Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 12:14:54 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199801211714.MAA28919@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: Summary so far on DJUNO X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-UIDL: 4b09e85b3a52979bf97cd2e65875009c X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1640 X-From-Space-Date: Wed Jan 21 12:48:14 1998 X-From-Space-Address: - in haste: mark: > >Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 14:20:22 GMT+0 > >From: And Rosta > >Organization: University of Central Lancashire > > > >I've had to skim some bits, and have resisted the powerful > >temptation to reply to lots of contributions to the debate. > >But here is an offered summary in the hope of moving things on. > > > >1. Jorge is completely correct about the meaning of "know", but > > not everyone has managed to realize it. > > I'm pretty much with you on that, though here's an interesting > counterexample I heard on TV just the other day and made a note of: > > Some scientist was saying, on a science program, "Consider the 1920's. > Scientists knew -- they KNEW -- that universe was just the milky way > galaxy." > > This is a use of perhaps another meaning of "know" in English, a slightly > different one, more in line with Steve Belknap: to be completely > convinced. Used for effect here, since it's being falsified. > > Or that line in Men In Black (drastically misquoted): A few centuries ago, > everyone knew the world was flat. Fifteen minutes ago, you knew there were > no aliens on Earth. Who knows what you'll know tomorrow? It is a kind of empathetic shift-of-subjectivity (=me-hood). Like say, "Yesterday you were living with your wife, and today you discover you were living with your sister" (i.e. unwittingly incestuous & invalid matrimony). It means "you *thought* you were living with your wife, but in fact you were living with yr sister". Technically a counterexample, but in fact something normal and explicable. I forget what the technical term for it is. --&