Subject: Re: [lojban] Set of answers encore

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 14:50:00 EDT

In a message dated 9/26/2001 11:25:21 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> What's a taxicab rejoinder?
> One you think of in the taxicab on the way home that would have been 
devastating to your opponent had you thought of it when you were in the 
debate.

<I don't see any solution in {ka'e}>
As I look at it more closely, neither do I, unless we waffle a little on 
"innately."
The point was that, since he has the premises and the deductive apparatus, he 
could come to the conclusion, were he to turn his mind to it, and thus 
*could* know it in a slightly less remote way than someone who did not ahve 
the background yet. I now think the "ought" case is better.

<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.>
And OK set of definitions (I like functions better, but in this case the 
exchange is trivial -- though it is important to notice that "proposition" is 
taking on a slightly different -- and higher order -- meaning that when it is 
applied to {du'u} phrases). But you have the subsets backward: if John's 
beliefs entail that Bill is not the king of France, then those belief worlds 
constitute a subset of the of the proposition worlds, otherwise there would 
be a case where the beliefs held but the proposition did not. It is true on 
this correction that every world compatible with John's beliefs is a world in 
which Bill is not the king of France. It is also true of all these worlds 
that in them 73 is the cube root of 389017 (I trust your math). But I have 
no inclination at all to say that John knows or even believes that, even ifI 
admit that John is mathematically well enough educated to work it out.

<I accept John's typically clear Cicero/Tully example.>
"John knows that Cicero is a great Roman orator." Suppose so.
"Tully is Cicero" Usually regarded as a fact on a vaiety of historical 
grounds but unknown, suppose to John (or at least not something he has 
considered along with his thought about Cicero)
"John knows that Tully is a great Roman orator" No reason so far to think so 
and tests may very well show that he does not even believe it (he thinks 
Tully was the Emperor after Caligula, the one who mumbled and stuttered -- 
Derek Jacoby in the movie).
"Of Tully, John believes that he was a great Roman orator" Iffy, but 
probably true on the evidence above.
"There is a proposition p such that p is true just in case Tully is a great 
Roman orator and John believes that p" Safe as houses.

This is pretty clearly intensional-extensional stuff, not restricted to 
epistemic predicates. The odd thing about epistemic predicates is the 
tendency to think that what does not work generally does work for them. It 
doesn't.

Cowan:
<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?>

Well, he surely saw Echo orbiting the Earth; nothing intensional there (well, 
I suspect someone would try to make a case, but we can handle him pretty 
easily).
But that Kemal saw THAT Echo was orbiting the Earth is pretty unlikely given 
the kind of background that you give for Kemal -- and not terribly likely for 
most other observers I can think of, maybe all. I won't go for the strong 
case, howwever, and just say that, since Kemal did not -- even could not -- 
formulate the claim (or a reasonable version of it in Arabic or whatever) 
and did not contemplate it ever, let alone accede to it on the basis of his 
observations, then he did not see that.... .

The difference is that "see that" means something like "comes to know that on 
the basis of visual experience" (and then on to toher grounds by metaphor) so 
brings in all the intesional garbage of "know".

& again:
<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.>

These are hard cases in a very weird sense, for every time an example comes 
up of something that you believed though you had never considered it, it 
comes up after you have had a chance to consider it. Suppose we did have a 
good indirect test for beliefs so that we could check out your belief abouta 
jack-tax without calling the issue to your mind and that we find that, 
although you do believe that non-harmful activities conducted in private 
ought not be subject to official sanction and that masturbation is a 
non-harmful activity, you have no belief about the jack-tax at all. Would 
you still say that the person's claim that you opposed the jack-tax -- once 
you heard of it -- was correct?  

<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>

This seems fair, assuming that the basic meanings go to the intensional 
cases. I am less than convinced that the extensional cases are more than 
retrospective virtue: I ought to have done this, so when the chips are down, 
I will claim that I did do it, since no one can check. The test mentioned 
above would be such a check and if you persisted in claiming you really did 
believe that back then, we are off into another problem (not excluding the 
possibility that you are lying).  

<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. >
Frinstance? Most of the problems come about from trying to do both at once.  
Sorted out, there aren't many problems left -- truth aside.

<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.>

Probably not epistemologically, just playing on an ambiguity -- and, as I 
say, lying a little to look epistmologically moral.

<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).>

Yeah, the misspeaking is usually done by an epistemologist, who uses these 
cases to make a point about the strong position, when he ought to know better 
(so "misspeaking" is used in a NIxonian sense). The word {know} and the rest 
in ordinary English are ambiguous is a variety of ways, and we can't blame a 
person for using the one that puts him in the best light. I see a three way 
distinction coming here: the flat out intensional sense, the epistemological 
strong sense (believes all the consequences of his beliefs) -- to be proposed 
just to be knocked down, and the fuzzy middle position: beliefs he would have 
had pretty surely if he had turned his mind to thae question involved -- what 
I called what he ought to believe. I would (jumping on to the next note) 
have proposed a compound of "should believe" for that indeed, since the 
"entail" one seems more objective and faultladen than this, which seems 
highly moral/goal oriented. {jivbilga}? I suppose a good Gricean convention 
can be tucked in here somewhaere as the source of the obligation?