So 'I knew' means the picture I had of X matched the way X really was. Substitute those meanings into our tricky sentences and they are safely conserved between tenses. — Isaac
No they aren’t? If you’re wrong about something.
So for instance “I know England is gonna win tomorrow”. England loses. Now I say, “I thought I knew England was gonna win tomorrow, but I didn’t”. Now the first sentence is not conserved. — khaled
It seems we’re not entirely consistent in our usage. Sometimes we seem to be using a correspondence definition. Sometimes we seem to be using a degree of confidence definition. — khaled
Saying that someone knows something absolutely and/or objectively has no meaning, since if someone knows something he just knows it. Even if he thinks he knows it but in fact he doesn't, i.e. he is mistaken, he is still certain that he knows it.Do you know absolutely and objectively what language this post uses — Banno
The fact that the language used in this post and even the English language itself are not absolute and/or objective things. They don't exist somewhere "out there", outside our minds. There's no sign or indication whatsoever in the universe about the above fact or the language itself. English, like the other about 7,000 languages (as it is believed) that are spoken in the world are created by Man. And if you know and I know that we are communicating in English, it is because we agree that the language we are communicating in is English. But even if English were created by the universe, we, as humans, must first give it a name, "English", then still recognize it as such and also agree that it is that exact language. That would be not much different than a rock that has been created by nature!Do you know what language this post uses? Of course you do, It's English. — Banno
I agree! :smile:So a simple solution is to leave out "absolute, objective". — Banno
Reality is bound by what we can say. — Banno
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