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eryday uses of these verbs (which are semantically more "fuzzy"), but such are the limits of formal representations. A more comprehensive semiotic approach can only decide to represent (in an encyclopedic way) the different uses of these expressions. If the present study were brought to a satisfactory end, there would be many, and conflicting, representations of to know, to be aware, and so on. At the present provisional stage, these verbs can only be taken as primitive, unanalyzed for the sake of brevity. The solution of the puzzle undoubtedly goes beyond a mere linguistic or logical framework and will involve wider philosophical and cognitive problems. |
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Nevertheless, the difference between (26) and (27) can be taken into account. If one assumesas a requirement for the good functioning of conversational intercoursethat the use of the expression to know presupposes the truth of the embedded clause, then in (27) S is simply saying that X is not aware (that is, what X does not think) of what the other participants assume to be the case. Thus S depicts the epistemic world of X as different from the epistemic world of everybody else and, in fact, says that X is thinking of some Owjtj which does not coincide with the Ow0t0 (which is at the same time the content of S's epistemic world and what is the case). On the contrary, when a given S says that he himself does not know p, then S is misusing language. The mistake committed by S is shown by the epistemic intcrpretation of (28): |
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(28) I did not know that p. |
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This sentence means that S, at the time t-1 believed ~p, and believed that ~p (the content of his propositional attitude) was the case. Now, at the time of the utterance, S is aware of the fact that p is, and was, the case (also in t-1), and correctly says that in t-1 he was not aware of it. But at the moment in which, at the time of utterance, S uses to know, he assumes that p is, and was, the case. Thus in (28) S is making a coherent assertion whose foreground information concerns the state of his beliefs at a previous time, while he, and everybody else, assumes as background information that p is the case: |
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