From cowan@ccil.org Sun Mar 18 17:45:56 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: cowan@mercury.ccil.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_4); 19 Mar 2001 01:45:56 -0000 Received: (qmail 60323 invoked from network); 19 Mar 2001 01:45:55 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 19 Mar 2001 01:45:55 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mercury.ccil.org) (192.190.237.100) by mta1 with SMTP; 19 Mar 2001 01:45:54 -0000 Received: from cowan by mercury.ccil.org with local (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 14eokS-0001z7-00; Sun, 18 Mar 2001 20:46:16 -0500 Subject: Re: [lojban] Random lojban questions/annoyances. In-Reply-To: <20010318153923.B3953@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> from Robin Lee Powell at "Mar 18, 2001 03:39:24 pm" To: Robin Lee Powell Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 20:46:16 -0500 (EST) Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL66 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: X-eGroups-From: John Cowan From: John Cowan Robin Lee Powell scripsit: > No, it entails that as far as we know, the Earth is not flat. Knowledge > is changing all the time. True. But when it changes, we deny that what we used to believe was, in fact, knowledge. > > Would you say "Aristotle knew that the Earth was the center of the > > universe"? > > Absolutely. He did know exactly that. We now 'know' that he is wrong, > but maybe _we're_ wrong, hard as that may be to believe, or maybe the > universe has changed. Maybe we are. And if we find that Aristotle was right (= knew it), then we will say that in the 20th century we did not know. > I consider belief and knowledge to be equivalent, because 'the truth' is > too elusive and always changing for us to ever be _SURE_ something is > true. Surety is not required, only truth. Do we really want a situation in which A knows that G is a koala, whereas B knows that G is a chimpanzee? > I can _know_, with absolute certainty, that the sky is purple. I sure > most people would say that my knowlede is wrong. But if you point a > colorimiter at the sky, it will in fact come up purple rather than blue. 1) Colors are explicitly subjective in Lojban. 2) Colorimeters don't work reliably on scattered light; they are meant to deal with reflected light only. Try pointing one at a rainbow sometimes. -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore --Douglas Hofstadter