Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 15:08:58 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802272008.PAA07948@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: Summary so far on DJUNO X-To: a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-UIDL: c22a97547ce62896d63f719512e23cf9 Status: O X-Mozilla-Status: 8011 X-From-Space-Date: Mon Mar 02 13:39:45 1998 X-From-Space-Address: - >or > > x2 obtains This choice does imply an epistemology. You can use this version arguing from a set of postulates which you recognize are not true about the real world. >God help you if you ever tried to translate/write a logic textbook in >Lojban! How on earth would you render the notions that in English are >called _True_/_False_? I think that I have been trying to say that there is no single English notion called "true". We have "fuzzy true" a la Belknap, we have "true as derived from set of postulates X" in mathematics, and we have a supposed "real world" true which requires that one accept that there is a single real world that is independent of our perceptions of it. We have universes of discourse in which unicorns and Sherlock Holmes's can wander without particular marking. Is it true that Sherlock Holmes lives on Baker Street? Is it false? The status quo in Lojban seems to be that we incorporate something in the universe of discourse merely by mentioning it. Thus, if we use "lo pavyseljirna" in a sentence we are admitting its existence. But then is it true that "lo pavyseljirna cu zasti"? It is not true in the "Real world" but it is true under the metaphysics of the universe of discourse. I can know that Sherlock Holmes lives on Baker Street using the epistemology of A.C> Doyle's works, even while knowing that Sherlock Holmes doesn't live anywhere by some other epistemologies. So what is "true"? What do I "know"? I think that any definition of "know" which does not allow me to say that "I can know that Sherlock Holmes lives on Baker Street using the epistemologyof A.C> Doyle's works" is not standard English. Lojban djuno should at least be as powerful, being designed specifically to account for multiple epistemologies. lojbab