Subject: Re: [lojban] Set of answers encore

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 12:01:05 EDT

In a message dated 9/26/2001 7:38:38 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> For example, if John believes that there is no king of France and if
> that belief is true, then it follows that Bill is not king of France. So
> in the 'extensional' sense Bill believes that Bill is not king of France,
> even if John has never thought "Bill is not king of France". For
> John to believe that in the 'intensional' sense, J must have
> thought "B is not king of France". Likewise for the example
> 

But if John has never thought it, then John does NOT believe it. 
Epistemology has always, since before Plato and Akshapada down to the modern 
Hintikkoids and all-Wright-niks, been plagued by perfectionism, the notion 
that a person believes the logical consequences of whatever he believes. 
Without this view there would be practically no epistemology as such, only 
empirical psychology, which consistently refutes the perfectionist thesis. 
With this thesis, epistemology ahs been a millennia-long attempt to dodge 
psychological evidence. "The psychological tests are no good" though it 
turns out to be impossible to find one that is good, since every improvement 
comes back with the same result: consequences of things clearly shown to be 
believed are not learned, agreed to, etc., etc. in ways significantly 
different from the way totally new information is, and people accept -- or 
alreeady hold -- views incompatible with those they already hold with no more 
difficulty than for totally unrelated information. Well, then, "nobody 
really knows anything," in which case, since it is crucial to the argument, 
nobody really believes anyhting either -- but no one holds that. "Well, real 
people are emotional, etc., and this is about the knowledge of a perfectly 
rational human being" that is, it is a constructed theory without any 
practical application -- so why the big fuss -- and why the counterexamples 
from "real life"? This deontic dipsydoodle isn't even impressive in ethics, 
where being impressive doesn't take much, why accept it in epistemology, 
which is supposed to be more scientific? "It is about God's knowledge" 
except that the God they mean doesn't know anything by inference but all by 
direct awareness.
And so on. The one good thing to be said for perfectionism in epistemology is 
that, if it were true, we would have to do away with our present educational 
system, but there are better reasons for that, ones that actually are true. 
So, then, why bring this muck into Lojban, the "culturally neutral" language? 

There is no extensional sense of "know," if perfectionism -- or even a hint 
of it -- is required. The best that can be said about consequences of 
beliefs is, perhaps, that -- if the inference is simple enough, like the no 
king - Bill not king case -- the believer OUGHT TO believe the rest, maybe 
even can be held responsible in certain cases for believing and culpable for 
not believing. But it can't even be held that he will learn or recognize the 
inferrable claim more easily than some other claim. He may, of course, swat 
his head and say "Oh, I knew that" when it is called to his attention. But 
he is just misspeaking at that point -- possibly out of 2500 years of 
atrocious epistemology.