Subject: Re: [lojban] "knowledge as to who saw who" readings

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 15:47:18 EDT

In a message dated 10/6/2001 10:15:30 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> >And SA3b is pretty likely false, since it is unlikely that he knows -- even
> >believes, even conceives -- all the true answers.
> 
> In And's version, he knows the full extension, and knows that
> it is the full extension, so that would involve knowing all
> the true answers. The question occured in a context, and in that
> context the true answers were not inconceivably unknowable.
> 
And's case is largely unrealistic and cooked up to make his theory look good 
and ours less so. He may know the extension of the property, but he far less 
likely to know that he knows than to know -- the evidence that there are no 
further cases is much harder to get than the evidence for the cases (Nero 
Wolfe is always saying, with some considerable justification, that you can't 
prove a negative -- except by proving something incompatible with the 
corresponding positive, which is hard to come by for this case). In any case, 
knowing all the answers isn't the solution, since most of the answers are 
false -- not that you use this solution. But trying to sort them out with 
{le} won't work either, for all the usual reasons. If this is a real 
situation, I would just add that he knows that what he knows is enough -- 
though I would be sceptical of the claim.