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Vagueness for the practical man

How can computers be vague

Vagueness for computer programs

Computers must use vague concepts

	It has been said that the philosophical discussion of the meaning
of a term should not depend on first answering all related scientific
questions about the domain.  Likewise equipping computer programs with
common sense should not depend on first answering all related
philosophical questions.  Carrying out Turing's plan of designing
and educable child-program requires that the program be able to
accept new concepts without knowing their full meaning.  Likewise,
a program should be able to use a term like "murder" without being
able to decide all cases.  In fact it should not even have to know
about puzzling cases.  Like a human its typical situation should be
that it knows of no cases that it cannot decide, but when one comes
up, it admits to being puzzled.  However, the program cannot depend
on the programmer having anticipated all possible forms of puzzlement.
This lecture will discuss possible ways of formalizing such vague
concepts in first order logic.

	Philsophical discussion of the meaning of the word "fish" need
not wait for the solution of all scientific problems of vertebrate
classification.  Likewise programming a computer to use the word "murder"
should not depend on having solved all philosophical problems concertning
it.  A human can use the word "murder" with no sense of puzzlement
until confronted with one of the conundrums philosophers have discovered.
Indeed a philosopher can suppose he has solve the conundrums and then
be surprised by a new one.

	This paper discusses formal systems for using incomplete concepts.
computers to use