> In principle, First Order Logic and equivalent languages can represent anything that can be represented in natural language.
Is there any proof about an existing non-leaky abstraction between natural language and First Order Logic (or logic in general)? Afaik there is none, but I might me wrong. For example (one amongst thousands): “I don’t like you” can actually mean (and it often does) the exact opposite, and the same can be said of a simple statement like “I am ok” which also can mean the exact opposite. Natural language is a very hard problem.
Does it matter, though? Understanding sarcasm or other forms of language twisting seems like only important for a very advanced and specific set of applications. There's another post in the front page about the death of a gorilla that was able to do signs language. I'm sure nobody cared if he could catch jokes.
Well, going by formal language theory, FOL is equivalent to a universal Turing machine, which is probably also the full expressive power of human language. Therefore, everything that can be said in human language should in principle be possible to say in FOL. I don't think this is controversial.
Notice again that I don't think this is feasible in practice. At least not with hand-crafted FOL expressions and certainly not with existing technology.
I'm not sure what "non-leaky abstraction" means. Would formal language theory fit the bill?
Yeah but humans don't have a single consistent logical model for all reasoning - i believe that all my models can be in fol, but i don't believe that they can be unified in fol
Oh, I'm not saying anything about how humans think, or model the world. FOL is a formal language. It can express the same things that natural language can express and you can do reasoning in it (actually- let's say "inference" because reasoning is a bit of a loaded term), but I make no claim that it's how humans really think.
I mean, I don't believe that is true any more that I believe calculus, or linear algebra are the way we think. Those are just formal systems that we can use to get various results about the world- but is that how we really think inside our heads? I kind of doubt it.
I'm just talking about the expressive power of first-order predicate calculus here, not about whether it's a good model for human intelligence.
Is there any proof about an existing non-leaky abstraction between natural language and First Order Logic (or logic in general)? Afaik there is none, but I might me wrong. For example (one amongst thousands): “I don’t like you” can actually mean (and it often does) the exact opposite, and the same can be said of a simple statement like “I am ok” which also can mean the exact opposite. Natural language is a very hard problem.