Date: Tue, 30 Dec 1997 18:03:59 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199712302303.SAA08566@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Chris Bogart Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Bogart Subject: Re: knowledge and belief X-To: lojban To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 786 X-From-Space-Date: Tue Dec 30 18:04:00 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Steven Belknap writes: >I consider >the predicates know/believe/think/suspect/uncertain to form a fuzzy >continuum from certainty to uncertainty.=20 The examples you give all use "I" as the subject, though. A strident = pacifist probably wouldn't say "The president knows that the bombing was = justified" -- they'd (perhaps derisively) use some term that marked = their *own* skepticism: "The president claims..." or "The president = thinks..." or "the president imagines...". The certainty/uncertainty = scale of knows/claims/thinks/etc. is muddied by the question of whether = it's the subject of the verb or the speaker who feels certain or = uncertain. With your "I" examples, that muddiness doesn't show up = because the speaker and the subject are the same. co'o mi'e kris