Subject: Re: [lojban] Random lojban questions/annoyances.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 17:48:23 EST

In a message dated 3/20/2001 3:42:33 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> <Am I the _only_ person here who doesn't believe in this whole 'objective
> reality' thing? Or, at least, that no human being can percieve
> 'objective reality', even if it does exist?>
> 
Well, no, since I am on this list too. But the problem probably is to figure 
out what each of us means by "objective reality" -- and "perceive," for that 
matter. I expect xod would join in, but with yet another set of definitions.  
Our perceptions are influenced by a range of factors that are not now 
external to us, but also seem, at least, to be influenced by things that are 
external to us. What those things are in themselves we cannot, in a sense, 
know, though in another sense they have to be pretty generally what they seem 
to be. If we stress the latter point then objective reality is just the 
agreed upon reality of the community. If we stress the former, then 
objective reality is unknowable and thus, may not exist (the apparently 
external factors in perception being part of our vast unconscious). The 
first position turns out to make life a lot easier.

In a message dated 20 Mar 2001 14:33:24 EST [email-masked] writes:

<assertion that "a belief without any evidence never occurs", I won't.>
>
> Again, it is not clear which point you mean, especially since none of them
> seem to support your assertion.  One point was that some beliefs have causes
> but no evidence, another was that among those causes are other beliefs
> (typically about how to identify certain experiences), which are also not
> evidence.
Well, you cut the text away again! I can't refresh my memory! Please, take
it easier with the snipping and cutting!>

Actually, by comparison with what I sent, you cut off two lines of mine, 
which probably contained what you wanted. Keep copies and don't clutter the 
box with repetitions (I just got a message with 39 lines of quote and one 
added comment, less than a line -- and it was not terribly relevant to the 
quote even. Bad form! I now violate my own strictures in the interest of 
full disclosure)

<I believe you were telling me how beliefs are based on evidence, and
evidence is always informational. And even if a belief is triggered by
sense data, it gets combined with some information before it generates a
belief. Well, this supports my assertion that "a belief without any
evidence never occurs". If you're willing to accept subliminal, unspoken,
and trivial "facts" as evidence for beliefs, then I'm home free. For
instance, the proposition that "If I see an insect fly through the air,
it's really there".

Furthermore, the English in the definition of krici is not clear if it
uses technical meaning of "evidence", not the common one. Commonly, sense data
is taken as "evidence" for a belief. For instance - belief in UFOs because
I saw 2 of them, or belief that a fly landed on my arm because I felt and
saw it land there.

In conclusion:

Using the common English definition of "evidence" (sense data or
information), there is never any belief without evidence.

Using the technical epistemological definition of "evidence"
(propositions), which includes subliminal "obvious facts", there is never
any belief without evidence.

The gismu "krici" is meaningless and should be ignored.>

Well, for starters, neither seeing a UFO nor seeing a fly or feeling it land 
on my arm are strictly sense data. Having a yellow patch in my visual field 
is -- if it ever happens, which I doubt. And even it is not adequate to 
justify (as evidence must) the claim that I have a yellow patch in my visual 
field, since that the patch is yellow is not a given in the experience. The 
belief that it is yellow then arises spontaneously: if you want to justify 
it, you cannot without getting into a very short circle.Trying to push back 
from this to something more basic always leads to worse problems yet, but we 
know that there must be a more basic else there would be an infinite regress 
of justifications and thus no belief would be in fact justified. So whether 
we use the technical or the non-technical sense, there must be beliefs that 
are not justified.

But, of course, the high-seas ship-repair metaphor offers a way out. Every 
belief has a justification somewhere, but not every belief has a 
justification that we are alowed to examine at this time.

None of this has much of anything to do with {krici}, which explicitly is 
about the state of believing and explicitly NOT about whether the content of 
that state is justified or not, even whether it is true or not. That it 
might have something to do with these other factors arise from 1) the fact 
that when we disagree with what someone claims to know, we fall back on 
"believes" as a way to describe their state, since a large part of what 
"know" adds to belief -- truth and justification, at least -- have been 
stripped away, but not, presumably, the underlying cognitive state. And 2) 
the fact that {krici} has the same grammar as {sruma} which is a very 
different sort of critter -- though still not one that involves evidence or 
truth, at least not in the same way.
{krici} is needed for psychological description and nothing else in the 
language will do its work. But it may not do all the work that English 
"believe" might be made to do.