From jcowan@reutershealth.com Wed Sep 26 09:58:41 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: jcowan@reutershealth.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_2_2); 26 Sep 2001 16:58:41 -0000 Received: (qmail 77617 invoked from network); 26 Sep 2001 16:58:40 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 26 Sep 2001 16:58:40 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail.reutershealth.com) (204.243.9.36) by mta3 with SMTP; 26 Sep 2001 16:58:40 -0000 Received: from reutershealth.com (IDENT:cowan@[192.168.3.11]) by mail.reutershealth.com (Pro-8.9.3/Pro-8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA03293; Wed, 26 Sep 2001 13:00:09 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <3BB20930.5050609@reutershealth.com> Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 12:58:24 -0400 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.4) Gecko/20010913 X-Accept-Language: en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 To: And Rosta Cc: lojban Subject: Re: [lojban] Set of answers encore References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: John Cowan And Rosta wrote: > 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". This example makes me wonder how much of the issue is epistemology, and how much is the conventions of indirect discourse. Suppose it is 1959, and Kemal is looking at the night sky. He sees a bright object, he knows not what, rise in the west, transit the entire sky in some 20-30 minutes, and set in the east. Would either of you object to the sentence "Kemal saw that Echo was orbiting the Earth", on the grounds that Kemal did not have the thought "Echo is orbiting the Earth", since Kemal knows nothing of Echo and perhaps nothing of orbiting? How about the simpler sentence "Kemal saw Echo"? Surely this one is not controversial: one may see something without knowing its name. If there is a difference, what is the difference? -- Not to perambulate || John Cowan the corridors || http://www.reutershealth.com during the hours of repose || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan in the boots of ascension. \\ Sign in Austrian ski-resort hotel