<djuno>

[Steven Belknap <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>]

Ashley:
>>It seems to me that one must either fuzzify <djuno> with
>><jei>, specify the epistemology or method by which certain knowledge is
>>claimed, or use a bridi which reports "Just the facts, M'am," such as:
>...
>Oh, so "djuno" implies '_certain_ knowledge' now?

Lets just stick to the example, or we will get off into the deep mud.
"djuno" refers to "known facts". Of the 20,000+ attending a Cubs game, some
will see the play differently than others. But the only views that matter
(according to the rules of the game) is that of the umpires, particularly
the home plate umpire. A perfectly valid use of <djuno> would be:

<le pajni ku co'i djuno du'u le renro mo'u renro le bolci ku le kabvu kei>

because the umpire's knowledge is *defined* as being peremptory (and the
rules of baseball are the implicit epistemology). There are other formal
systems which would also be appropriate for application of <djuno>. These
are such things as mathematics, law, religion, codified social protocols
and many others. The usage I am proposing for <djuno> is really not very
restrictive at all, and usefully distinguishes between formal systems
knowledge and other types of ideas. In the stadium where Mark sits, there
may be considerable disagreement about whether or not the pitch was a
strike or a ball or was caught. There is no formal mechanism for deciding
the matter among these observers, (although fisticuffs seems to be popular
as an informal mechanism), so it is hard for me to see how djuno would be
used. Of course, one could *define* a craft or method for <djuno>, and
there is a sumti for that built in to <djuno>. The X3 place is to be filled
by a meme which defines a decision function.

>Bear in mind that the
>range of things one might have non-fuzzily justifiably certain knowledge
>of is extremely limited, and wouldn't include your 'possibly true' example
>
>     "Steven knows that Jorge asserts that Lojbab goes to the store."

There is great irony in your statement, although I don't know if you were
reading the list during the Great Fuzzy Debates of last year. I certainly
agree strongly with you that fuzzy statements deserve a very prominent
place in lojban, as predicate logic differs substantially from natlang
meaning, and fuzziness is a better reflection of the meaning of most
natlang utterances. I argued vociferously for inclusion of syntax which
facilitated fuzzy statements in the grammer of lojban. Much of it was
there, (although perhaps unrecognized), the rest can probably be handled by
<jei>, which is in the grammer. (Hooray!) I suggest that the terrible flaw
in Samuel Delaney's Babel-17 was that there was no fuzzifier, and that the
big improvement in Babel-18 was that they added <jei>. :-)
>
>since Steven can never rule out having misheard, etc. Your definition of
>"djuno" doesn't seem particularly useful, and I would suggest that one
>matching a more usual English definition of 'know' (as indeed the
>gismu-list suggests) might be better.

I am trying very hard to match the definition as given in the very short
dictionary entry. However, it is clear that only the tip of the iceberg is
covered by the entry for <djuno>:

djuno [ jun ju'o ] know
x1 knows fact(s) x2 (du'u) about subject x3 by epistemology x4
[words usable for epistemology typically have a du'u place; know how to -
implying knowledge of method but not necessarily having the ability to
practice (= tadjyju'o)] (cf. know/familiar with: se slabu, na'e cnino, na'e
fange; cmavo list du'o, cilre, certu, facki, jijnu, jimpe, senpi, smadi,
kakne, birti, mipri, morji, saske, viska)

>
>In any case, I think there are very few fields of discourse in which one
>can assume that every assertion will be perfectly true or false
>(mathematical proof is one, no others come to mind).

Everything from Baseball to Monopoly to Algebraic topology, from Islam to
Confucianism has a codicile which defines the body of a particular
epistemology. Even codified science would qualify, I suppose, although in
my view codified science is pseudoscience. That seems like a rather large
subset of the universe of discourse to me! Wouldn't cricket qualify as well?

>Everywhere else, one
>has to allow for fuzziness, so it's nothing special for assertions
>involving "djuno" to be fuzzy any more than those involving "crino".

Agreed. That was why I briefly mentioned the fuzzy issue before dissecting
the other issues related to <djuno>. Perhaps the standard context in
lojbanistan will be fuzzy, and the statements made in lojban will be
shorthand for fuzzified statements. I don't know that this is desirable,
and I would prefer to explicitly fuzzify until it is clear to me that your
assertion is true.

co'omi'e la stivn

Steven Belknap, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria