Re: Summary so far on DJUNO

[And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>]

in haste:

mark:
> >Date:         Tue, 20 Jan 1998 14:20:22 GMT+0
> >From: And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>
> >Organization: University of Central Lancashire
> >
> >I've had to skim some bits, and have resisted the powerful
> >temptation to reply to lots of contributions to the debate.
> >But here is an offered summary in the hope of moving things on.
> >
> >1. Jorge is completely correct about the meaning of "know", but
> >   not everyone has managed to realize it.
>
> I'm pretty much with you on that, though here's an interesting
> counterexample I heard on TV just the other day and made a note of:
>
> Some scientist was saying, on a science program, "Consider the 1920's.
> Scientists knew -- they KNEW -- that universe was just the milky way
> galaxy."
>
> This is a use of perhaps another meaning of "know" in English, a slightly
> different one, more in line with Steve Belknap: to be completely
> convinced.  Used for effect here, since it's being falsified.
>
> Or that line in Men In Black (drastically misquoted): A few centuries ago,
> everyone knew the world was flat.  Fifteen minutes ago, you knew there were
> no aliens on Earth.  Who knows what you'll know tomorrow?

It is a kind of empathetic shift-of-subjectivity (=me-hood).

Like say, "Yesterday you were living with your wife, and today
you discover you were living with your sister" (i.e. unwittingly
incestuous & invalid matrimony). It means "you *thought* you were
living with your wife, but in fact you were living with yr
sister".

Technically a counterexample, but in fact something normal and
explicable. I forget what the technical term for it is.

--&