Subject: Re: [lojban] re: djuno [was: random lojban annoyance

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 16:40:00 EST

In a message dated 3/19/2001 2:47:44 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> Can you give me any example some somebody believing anything without
> evidence? Even the Son of Sam serial killer had evidence; his neighbor's
> doberman told him to commit those murders.
> 

It's hard to give a case, because as soon as I suggest one, you will come up 
with a plausible story about the evidence I must have had. The proof that 
there must be some such beliefs is a proof of just that "there are....", with 
not indications of what these beliefs might be (the usual candidates are 
things like "I am experiencing a yellow patch in my visual field," but these 
have along history of not working as needed. They are meant to be simple 
reports of experience, where no experience lies behind or explains or... the 
one reported.)
The alternate view (why I said, "if taken literally"), is that, in any 
discussion of an epistemological sort, some beliefs are to be taken as 
established for the present discussion (justification for them is not to be 
asked for) and these can then be used to justify the items at issue. (These 
established items may become the questioned ones in anotehr discussion, 
however). This is known as "repairing the ship of beliefs while sailing on 
the experiential sea" -- and several things much worse.