Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 13:48:54 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199801211848.NAA03435@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Rob Zook Sender: Lojban list From: Rob Zook Subject: Re: Knowledge and Belief X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199801211728.JAA14158@gateway.informix.com> X-UIDL: 0ae0395f823499b24ac475ae2faade99 X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1363 X-From-Space-Date: Wed Jan 21 14:16:18 1998 X-From-Space-Address: - At 12:42 PM 1/21/98 -0500, John Cowan wrote: >la pycyn cusku di'e > >> "Knowledge=justified true belief" or "a knows that p = p >> and a believes that p on the basis of adequate evidence" are nice >> philosophical definitions but, as usual, useless where the rubber >> meets the road. The "true" drops out, since the only truths we can >> apply in these judgments are the ones we know, and applying them gets >> us into an infinite regress and thus no decisions. > >That is so in the moment of speaking, but "truth" is still important >retrospectively. If we repudiate the claim of truth later on, we also >repudiate the claim of knowledge --- which is not true of claims of >belief and the like. But if you look at a past system, you cannot affect the truth value of that system from the inside. The inside of the system is no longer accessible. So you cannot help but take a more inclusive view, which may include a copy of the previous system with a different truth value but that makes it obvous that your view cannot be compared the to old system on the same basis. Rob Z. -------------------------------------------------------- Were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults in the first. -- Ben Franklin