From jcowan@reutershealth.com Wed Sep 26 13:42:36 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: jcowan@reutershealth.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_2_2); 26 Sep 2001 20:42:35 -0000 Received: (qmail 54877 invoked from network); 26 Sep 2001 20:42:35 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l8.egroups.com with QMQP; 26 Sep 2001 20:42:35 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail.reutershealth.com) (204.243.9.36) by mta1 with SMTP; 26 Sep 2001 20:42:34 -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 QAA06766; Wed, 26 Sep 2001 16:44:01 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <3BB23DA7.1010008@reutershealth.com> Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 16:42:15 -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: > 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. -- 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