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When someone infers a piece of info, they don't know it. At most, if the inference is strong enough, they can say "for practical matters it's like I know it", but there's always some chance that the inference is wrong.
That's relevant here because the main sources of info that you have about the others' intentions are all under their control, not yours. So inferences dealing with intentions are rather weak.
For example, they can claim that they withheld info because they didn't think that it would be relevant, or because they didn't know it. Or even when asked directly they answer in such a convoluted and indirect way that it's hard to know if they even said it. (NB: I know at least one person like this.)
Yes, that is why I did not contradict your statement that nobody really knows other people's intentions because that is true. But being able to infer covers the times where it is pretty blatant that there isn't another likely explanation than intentional omission.
I put an example of someone being asked by their spouse who they were with and what they did the night before. The person answered by naming a couple people and something they did, but omitted hanging out with another person and cheating on the spouse. Something so recent and obviously relevant to what the spouse asked not including the cheating can be used to infer it was intentionally omitted.
A question about something random that happened 10 years ago isn't likely to lead to the same inference.
Someone giving complex and obtuse answers can make inferring unreliable, sure. But that is more of a specific scenario and there are always some exceptions, but some exceptions doesn't mean the whole concept is invalid.
Fair.
I'm still "munching" what you and @[email protected] said; both of you wrote good points, it takes a while to think about this stuff.
Having read this over, fwiw I am definitively siding with @[email protected] on this. Here is an illustration that I think will help:
Child 1: Hey, let's grab some cookies!
Child 2: Okay! (reaches for cookie but before they can grab one...)
Mother: Hey, what are you doing - you two are not eating cookies are you, hrm!?
Child 1: No mummy dearest (choose appropriate slang of choice here:-), we two are not eating cookies...
Question: did child 1 lie? Technically their statement is accurate according to the narrowest possible interpretation - they both were not eating cookies, yet, even though the intentions of them both were fairly blatantly obvious.
Communication among humans is not math - the meaning of a message requires interpretation from the multiple parties involved. And in particular the recipient is usually in possession of additional data than the sender - at the very least, once the sender chooses to send the message packet, then the receiver has obtained +1 message that prior to the sending did not yet exist between them (and which may contain additional data, such as "a sender exists" and "the sender was located in this direction, at the time of the sending").
Anyway the child KNOWS what the mother intended to ask, but deliberately and blatantly told an extremely skewed version of the truth that is SO distorted, SO unwieldy, SO twisted, that there is no doubt that the intention was to deceive. In a normal situation anyway - though ofc exceptions always exist e.g. an autistic child, or one who has suffered some form of brain damage that causes them to struggle with over-literal statements might somehow literally be confused what the intention of the mother was. But in a normal situation, the meaning is clear: the child lied.
Any judgement about that is ofc up to interpretation - maybe the mother is actually pleased at having taught her children to lie so well? :-P
And I for one appreciate so much that you do - take all the time that you need and I will know that the response will be all the better for it.:-)
[Sorry for the double and late reply.]
Yup, it seems like we reached agreement through different words - epistemically speaking the cheated spouse still has no knowledge strictly speaking, but for practical purposes the inference in this case is so strong that it can be treated as if it was knowledge. Including the fact that spouses often know a lot about each other's behaviour. In this specific case I'd probably call it lying by omission, even if the intention is not known.
Going a bit deeper on that: inference doesn't grant us knowledge, only deduction. But if you dig deep enough you'll need to infer something, so if you go too hard on "inference is not knowledge!" you fall into solipsism.