Subject: Re: [lojban] Set of answers encore

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 16:42:15 -0400

And Rosta wrote:

> My preferred solution would be to make the distinction on the x2, not
> on the selbri, but thinking about it, it does seem that we really are
> dealing with a selbri distinction.

Your examples are thought-provoking, but unfortunately for you
tend to push me in the other way: "believe" is just inherently a
fuzzy notion, I now think, and there's simply no way to draw
the line between "X believes p" and "X would believe p if he
had a clue" and "X will come to believe p if jogged a bit."

In short, "{p | John believes p} is a prototypical category.
Prototype beliefs include "Aristarchus believed the
sun was at the center of the universe" and "I believe I have
money in my pocket", but what to do with "Jim (a mouse)
believes that Tom (a cat) will catch him and eat him" is a puzzlement.

Dennett makes some distinction between beliefs and opinions,
which is not krici/jinvi, but if I understand it is about what
we act on vs. what we are willing to assent to: Jim has
beliefs but not opinions (Mickey has both); I have both;
there are many more beliefs than opinions; almost all
beliefs are true, on pain of nonsurvival; opinions can be true
or false without very grave consequences much of the time.

-- 
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