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On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Jorge Llambias wrote:
>
> la djan cusku di'e
>
> >And Rosta scripsit:
> >
> > > Is absolutely EVERY jboskeist now having a long dark night of the
> > > lojbo soul?
> >
> >By no means. I am nowhere near despair. But we all (being reasonable
> >persons and not fanatics) are trapped by Quine's Paradox: namely, to
> >believe p is to believe that p is true, so I believe that each of my
> >beliefs is true.
>
> ro da poi do krici ke'a zo'u do krici le du'u da jetnu
>
> >Yet I also believe that some of my beliefs (I know
> >not which) will turn out to be false if and when tested.
>
> do krici le du'u su'o da poi do krici ke'a zo'u da jitfa
>
> No contradiction.
>
> >So:
> >
> > I believe that each of my beliefs is true;
> > I believe that some of my beliefs are false.
>
> The first one is false, if by that you mean: {mi krici le du'u
> ro da poi mi krici ke'a zo'u da jetnu}. That doesn't follow from
> "to believe p is to believe that p is true".
>
> >Saith Quine: "I for one had hoped for better from reasonable persons."
>
> Does he really pose this as an unresolved paradox?
I say it's a bogus contradiction, because under the scrutiny of precise
language, any rational person would understand that the uncertainty of the
truth of the set of their beliefs would have to be distributed among the
individual beliefs, because the certainty of beliefs is a conserved
quantity which isn't affected by the number of beliefs held.
Furthermore, most people *suspect* there is a possibility that their
beliefs *could be proven in the future* to be false, but at the current
moment, the evidence has not yet been produced.
--
// if (!terrorist)
// ignore ();
// else
collect_data ();