scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1361528
In this short, clear paper, the authors first seek to distinguish opaque predicates from those that are vague. They argue that unlike vagueness, opacity concerns no lack of precision in the properties expressed by the predicate, but instead lack of individuality in the very elements described. Their motivation for such a distinction comes from considering quantum mechanics, for example a predicate associated with spin up in direction \(y\) of an elementary particle. In such a case there is indeterminacy, in the sense that one cannot always distinguish whether or not the predicate holds, but they argue, the indeterminacy is not with the predicate itself, since it is indeed very precisely defined. Instead they argue there is a strong indeterminacy here concerning the objects of such collections, i.e. we have indeterminacy of the objects, the elementary particles themselves rather than the properties described, and hence they argue, standard treatments of vagueness do not apply. Predicates used in such circumstances they call opaque, and this paper represents an attempt to devise a formal framework appropriate to express them. This they do by first developing a higher-order logic that distinguishes by type the microobjects, then using quasi-sets to generate an interpretation for the system, and a generalized semantics based on quasi-sets. In fact they generate an axiomatic treatment of their logic analogous to Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, where each of the standard set-theoretic axioms has a weaker analogue expressed in terms of quasi-sets. Similarly there are analogues of the standard results for soundness and weak completeness of the system. The resulting structure they argue is an appropriate mathematical device for treating collections of indistinguishable objects. The paper is concise, very clearly expressed, and contains a very useful list of references to many other papers dealing with quasi-set theory and logical treatments of indistinguishable elements. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0919.00038].
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