Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 17:12:18 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199801202212.RAA22364@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Jorge_J._Llamb=EDas?=" Sender: Lojban list From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Jorge_J._Llamb=EDas?=" Subject: Re: Knowledge and belief X-To: lojban To: John Cowan X-UIDL: 5ec1e4b5efbdd876e6f4f0435c39e640 Status: RO X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2661 X-From-Space-Date: Wed Jan 21 09:46:53 1998 X-From-Space-Address: - Lojbab: >>No argument against that. You can claim djuno as long as you >>presuppose jetnu. If later you find out that jetnu doesn't hold, then >>you will withdraw the djuno claim as well. > >But this I think is wrong. if I claim djuno, and we agree that it is >true now, But we don't agree that it is "true now". Rather, we "now agree" that it is true. We might later realize that we were wrong. >but then if it turns out that it is false (through presupposition >failure or some other reasoning) then at that time we can say that it is >false, but I do not see how we can make the former knowing "false". Just as we made the former being true "false". We were wrong, that's all. > What >has happened is that the universe of discourse aboiut which the former >claim was made, turned out not to be the real world. Is that really what happened? Couldn't it be that we simply made a mistake about the real world? I don't think the universe of discourse can be changed like that so as to force a claim to be true. > This makes the >statement not far removed from "I know that Sherlock Holmes lived on Baker >Street". Your presupposition there is that Sherlock Holmes lived on Baker Street, which is true in context. >In any event, WITH the epistemology place present, something false by one >epistemology (hindsight) can be true by another epistemology. My point was that {djuno ko'a fo ko'e} presupposes {ko'a jetnu ko'e}. Same ko'a and same ko'e. >I find it hard to accept that a statement can be true at time T, and then at >time X which is after T, we can say that it was NOT true at time T. Personally, I prefer to think of truth values as outside of time as well. Just like the number 5 does not have a duration in time, neither does a truth value. But our agreement at time T that a statement is true does not mean that we cannot later change our minds and admit that we were wrong. > It seems >to me that there are presuppositions in every sentence, and involing hidden >presuppositions in order to make things work out makes it hard to claim that >the language is working as a "logical language". If there are presuppositions, >that fact should be plainly evident in the claim. In the case of djuno, the presupposition is plainly evident, isn't it? >I am also bothered by the fact that time is critical to the truth of such a >claim. Lojban of course has tense optional. I am bothered that truth of a given >proposition at a given time could depend on when the proposition is stated. I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. When a given sentence is uttered can certainly make a difference as to the truth value. co'o mi'e xorxes