Subject: Re: [lojban] Knowledge (was: Random lojban questions/annoyances

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 20:18:39 EST

In a message dated 3/19/2001 4:11:14 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> <> I suspect Jorge + John use the narrator as default x4, since they seem to
> > see djuno as similar in this sense as "know". And I suspect Robin would
> > put it as the belief system of the person being discussed (if there is
> > such a person). A convention on the meaning of djuno fo zo'e would be
> > nice!
> 
> Yes, I agree. I think I'll just use 'mi djuno fo le du'u noda jetnu'
> from now on, as I don't really believe in the concept of objective
> 'fact's.
> 
> zo'o>
> 
Thank God for the {zo'o} or we'd be giant's balls deep in philosophical muck: 
the world where nothing is true is so self-contradictory that even the people 
who don't mind second order contradictions don't deal with it (it is 
contradictory on its face given that here are whatever it is that might be 
true and it is further contradictory in that it can't be a proper 
self-description). And then there is the problem of what "epistemology" (not 
the word I would have chosen, but...) you want them not to be true in: if 
that self-same world (with all its problems) then you have a boring tautology
(also, arguably, a contradiction, but that is another matter); if another 
world then there is (for the third time) no such world as the one described. 

What does {jetnu} have to do with "objective facts?" I suppose your problem 
is rather with {fatci} than either {jetnu} or {djuno}.

As for the assumed epistemology, the default to the speaker's is required on 
(dare I say it) strict Gricean grounds: the cooperative interlocutor is 
trying to tell the exact truth (insofar as blahdy blah blah) and so the 
standard he uses is the one he believes to be correct, namely his own. To 
use another would be uncooperative, to believe one's own to be incorrect 
(except in the very theoretical sense) would be another round of paradoxes. 
What the speaker actually believes is closer to the standard being objective 
or what everybody (who is with it) believes, but, in fact, comes down to 
merely his own belief, which he believes is objective and what everybody 
believes. 
I would think this was the perfect view for someone who does not believe in 
objective facts (whatever that means - no world or no adequate langauge?).

So x1 says "I know that x2." y1 reports this, but s/he knows that x2 is not 
true. How does s/he put the report. The safe way is to say "x1 claims to 
know that x2," maybe adding "but s/he's wrong" or so. Or s/he might go into 
indirect description, saying only "x1 believes that x2." In this case, y1 
can't say "knows" because he assumes that x1's epistemology is the same as 
his own and on that epistemology, x2 is false. He might try "knows on x1's 
epistemology," but he won't for to do so is to admit that the epistemolgy he 
uses is not what everyone holds to and thus may be wrong -- which he cannot 
admit with the conversational context again. Unless, of courses, x1 actually 
included it in his claim, which makes the whole close to a tautology (though 
not quite -- it is liable to become one if challenged, however).