The Agnostic’s Exit Strategy (Agnosticism)

by George Jelliss ⌂ @, Crewe, Friday, June 27, 2008, 20:26 (5991 days ago) @ Cary Cook

I've been following this exchange if only to admire dhw's patient perseverance. - What I don't understand is why there are only five "categories" in Caryan logic:
1. 100% likely = certain 
2. less than 100% and more than 50% likely = probable 
3. 50% likely = even probability, or equal chance 
4. less than 50% and more than 0% likely = improbable 
5. 0% likely = impossible - Surely there are 100 categories here (0-1%, 1-2%, 2-3%, ..., 99-100%) if the percentages are worked out accurately to the first whole digit. Of course if they can be worked out correct to the first decimal point then there are 1000 categories. - However placing probabilty values on beliefs or propositions is notoriously difficult, depending on the subject being studied, so I suspect we can only work them out to within much larger tolerances. If the tolerance is 20% then we do get five categories: 
0-20%, almost certainly false
20-40%, probably false
40-60%, undecidable
60-80%, probably true
80-100%, almost certainly true. - However, Cary has already dismissed my espousal of "fuzzy logic", of which this is an example.


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