Re: Summary so far on DJUNO

["Jorge J. Llambías" <jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR>]

Lojbab:
>djuno refers to the mental state of another, and hence I can report that
mental
>state without reference to my own mental state regarding the same subject.

If that were the case, then {djuno} should be translated as "is convinced"
and not as "knows", which means something else. Knowledge is not
a mental state of another in the way that a conviction is. I don't think
there is any other gismu with the keyword "convinced", so that should not
be a problem.

>If the discussion were about emotional states, this would not be in
question.
>We can report John feeling an emotion without feeling it ourselves.

Of course. Same goes for opinions, beliefs and convictions. But not for
knowledge.

>It is
>only if we consider "knowedge" to be different - an absolute that is
>independent of minds,

Only in the same sense that truths are independent of minds.

>and of epistemologies,

Epistemologies (in the sense of roads leading to knowledge) are
irrelevant here.

>that we assume that our own
>menatla state has any relevance to reporting another's mental state.

Our mental state is relevant to reporting anything at all. To that extent
it is relevant to reporting another's mental state or another's redness,
for example.

>Knowledge (at least se djuno in Lojban) has nothing to do with facts in the
>absolute (fatci), and doesn't necessarily have to so with jetnu (truths
that
>may be stated so as to be observer-independent).

So you say, but that's not what the gi'uste says. It describes {djuno} as
"x1 knows (fact) x2" and not as "x1 is convinced that x2 is true".

> It is only when we assume
>an absolute reality consisting of objective facts, of which any person's
>"knowledge" is a subset of these facts, that we can trulky say that
knowledge
>requires "truth".

Nonsense. That only works if you assume that there is only one "truth"
to be known in the first place. If you accept different truths, then there
can
be knowledge of those different truths.

>But we all seem to be agreeing that fatci is reltively
>useless

Plese exclude me from that "we". I have already said that I have
found {fatci} quite useful, and I have seen several others use it too.

>simply BECAUSEW there is little that is absolute fact, and we certainly
>do not limit knolwedge to those things that are absolute facts.

We certainly don't.

> When we
>overtly make clear that the context is subjective, the use of "know" to
>reprt another's thinking does not imply anythimg about our own knolwedge or
>belief.

So you say, but that doesn't agree with my experience. Let's take a very
subjective context:

    John is very sad, but he knows that he's really very happy.

No, it doesn't work.

>In English, however, subjective context is not the default, whereas
>in Lojban it is.

What????? Is that part of the baseline?

co'o mi'e xorxes