Re: Knowledge and Belief

[Steven Belknap <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>]

>la stivn. cusku di'e
>
>> There is church down the street from me where
>> parishioners saw a statue of Mary weeping. They *know*
>> that this happened, because they saw it with their own
>> eyes. The senses are fallible.
>
>la markl. spuda la stivn. di'e
>
>The senses are fallible, but they are not always wrong!

True.

>
>Pragmatically speaking, extraordinary claims may require
>extraordinary evidence, but ordinary claims are often
>accepted casually.  Is it really so hard to believe that
>the pitcher at a baseball game has thrown a pitch?

No.

>Is it
>really so outrageous to say that the catcher *knows* the
>pitch has been thrown?

Yes.

Only the umpire directly "knows" that the pitch has been thrown and caught.
Once the umpire indicates his decision, everybody knows. If the umpire
decides that ball was not thrown and caught, then it wasn't under the rules
of the game, despite appearances to the contrary. Thats the rules of the
game. Such conflicting epistemologies led to Roberto Alomar spitting on the
ump.If one wanted to specify a non-baseball epistemology, one could
certainly use the x4 place of djuno for that. Or maybe it would be clear
from context that some particular epistemology was being used. But this is
a baseball game, right? Shouldn't the default epistemology be that of
baseball?

co'omi'e la stivn

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