Re: knowledge and belief

[Mark Vines <vinesm@wholefoods.com>]

la xorxes. spuda mi di'e

> > Examples from English:
>
> Several of your examples contain indirect questions.
> In those cases, the truth assumption is very much
> reduced. All that is required is that there be a true
> answer.... There is no presupposition that I know the
> answer.

mi spuda la xorxes. di'e

Welllll, okayyyyy....

> >  You know you want me, so why not admit it?
> >    - many sources
>
> The speaker presupposes (perhaps facetiously) that
> "you want me" is true.

A facetious presupposition?  I'm not sure what to make
of that idea.  I observe from English usage that, when
someone says "You know you want me, so why not admit it?",
the speaker is usually an arrogant male in his late teens
or twenties, the person being addressed is usually a woman,
& she practically _never_ really wants him.  Oddly enough,
the speaker is often well aware of that fact, but says
"You know you want me" anyway - in too many cases, without
a trace of humor or comical intent.

If that's what you mean by a facetious presupposition,
then I'm going to have to broaden my understanding of
what "facetious" & "presupposition" signify.

> If the presupposition is false, the appropriate response
> in Loban is {na'i}, rather than "No, I didn't know that
> I want you, thank you for informing me".

Okay.

> >  I know you wanna leave me,
> >  but I refuse to let you go.
> >    - sung by Marvin Gaye
>
> The presupposition is "you wanna leave me".

Not at all.  The actual presupposition is something like,
"If I handle this right, I may be able to persuade you
that you don't want to leave me".

> Would you really accept something like: "I'm not
> sure whether it is true that you wanna leave me, but
> I know you wanna leave me." It doesn't sound normal
> to me.

But that's exactly what the quotation means.

> >  It ain't what you don't know that worries me;
> >  it's what you do know that ain't so.
> >    - several sources
>
> That's an indirect question.

No, it's an assertion that I am worried by the event
or state of your knowing things that are not true.

> >  All I know is what I read in the papers.
> >    - Will Rogers
>
> Is there any indication that he doesn't think that
> what he knows is true?

Yes!  That's the whole point of the quotation.

> >  Everybody knows that O.J. was the killer.
> >    - many sources
>
> And those sources don't think that O.J. was the
> killer?

The sources think so, yes.  But let's break this
quotation down into its three component claims:

  Claim A:  "O.J. was the killer."
  Claim B:  "Claim A is known."
  Claim C:  "Claim A is known to everybody."

The sources are, in reality, uncertain about all
three claims.  Despite their uncertainty, they
use the verb "know", rather than "assume" or some
other verb that, logically, would be more apropos.

> Do you really find acceptable something like
> "Everybody knows that O.J. was the killer, but maybe
> he wasn't."

Those are the facts.  I may have trouble accepting
them, but they're true anyway.  :-)

> >  I know it's only rock'n'roll, but I like it.
> >    - sung by the Rolling Stones
>
> Presupposition: "it's only rock'n'roll". You wouldn't
> accept "I'm not sure whether it's only rock'n'roll, but
> I know it's only rock'n'roll", would you?

But that presupposition is obviously false!  How can
_anything_ be "only rock'n'roll"?  If something is
rock'n'roll, then it's also the subject of infinitely
many other predications:  it's a song, it's a musical
genre, it's a concert performance, it's a way of alluding
to sex, it's a social phenomenon, it's an artform that my
mother fails to grok, &or so forth, ad infinitum.

If there's a truthful presupposition behind this quote,
it would have to be something more like:  "The importance
of rock'n'roll is occasionally overestimated."  Which
isn't even all that close to what the singers claim they
"know".

> >  I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
> >    - attributed to Socrates
>
> Presupposition: "the fact of my ignorance".

But the impact of Socratic irony depends on the falsity
of this presupposition; Socrates was acknowledged by all
(including himself) as the wisest & most knowledgeable
man in Athens.  Yet he was serious about using his
"ignorance" as the starting point for inquiry - & for his
debates, in which he was famous for asking people lots
of questions, as if he knew nothing beyond what they could
tell him, & then using their own answers against them.
I.F. Stone explains this very clearly in his _Trial of
Socrates_.

> >  I am the Master of Balliol College,
> >  and what I don't know isn't knowledge.
> >    - anonymous
>
> Does he not presuppose that what he does know
> is true?

The anonymous sources are mocking the Master by seeming
to speak in his voice.  Again, the force of their mockery
depends on the realization that the Master's so-called
"knowledge" is fallible & incomplete.

> >  Teilhard knew the Piltdown fossil was a fake,
> >  and may have known who the faker was; but he
> >  died without revealing what he knew.
> >    - several sources
>
> Presupposition: the Piltdown fossil was a fake.
> The other two are indirect questions.

The indirect questions are very revealing here IMO.  The
authors say that Teilhard "may have known" the faker's
identity, indicating their uncertainty about the extent
of Teilhard's knowledge.  Then, in the very next line,
they say that Teilhard knew something that he failed to
reveal before his death.  If his knowledge really went
unrevealed, then the authors can't be sure of its
content, or of its accuracy, or of the truth of the
claim that Teilhard "knew" it (rather than just believing
or guessing it, or what have you).  Despite these
uncertainties, the authors use words like "knew" & "known",
apparently without qualm.  In fact, such comments are
cliche' in English-language discussions of the infamous
Piltdown hoax.

> > In each of these English examples, we remain uncertain
> > about either the content of the known, &or the accuracy
> > of that content, &or the truth of the claim that the
> > content really is known to the person or persons
> > identified as knowing it.
>
> All that we're discussing is whether the claimant
> presupposes the truth of what is supposedly known.

Is that really all that _I'm_ discussing?  Or were you
intending that "we" as an exclusive "we"?

> In all those cases except in "all you know is wrong"
> I find that there is a presupposition of truth.

Obviously I dispute your findings.  Altho, if we allow
facetious presuppositions, we can certainly find more
presuppositions of truth than we would find otherwise.

> > Despite our uncertainty, we
> > often use the word "know", or some variant thereof,
> > in statements like these, at least in English.
> > Similar usages probably occur also in other natlangs.
>
> All of those would be translatable more or less word
> for word into Spanish using "saber", yes. And also into
> Lojban using {djuno}, don't you agree?

I do agree with that, yes.  But it seems inconsistent with
claims that I _think_ have been made here by you & John
Cowan & others, which say that something must be true
before it can be known.  Unless I misread him, pc even implied
that "right-thinking philosophers" all subscribe to the
notion of absolute truth as the only basis for knowledge!
I hope I've shown that people frequently use the word "know"
in ways that cannot be explained, or even successfully _read_,
by such a ruthlessly strict interpretation of what it means to
know something.

la kris. cusku di'e

> It strikes me that Markl went looking for clever literary
> uses of "know", and in his list, pe'i, only a few of them
> really violate Xorxes' rule.  Grep through an online book
> or something for a more random sample of "know" and I
> strongly believe that you'll find Xorxes is right in general.

mi spuda la kris. di'e

I strongly believe that such "clever literary uses" _are_
the norm, both in conversation & in print.  & also that they
do sometimes violate Jorge's presupposition rule.

> "Everything you know is wrong"  and the example above, are
> interesting "quotable" sentences precisely because they
> violate the norm in search of a jarring rhetorical effect.

In a way, that's true; but the norm that they violate is the
prescriptive or definitional norm.  I'm saying that actual
usage violates the prescription or definition, more often
than not.  "Jarring rhetorical effect" is sought not only
by literary sparkwits, but also by ordinary people in routine
discourse.

co'omi'e markl.