Subject: Re: [lojban] Set of answers encore

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 17:29:03 +0100

>>> <[email-masked]> 09/25/01 10:47pm >>>
[email-masked] writes:
#> First off I want to know how to render the two readings of "John knows/believes 
#> that Bill is not king of France" -- the intensional reading (which is the 
#> current Lojban one) and the extensional reading, where John's beliefs are such 
#> that were they true, Bill would not be king of France.
#
#Oh ho! (what is Lojban for "taxicab rejoinder," ?"l'esprit de l'escalier"?or 
#some such).

What's a taxicab rejoinder?

#I now see the point. John has never considered the question whether Billis 
#the king of France let alone formulated the belief that he is not. So, on 
#the intensional view -- what I take the lojban {la djan jinvi le du'u ...}to 
#mean, it is false that John believes/opines this 

right

#(though this might make an 
#interesting case to rpovide some separation between these two other than just 
#the evidentiary one). On the other hand, John may well have beliefs that 
#entail that Bill is not the king of France and the entailment may be one that 
#John could work out easily -- even unconsciously -- were he to direct his 
#attention to the matter. So there is a sense in which John does already 
#believe that Bill is not the king of France (he believes, for example, that 
#France does not have a king).  

right

#I don't see exactly how this is an intensional-extensional problem; it seems 
#to be more a problem about how to say the latter case -- something like 
#{ka'e} or some stronger for: "doesn't but should to be consistent and 
#complete." I don't think there is directly a sense of "believe" or "opine" 
#or {krici/jinvi} that directly allows the claim that he does belive this to 
#be true. But, again, this is not intensional-extension, since there is no 
#claim to the effect that Bill is not the king of France such that John 
#believes it either.

I don't see any solution in {ka'e}

I may be abusing terminology to describe it as extensional/intensional,
but if we define a person's beliefs as the set of worlds that the beliefs 
could be true of, and a proposition as a set of possible worlds that the
proposition is true of, then the set of worlds in which Bill is not king
of France is a proper subset of the set of worlds compatible with
John's beliefs, and hence it can be said that in this sense, it is
among John's beliefs that Bill is not king of France.

I accept John's typically clear Cicero/Tully example.

Another example: 

John believes that Bill's age is the cube root of 389017.

... when John has the thought "It is the case that Bill is 73".

--And.