Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 16:01:29 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199801202101.QAA18996@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: Knowledge and belief X-To: jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-UIDL: 2e417a8b1d3b79a42eca1176290e3c77 X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1514 X-From-Space-Date: Tue Jan 20 15:58:58 1998 X-From-Space-Address: - >No argument against that. You can claim djuno as long as you >presuppose jetnu. If later you find out that jetnu doesn't hold, then >you will withdraw the djuno claim as well. But this I think is wrong. if I claim djuno, and we agree that it is true now, but then if it turns out that it is false (through presupposition failure or some other reasoning) then at that time we can say that it is false, but I do not see how we can make the former knowing "false". What has happened is that the universe of discourse aboiut which the former claim was made, turned out not to be the real world. This makes the statement not far removed from "I know that Sherlock Holmes lived on Baker Street". In any event, WITH the epistemology place present, something false by one epistemology (hindsight) can be true by another epistemology. I find it hard to accept that a statement can be true at time T, and then at time X which is after T, we can say that it was NOT true at time T. It seems to me that there are presuppositions in every sentence, and involing hidden presuppositions in order to make things work out makes it hard to claim that the language is working as a "logical language". If there are presuppositions, that fact should be plainly evident in the claim. I am also bothered by the fact that time is critical to the truth of such a claim. Lojban of course has tense optional. I am bothered that truth of a given proposition at a given time could depend on when the proposition is stated. lojbab