John, (01)
In your KR book, you discuss transformations of the following natural
language statement: (02)
Joe said, "I don't believe in astrology, but they say that it works even
if you don't believe in it." (03)
You arrive at (04)
Joe believes [p AND ~p] (05)
at which step you announce a contradiction in the context of Joe's
beliefs. (The previous step was (06)
Joe believes
[Joe doesn't believe [astrology works]
and Joe believes [astrology works]] (07)
It may be my imperfect command of English, but it seems to me that the
original sentence does not assert that Joe believes that astrology works
(or that he believes he does). He is explicit in that he does not, and
he also says that it is said that non-belief does not prevent astrology
from working; but this does not imply that Joe believes that tihs
saying is correct, and thus that he nevertheless, contradictorily to
what he says, believes that astrology works. (08)
I think the problem comes from the induction from 'they say' interpreted
as 'it is commonly accepted in the community' to 'they say' interpreted
as 'every person agrees'. (09)
Would you agree? (010)
vQ (011)
--
Wacek Kusnierczyk (012)
------------------------------------------------------
Department of Information and Computer Science (IDI)
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Sem Saelandsv. 7-9
7027 Trondheim
Norway (013)
tel. 0047 73591875
fax 0047 73594466
------------------------------------------------------ (014)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Subscribe/Config: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (015)
|