Re: Knowledge and Belief

[Rob Zook <rzook@INFORMIX.COM>]

At 02:25 AM 1/9/98 -0500, you wrote:
>>Getting back to that. If I were to say, in the context of a base ball
>>game: mi cu djuno lo du'u le kavbu cu djuno lo du'u le renro ba'o renro
>>le bolci (given that I translated that right), then I think it makes
>>sense. Because, I will have directly observed the catcher catching the
>>ball, or attempting to catch the ball, and obviously the catcher would
>>do neither of those things, if he/she had not seen the pitcher throw it.
>>
>>Could not the default value, for x4 almost always be direct observation
>>in these cases? If the speaker does not directly observe the event, then
>>should not one supply a x4 for djuno to provide their argument as to why
>>they know someone else knows something? Especially, given the main goal
>>in providing an unambiguous grammer in lojban is to ensure clear
>>communication, correct?
>
>For a Christian who accepts the Bible as a statement of truth by faith,
>then for them, "they know that Paul knew that Christ was the Son of God".
>There is no direct observation present or implied in the English, and
>to Biblical literalists, a claim that faith in God is any less valid an
>epistemology than direct observation (which can be flawed in the case
>of optical illusions, for example) or mathematical knowledge (which is
>depednent on axioms), is blasphemy.

Urk. I think I had better not comment on this part, my personal bias
will distort any good intensions I may have.

>Lojban has to be as usable by mystics as by rationalists in order to be
>culturally neutral.  The gismu, even more than other Lojban content
>words, need to be sufficiently vague that they allow use by people with
>alternate cultural mindsets to that of the typical Western-culture
>scientific skeptic that has dominated the develeopment of the language.

Well, I can understand that. It leaves djuno with the colloqual sense of
know: "to regard as true". But that again makes it less clear to me how
that seems different from krici.


Rob Z.
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Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
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