I don't see that much use for graded perception of lion-ness. Like, a
little bit of lion seen through tall grass is much more unnerving than
lots of lion seen through nice thick iron bars. I think that what the
continuous variable ought to be is estimated likelihood of bad things
happening (ranging for 0 to 1), and conjecture that something
sort of like the logical deductions I exhibited might be involved
in calculating them, along the lines, perhaps of an assignment of values chosen
from {1,0} for intentions (1 = do it, 0 = don't do it) that minimizes a bad
consequence score.
One consideration that urges me to think that way is the fact that people
are obviously quite bad at predicting bad consequences of novel kinds
of courses of action, even when the logical deduction from the action
to the consequences is very short, and seems shockingly obvious in
retrospect. This is, I believe, because we actually maintain long
lists of bad things that we don't want to happen, and try to figure out how
likely they are to, given how things are. Children don't have such large
lists, which is one reason they do so many stupid things.
As for philosophers and negation, I think I can deal with that sort of
trouble (the other day I presented a quick story about how to do
`Zeus doesn't exist' and didn't get shot down--I haven't been hanging
around with these guys for three months for nothing).
Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au