Date:  Tue, 6 Jan 1998 20:16:11 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <199801070116.UAA17728@locke.ccil.org>
Reply-To: Steven Belknap <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Steven Belknap <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>
Subject:      knowledge and belief
X-To:         "=?iso-8859-1?Q?=22Jorge_J._Llamb=EDas=22?="
              <jorge@intermedia.com.ar>
X-cc:         lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
In-Reply-To:  <U16081.884109250@UICVM>
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
Content-Length: 2496
X-From-Space-Date: Tue Jan  6 20:16:12 1998
X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU

>><la stivn cu djuno du'u la xorxes cu djuno nu da cu klama le zarci kei>
>
>[You are missing a {le} or some other gadri in front of {du'u} and {nu}.]
>
>    la stivn cu djuno le du'u la xorxes cu djuno le du'u da klama le zarci
>    Steven knows that Jorge knows that someone goes to the market.
>
>Which is different from:
>
>    la stivn cu djuno le du'u la xorxes cu djuno le du'u makau klama le zarci
>    Steven knows that Jorge knows who it is that goes to the market.
>
>I may know that someone goes there without knowing who.

Thanks for the correction. I'm curious why you chose to use le du'u makau
instead of le nu makau.
<la stivn cu djuno le du'u la xorxes cu djuno le nu makau klama le zarci>
seems closer to what I meant, since I am referring to an event.
>
>>I don't think this adds any additional problem, although perhaps I'm
>>missing something.
>
>In English you can't normally use "believe" or "opine" with indirect
>questions: *I believe who goes to the market. But there should be
> no such problem in Lojban:
>
>            mi krici le du'u makau klama le zarci
>            I have a belief as to who it is that goes to the market.
>
>co'o mi'e xorxes

I believe I know who goes to market
I think I know who goes to market.
I am sure I know who goes to market.

is the idiomatic way of saying this; in this case the know seems to be a
sort of "placeholder" for unwinding the indirect reference. However, one
could give the examples

I know who goes to market.
I know I know who goes to market.

These seem to have very similar meanings, unless you take the second being
as being a deliberately metareferential statement. What are your thoughts on

<la xorxes cu djuno le du'u la stivn cu djuno>

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 seems like a "green ideas sleep furiously" type sentence to me:
syntactically correct, but nonsense in the absence of some context that
provides for meaning. I'd be curious to hear your take on this, which you
have not given, although you asked some interesting questions.

co'o mi'e la stivn


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