Date: Sat, 28 Feb 1998 14:03:08 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802281903.OAA18762@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: Summary so far on DJUNO X-To: lojban To: John Cowan X-UIDL: 0feff94ac042e5d1df01a10092e0b950 Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 8011 X-From-Space-Date: Mon Mar 02 13:44:44 1998 X-From-Space-Address: - Lojbab: >But it's NOT true that Sherlock Holmes lives on Baker Street, because >Sherlock Holmes is not and never was alive. I know that he lives ONLY >by contemplating a known-false (i.e. fictional) epistemology. If you really think that "S.H. lives on Baker Street" and "S.H. lives on Wall Street" are equally true or false, then I don't know what to say. What is the difference between them? Call that difference property X if you think "truth" does not apply. Then the x2 of djuno needs to have that property, unlike the x2 of krici or jinvi. I can say "Lojbab believes that S.H. lives on Wall Street", but I can't say "Lojbab knows that S.H. lives on Wall Street", because I know that he doesn't live there. > And I know he >"lives" only by presuming the timelessness of literature, since the >Victorian era ended almost a hundred years ago. I don't even know if >there still IS a Baker Street in London. Right. There's no problem there. >The only way I can make x2 true in a statement about Sherlock Holmes > as-real is if I limit the universe of discourse to AC Doyle's works (which > I did not explicitly, nor to my knowledge implicitly do). Well, not limit it to it, but yes include it. >Now someone can >say that invoking an author of fiction as an epistemology implicitly >invokes his fictional world as the metaphysical universe. Yes. > But I nefver gave >any indication that my epistemology was invoking a fictional world. Well, you did mention an author of fiction. That's a pretty strong indication. > Thus >you have no basis FROM MY STATEMENT to treat an invocation of AC Doyle as >an epistemology any differently from an invocation of Albert Einstein (who >do far as I know never published any fiction). Yes I do, because I know that Doyle wrote fiction, and Doyle appeared in your statement. Even if you hadn't mentioned Doyle, your mention of Sherlock Holmes would have been enough. >If you want to call a statement TRUE you MUST qualify it by the metaphysics >or I have no idea what you mean. I'll keep that in mind. Most people figure it out from context. Do you need me to qualify it by the metaphysics if I want to call an animal CAT as well? co'o mi'e xorxes