On 1/1/09, Phil Carmody <thefatphil@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
From: Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com>
In simplest terms, the logical fallacy is essentially the following:
A is a subset of (not C) B is a subset of (not C)
Therefore, A is somehow "equivalent" to B.
It's rather "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"-like, which is also commonly used.
Mmm... It's very tempting to be dismissive of such reasoning, but the bald fact is that associative "logic" of this nature is far more effective in many real-world situations than simple boolean calculus; and is very often the only tool available in the absence of complete information. More constructive would be to consider looser and more robust logics which might be more widely applicable --- indeed, the AI people have already made several attempts to do so, such as "fuzzy set theory". WFL