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Re: knowledge and belief



At 03:00 PM 1/21/98 -0500, John Cowan wrote:
>Rob Zook wrote:
>
>> >What we're saying is that "x1 knows that x2 at time X" and "x2 is
false" are
>> >contradictory statements.  If x2 turns out to be false, then x1 didn't
>> >know x2 at any time, no matter what x1 or anyone else believed at time X.
>>
>> Then in Lojban terms it seems you want to mix a jetnu claim and a fatcu
>> claim. That seems like a main problem here. Again I think we must
>> regard truth as a measurable quantity relative to the instrument or
>> it makes no sense.
>
>Not so.  I will rephrase as "x1 knows that x2 at time X by
>system S" and "not-x2 is true by system S".  These two are
>contradictory, unless there are specific magical references to
>time within system S that cause the statements to cancel out,
>such as "S = statements believed false by x1 at time X"

Well, I don't see anything magical about it. Neither djuno or
jetnu have time place.

djuno:
x1 knows fact(s) x2 (du'u) about subject x3 by epistemology x4

jetnu:
x1 (du'u) is true/truth by standard/epistemology/metaphysics x2

However, If I say "mi djuno <X> fo <Y>", and you say but, "<X> na jetnu
<Y>", then those two statements would only contradict each other if
we where both looking at <Y> in the same time frame.

For example, if Y= astronomy, and X= "rocks do not fall from the sky",
then we would both have to be talking about astronomy around the 20th
century because, say 15th astronomy did not include facts about rocks
falling from the sky.


>> What it looks to me we have here are two camps, one who wants to base
>> djuno claims on fatci and one who wants to base djuno claims on jetnu.
>> I think the baseline implies jetnu rather than fatci.
>
>So do I, and in fact I belong to the fatci-is-useless clique.
>Again, when I say in English that something "is true" or "is false",
>I mean with respect to an unspecified but internally consistent
>truth model.

But in which time frame? That does make a difference.


Rob Z.
--------------------------------------------------------
Were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection
to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only
asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to
correct some faults in the first.
-- Ben Franklin