Date: Thu, 1 Jan 1998 22:42:34 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199801020342.WAA18878@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Steven Belknap Sender: Lojban list From: Steven Belknap Subject: and X-To: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?=22Jorge_J._Llamb=EDas=22?=" X-cc: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 4104 X-From-Space-Date: Thu Jan 1 22:42:39 1998 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU >la stivn cusku di'e >> It seems to me that one must either fuzzify with >>, specify the epistemology or method by which certain knowledge is >>claimed, or use a bridi which reports "Just the facts, M'am," such as: >> >> .i la xorxes cusku di'e >How can you be so sure that those are the facts? Because Mark said so, and that is a good enough criteria for me regarding a event. Of course, Mark might be lying, or might have misperceived the event. One night I was walking home on a dark street, and I saw a terrorist, complete with ski mask and Uzi. This was an experience of seeing, even though it turned out to be an illusion due to a peculiar convergence of shadows. Now that I've told you this, you could perfectly well tell someone else that Steven saw a terrorist. And you would be correct, although incomplete. To be complete, you would add that I then changed my angle of view, and discovered that what I saw was an illusion. Seeing is not believing! >Can anybody other than markl say what markl saw? Can even markl? Yes. The map is not the territory. We implicitly know that a description of an event is not the event. >You seem to take extreme caution with djuno, but not with viska, why? Because knowing is *different* than perceiving. You explained this very well in a recent post, which discusses the difference between prediction and knowledge. I could apply the xorxes test to : Lets suppose that Mark saw the catcher catch the ball. The next day, he sees the instant replay on television, and on the slo mo the catcher is clearly seen to drop the ball then pick it up. Mark might then say, "I saw him catch the ball yesterday, but now I see that I was wrong." I have no problem with that statement. But if he said, "I knew that he caught the ball yesterday, but now I see that I was wrong." I do have a problem with that. He couldn't have both known it and not known it. Now lets suppose that the umpire says, "I knew that he caught the ball yesterday, and now I see that the catcher dropped the ball." That is OK, because the umpire's opinion at the time of the pitch was peremptory according to the rules of baseball. He *really did* know, because his opinion determined that knowledge, at least according to the rules of baseball. It doesn't matter that his opinion changed when he saw the video recording. He knew the catcher caught the ball at the time of the event, and that was definitive. >How is that sentence any more factual than: > > la markl djuno le du'u le renro cu renro le bolci le kabvu > Its not. makes a different claim about the universe than does. Mark perceived a catch. Even if his perception was flawed, that has no bearing on whether or not his perception occurred. He and we are free to report on this event, for we implicitly understand that visual perception is fallible and that sometimes people lie. To be absolutely precise, I would have to say: but I am comfortable with < la markl visku le du'u le renro cu renro le bolci le kabvu> because the fallibility of vision is commonly known, and that seems like a reasonable may to achieve a bit of conciseness. If Mark wishes to report that he saw something and that he believes that what he saw is fact, he is free to add that, as long as there is a "controlling authority"-some method or epistemology by which the veracity of a statement can be determined. This could be implicit, context-determined, or cultural. None of these "controlling authorities" are extent in lojban at this time. I suppose that with use lojban might adopt a convention that "seeing is believing" and that would become the epistemology used for reporting ones own perception. This would be unfortunate, in my view, and should be discouraged. co'omi'e la stivn Steven Belknap, M.D. Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria