Subject: Re: [lojban] Set of answers encore

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 18:02:53 +0100

>>> <[email-masked]> 09/26/01 05:01pm >>>
[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.  

I both agree and disagree. Certainly the fact that a single person can
believe logically incompatible things is enough to show that we cannot
hold people to believe the logical consequences of their 'conscious'
or incontrovertibly-believed beliefs.

However, if you had said to me yesterday "And believes that people 
should not be fined for masturbating in bed", I would say that your claim,
when made, was perfectly true, even though that proposition had never
entered my mind until 5 minutes ago when I started writing this reply.
So I cannot accept the extreme "If John has never thought it, then
John does NOT believe it", either.

Here's how I see the resolution of this bone of contention:

Lojban needs an unambiguous way of distinguishing between

'intensional believe': x1 has the thought that x2 is the case

and

'extensional believe': The states of affairs that x1 believes obtain include x2

Now, it is a matter of psychological and epistemological debate as to
what exactly counts as intensional believing and extensional believing
-- both give rise to immense difficulties. However, that is not a problem that
Lojban should solve. Rather, Lojban just needs the appropriate linguistic
mechanisms for making the distinction.

#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 epistemologyis 
#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? 
 
Given that I have little interest, and less expertise, in epistemology, while you
are in the midst of its mellay of disputation, let me just reply by contending
that we don't need to have this debate. The evidence of everyday English
shows that we frequently want to say things that presume an epistemology
incompatible with the strong form of your position. We may be epistemologically
criminal by wanting to say such things, but want to say them we nonetheless
do.

#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.

Misspeaking? Well, maybe he shouldn't have said "mi djuno" and should
instead have used some other predicate -- that's something we're
discussing. But this 'misspeaking' is not the same thing as making a
straightforwardly false claim. We really do use 'know' in its extensional
sense, sometimes. Sometimes in a clearly nonintensional sense, as in
"You know that 123544655676887685862 is not prime", and sometimes
in an indetermine sense, as in "John knew Bill was at home", where
the speaker doesn't know that John had the actual thought "Bill is
at home", but does know that Bill's being at home was at least a
very obvious inference from John's actual thoughts, so obvious that
John would make it if he needed to (i.e. if his mind's attention were
directed to it).

Again, let me emphasize, I don't want to argue about the nature of
knowledge or blahdyblah (no insult to your blahdyblah intended!).
I just want to know how to express in Lojban this everyday semantic 
distinction.

--And.