knowledge and belief

[Steven Belknap <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>]

>I perceive a split here between what I might describe as
>logically minded people & what I might describe as more
>pragmatically minded people.
>
>A pragmatically minded person has no problem saying
>something like, "I don't know what her name is, but Genaro
>does; go ask him."
>
>This is outrageous to the logically minded person.  "How
>can you say that Genaro 'knows' her name when you haven't
>even verified that what Genaro claims to 'know' is really
>her name?"
>
>The pragmatically minded person is typically either
>amused, annoyed or both.  "Why waste time asking me how
>I can say what I said?  If you want to learn her name,
>go ask Genaro!"

I find that I fall into neither the logically minded nor the pragmatically
minded as you have described them.

I have no problem with:

"I don't know what her name is, but Genero does; go ask him."

This is a reasonable and common use of "know" in English.

However, I am struggling with the use of <djuno>. I fear that you are
projecting all of the various definitions and semantics of the English word
"know" on to the lojban word <djuno>. This is not a good idea. I have
nowhere criticized how people are using <know> in English utterances. I use
know in much the same way. But <djuno> has only one (very terse)
definition, is a word in a radically different language, and we are
struggling to discover how to use it in a way which is distinct from other
gismu, yet still has utility for description of sedjuno (knowledge). Jorge
suggests that the x4 place is superfluous; I am trying to figure out what
it tells us about the word; lojbab suggests that le nu visku or similar
"epistemologies" will suffice.

-Steven

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