<djuno> & <xusra> (Was Knowledge & Belief)

[Steven Belknap <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>]

I suggested the change in thread name because we are being distracted by
the semantics of natlangs, when what is at issue is the semantics of lojban.

>>Are you drawing a distinction between 'know' and 'directly know'? It what
>>sense is it not possible to know that someone else knows something, but
>>it is possible to know that someone else does something? Bear in mind
>>that in both cases, 'knowledge' is mediated through imperfect senses.
>
>ko ga'inai fraxu mi le porpi fau tavla
>
>Given that this thread appears to have an epistemological context,
>then one cannot know another person "knowing" anything. One only knows
>Jane Bloe's said that she knows something. Simply because she knows
>something - her telling you so does not automatically transfer
>said knowledge into your mind.

I agree with this.

>
>If Jane says to me, "I know that it will snow tomorrow", I know she said
>something to me, I directly observed said event. However, I do not know
>that the snow will fall on her head tomorrow.
>
>I can say, "I know that it will snow tomorrow because I have done
>the necessary meteorological research necessary to determine this, and
>so I agree with Jane". But her saying she knows does not make me know it
>also.

What if the earth is hit by a giant meteor tonight, and instead of snowing
tomorrow it rains molten ashes and lava? I assert that although one can
"know" that it will snow tomorrow, one can not <djuno> that it will snow
tomorrow or <djuno> that any future event in the physical universe will
take place under an empirical epistemology.

One can <djuno> that the savior is coming, that Windows 95 is better than
Macintosh, or that Halle-Bopp is a spaceship which will take castrated
people to the next level because these claims are not based on empirical
observation or rational thinking, but instead are in the province of
religion, delusion, or more generally, "faith". (I am not saying that these
ideas are necessarily bad or wrong, just that they are not
empirically-based.) Persons with such beliefs often point out that their
predictions about such events represent an article of faith, and that part
of their trial on earth is to have doubt about the validity of their creed,
etc., etc.

>
>
>>In any case, your definition of 'know' is at variance with the standard
>>one, with which it certainly is possible to "know" that someone knows
>>something. Go ask anyone on the street.
>
>In epistemology, "know" has a more specific meaning than casual use of
>the word, although they seem _very_ similar. The epistemological
>use involves justified true belief. A belief is not justified if you
>do not have empirical testing of it, or sufficient logical arguments
>to back it up. Admittedly, there does seem to exists dispute on what
>"justified" refers to specifically.
>
>
>Rob "la valsi nanla" Z.

It doesn't have to be justified the same way for everyone. There is no a
priori universally agreed upon set of knowledge. Some people think that
books which are thousands of years old, have been heavily edited by persons
with economic and political agendas, and translated imperfectly from
ancient languages are valid sources of knowledge. Other persons might
insist on reproducibility of observations, consistency with a mathematical
model, and elegance of formulation to be the basis of their <djuno>. It is
certainly possible to "religionize" science, and use that as an
epistemology. It is a rather odd thing to do, as "religionized" science
(that is, taking the current working hypotheses of science and converting
them to <djuno>) is no longer empirical.

Perhaps much of the apparent disagreement between empiricists and mystics
is due to unfortunate definitional overloading of individual natlang
predicates.

-Steven

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