Re: knowledge and belief

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

>>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):

The errors were partially intentional and partially fuzzy memory of the
legend.  The intention was to indicate that the false legend can be the
source of false knowledge (i.e by using an invalid by some standard
epistemology, things which are false according to that standard could
be true according to the epistemology).  I can thus know something is true
by one epistemology and know that it is false by another epistemology.
It is my observation that children have no problem maintaining contradictory
knowledge in their heads.

>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.

It seems that those who disagree with my opinion on this matter consider any
"knowledge" that is less than "certainty" to be merely a "belief", at least in
English.  The recognition of fuzzy truth, multiple epistemologies, and a
demonstrated lack of commitment to a "real world" in Lojban (as given by the
lack of necessary marking in order to talk about "lo <unicorn>) make it
essential that knowledge not be equated to truth, and indeed that truth
generally be considered relative.

Be that as it may, Socrates and most other human beings, whether foolishly or
 not, tend to think of their knowledge as certainty.  Indeed, they tend to think
of tyheir beliefs as certainty and their opinions as certainty.


I will not attempt to resume discussion of how to express fuzzy levels of
truth.  This is one of those areas where a summary of where the last
overly technical discussion ended up would be useful to those of us who
never quite followed most of it.

lojbab
----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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