Date: Fri, 9 Jan 1998 15:29:40 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199801092029.PAA21519@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: mark.vines@wholefoods.com Sender: Lojban list From: Mark Vines Subject: Re: knowledge and belief X-To: LOJBAN@CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Jorge_J._Llamb=EDas?=" "Re: knowledge and belief" (Jan 9, 7:57am) X-UIDL: 932d058236ddd948beb042d99e67b926 Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2798 X-From-Space-Date: Mon Jan 12 15:46:41 1998 X-From-Space-Address: - la xorxes. cusku di'e > Yes, but to claim that someone else is convinced of > something one need not consider it true, while to claim > that someone else knows something one must. That's the > difference that I have been pointing out, not the use > in the first person. la markl. spuda la xorxes. di'e I perceive a split here between what I might describe as logically minded people & what I might describe as more pragmatically minded people. A pragmatically minded person has no problem saying something like, "I don't know what her name is, but Genaro does; go ask him." This is outrageous to the logically minded person. "How can you say that Genaro 'knows' her name when you haven't even verified that what Genaro claims to 'know' is really her name?" The pragmatically minded person is typically either amused, annoyed or both. "Why waste time asking me how I can say what I said? If you want to learn her name, go ask Genaro!" The logically minded person can cite the definition of Lojban {djuno} - or English "know" - until the cows come home, & the pragmatically minded person won't care, altho s/he may pretend to care for the sake of politeness. To the pragmatically minded person, what matters is not how the word is defined but, rather, what the speaker or author meant when using it. The definition usually helps in identifying the speaker's or author's meaning: but not always. Sometimes the definition is just an obstacle that gets in the way of the sympathetic reading or listening that is required for pragmatic understanding. The pragmatically minded person can refine the definition with alternative glosses, trying to bring it closer to hi/r intuitions about how authors & speakers really use the word in practice, & the logically minded person won't care, altho s/he may pretend to care for the sake of politeness. To the logically minded person, the value of a statement largely depends on how well it adheres to the prescriptive rigor demanded in logic. Pragmatic usages may produce rigorous statements: but not always. Sometimes pragmatic usages depart from the prescribed definitions so dramatically that they're just an obstacle that gets in the way of the semiotic concentration that is required for logical evaluation. I could propose a compromise: to claim that someone else is convinced of something, one need not consider it to be true; to claim that someone else knows something, one must consider its truth to be extremely likely, or at least overwhelmingly plausible. But such compromises are, by their very nature, acceptable only to the pragmatically minded people who do not need them. Such compromises might offer some illumination to the logically minded people, but those are the very people who cannot allow themselves to compromise.