Subject: Re: [lojban] Set of answers encore

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 19:44:23 EDT

In a message dated 9/26/2001 3:49:43 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> 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."

I think this misses the point a little:"had a clue" is way short of what 
epistemologists seem to want (indeed, they tend to go unconditional on this): 
"follows from what he believes" really does seem to be it. And I don't think 
there are any cases. A more interesting contrast is between the ones we are 
willing to concede he knew all along once we get him to say (or do) the 
appropriate thing and the ones that we insist he just figured out, even 
though the premises were there all along. But basically I fall in with your 
next line:

<> 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.>
The answer seems to lie in Dennett's notion of a belief, that is, a 
behavioral category, more or less, plus some anthropomorphism: Jim behaves 
the way I would if I believed that and was Jim's size and savor -- and other 
faculties.

> 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.
> 
Actually, when Dan is consistent (and coherent) he would admit that most 
believes may well be false but they fit together to give a good functional 
grasp of the world -- different falsehoods cancelling one another out, as it 
were. He can be a fairly intelligible Pragmatist when pressed and not on 
display (so, of course, what he means by true is something else again too -- 
I am translating). this belief-opinion distinction is a nice one and worhty 
of Lojbanization, but I don't know just how to do it efficiently.

<> Suppose we 
> did have a good indirect test for beliefs so that we could check out 
> your belief about a jack-tax without calling the issue to your mind [...]

Shades of Smullyan's experimental epistemologist, whose machine
gives him access to the physiological correlates of people's brain
states.  With the machine, he knows whether or not something seems
red to you -- but he gets into trouble when he applies the machine
to his own mind, and learns that he may be going crazy.>

Ray likes to push stock characters to the extreme. I assume one aspect of his 
going crazy is that he thinks he can tell when something seems red to you or 
rather when someone may be going crazy.