Thursday, October 02, 2003

Economist.com

Economist.com: "EPIMENIDES the Cretan, a philosopher of the 6th century BC, is said to have uttered the sentence, �All Cretans are liars�. As he himself was a Cretan, this gave rise to a paradox�if he were telling the truth, then he would be a liar. Depending on how one defines a liar, the paradox is resolvable; he could have been a habitual liar who was telling the truth in this one instance. However, a stronger version of the paradox, known as the Liar paradox��this sentence is false��is not resolvable in conventional logic systems.
Indeed, the circular loop that the sentence induces�if it is false, it must be true, and if true, false�has been used more than once in science-fiction movies to cause marauding computers to lose their sanity and explode. But in a new paper, Kostis Vezerides of the American College of Thessaloniki, and Athanasios Kehagias of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in Greece, show that, in almost all cases, paradoxes such as the Liar are resolvable with the use of �fuzzy logic�."

Interesting look at thing. I'm guessing this will have something worthwhile for QP, since resolving paradox is definitely a goal.

No comments: