Date:  Wed, 7 Jan 1998 12:09:08 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <199801071709.MAA12455@locke.ccil.org>
Reply-To: Steven Belknap <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Steven Belknap <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>
Subject:      Re: knowledge and belief
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              <jorge@intermedia.com.ar>
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To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
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>>What are your thoughts on
>>
>><la xorxes cu djuno le du'u la stivn cu djuno>
>
>Seems fine to me. For example:
>
>    mi djuno le du'u la stivn djuno le du'u makau cmene mi
>    I know that Steven knows what is my name.
>
>>Assuming for purposes of discussion that there is no prior textual source
>>of a schema for the x4 place, does this statement imply telepathy to you
>>(as I suggested in an earlier post), or would you suggest that some other
>>schema is operant? (i.e., "seeing is believing", "Steven says he knows, so
>>that is adequate for me to know that he knows.)
>
>It doesn't imply telepathy to me. I have enough evidence to know that you
>know what is my name. I think that {djuno} has about the same use as
>English "know". (In its meaning of knowing a fact, of course, not
>in the meaning of being familiar with someone or something, as in
>"I know John", nor in its biblical {gletu} meaning.) But I don't really know
>how to fill the x4 place. {le nu viska}, {le nu jinvi} and other events like
>those don't seem to me to be epistemologies. I don't quite know what
>an epistemology is. I would not use {djuno} as lojbab says he would.
>For example, I find {le mi bersa cu djuno le du'u la santas cu zasti} as
>odd as the English version "my son knows that Santa exists" said by
>someone who doesn't believe that Santa exists.
>
>co'o mi'e xorxes

I share your puzzlement about the x4 place of <djuno>, perhaps for a
related reason. The source of my struggle with <djuno> is that when the X4
place is elided, the implicit criteria for judging the truth of a bridi
containing <djuno> is unclear, at least to me. I have suggested that it be
the nearest epistemology, which led to my suggestion that <djuno>ing what
someone else <djuno>s would have to be telepathy, for that would be the
most plausible extrapolation of my idea of what <djuno> means. <krici>
seems better than djuno for describing knowing what someone knows, but
perhaps I'm overly influenced by colloquial English in this regard. Perhaps
Mark's suggestion that "schema" as an alternative to "epistemology" would
resolve this confusion about <djuno>, as this would be closer to what you
suggest could go in the x4 place. This would gloss as an English "because"
clause:

<la xorxes djuno le du'u la stivn djuno le du'u makau cmene la xorxes kei
fo le nu xorxes viska>
"Jorge knows that Steven knows Jorge's name because Jorge has seen (it)."

<le mi bersa cu djuno le du'u la santas cu zasti kei fo le nu mi cusku>
"My son knows that Santa exists because I said (it)."

Does that seem reasonable?

-Steven


Steven Belknap, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria