This paradox shows that intervals dx are not the same as x. All dx tògether have length 2, because you lay them together mutually orthogonal. Points can't be laid aside mutually orthogonal. The continuum can't be constructed from points x. But it can from dx's. — Raymond

Only finite intervals exist in the standard euclidean space, but this doesn't matter because infinitesimals aren't even quantities, meaning that limits and their approximations never meet in the plane, which resolves the paradox.

Whatever. As I mentioned in another thread, a simple isomorphism between physical reality and mathematical structures provides a way of saying they are the "same" without being identical. But if this is truly what Tegmark had in mind he overdid his arguments - as do some posters on this forum. :cool: — jgill

But if meaning is use - which is essentially a structuralist standpoint - then it isn't clear to me that maths and physics aren't identical, at least partially, in a tautological sense. From the perspective of use, the meaning of Newtons Laws of motion, for instance, includes the mathematical activities which are used in their application. Conversely, the meaning of "2 + 2 = 4" can be understood to include the physical experiments that verify it.

What i was mostly objecting to earlier was Tegmark's aperpsectival take on the conceptual overlap that is a consequence of his scientific and metaphysical realism.

Differentials are funny things. They are not points, but infinitely small pieces of a continuum. The small stairs has the same length as the big one. The smooth diagonal has a different structure as the infinitely small stair. You could put the differentials in a variety of ways together around the diagonal. Mutually orthogonal, like a stairs, or in a general zig-zag pattern, which will lead to a total length bigger than sqrt2. Maybe even an infinite length. Can one project all parallel differentials placed together to form an infinite line, squeeze together on the diagonal? If you rotate all dx on the infinite line 90 degrees, can the be layed side by side on the diagonal? — Raymond

Differentials, i.e. infinitesimals cannot denote regions of Euclidean space, due to the fact the reals are an Archimedean field, which prohibits the definition of infinitely small intervals. Yet infinitesimals are indispensable to analysis, due to the mathematical importance of potential infinity, of which they are the reciprocal concept.

According to Cauchy

"When the successive numerical values of a variable decrease indefinitely so as to be smaller than any number, this variable becomes what is called infinitesimal , or infinitely small quantity... One says that a variable quantity becomes infinitely small when it's value decreases numerically so as to converge to the limit zero"

In other words, an infinitesimal should not be understood as being a quantity, but understood as referring to a variable that refers to a non-infinitesimal value chosen at random from a monotonically decreasing process whose limit is zero. In practice, the use of an "infinitesimal" is analogous to running an algorithm that generates it's respective process, then stopping the algorithm after a finite random amount of time and using the last value obtained as the value of the infinitesimal variable (which is necessarily a non-infinitesimal quantity)

More generally, the (ε, δ)-definition of a limit of a function f(x) at some point b has a similar interpretation, namely as a process denoting a winning strategy in a sequential game played between two players. Player one first fixes a value for L, then in every round of the game player two chooses a positive value for ε and player one then chooses a value for δ in response. If δ is such that |f(x) - L| < ε whenever |x - b| < δ , then player one wins the round. If player one has a strategy for winning every round, then the limit is L. But all meaningfully defined games must eventually terminate, which in this case is when player two decides to quit, making the eventual value of |f(δ) - L| a random positive quantity determined by player one's last move.

So on reflection, the philosophical paradox raised by the OP is resolved purely through careful inspection of the limit concept; for to say that a sequence of finite staircases comes "arbitrarily close" to a diagonal line, is only to assert that a staircase randomly drawn from the respective process comes boundedly close to the diagonal line, where the looseness of the bound is a monotonically decreasing function of the staircase's position in the sequence.

It's all too easy to accidentally commit the fallacy of absolute infinity.

This is the stupidest discussion I have ever seen on the forum... Well, that's not true. Pretty stupid though. Here's my favorite:

In my opinion, the philosophical paradox is only solvable having gained an intuitionistic understanding of the continuum and of point-free topology, due to the fact that intuitionism is better fitted to the phenomenology of mathematical judgement. — T Clark

hehe You're welcome. But stupid or not, the paradox is due to intuitions that aren't compatible with the definition of the classical Euclidean topology. Rather than insist that our intuitions are wrong and that the mathematics is right, we can instead insist that our intuitions are right by switching to an arguably more realistic axiomatization of geometry in which the paradox is dissolved or doesn't arise in the first place, such as computational geometry or intuitionism.



Can you honestly intuit an extensionally infinite staircase that is arbitrarily close to a diagonal line yet remains different in length? The concept of differentiation is similarly philosophically problematic, due to the ghost of departed quantities.

Tegmark's views are in part the logical corollary of swallowing the subjective-objective distinction, according to which perspective isn't real and only "inter-subjective" laws for translating Lockean primary qualities are real.

His views are also funny, not only for abusing Occam's razor in such a crackpot fashion, but that a parameter-less "model" of physics is a contradiction in terms; for it is the parameters of a model that correspond to the model's falsifiable propositions, that are revised via fitting the model to data. An infinitely adaptable model that has no parameters makes no predictions and is functionally similar to the largest possible fishing net.

The general thrux of Tegmark's remarks can be interpreted as a Modus-Tollens argument against scientific realism. i.e. that his argument is valid, but that his conclusion is false, implying that his premise of a mind-independent universe is false - which is already an empirically obvious false premise to those who aren't blinded by a dogmatic understanding of scientific jargon.

Both idealists and realists can agree with the Ontic-Structural Realism of Tegmark. For example, British idealism's doctrine of internal relations is in logical agreement with OSR, without jumping the shark to conclude that only unthinkable and unperceivable mathematical structure exists in a way that is divorced from the Lockean secondary qualities of perception.

In my opinion, the philosophical paradox is only solvable having gained an intuitionistic understanding of the continuum and of point-free topology, due to the fact that intuitionism is better fitted to the phenomenology of mathematical judgement.

Consider for example, that it is impossible to visualise or perceive an extensionally infinite staircase, or a perfectly straight path, or vanishingly small point, or a precise angle. The instability, ambiguity and uncertainty that characterises mental imagery and perception complements the realities of mathematical undecidability and finitistic reasoning that intuitionistic geometry recognises and which classical geometry ignores, while Brouwer's theory of choice sequences parallels how one visualises or recognises "infinity" (i.e. as a finite random truncation of a vaguely sized process).

As the pollution of the supposedly sacred Ganges river demonstrates, the sacred lies in the realm of ideas and relates to the physical realm only to the extent that the recognition of those ideas is physically contingent.

Sime, you're wrong about the arrow example, and about a "look up table." Let's see if I can make this clear. Wittgenstein asks in (PI 454), "How does it come about that this arrow -----------> points?" Any sign, be it a word or an arrow, only has an application, a use, that we together as a people, i.e., in socially given situations, give to it. "This pointing is not a hocus pocus which can be performed only by the soul [the soul, as used here, should be understood as the inner thing, the subjective]. So, it seems to me, and not only me, but many other interpreters, that Wittgenstein is saying the exact opposite of your point. This is clear throughout the PI, starting at the beginning when he talks about language-games. — Sam26

" This pointing is not a hocus pocus which can be performed only by the soul "

Does not support your thesis or yield the conclusion

"Any sign, be it a word or an arrow, only has an application, a use, that we together as a people, i.e., in socially given situations, give to it."

unless by that you mean

"Any sign, be it a word or an arrow, only has an application, a use, that a person gives to it."

Which is logically coherent, and avoids the unintelligible requirement of social consensus with respect to meaning and truth, that you often appear to imply.

Notice the context of the PI 454, in which he barely mentions social consensus. He is merely remarking on the distinction between what is said or thought a priori in relation to a sign (e.g the sign's stipulated definition) in comparison to it's actual a posteriori application. The difference between the definition of a sign and it's eventual application - that is under-determined by the definition, undermines the possibility of any theory of semantics, whether private or public.

​"Infinity" is a striking example of a word whose use necessarily belies any stipulated definition. Our convention defines "infinity" as meaning boundless, endless, or larger than any number..., and yet any particular use of the sign of "infinity", such as in an executed computer program, eventually halts and involves strictly finite reasoning and demonstration, - in apparent contradiction to it's stated definition as being "endless" - until that is, it is remembered that the actual uses of the phrases "boundless energy" , "infinite love" and what have you, are also finitistic...

In other words, "infinity" and "going on forever" can be considered as synonymous, but no two applications of either are the same, for they halt at different times or finite numbers, if at all.. Hence the synonymous definition of infinity is a misleading tautology that says nothing of implicative relevance and isn't the semantic ground of anything. This is the logical content of the so-called "private" language argument, and as demonstrated, applies equally to the shared definitions offered by public languages.

The "private language argument" isn't "no private meaning, therefore only public meaning", but rather "no private theory of meaning, therefore no public theory of meaning either".

The concept of "potential infinity" partially circumvents the above issue by defining "infinity" to be an indexical referring to a fallible promise of a future finite number (as is done in computing), but fallible promises, by definition, lie outside of what is determinable by convention,implying the meaninglessness of a theory of so-called "infinite numbers" except as an empty syntactical construct.

Wittgenstein undoubtedly noticed that what is true regarding the definition of "infinity" is also true of every sign in every language, complementing Quine's attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction. For example, we say "Bachelor" is a synonym for "Unmarried Man", but no two individuals use the expressions synonymously. Synonymy isn't use - except when writing definitions.

And since the sentences of our language are infinite, we cannot even ground the linguistic notion of synonymy in personal or social conventions without appealing to a notion of logical implication, which leads to vicious regress if we think of logical implication as being reducible to convention. This observation of Quine in his attack on "truth by convention" predates the post-humus publication of PI by nearly two decades, and Wittgenstein was likely influenced by it. It rules out every stripe of meaning-theory so that neither phenomenalism, physicalism nor communitarianism can serve as semantic or epistemological "givens".

Your logic is on the right lines, imo. In phenomenological application, "Nothing" is only used to refer to the irrelevancy of an experience with respect to some objective, as opposed to referring to absolute absence of experience. Therefore, with some grammatical distortion one could say "experience is logically necessary" , by virtue of "experiential nothingness" referring to ... nothing.

Another source of conflict and confusion, especially among Bayesian statisticians, concerns the distinction between uncertainty and imprecision.

The typical breed of Bayesian accepts premise A.

Premise A: Tomorrow's weather is physically certain, but epistemically uncertain.

On the other hand, a modern physicist with a distaste for folk-psychology (and hence for conventional epistemology and Bayesian statistics) might reject A in favour of the "direct realist" premise B:

Premise B: From the perspective of today, tomorrow's weather is physically imprecise.

Here, physical imprecision refers to the fact that the physical information constituting "today" does not imply a precise weather-outcome tomorrow and that any accurate model of today's information translates this physical imprecision into an imprecise estimation.

I would disagree. Its raining is an axiomatic statement based on an independent variable. That is, it is independent from belief. If it was a belief, they would pose it as an opinion such as: I think it is raining. Calling water falling from the sky a "good justification" for a belief that it is, in fact raining is a bit of an understatement. — john27

People have a confusing tendency to say "I believe X" when exhibiting doubt or a granting concession that one might be wrong - the very opposite qualities to the supposed meaning of "belief".

Also, a person's spoken beliefs often belie their actions.

The meaning of our words or concepts is established necessarily within a social construct, and it necessarily follows that meaning is not a function of an individual’s privately derived sense of meaning; assuming that a privately derived sense of meaning is even linguistically possible, as Wittgenstein’s private language comments seem to suggest. — Sam26

Any interpretation of a social convention is subjective. Wittgenstein was especially clear about this (e.g how can I know the intended direction of an arrow? how I am supposed to interpret a look-up table? ) . So there is no escape from purely private meaning, at least for Wittgenstein, even if such meaning cannot be linguistically translated.

Of course, he did understand that there is no logical room for an intermediate "private language" mediating between one's percepts and one's use of public language, recalling his attack on the Is/Seems distinction with regards to perceptual judgements.

Quantum superposition has already been logically described without contradiction using Tensor Products in Categorical Quantum Mechanics, a form of Linear Logic . Linear logic is para-consistent, so doesn't permit the derivation of anything from A and not A, otherwise known as ex contradictione quodlibet.

I'm tempted to say that Symmetry isn't true by correspondence, rather symmetry means "truth by correspondence".

This is by considering symmetry to be the same thing as an isomorphism, i.e an invertible mapping, where an invertible map is a property of a description or acts of description.

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To sum up, Gettier Problems demonstrate that justified true beliefs can be fallible, leading to scepticism about the existence of knowledge.

But I argue that there are equally valid reasons to deny that beliefs can refer to anything but the truth, leading to scepticism about the existence of false beliefs, and hence the utility of the concept.

In my opinion, having scepticism of the second sort doesn't nullify the epistemic scepticism provoked by Gettier problems, or vice versa. After all, denying the existence of false beliefs cannot deny the reality of one's mistakes.

Arguments of the second sort are really an instance of meta-epistemological scepticism, which is to doubt the meaningfulness of epistemology as an enterprise and the idea of inter-subjective theories of truth, belief and knowledge.

In an attempt to crystallise the differences of opinion in this thread, what is everyone's view regarding the relevance of the Private Language Argument (if any) to the "The hard problem"?

In your opinion, does Wittgenstein's strategy of semantic reduction (as you understand it) successfully solve or dissolve the hard-problem? (to recall his earlier logical behaviourism)

I don't see how. You seem to be saying that I can't have a belief about the result of a coin flip because it hasn't happened yet but I'm not seeing why. — Isaac

You can have a belief in the manner you describe that refers to your psychological concept of "future". But from a physical and causal perspective, your beliefs cannot refer to the physical future and can only refer to your physical history, making your beliefs a conceptually redundant way of talking about the causes of your perceptions, from a physical perspective.

Haven't you ever had an experience where you have thought "this wasn't what I was expecting!".

What makes you think this isn't literally the case?

I don't see why not. There are psychological states regarding 'the actual lottery' as much as there are regarding 'my dream I had last night'. I can quite coherently now distinguish between my concept of what's actually in my cupboard and what I believe is in my cupboard, that's how I'm aware of the fact that I might be wrong, by holding those two concepts to be different. If someone says to me "what might be in that cupboard?" I could give them several answers, none of which correspond to what I believe is in that cupboard. I could even imagine myself opening the cupboard and being surprised by the contents. — Isaac

Right, but what has your present psychological state of uncertainty, including your memories, imagination and thought experiments, got to do with a future interaction with your cupboard?

Doesn't your self-professed ability to distinguish your beliefs from actuality preclude you from interpreting the objects of your beliefs as being in the future?

OK, so perhaps you should have said "fundamental to my definition of the actual moon" rather than "fundamental to the very definition of the actual moon"? — Janus

Yes, I'm of the view that the object of a predicate loses intelligibility if the subject responsible for the predication is dropped or replaced with the mythical subject "we".

Still not following I'm afraid. 'Truth' is a predictive function, it says that if I act as if A I will get the response expected if A were the case. I don't see how a notion of mind-state causality affect this. We can model all the prior causes of the the belief that X and still find that acting as if X doesn't yield the results we'd expect if X were the case. — Isaac

We predicate truth about people's behaviour, e.g. "John's opinion was discovered to be true", but this shouldn't be taken to imply that truth is a property of their thoughts and actions.

Suppose a person says "I expect that if I buy a ticket I will win the lottery tomorrow, because I had a vivid dream of winning it last night".

On a causal account of belief states, the psychological state of expectation cannot be interpreted as being future directed. The object of this person's expectation isn't the future lottery, but merely the dream that they had.

So in "the cat believes the food is under the box" 'believes' should be replaced with what? Or do our epistemic conventions apply to cats? — Isaac

We interpret the cat in the manner that suits our purposes, i.e. using the same approach as we do a human being. In both cases, we aren't predicating a property about the agent concerned.

According to a causal understanding of mind, each and every psychological state refers only to the situation that caused it, implying that "belief states" are necessarily infallible or that the notion of truth is superfluous. Therefore, since beliefs aren't generally considered to be infallible, they cannot be reducible to psychological states.

Rather, beliefs exist in relation to social-conventions for classifying thoughts and behaviour. To say "John's beliefs were shown to be false" is to say "Relative to our epistemic-conventions, the belief-behaviour exhibited by John was classified as "false" - which isn't to say anything about John per-se.

Why would your perception of the moon be any more "fundamental to the very definition of "the actual moon"" than mine though? While it seems true that the properties of the moon are perceived properties; I don't think it follows that the moon must be dependent for its existence on being perceived. The way it appears depends on being perceived, but that is not the same as the ways in which it could be perceived. — Janus

Because my concept of "the actual moon" is necessarily in relation to my experiences that constitute my frame of reference, and any powers of empathy i might have for pretending to understand the moon from your perspective cannot change this semantic fact.

Beliefs cannot be real properties of brains, because the notion of epistemic-error is under-determined with respect to the neurological and physical facts of perception and action.

If I think John exists and I make a statement about John, then it is intended to be about an actual John. So I know what my statements are intended to be about. But I am not infallible. — Janus

That depends on perspective. E.g, from my perspective, your perception of the moon and "the actual moon" are mostly unrelated concepts, even though I am forced to consider my perception of the moon as being in some sense fundamental to the very definition of "the actual moon".

Anyone claiming that science can solve or dissolve the hard-problem, is not only wrong, but demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of science.

The ontological naturalism of science refers to the fact that the ontology of science is deliberately left undefined in terms of the perceptual judgements of any particular individual, in order so that scientific concepts can be universally shared and applied by scientists worldwide in a free and bespoke fashion, without laboratories having to submit their interpretations of their findings to the authoritative perceptual judgements of a particular individual. The price of this freedom and universality is experiential under-determination of scientific language, whereby no particular individual can claim to have direct and objective scientific knowledge.

To understand the existence of the hard-problem is to recall the history of the metre. Recall the platinum bar locked in the vault of Paris during the 19th century that was used to define "one metre" . If that platinum bar was replaced with a person whose judgements constituted the definition of "one metre", for that particular person the "hard-problem" of "sensing" one metre wouldn't exist, because by definition whatever the person perceived to be "one metre" would by definition be "one metre".

Eventually, the definition of "metre" was dematerialised for global convenience, and redefined theoretically in terms of the speed of light, changing the meaning of " one metre" from being a fundamentally empirical proposition referring to a particular bar in paris, to being a theoretical term with ambiguous empirical content, a term that was itself defined in terms of other theoretical terms in other units of measurements. In the process of dematerialisation across all units of measurement, scientific empiricism lost the distinction between theoretical and observational terms to became thoroughly aperspectival and theoretically circular.

The dematerialisation of scientific language therefore constitutes buying universality, semantic simplicity and practical freedom, at the cost of creating the hard-problem of subjectivity.

No, I commit to all of reality, I won't cherry-pick. What I don't commit to is the fantasy of direct knowledge of objects. — Kenosha Kid

Then why not commit to direct perceptual access of vague objects?

You can't avoid the implied subjective idealism, but naturalised science can at least accommodate the paradox via the adoption of an irrealist stance; If one wants to solve the hard-problem, deflate one's notion of experience to the objects experienced. On the other hand, if one wants to solve the perceptual problem of how one perceive's optical red, study neuroscience.

The questions are qualitatively different, and so are the answers that are expected. So it shouldn't matter that incommensurable theories are used for the different types of question, except for the epistemological foundationalists who are on a hiding to nothing.

One of philosophy's greatest mysteries, even more mysterious than the hard problem, is the mystery of how Daniel Dennett ascended to prominence in anglo-american philosophy.

I suspect "I believe X" causes grammatical disagreements and confusion due to the fact that it can be used to mean ​"X is more likely true than false" and higher-order propositions, such as " the sentence "X" is true", not to mention it's use case in relativizing knowledge in relation to perspective ("I know X to be true, so let's agree to disagree").

As demonstrated in these use cases, first order and higher-order belief predicates must be eliminated via slightly different strategies in order to arrive at the equivalence of "I believe X" and "X is true", and in cases of doubt "X has intermediate truth value".

Ultimately, what Gettier overlooks is the perspectival nature of belief and knowledge, namely the fact that the intentional object of a judgement cannot transcend the information available to the judgement. So it makes no sense for an external evaluator to interpret a person's belief as referring to what only the external evaluator knows. And if the person himself evaluates his past beliefs as being false on light of new information, isn't this case the same as the previous fallacy with the person's future self playing the role of the external evaluator?

Moreover, if beliefs are interpreted as having immanently accessible referents as opposed to transcendentally unavailable referents, we end up with an opposite problem; how is it possible to have false beliefs?

In my opinion, the conclusion to the above is that beliefs cannot be properties of a mind.

It’s wrong because it is a fact that it isn’t raining. Our perspectives are irrelevant. — Michael

That's where we disagree then. If someone other than myself claims to 'know' something, I can't interpret their use of the word as making transcendental claims that from my perspective is beyond their cognitive closure.

Therefore if i was observing a brain in a vat, i would understand the brain's claims to knowledge to be correct from it's perspective, in spite of the fact that from my perspective it's claims are false. And if during the course of it's life it spontaneously started to believe that it was in a vat without being informed via miraculous intervention from my world, I would understand it's belief to be delusional.

Yes, your belief is wrong because it isn’t raining. — Michael

But is my belief wrong from my perspective given that my use of "to know" hasn't changed, or only wrong from the mods perspective?

When I'm out in the rain getting wet, I certainly have an understanding of what reality is like outside my belief that it is raining; I have the actual, physical experience of the rain making me wet. The fact that it's raining coupled with the physical experience of the rain making me wet grants me the epistemic warrant to know that it's raining. — Michael

Suppose i assert "I know that it's raining because I am experiencing rain and that this fact coheres with everything else that i know". But suppose that unknown to me, the mods of this forum had drugged me into experiencing an hallucination, in such a fashion that I would never become aware of this fact at a later date.

In this situation, should a moderator judge my belief to be wrong, given that i am employing the word "know" in the same sense in which i always employ it?

Known because denoted or denoted because known? If the latter, an example, please? — tim wood

A good introduction is Judea Pearl's "Introduction to Causal Inference". The lesson is that causal implications cannot be derived from a statistical model without some initial causal assumptions.
Garbage causal assumptions in, garbage causal inferences out.

It appears that "cause" in your references is a term of art. What exactly does it mean? And what do you say caused the dynamite to explode? Or might you say that depends entirely on the who and why of the asking. And if this, then it must seem that there is no cause by itself - or even a clear understanding of the event itself!

My argument here, such as it is, simply that in informal use most folks usually know what is meant by the word "cause" in context. But I think any claim that the word itself denotes any particular anything or has any central univocal meaning is untenable. — tim wood

Sure, and to make matters worse, intuition is often wrong with respect to logical and statistical inference. Hence the reason why formal definitions and theorem provers are useful whereby informal causal intuition is reduced to axiomatic systems, even though philosophical dilemmas remain e.g with regard to counterfactual reasoning.

As a speech act asserting that one knows X may be equivalent to asserting that one believes X, but as propositions "I believe X" is not equivalent to "I know X". This is similar to the mistake that sime made above regarding "it is raining" and "I believe that it is raining" – even if asserting the former implies an assertion of the latter, as propositions they mean different things.

That belief and knowledge are different is obvious when we consider it in the third-person: "John believes that Donald Trump won the 2020 election" is not equivalent to "John knows that Donald Trump won the 2020 election." John can believe that Donald Trump won even if he didn't, but he can't know that Donald Trump won if he didn't. — Michael

As we are both not john, we can both agree that John's beliefs doesn't equal the truth, but that doesn't give John the epistemic warrant to know that fact, because it lies outside of John's cognitive closure.

At most, John can parrot the sentence without any understanding of what reality is like outside of John's beliefs.

I'm concerned with the meaning of the proposition "you're wrong", not how to interpret it as a speech act in a specific situation like we've done above. — Michael

If you understand my point of view, then we might be talking apples and oranges with you playing the game of arguing within accepted philosophical convention and me under-mining it, but assuming we disagree i'll continue.

What I am questioning is the very existence of inter-subjective semantics for propositions, which in turn leads to questioning the distinction between ethical misconduct and epistemic errors. The notion of inter-subjective meaning is dubious at best, and rigor is improved by conditionalizing every utterance, including so-called propositions, with respect to the causes of the speaker's utterances including causes that are external to the speaker's mind or brain.

For instance, consider the published results of a scientific experiment. If the details of the experiment aren't reported, then the results cannot be interpreted and are gibberish. Why should utterances divorced from their speakers be treated differently? How can we arrive at the idea of an inter-subjectively meaningful and speaker-independent proposition? And if we can't, then why should we attribute epistemic errors to anyone, even in the case of ourselves?

Language is a social convention for coordinating human activity, and achieves this by correcting people who fail to speak in a socially accepted fashion. But how do we leap from the observation that a speaker has spoken the unethical utterance "The Earth is Flat", to the conclusion that the speaker has made an epistemic error? This isn't justified on any causal analysis of psycho-linguistics, unless "epistemic errors" are trivially defined by convention to refer to the unethical utterances concerned.

Just because my assertion "it is raining" implies that I believe that it is raining, it doesn't then follow that "it is raining" means "I believe that it is raining." — Michael

If you say "It is raining", i cannot interpret you as saying anything other than " Michael believes it is raining".

And if i notice that it isn't raining, then it begs the question as to how a false state of affairs could cause your belief. The notion that the cause of a belief can be detached from the intentional object of the belief is a fallacy, well, at least according to me.

No, not according to us. It's not according to anyone. It's about what actually is the case. I don't understand what's difficult about this. — Michael

Every assertion has a cause. In your view, is it possible to grasp the meaning of an assertion without understanding the cause of the assertion?

It's not according to anyone. It's about what really is the case, irrespective of what anyone believes. — Michael

So according to us? See my last example.

It doesn't. It refers to the independent fact that it is raining. — Michael

An independent fact according to whom?

John knows that it is raining if:

1) John believes that it is raining,
2) John is justified in believing that it is raining, and
3) it is raining

It would be a mistake to interpret this as saying that John knows that it is raining if:

1) John believes that it is raining,
2) John is justified in believing that it is raining, and
3) I believe that it is raining

This latter argument is obviously fallacious. — Michael

If 3) refers to your belief that it is raining, then I would say, by appealing to the meaningless of Moore's Sentence, that :

John doesn't know that it is raining from my perspective,
John knows that it is raining from your perspective.

If this looks uncomfortable, recall as Wittgenstein did, that we often say "I thought I knew, but i am proven wrong". From the perspective of ordinary language philosophy, the use of the verb "to know" doesn't imply infallibility of belief.

Consider also:-

1) John is blind, never leaves the house, and believes that it is raining,
2) John is justified in believing that it is raining, and
3) you and I directly observe that it isn't raining.

In which case John's belief that it is raining is false-according-to-us. But if we are privy to "insider information" about the weather that John does not and cannot possess, then is it logically coherent for us to interpret John's concept of the weather as being the same as ours?

If John's justification for his beliefs is logically valid and logically sound with respect to information he possesses, and if he is never confronted with a situation in which he declares his previous beliefs to be wrong, then where is John's mistake?

The same way most people do. The world isn't just what I believe it to be. Sometimes the things I believe turn out to be wrong. — Michael

It is obviously that case that you aren't necessarily willing to presently assert your previous beliefs, or to presently assert my present beliefs.

This is why i precisely asked

"So what are you willing to assert about the present that you don't presently believe? "

Which is the case precisely raised by Moore's paradox.