Re: knowledge and belief

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

>There seems to be some confusion as to what is an
>epistemology. In some examples, it seems to be taken
>as the way by which something gets to be known.
>In other cases it is the theory or lore within which
>something is a fact. For example:
>
>            le du'u li re sumji li pa li pa cu jetnu le cmaci
>            That one plus one is two is true in mathematics.
>
>--More--
>            la djan djuno le du'u li re sumji li pa li pa kei fo le cmaci
>            John knows that 1+1=2 in mathematics.
>
>            la djin toldjuno le du'u li re sumji li pa li pa kei fo le cmaci
>            Gene ignores that 1+1=2 in mathematics.
>
>Obviously in those examples the epistemology has nothing
>to do with how John came to the knowledge or why Gene
>came to be ignorant of that fact. The epistemology has to do
>with the realm within which the fact is true, not with the
>method by which the knower came to know it. That's why
>I'm confused by "epistemologies" that only say how the
>knower came across the fact.

In the context of my iummediate prior response to Steve, where I gave a
definition of epistemology, I think all of these make sense.  "Mathematics"
as a schema/system is a method or system that generates facts that can be
known or ignored.  So is "visually seeing with one's own eyes
"li'i viska"  Sometimes all there is to knowledge is that someone has
"come across a fact" by some means, and sometimes there is much more to it
- that the the fact is part of a larger system of facts or body of
knowledge for which a single specific means of acquiring a fact does not
suffice to describe how one might in tyheory come to acquire a whole body of
facts about a subject.  That subject goes in x3 of djuno, and that x3 is
in theory as important to djuno as x1, x2, and x4 are.  But probably we
would find the term "epistemology" easier to digest when talking about facts
(x2) within a subject which is studied by means of an epistemology.

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