Re: Summary so far on DJUNO

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

>As ~mark pointed out some time back this thread, you seem to
>be confusing assertions with truth. Your mental state is relevant to your
>asserting that I am red. Your asserting that I am red does not make
>me red, even if you believe it is true.

Not necessarily true.  BUT, if I am accurately reporting, then it may be
red according to my metaphysics even if it is blue according to yours.

The universe of discourse, as it seems to have evolved, may or may not be
the "real world".  Therefore, unless we explicitly AGREE on some external
standard of truth and of redness, there is always some risk that we are
indeed NOT talking about the same "world".

>If you don't suppose
>that your idea of a mlatu is more or less the same as mine, what do
>you expect me to understand when you say {ta mlatu}?

Ah, but that is itself a presupposition!.  I agree that we have to assume
that our truths are more or less synchronous, but that does not mean that
they really are, nor does it mean that ALL of them are.  Clearly you and I for
example have different ideas about what it means to know something.  Yet we
still manage to communicate.

> >Given the baseline, I cannot change the keyword even if i wanted to.
>
>I was not talking about the keyword, although I don't see much point
>in keeping obsolete keywords frozen.

Keeping a committment to the community, for one.  If we change one baseline,
why should people not suspect that we will just as easily change others.
If we keep a baseline element that is a little bit awkward (noting that the
keyowrds were never supposed to mbe more than memeory hooks, and that therefore
awkwardness should be tolerable), then we will not go fiddling with other
things for prescriptive effect.

>Also, if you change to "is convinced"  we would be left with no word to
>express
>the concept of  "know", which seems like a useful one.

The concept you have for "know" requires that the speaker presume the truth of
the knowledge (as opposed to the x1 so presuming), and hence would have to
be worded to make this clear.

But I will not argue this one further since I still am not sure that I know
what your definition of "know" really is, and have agreed not to argue it
further.  Every time we get into that definition, we stumble over each others'
presumed definitions of the supporting terms like "true".

>Your opinion as to the meaning of {djuno} is based on what your
>intentions were of what it should mean.
>
>My opinion as to its meaning is based on what the gi'uste says it means.

Using definitions of words that are obviously different from my definitions
of the same words.  BY my defintiions of the words, the gi'uste says what >I<
intended it to mean.  I did not put the speaker in a privileged position
with regard to x2's truth; I did not say that x2 had to even be true - only
that it had to be known by the epistemology x4.

>>If there is ANY debate as to the truth
>>of a proposition possible, under any epistemology or metaphysics, then
>>it is not a fatci.
>
>Isn't that a bit strong?

The gismu list says truth "in the absolute".  That is indeed most extreme.
General semanticists that deny the mathematical axiom of identity will not
necessarily agree that "x=x" is a fatci (There is a guy who has been an
active Lojbanist at one time who is such a G.S. afifcionado - I am not saying
that all G.S. people are so extreme).

>Is that claim of yours a fatci? If I say:
>
>        le du'u la lojbab cu rirni re da cu fatci
>        "That lojbab has two children is a fact."
>
>are you going to categorically assert that that claim is false?
>Under any and every metaphysics? Seems to me like you can't have
>it both ways.

No I merely have to assume that there MAY exist a metaphysics under which it
is false.  And I am sure that there is.  If it is true under the default
 metaics, but false under some plausible metaphysics (wjere plausible is in the
 eye of the beholder), then it is not truth in the absolute
le no'e fatci cu jitfa da
.iseni'ibo le no'e fatci na fatci

Only by constraining the universe of discourse to noda se jitfa
can we get a fatci, which makes fatci not all that far removed from se sruma.

>>Since you seem to inject mental states into all
>>assertions then nothing imaginable can be false.
>
>I'm not sure what you mean by injecting mental states into
>assertions. Certainly lots of things imaginable can be false.
>For example, that you have only one child is false.

I am sure that there is some metaphysics under which it is true.  Not one
that I suspect that you or I accept as a valid metaphysics.   On the other
hand when my daughter is mad at me and says "I am not your daughter", it
is perhaps possible that she momentarily is working with such a metaphysics.
I cannot say.

Note that the positions I am arguing are those of the extreme postmodernist
insofar as I understand them.  But Lojban needs to be speakable by extreme
postmodernists as well as by rationalists, ande therefore hidden assumptions
should be made explicit as much as is possible.

lojbab