Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 17:17:58 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199801162217.RAA02069@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: a9c4e3757bc5b9ec0c820d3b162da869 Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1380 X-From-Space-Date: Tue Jan 20 09:44:54 1998 X-From-Space-Address: - Jorge >>IN any event, for a baby, I don't even think "belief" is necessarily >>a valid claim - it is more like "insticntually expects that the mother is >>about to feed her". > >You're branching into separte issues. If you use "know" then you >require the presupposition. Whether babies are capable of >knowing is a different matter. In English usage, we certainly do not question whether a baby, or even my cat is capable of "knowing" basic stuff like whether someone is about to feed them. My cat knows it on the basis of reading my body language and movements, or something. Now if I were to drop dead of a heart attack before putting the can down, then you might say after the fact that she didn't really know that I was going to feed her because I didn't, but that sounds just as clumsy to my ear as saying that she knew I was going to feed her, but I didn't. No - on writing them, I think the latter sounds better. In any event, for djuno, with the epistemology place filled in, one can know something that later turns out to be false, because the epistemology will have been found inadequate. So far we have few epistemologies that predict the future with 100% accxuracy (if any). But we still can claim to know 9and to djuno) that something "will" happen. What we say after the fact may be something else, but djuno should still be valid before the event. lojbab