Re: Knowledge and Belief

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

>>Lojban has to be as usable by mystics as by rationalists in order to be
>>culturally neutral.  The gismu, even more than other Lojban content
>>words, need to be sufficiently vague that they allow use by people with
>>alternate cultural mindsets to that of the typical Western-culture
>>scientific skeptic that has dominated the develeopment of the language.
>
>Well, I can understand that. It leaves djuno with the colloqual sense of
>know: "to regard as true". But that again makes it less clear to me how
>that seems different from krici.

djuno is more like ""to regard as true because ...", whereas krici is a
kind of because: "because I choose to have faith that it is true, without
requiring evidence or any other reason".  (Of course some people might
not consider that belief/faith is a "choice" - indeed it could be an
irrational or instinctive belief, so the word "choose" in there is somewhat
misleading).

Furthermore, rationality might lead to one conclusion that we are unwilling
to accept.  I can thus know something by one epistemology, while still
believing it to be false because it seems simply unacceptable to my mind.
Einstein's famous "God doesn't play dice" was an expression of belief or
rather of disbelief (belief in negation) of something he found true by some
other epistemology.

lojbab