Date:  Tue, 17 Feb 1998 10:44:48 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <199802171544.KAA16357@locke.ccil.org>
Reply-To: And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>
Organization: University of Central Lancashire
Subject:      Re: Summary of summaries on DJUNO
X-To:         LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
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X-From-Space-Date: Tue Feb 17 14:23:16 1998
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Robin:
> Have I got this right?
>
> ORIGINAL POSITION
> 1. Lojbab claims that both "know" and "djuno" mean to apply an
> epistomology to one's satisfaction.
> 2. And (and others) claim that both "know" and "djuno" mean to be aware of
> something which is objectively true.
>
> MODIFIED POSITION
> 1'. Lojbab concedes that English usage generally supports position 2. for
> "know", but this does not have to apply to "djuno.
> 2'. And (and others) maintain that since "djuno" means "know" in
> the gismu list, it should still have meaning 2.

Here's my version.

1. Lojbab:
   {djuno} means "epistemology x4 convinces x1 that x2 is true about
                 x3".
   Rationale. 1. This is what he originally intended, even though the
                 intention was never apparent to anyone else.
              2. Some incomprehensible reasoning that is too half-baked
                 to be summarizable.

2. Everyone else:
   {djuno} means "epistemology x4 convinces x1 that true proposition
                  x2 is true about x3"
                  = "x2 is true and epistemology x4 convinces x1 that
                  x2 is true about x3".
   Rationale. 1. It forms a neat paradigm with jinvi and krici:
                 krici = belief
                 jinvi = justified belief
                 djuno = justified true belief
              2. It is consistent with the keyword.
              3. Lojbab's meaning is hard to distinguish from other
                 gismu's, such as {birti} or {jinvi}.

Responses to Lojbab's rationale is that 1.1 is irrelevant, and 1.2 is
incoherent.
Lojbab has no response to 2.1. His response to 2.2 is that keywords
are not defining. My response to that is that other things being
equal it is better to have a keyword that fits the actual definition
rather than a completely misleading keyword. His response to 2.3
involves counterintuitive definitions of {birti}, etc.

As far as I can see, 2.1 and 2.3 are the best rationales, out of the
five.

> Perhaps the problem is that we don't have much agreement about "facts",
> and whether there are absolute and relative (?) facts:

This is not the problem, though it is quite likely that Lojbab
believes it somehow is. Whether or not you believe there are absolute
facts, it remains the case that whenever you assert p in Lojban your
sentence is asserting p to be an absolute fact. Language and
communication requires that we at least pretend that there are
absolute facts. Jorge has said all this rather more eloquently in
some of his recent posts.

--And.