Do you know what I know, in your palace warm, mighty king?

[Steven Belknap <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>]

>>If I say:
>>
>>        la sokrates djuno le du'u la djan klama le zarci kei ko'a
>>        Socrates knows that John went to the market by epistemology A.
>>
>>Does that require me to believe this:
>>
>>        le du'u la djan klama le zarci cu jetnu ko'a
>>        That John goes to the market is true by epistemology A.
>
>I don't think so.
>
>I think that it entails that you know
>
>      le du'u la djan klama le zarci cu jetnu ko'e
>      That John goes to the market is true by epistemology B.
>
>where B is some indication of "by authority of Socrates", whatever
>the particular means you have in order to make the claim that Socrates
>knows about John.
>
>For example, Galileo knows that a feather and a cannonball fall at the
>same rate, by epistemology of experimnentation at Pisa.  I know that
>a feather and a cannonball fall at the same rate, by epistemology of
>cultural legend about Galileo's experiment at the leaning tower.  But I
>cannot claim that >I< know by the experimentation directly since I did
>not do or observe any such experiment.
>
I am not sure if this mistatement of events is intentional to make the
point, or if it is unintentional. There are several orders of error
(possibly intentional by lojbab):

1. A feather and a cannonball would fall at the same rate in a vacuum, but
a feather would fall much more slowly than a cannonball in an atmosphere,
due to air resistance.

2. The legend is that Galileo dropped objects of differing weight, but
approximately equal cross sectional area, (not a feather and a cannonball)
and that this disproved the Aristotlean claim that heavier objects fall
faster than lighter objects.

3. This legend has no basis in fact, at least there is no written
confirmation that Galileo Galilei performed these experiments, in Pisa or
anywhere else. Galileo was born in Pisa, and lived there, so this legend
appears to be a confluence of the leaning tower of pisa meme and the
galilean experiments with gravity meme.

The entire problem of what Socrates and Plato believe as to John's journey
to market appears to me to be a problem with false dichotomy. Socrates
would be foolish to accept as absolute truth the assertion that John went
to market. He could (if he wished) estimate the degree of certainty he has
about this assertion, this would allow him to compare the certainty of this
knowledge with that of other knowledge which he has.

la sokrates djuno le du'u la djan klama le zarci kei jei 5/7

socrates knows that john went to market, that knowledge being fuzzily
certain to extent 5 on a 0 to 7 scale.

I probably screwed up the grammer. Corrections welcome.

-Steven

Steven Belknap, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria