Date: Mon, 5 Jan 1998 02:32:53 -0500 (EST) id CAA15351; Mon, 5 Jan 1998 02:24:32 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 5 Jan 1998 02:24:32 -0500 (EST) From: Logical Language Group Message-Id: <199801050724.CAA15351@access1.digex.net> To: cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG Subject: Re: Knowledge and Belief Cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1973 X-From-Space-Date: Mon Jan 5 02:32:54 1998 X-From-Space-Address: lojbab@access.digex.net Cowan: >Rob Zook wrote: > >> Gettier counterexamples? Could you elaborate on this a bit? Some belief >> may be false for another, but people do not generally accept beliefs >> which they find false. So saying the truth value can seem independant >> of the justification seems misleading, at best. > >For this purpose, I take "true" and "false" to be absolute, not relative >to the believer/knower. By this you mean "fatci"? For Lojban purposes, except for fatci (and no one knows which truths are fatci), truth and falsity are dependent on the epistemology, though independent of the believer/knower. Since we cannot know what is absolute truth independent of epistemology, one cannot define knowledge in terms of absolute truth. Rob Zook: >> I believe that we define knowledge as a true belief, because people >> do not generally accept false beliefs. Rational people using rational epistemologies do not. But those using mystical epsitemologies may come to accept apparent contradiction as "true". All beliefs are se djuno by epistemology of li'i krici (I think li'i is the appropriate abstractor there, but I could accept others being argued). In other words, by the epistemology of belief, all beliefs are true beliefs. >> >The crew of a yacht left Boston on 7 November 1918 with the justified >> >false belief that the Great War was over, based on newspaper reports. >> >> False according to what? It certainly seemed true to them. > >Yes, but they were mistaken, although relying on what seemed like a reliable >source. They were justified in believing what was printed in the >newspapers, but in this case it happened to be false. The armistice >did not come until 11/11/18. They knew that the armistice had come by epistemology of authority of the newspapers. They did not know it by epistemology of the signed armistice agreement (but then they did not know anything by that epistemology since thay did not know the details of said agreement). lojbab