intermezzo: After the job interviews ; Scientific discovery and word meaning
Identity and gradual change : Identity: the case of old number one ; Multiply objects ; Dialogue intermezzo: On old number one ; What makes a book? ; What makes a person? ; What is a language? Digression: protection against change ; So what?
Vagueness in numbers and maths : Vagueness in mathematics ; Talking about numbers ; Which computer program is faster ; Statistical significance
Part II. Theories of vagueness : The linguistics of vagueness : Chomsky's machine: computing grammatically ; Montague's machine: computing meaning ; The role of language corpora ; Vague adjectives ; The meaning of adjectives ; Vagueness and ambiguity ; Lack of specificity ; Prototypes ; Comparatives ; Packaging what we say: hedging ; Future work
Reasoning with vague information : Reasoning with vague concepts ; The sorites paradox ; Vagueness as ignorance ; Similarity is in the eye of the beholder: the case of colour ; Dialogue intermezzo: On vagueness as ignorance ; Continuity and vagueness
Parrying a paradox : Logic and paradox ; A crash course in classical logic ; First deviation: supervaluations and partial logic ; Second deviation: context-aware reasoning ; Third deviation: introspective agents
Degrees of truth : Fuzzy logic ; Dialogue intermezzo: On fuzzy logic ; Fuzzy logic and the sorites paradox ; Probabilistic versions of many-valued logic ; What's wrong with degrees?
Part III. Working models of vagueness : Artificial intelligence : A brief history of AI ; Artificial intelligence? ; Qualitative reasoning ; Applying fuzzy logic: an artificial doctor ; The future of AI
When to be vague: computers as authors : Example: generating vague descriptions ; Dialogue intermezzo: What use is a theory? ; Tolerance revisited ; A game theory perspective ; Vagueness in the absence of conflict ; Why do we speak?
The expulsion from Boole's paradise : Earlier questions revisited ; Coping with vagueness
Epilogue : Guaranteed correct.

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