Knowledge and belief

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

Newton knew that his 3 laws of motion were true

Barring the philosophy of science issue as to whether a scientist ever
"knows" any scientific fact, or merely theorizes it in the absence of
countering data, I think we generally agree that the above is a true
statement.  The following is also true.

Einstein knew that the 3 Newtonian Laws of motion are false.

This would seem to be a counterexample to Jorge's claim that knowledge
presupposes truth, especially since epistemology was not cited in any
of the examples he used or I am using.

Part of the trick here is the use of the past tense, which in English
can change truth conditions.  I can know something ttoday and not know it
tomorrow either because I forgot it or because I found out that my knowledge
was false or because the fact of the matter has changed since I knew it
The Lojban statement may have no tense information in it, in which case
the tenseless statement of knowledge might be true or flase depending on the
contextually implied tense.  Let me now choose one of those laws:

Newton knew that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction
which gets "true" and "false" ouyt of the actual fact that is known or not
known.  We don't have a straightforward English way to say
Newton knew la'e his 3 laws of motion
such that it will be understood as knowing those laws each individually
as facts, rather than knowing what the laws are.

Now we can move things into the present tense.

The  6 th grade student knows that for every action there is an equal and
 opposite reaction
(he hasn't been taught about Einstein, and just finished an experiment that
demonstarted this law)

The college physics major knows that it is false that for every action there
is an equal and opposite reaction

having just studied Einstein's work.

Now I have to confess that I don't actually know if Einsteinian relativity
renders all of Newton's Laws false, because although I was a phsyics major
(actually astrophysics, though I met the degree requirments for a phsyics
major as well), I managed to avoid any solid exposure to relativity theory.
Instead I built these examples from the more loosely stated "newtonian
mechanics is false in a relativistic universe", without knowing that all
3 laws of motion are indeed false by relativistic theory.  So I have made
statements of others' knowledge without knowing myself that they are true.
I contend that UNLESS the knowledge is false, and known to be false by
someone evaluating my statements, that whether I knwo that they are true is
not a factor in whether the statements of knowledge are true.

That is, unless someone reading this corrects or contests the statements
that Newton's Laws of motion are true or false at the present time, all
of my statements above remain unchancged truth functionally by my admission
of uncertainty as to the truth of what they claimn is known.  So my knowledge
as speaker is not necessarily relevant to the truth of a claim of someone
else's knowledge.

And I contend that the absence of epistemology as a required component in
a knowledge statement in English means that my two statements regarding
the knowledge of the 6th grader and the college phsyics major can both be
true regardless of the actual truth of the proposition.

The result is that statements of knowledge become truth-functional
equivalents of "is convinced of".  But the latter IN ENGLISH has connotations
of emotional certainty independent of the actual truth of the proposition.
WE accept that one can be convinced of something that eveyone else knows to
be false because that one person may be blind to a counterdemonstration.
The question is whether that individual can be said to "know" that fact
that everyone else knows is false.  Given my arguments regarding 6th grade
students, I am not sure this is untenable.

Carrying to a greater extreme, we can have
"the baby knows that the mother is about to feed her".
Well, in an absolute sense no one, especially a baby, knows the future.
IN any event, for a baby, I don't even think "belief" is necessarily
a valid claim - it is more like "insticntually expects that the mother is
about to feed her".

So can we make statements about what a baby knows, regardless of our knowleddge
of truth in the matter?

Having raised knowledge of the future, I will close with:
I know that the sun will rise tomorrow.
Is this a true or false statement?

I know that someone will disagree with some element of my posting here.

Is this a true or false statement?

Do any of these questions tell us anything meaningful about what djuno means?
I am convinced that they do not, by epistemology of their omission of any
discussion of the relevance of epistemology whether stated or unstated from
a Lojbabn djuno sentence.

lojbab
----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                        703-385-0273
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