RE: What do the ontologists want

>Pat hayes wrote:
> >>  'Jon says "The sky is blue"'
> >>  'I believe Jon'
> >>=>
> >>  'I believe (the sky is blue)'
>
> >Careful, those are two different senses of 'believe'. You don't
> >believe Jon is TRUE, right? You believe that what he SAYS is true.
> >Write that out and your example looks more, er, logical:
> >
> >Says(Jon,  (the sky is blue))
> >Says(Jon, ?p) implies ?p.
> >=>
> >(the sky is blue)
>
>Shouldn't it be something more like:
>
>Says(Jon, (the sky is blue))
>Says(Jon ?p) implies Believe(I, ?p))
>=>
>Believe(I, (the sky is blue))

Yes, that would more accurately transcribe the example. I tend to 
assume that since "I" means the one who is manipulating the beliefs, 
as it were, that Believe(I, ?p) is pretty much interderivable with 
plain ?p.  After all, if ?p is something I am asserting, then 
presumably I believe that ?p, and then I would have to be pretty 
cynical about myself not to be willing to conclude from this that 
Believe(I, ?p); and contrariwise if I believe that Believe(I,?p), 
(and am not just trying to lie to my God, say), then I ought to be 
willing to conclude ?p. I guess there might a kind of existential 
state of self-doubt that would block this inference, but I do not 
want to make neurotic web software agents just yet.

Pat Hayes

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Received on Thursday, 17 May 2001 19:16:14 UTC