A new solution is offered for the ancient ’sorites’ paradox of vagueness. The sorites paradox arises if it is assumed that if two objects are indistinguishable, then a vague predicate (e.g., large, or small) can never distinguish between them. The proposed solution to the paradox depends on a systematic ambiguity that is displayed by vague predicates as well as vague relations (e.g., the relati...

One important characteristic of distributed database management systems (DBMS) is that due to network or machine failure the environment may become partitioned into sub-environments that cannot communicate with each other. However, there are various application areas where the individual sub-environments should remain operable even in such situations [2, 5]. In particular queries to the databas...

1 The issue The purpose of this essay is to shed some light on a certain type of sentence, which I call a borderline contradiction. A borderline contradiction is a sentence of the form F a ∧ ¬F a, for some vague predicate F and some borderline case a of F , or a sentence equivalent to such a sentence. For example, if Jackie is a borderline case of 'rich', then 'Jackie is rich and Jackie isn't r...

In this paper, the concept of v-filters on lattice implication algebras is introduced by linking the Vague set and filter theory of lattice implication algebras; The properties and equivalent characterizations of v-filters are investigated; The relations between v-filters and filters are studied.

Conscious and unconscious brain mechanisms, including cognition, emotions and language are considered in this review. The fundamental mechanisms of cognition include interactions between bottom-up and top-down signals. The modeling of these interactions since the 1960s is briefly reviewed, analyzing the ubiquitous difficulty: incomputable combinatorial complexity (CC). Fundamental reasons for C...

Different languages that are offered to model vague preferences are reviewed and an interval-valued language is proposed to resolve a particular difficulty encountered with other languages. It is shown that interval-valued languagesare well definedfor De Morgan triples constructedby continuoustriangular norms, conorms and a strong negation function. A new transitivity condition for vague prefer...