Abstract: Words are the fundamental carriers of information. Words that refer to numbers stand apart from all other words in one respect: Numbers are concepts that lend themselves to spatial representations with exact contours. Yet the verbal definition of numbers, through which their meaning is defined, shares in a property common to all words: their verbal definition cannot be given a spatial representation with exact contours. In that definitional respect, words are not even comparable to amoebas which, although they constantly change their shapes, have clear boundaries. Words are best to be likened to patches of fog that not only change but have no strict boundaries. While this does not land all discourse in the realm of half-truths, it sets basic limits to what can be achieved by fuzzy logic and programs of artificial intelligence. !11
展开▼
