Re: <djuno> and <viska>

[Mark Vines <vinesm@wholefoods.com>]

la stivn. cusku di'e

> Lets suppose that Mark saw the catcher catch the ball. The
> next day, he sees the instant replay on television, and on
> the slo mo the catcher is clearly seen to drop the ball
> then pick it up.

la markl. spuda la stivn. di'e

Did the catcher catch the ball or drop it?  Either way, the
catcher knows that the ball was thrown.  If the catcher was
facing the mound, as is the norm in baseball, then the
catcher knows that the pitcher threw the ball.

Sure, you can dispute that statement with endless imaginary
counterexamples.  Maybe it was a Pod Person look-alike
instead of the "real" pitcher.  Maybe the catcher is the
great god Shiva dreaming of baseball, & the world will be
destroyed when he wakes.  But it's unreasonable to give
greater weight to these wild improbabilities than we would
give to the norms implied by the schema of the baseball
diamond.

> Mark might then say, "I saw him catch the ball yesterday,
> but now I see that I was wrong."
>
> I have no problem with that statement.

I might equally say, "I said the catcher knew that the
pitcher threw the ball, but now I realize that I was
wrong."  If such a disclaimer was warranted, would you have
any problem with that?

> But if he said, "I knew that he caught the ball yesterday,
> but now I see that I was wrong."
>
> I do have a problem with that. He couldn't have both known
> it and not known it.

As you yourself warned, if we stray too far from the original
example, we'll get into deep mud.  I wasn't discussing *my*
knowledge.  I was discussing the catcher's knowledge:

{le kavbu cu djuno lo du'u le renro [ku] ba'o renro le bolci}

So the correct parallel, as I just indicated, would be for
me to say, "I said the catcher knew that the pitcher threw the
ball, but now I realize that I was wrong."

Again, do you have a problem with that?

> I suppose that with use lojban might adopt a convention
> that "seeing is believing" and that would become the
> epistemology used for reporting ones own perception. This
> would be unfortunate, in my view, and should be
> discouraged.

I suppose that Lojban might adopt a convention that "we
must never use {djuno} as the selbri if the bridi is just
overwhelmingly likely instead of absolutely true" ... &
that would become the epistemology that persuaded many
beginners to discontinue their use of the language.

Come on, Steven!  Are we not allowed to be wrong in Lojban?
I thought it was supposed to be logical - not infallible!