Re: Summary so far on DJUNO

[John Cowan <cowan@locke.ccil.org>]

la rab. zuk. cusku di'e

> Actually, change that to "newspapers are supposed to print facts,
> and they printed the war was over" and it makes perfect sense in
> the context of their knowledge system. So it still looks like
> a justified true belief. We agree that it was justifed, however
> I say it was true within that system. You say no, it was false, but
> your looking at it from outside their system and saying that.

On your account, then, rocks did not fall from the sky in the
15th Century, the inverse square law was untrue until 1666, outer
space was not a vacuum in Aristotle's time, and so on.

All of what you say is correct, if you assume that the contents of
anyone's worldview at any time contains just what they
believe at any time, which I have summed up as "subjectivism"
(not solipsism, that was a blunder):  "p is true in your
worldview iff you believe p is true in your worldview".
This means that every time you learn better, you change your worldview.

Specifically, Sam and Frank knew on 7 November that the war
was over, but on 12 November they knew that the war had not been
over on 7 November.  There is nothing outright *inconsistent*
about this, but I feel very uncomfortable using the word "know"
in this context, and am strongly tempted to put it in scare quotes.

But I was assuming a more "normal" worldview in which one occasionally
has false beliefs which can be corrected without changing the
whole worldview.  In that case, I say that Sam and Frank:

	1) did not know on 7 November that the war was over
	2) believed they knew etc.,
	3) on 12 November still did not know the war was over until
		they read a newspaper
	4) after reading the newspaper did know the war was over,
	5) after reading etc. no longer believed that on 7 November
		they had known the war was over.

This, I think, is a more ordinary, default sort of worldview.  Lojban
does not exclude your type of worldview, but you and I will have
trouble communicating unless we find ways of explicitly filling
x4 (other than with a pronoun), and quick.

-- 
John Cowan	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan		cowan@ccil.org
	You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
	You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
		Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (FW 16.5)