Belief
This thread is a discussion of belief.
In the first few pages there was some confusion that it was an attempt to define belief. It's not, since any such definition will be ultimately circular. The approach here will be analytic, but include some phenomenological observations.
Of course what is written here is subject to review. I'm making it up as I go along.
A belief is a propositional attitude.
That is, it can be placed in a general form as a relation between someone and a proposition. So "John believes that the sky is blue" can be rendered as
Believes (John, "The sky is blue")
B(a,p)
There's ill will in some circles towards this sort of analysis. Think of this as setting up a basic structure or grammar for belief. A belief is a relation between an individual and a proposition. That there is much more to be said about belief is not in contention; this is just a place to start. This is set as a falsifiable proposition. If there are any examples of beliefs that cannot be stated as relations between individuals and propositions, this proposal would have to be revisited.
It has been suggested that animal and other non-linguistic beliefs are a falsification of this suggestion. The argument is that non-linguistic creatures can have beliefs and yet cannot express these beliefs as propositions, and that hence beliefs cannot be propositional attitudes. But that is a misreading of what is going on here. Any belief, including that of creatures that cannot speak, can be placed in the form of a propositional attitude by those who can speak. A cat, for example, can believe that its bowl is empty, but cannot put that belief in the form B(a,p).
Belief does not imply truth
One obvious consequence of a belief being a relation between an individual and a proposition is that the truth of the proposition is unrelated to the truth of the belief.
That is, folk can believe things that are untrue. Or not believe things that are true.
A corollary of this is that belief does not stand in opposition to falsehood, but to doubt. Truth goes with falsehood, belief with doubt. And at the extreme end of belief we find certainty. In certainty, doubt is inadmissible.
If belief does not imply truth, and if one holds to the Justified True Belief definition of knowledge, it follows that belief does not imply knowledge.
The individual who has the belief holds that the proposition is true.
This is, if you like, the significance of a belief statement. It follows from Moore's paradox, in which someone is assume to believe something that they hold not to be true. For example:
"I believe the world is flat, but the world is not flat".
While this is difficult to set out as a clear contradiction, there is something deeply unhappy about it. The conclusion is that one thinks that what one believes is indeed true.
Note that Moore's paradox is in the first person. "John believes the world is flat, but the world is not flat" is not paradoxical - John is just wrong. "John believes that the world is flat and John believes the world is not flat" - John is inconsistent.
The perforative paradox comes about only when expressed in the first person.
One might think it so trivial that it is not worth saying: to believe some proposition is to believe that proposition to be true.
That is, talk of belief requires talk of truth.
One might be tempted, perhaps by pragmatism or by Bayesian thoughts, to replace that with measures of probability. You might think yourself only 99.99% certain that the cat is on the mat, and suppose thereby that you have banished truth. But of course, one is also thereby 99.99% certain that "the cat is on the mat" is true.
Belief makes sense of error
Austin talked of words that gain their meaning - use - mostly by being contrasted with their opposite. His example was real.
"it's not a fake; it's real"
"it's not a mirage, it's real!"
It's not a mistake - it's real"
and so on.
Belief can be understood in a similar fashion, as gaining it's usefulness from the contrast between a true belief and a false belief. That is, an important aspect of belief is that sometimes we think that something is the case, and yet it is not.
We bring belief into the discourse in order to make sense of such errors.
Belief is dynamic
Beliefs change over time. It follows that a decent account of belief must be able to account for this dynamism.
Beliefs explain but do not determine actions
Beliefs are used to explain actions. Further, such explanations are causal and sufficient. So if we have appropriate desires and a beliefs we can explain an action.
So, given that John is hungry, and that John believes eating a sandwich will remove his hunger, we have a sufficient causal explanation for why John ate the sandwich.
One may act in ways that are contrary to one's beliefs. A dissident may comply in order to protect herself and her family.
So given that John is hungry, and has a sandwich at hand, it does not follow that John will eat the sandwich.
Phenomenal states
Talk of phenomenal states strikes me as misguided.
If they are ineffable personal experiences, then they cannot be discussed - that's what "ineffable" means.
But if they can be spoken of, then they are our feelings, emotions and so on - stuff we already speak of.
So either phenomenal states do not enter into the discussion, or we have been talking about them for a very long time.
Either way, they do not add to the discussion.
An individual's belief is inscrutable
One can act in ways contrary to one's beliefs. It's a result of the lack of symmetry between beliefs and actions mentioned above - Beliefs explain but do not determine actions. Thanks due to @Hanover and @Cabbage Farmer.
Any belief can be made to account for any action, by adding suitable auxiliary beliefs.
This edit July 12
In the first few pages there was some confusion that it was an attempt to define belief. It's not, since any such definition will be ultimately circular. The approach here will be analytic, but include some phenomenological observations.
Of course what is written here is subject to review. I'm making it up as I go along.
A belief is a propositional attitude.
That is, it can be placed in a general form as a relation between someone and a proposition. So "John believes that the sky is blue" can be rendered as
Believes (John, "The sky is blue")
B(a,p)
There's ill will in some circles towards this sort of analysis. Think of this as setting up a basic structure or grammar for belief. A belief is a relation between an individual and a proposition. That there is much more to be said about belief is not in contention; this is just a place to start. This is set as a falsifiable proposition. If there are any examples of beliefs that cannot be stated as relations between individuals and propositions, this proposal would have to be revisited.
It has been suggested that animal and other non-linguistic beliefs are a falsification of this suggestion. The argument is that non-linguistic creatures can have beliefs and yet cannot express these beliefs as propositions, and that hence beliefs cannot be propositional attitudes. But that is a misreading of what is going on here. Any belief, including that of creatures that cannot speak, can be placed in the form of a propositional attitude by those who can speak. A cat, for example, can believe that its bowl is empty, but cannot put that belief in the form B(a,p).
Belief does not imply truth
One obvious consequence of a belief being a relation between an individual and a proposition is that the truth of the proposition is unrelated to the truth of the belief.
That is, folk can believe things that are untrue. Or not believe things that are true.
A corollary of this is that belief does not stand in opposition to falsehood, but to doubt. Truth goes with falsehood, belief with doubt. And at the extreme end of belief we find certainty. In certainty, doubt is inadmissible.
If belief does not imply truth, and if one holds to the Justified True Belief definition of knowledge, it follows that belief does not imply knowledge.
The individual who has the belief holds that the proposition is true.
This is, if you like, the significance of a belief statement. It follows from Moore's paradox, in which someone is assume to believe something that they hold not to be true. For example:
"I believe the world is flat, but the world is not flat".
While this is difficult to set out as a clear contradiction, there is something deeply unhappy about it. The conclusion is that one thinks that what one believes is indeed true.
Note that Moore's paradox is in the first person. "John believes the world is flat, but the world is not flat" is not paradoxical - John is just wrong. "John believes that the world is flat and John believes the world is not flat" - John is inconsistent.
The perforative paradox comes about only when expressed in the first person.
One might think it so trivial that it is not worth saying: to believe some proposition is to believe that proposition to be true.
That is, talk of belief requires talk of truth.
One might be tempted, perhaps by pragmatism or by Bayesian thoughts, to replace that with measures of probability. You might think yourself only 99.99% certain that the cat is on the mat, and suppose thereby that you have banished truth. But of course, one is also thereby 99.99% certain that "the cat is on the mat" is true.
Belief makes sense of error
Austin talked of words that gain their meaning - use - mostly by being contrasted with their opposite. His example was real.
"it's not a fake; it's real"
"it's not a mirage, it's real!"
It's not a mistake - it's real"
and so on.
Belief can be understood in a similar fashion, as gaining it's usefulness from the contrast between a true belief and a false belief. That is, an important aspect of belief is that sometimes we think that something is the case, and yet it is not.
We bring belief into the discourse in order to make sense of such errors.
Belief is dynamic
Beliefs change over time. It follows that a decent account of belief must be able to account for this dynamism.
Beliefs explain but do not determine actions
Beliefs are used to explain actions. Further, such explanations are causal and sufficient. So if we have appropriate desires and a beliefs we can explain an action.
So, given that John is hungry, and that John believes eating a sandwich will remove his hunger, we have a sufficient causal explanation for why John ate the sandwich.
One may act in ways that are contrary to one's beliefs. A dissident may comply in order to protect herself and her family.
So given that John is hungry, and has a sandwich at hand, it does not follow that John will eat the sandwich.
Phenomenal states
Talk of phenomenal states strikes me as misguided.
If they are ineffable personal experiences, then they cannot be discussed - that's what "ineffable" means.
But if they can be spoken of, then they are our feelings, emotions and so on - stuff we already speak of.
So either phenomenal states do not enter into the discussion, or we have been talking about them for a very long time.
Either way, they do not add to the discussion.
An individual's belief is inscrutable
One can act in ways contrary to one's beliefs. It's a result of the lack of symmetry between beliefs and actions mentioned above - Beliefs explain but do not determine actions. Thanks due to @Hanover and @Cabbage Farmer.
Any belief can be made to account for any action, by adding suitable auxiliary beliefs.
This edit July 12
Comments (1742)
Lol. Hope you have a good day. :)
If they are ineffable personal experiences, then they cannot be discussed - that's what ineffable" means.
But if they can be spoken of, then they are our feelings, emotions and so on - stuff we already speak of.
So either phenomenal states do not enter into the discussion, or we have been talking aobut them for a very long time.
Either way, they do not add to the discussion.
The ineffability need not be absolute. The police sketch artist hears the words and draws the picture, but never gets it exactly right. The source of the information lies in the witness' mind, the language roughly estimates and transmits it, and the recipient loses something in translation. Why is the sketch never exact?
If you make a perfume (as you're known to do) and tell me it smells of roses, and I don't think it does, I'll tell you that, but don't expect me to tell you why. I just don't have any real language for smells. It's ineffable, but I know your perfume isn't roses.
Suppose you and I are driving down the road, you glumly staring out the passenger window. I, looking out the windshield since I'm driving, see a hot air balloon, and I say something like, "Wow, look at that!" Without turning, you say, "Yeah, that's awesome." (Maybe you're a sulky teenager in this scenario.)
Your phenomenal state is irrelevant, so it doesn't matter that you responded without turning to look at what I was remarking upon, right?
You say things about that about which you can't say things.
There's the problem.
Truth results from falsehood. If every statement were true we would have no need to note that they were true. It is because some statements are false that we need to distinguish them from the ones that are true.
We need belief because we sometimes give assent to and act on statements that are false. There is a mismatch between what we do or say and what is the case. We can deal with this by using belief.
Hence belief becomes and explanation for our actions, such that when we act erroneously, we might explain it by noting that we held a false belief.
Just trying to get a handle on this irrelevance.
If I invite you to look at something, I'm inviting you to have a particular phenomenal experience, aren't I? That phenomenal experience, according to you, is irrelevant to something, so I'm trying to figure out what difference it could make for you to accept or refuse my invitation.
If I complain that you didn't even look, does it make sense for you to explain that your phenomenal state is irrelevant?
Perfect Banno. The difference between our accounts is clear.
That doesn't follow, but I suspect you know that already. It's a matter of existential dependency. Thinking about thought and belief is dependent upon language. Becoming aware of thought and belief is dependent upon thinking about thought and belief. It follows that becoming aware of thought and belief is dependent upon language. Hence...
Becoming aware of belief and language 'go together'...
Not all creatures capable of having belief are capable of thinking about thought and belief.
Do not neglect the distinction between what belief requires, and what thinking about belief requires. The latter includes language. The former does not. The latter requires the former. The former does not require the latter.
Quoting Banno
Well, no. As above, the awareness of belief presupposes falsehood.
It's a fine analysis of reports/accounts of belief. These are not equivalent to belief. A report/account of belief is about belief. The game of correcting errors is noting the difference(s) between belief and fact/reality.
Quoting Banno
To say "Truth results from falsehood" is to neglect to draw and maintain the crucial distinction between truth/falsehood and our awareness of truth/falsehood. I refer you to my last post. It is relevant here as well...
This language is fraught.
What more is said in "I'm inviting you to have a particular phenomenal experience" than is said in "Take a look at this"? If they are the same, then dispense with the excessive talk of phenomena; if more is being said, then exactly what?
Again, note the if: IF the phenomenal experience is ineffable, then it is irrelevant to the discussion.
And if the phenomenal experience is part of the discussion, then again, what more is it than "look at this"?
The attraction of talking about phenomena seems to be that it somehow allows us to get inside the head - inside the other person's beetle-containing box. It doesn't.
What underwrites our different positions is that I draw a distinction between notions of "belief", "falsehood", and "truth" and what they're taking account of, whereas you do not. Most of our notions are indistinct from our language. I would agree with you that there is no such distinction to be drawn between our notions and the monikers we give them, if it were not for the fact that some of our notions point towards that which is not existentially dependent upon our awareness of them. Such things exist in their entirety prior to our attempts at accounting for them. This allows us to be able to say that true belief does not require our awareness of it. Nor does false belief.
Is there no irony in your inability to convey your position to me despite the thousands of words expended?
See, Hanover, I cannot make sense of this at all. Your position and my own are similar in that we both claim a distinction between monikers for mental ongoings and the mental ongoings. However, this kind of talk looks like a conflation between mind/not mind.
No, the attraction is that it is the cause of our speaking to one another in the first place and it forms the basis all of our communication.
Can I believe that the content of the experience, its qualia as the kids say, is ineffable, but the fact of whether the experience took place at all is effable, and relevant?
For instance, suppose I believe that what a piece of music sounds like cannot be put into words, not in English anyway. Whatever. I could still ask you to put on my headphones and listen to something and say if you liked it. I expect you to have an experience I don't expect you to be able to put into words, but you and I will have no trouble at all determining whether you had the experience. Is that inconsistent?
Well, I reject the noumena/phenomena distinction dues to it's untenability. I could argue for that, but I suspect you've seen such arguments before. So...
I don't know if you can have a phenomenal state of a ball. Is the ball your phenomenal state? What's the difference between the ball and your phenomenal state?
To deny the distinction is idealism. Is that where you are on this?
Some music makes me feel good. I like it. Isn't that all one needs to know how to say after listening to an unfamiliar composition for the first time? Is that somehow insufficient and/or inadequate for being effable?
There are varying levels of complexity within our experience. These levels are directly effected/affected by language acquisition. After language use has begun in earnest, not only are we in the middle of events, but we're also thinking about these events in a more organized and complex fashion. The increase in complexity includes thinking about ourselves and others. Thinking about ourselves is limited to and/or delimited by how we've learned to talk about ourselves and others.
Saying "I have a dream" doesn't make a whole lot of sense(in and of itself) if that is all that's said. I mean, it makes sense, just the amount of sense is determined solely by the ability to talk about it in a meaningful and coherent manner.
Ahem... the number of correlations.
I am at a place where I would like for you to clearly set out the distinction, particularly seeing how it is your expression that has lead us to where we are in the discussion. It's an odd expression. I deny the game altogether, but was curious to see if you could make more sense of it than what I've seen.
What purpose does it serve but to confound the issue?
It is knowledge we seek and implicit in that is our wish to believe truths/facts about our world. We sometimes believe lies/falsehoods but what we shouldn't forget is that we think/assume these lies to be truths.
[I]Belief[/i], as a subject of study, must include knowledge itself and that renders belief redundant.
Makes sense.
Quoting Banno
Does the study of consciousness exclude anything that happens when we're asleep? I'm not sure I know how dissect consciousness. It seems unified to me.
Why is it so controversial to admit that language offers only a limited glimpse into one's phenomenal state? Language is a camera of limited resolution and while you can snap photos of whatever you'd like, it's inherently limited. It will never fully reflect the original. You say just keep moving the camera around, get more shots, different angles. I say it'll never happen.
I didn't suggest that they're ineffable, and I don't think that they are. That question does not address anything in my comment.
Well, it's an interesting question. I'd say the ball is an external object knowable as your phenomenal state. I don't deny external reality and consider a dream state of a ball distinct from an awake state, not in terms simply of clarity, but in terms of the former being of an objective thing externally.
I'm open to criticisms if it, but am not ready to slip into idealism just yet.
A distinction could be made between phenomenal experiences obtained via the physiological senses and those phenomenal experiences obtained via the imagination. “(Phenomenal) experiences obtained via the physiological senses”, or something shorter to the same effect, would rule out dream states, I'm thinking.
Our immediate comprehension of a directly perceived object is always, of itself in the very moment of experience, an arational occurrence—for it happens in manners that do not consist of consciously occurring explanations, provided causes, or provided motives for the immediate occurrence of awareness. In other words, our immediate awareness of the object is an instance of that which occurs beyond or outside the realm of consciously occurring reasoning.
This however, does not entail that our immediate awareness of objects, which of itself occurs arationally, cannot be rationally accounted for. It occurs be-cause of this and that explanation, cause, or motive. The provision of which will make our experiences rational (and the belief in the potential to so provide reasons for will then imply the belief that everything is rational without exception … although glitches such as that of “why being rather than nonbeing” might occur).
Same then with what’s ineffable—hence, beyond expression in words. It always holds the potential to be expressed via words, however imperfectly or improperly, but first the ineffable given must be to some extent commonly shared. We can’t, for example, properly convey what experience is to anyone who has never held first-hand awareness of experience (as in, to a philosophical zombie … can’t think of other examples). What experience is will then of itself be beyond expression via words—you’re either endowed with nonlinguistic knowledge of it via acquaintance or you’re not (aka, or you’re a p-zombie).
But this doesn’t mean that we can’t imperfectly address this commonly shared given via words—which will either conform to or deviate from this commonly shared, otherwise ineffable given (i.e., words that can either express truths or falsities in relation to what phenomenal experience is). Then, as previously mentioned by others, not all experiences are commonly held. We can talk about certain complex emotions or certain obscure concepts at length; this doesn’t then mean that a) we can obtain an adequate understanding of what is addressed strictly via words in all such cases (especially where we cannot related due to lack of shared emotions or concepts) or b) that the word(s) used will be perfectly equivalent to that which it specifies (thereby making that specified beyond expression via words, at least in some ways, which is in itself significant). E.g., the heck did Gnostics have gnosis about, anyway? Elephino. Or, could Van Gogh [Goya had his own issues] express via words what he felt and thought when he deprived himself of that one ear? Nope, not to me at least; I don’t care how long his essay on this might have been.
I know that this was directed at Banno, however this is the fatal flaw of Kant being put on display... but with a twist of wording. Earlier you claimed that the noumena was irrelevant. I ignored that claim, although it is clearly wrong when one is speaking in terms of phenomena.
In the above, phenomenal states are being treated like Kant's noumena and language like Kant's phenomena. The same criticism applies...
One cannot know that language does not fully reflect one's original phenomenal state unless one knows exactly what that original state consists of and/or is. Such knowledge requires comparison between the two. There can be no comparison between the phenomenal state(Noumena) and the description of the state(phenomena) unless one knows what both consist in/of.
It's untenable.
The noumenal(in this case your notion of phenomenal states) drops off as irrelevant.
I can see my beetle. You can't. The incoherence arises when we attempt to describe the beetle without reference to it's non-subjective appearance.
You see Hanover, on my view there is no clear distinction to be drawn and maintained between language and some phenomenal states after language acquisition/use has begun in earnest. Certain terms bring about phenomenal states. We can all probably put forth examples of these sorts of triggers.
If it is the case that your phenomenal states are known by you with certainty, then you can put them into words, unless what is certain is that you're confused about the state. If that is the case then, to nod towards javra, you must be able to find another who has shared the experience you're grappling with that is capable of putting it into acceptable words.
In the US, there has been a long standing struggle with racism and equality. In order for me(I'm not black) to be able to have the fullest understanding of what it's like to be a black man in America, I would have to be a black man in America. I'm not. Thus, I cannot have the fullest understanding of that. However, I can have black friends and family. I can listen to them and what they say about being black in America.
If they express a deeply felt emotional impact resulting from being looked at and treated suspiciously by police officers when they're just doing what they're supposed to be doing, then I cannot possibly have the fullest understanding of what it's like to be in that situation, unless I've actually been in it. If I've been in it a couple of times, then I cannot possibly know what it is like to have been in it hundreds of times. Being in that situation a couple of times will not have the same impact that being in that situation hundreds of times will have. I can imagine what it would be like to have to deal with that over and over again by virtue of knowing what it's like to have to deal with it once, and having a friend tell me all about what it's like to deal with it hundreds of times.
If my black friends and family have come to acceptable terms with their own experience then they can put the experience and it's impact upon them into words that I can understand. I can see and hear for myself the remnants of those experiences during the conversation(something sorely missing from online discourse).
Oh, as a side note... but imperative to understanding here. There is no such thing as a complete understanding of one's own experience. Or, conversely every understanding is complete. It's constantly being revisited, reviewed, and thus added to. A nod to Banno earlier when he mentioned how the phenomenal state grows...
A terribly ill-conceived notion, this 'phenomenal state' business...
Well, no. The incoherence is a consequence of the framework being used. I can talk about stuff without issue, until I attempt to compare that with something I cannot know about... by definition.
I'm thinking that this dubiously presupposes that imagination is possible without physiological sensory perception. Imagination requires physiological sensory perception. Thus, dreams are obtained via physiological sensory perception. It's the notion of experience which is the source of problems. Most of those who argue along those lines, also employ the subjective/objective dichotomy as a means for doing so. Experience consists of things that are neither and/or both. Thus, the dichotomy is inherently incapable of taking proper account of experience.
"F" the ineffable. I've set out why I choose not to consider phenomenal states; most replies here don't seriously address what was set out. The rest makes no link to the topic of this thread.
This is a thread about belief.
Quoting Banno
Well Banno. I've offered you three separate replies to that already(the error approach). I'd like for you to reply.
You've got it backwards. We don't use belief. That statement is a belief.
Quoting Banno
That doesn't answer anything. That explanation is a usage of belief, not its origin or reason of existence.
Our belief explains all of our intentional conduct regardless of whether we achieved a desired or undesired result. We don't need any statements to have beliefs and we don't need any truth values to have beliefs. We can have beliefs without language. Beliefs are internal states worthy of discussing and some internal states are ineffable.
Quoting Banno
I've set out why I choose to consider phenomenal states and why the effable is not in need of F'ing.
Quoting Hanover
I would argue against the claim that beliefs are internal states, and actually have(sort of). Earlier you offered reasoning for your claim, but failed to notice the consequences of it. I quoted the relevant claims, and put forth the conclusion...
"Then beliefs are not phenomenal states". You neglected to address it.
I would agree that some belief is ineffable, but only in the sense that sometimes creatures cannot talk about their own mental ongoings.
No examples of ineffable belief can be spoken of any further, lest it would cease being ineffable. The ineffable is an empty concept. A name without a thing. It derives it's meaning purely from our knowing what it means to be able to talk about stuff. It would be utterly meaningless if that were not the case.
Because the ineffable cannot be spoken about, it falls to the wayside of discourse.
The issues with your notion of "belief" Hanover are clear. Aside from what's been said directly above, you say that it cannot be spoken of, yet you speak of it. You call it a "phenomenal state". You compare this state with/to language about the state. The language you're using is Kant's. However, you're not using it in the same sense that he did. If you were, your notion of belief would be parallel to his notion of Noumena, and our talk of belief would be parallel to phenomena. As a result, your notion of "belief" would fall by the wayside... that which cannot be talked about... isn't.
It's a notion that serves only to delimit what can be said. The unknown and/or unknowable 'realm', by definition. It is certainly not helpful. It doesn't help us to understand belief.
Ok.
All that being said, there is much agreement here as well. Although I love a good argument, let's stick to the agreement for a bit and see where it goes. I've listed it below...
Strictly speaking our belief does not 'explain' anything at all. I suspect you can agree with our saying that intentional behaviour is belief-based.
I would agree with all three of the above claims, but with an important qualification/quantification. Qualify/quantify the term "beliefs" with "some".
Well, the only creature that can talk about his mental ongoings to any extent are humans.Quoting creativesoulThis is just incorrect, yet it keeps getting reasserted. It is entirely logical to say that my belief in freedom is ineffable, it evoking a feeling in me I can't describe. Just because I can name it hardly means I can describe it. I can also say that I have a phenomenal state that I can tell you about, but only to an extent, the rest being ineffable. I can sketch you how my father looked, but I cannot present to you all the details. I just lack the language or art skills (and they are one in the same) to show you exactly.
Quoting creativesoul
This is just wrong. The noumenal realm is unknowable period. I cannot speak of the rock outside of my experience of the rock because it is incoherent to reference a rock with none of the subjectively imposed properties of a rock. No matter how I look at the rock, it will be from my perspective, and since there is no such thing as a perspectiveless perspective (the noumenal realm), I can't know the rock.
On the other hand, my phenomenal state of the rock is knowable to me. I can speak of it. You can't. You can't speak of it because you can't see inside my head and see and feel my thoughts. The noumenal perspective is God's perspective, which no one can have. The phenomenal view is my personal view, which only I can have.
I can see my own beetle. You can't. No one can see the beetle as what it is as the thing in itself.
I have long since agreed that a creature can have beliefs that they do not know how to describe. You want to call that "ineffable", be my guest. You want to carry around the weight of a bunch of empty concepts, be my guest. I'll pass.
There were four other statements of agreement as well. Care to go there?
For me Hanover this is where so many people go wrong. I see this error being made in a variety of contexts, especially religious contexts. It also arises in talk about consciousness, so I don't want to make it seem that it's just a religious error.
Much of this has to do with how it is that we mean something by a word or statement, i.e., how does meaning arise in language. I've talked about this before, but it's very important if we are to get clear on some of these problems.
If it's true that language derives it's meaning in social contexts, then it follows that meaning is not a private endeavor. If I make it a private endeavor, then it loses its sense. This of course gets back to Wittgenstein's example of the beetle in a box. If we use the term beetle to describe something that only I can experience, then it necessarily follows that what each of us means by beetle is senseless. The thing in the box has no way of gaining a foothold in an objective reality, i.e., there is no way for anyone to objectively know what each of us are referring to. Note how this compares to our use of the word pain in reference to our pain. The concept pain has something to latch onto, viz., pain behavior. It's the pain behavior that gives meaning to the word pain, it's not my particular pain, it's not my subjective experience. This is not to deny that there are subjective experiences, but it denies that subjective experiences give meaning to words or concepts.
You said, "...it is incoherent to reference a rock with none of the subjectively imposed properties of a rock." Actually this is backwards, i.e., it's incoherent to talk about a rock in strictly subjective terms. You seem to think that your private experiences govern meaning, but that's impossible given how language forms. Language is governed by rules, and rules only make sense in social contexts. Social contexts not only show us when we are following a rule, but also show us when we are making a mistake. There is no such thing as having a completely private rule, because there would be no way to tell when you're making a mistake.
You also said, "my phenomenal state of the rock is knowable to me," but this is also an incorrect use of what it means to know. Knowing is not a completely private matter. It would not make sense to answer the question of how you know, by pointing to some internal state, or noumenal experience. The term or concept know would lose all its meaning, again it would be senseless. One can see this is so by looking at what follows from such a statement. Anything that I deem as knowledge, would be by definition knowledge. It's as if I have some privileged point of view.
Quoting Sam26
Sure, it denies it, but it's wrong to deny it. It's just the case that what happens is that I have a phenomenal state that results in a behavioral state that results in a particular linguistic use. I'm not entirely comfortable separating the linguistic use from the behavioral state either. Saying "Ouch, I'm in pain" while showing behavioral signs of not being in pain, relay sarcasm, as it's the holistic behavior (which includes sounds and gestures and anything else) that determines meaning. Writing "my dog has fleas" is no more linguistic than if I used hieroglyphics or if I painted a picture of my dogs with fleas. They are all symbolic representations of thought, and we can impose whatever rules we want on the
symbolism and those grammatical rules (for example) will be just more symbols.
That is to say, we have 3 options:
1. Phenomenal state --> Behavior ---> Language
2. Behavior --> Language
3. Phenomenal state --> Language/behavior
I take it that you accept #2, where behavior alone is what yields language (begging the question of what yielded the behavior).
I take it that you think I accept #1, where the phenomenal state causes the behavior and the behavior causes the language.
I'm suggesting I accept #3, where your phenomenal state causes language directly because there is no difference between language and behavior. They are one in the same. So how do I know that your behavior, whatever it might be, is representative of the same internal state as mine when you exhibit it? I don't. I assume it. It seems likely. But is my experience of pain like that of a spider's? I doubt it, despite its wiggling around like I might if I were in pain.
Quoting Sam26
And so when the dog barks at the door, he doesn't know there's an intruder in the yard, but you hear his bark and do know there is because you have the ability to know, but not the dog? Bizarre conclusion it seems.
My position would be that the dog formed an opinion based upon the behavior he witnessed and knew there was an intruder. You heard the bark and knew there was an intruder. You yelled out "there is an intruder" and someone else knew there was an intruder. All of this began in a dog's furry head as a belief without language. I'd actually even say that the man walking into the yard was a statement "there is an intruder in the yard" as much as if the man said "I am an intruder."
That's fine, but I think this idea of meaning that you have has been thoroughly debunked by Wittgenstein. It's not even close Hanover. Quoting Hanover
No, I'm not saying that behavior alone is what yields language. In fact, I don't accept any of these conditions as necessary for meaning. I'm saying that certain words/concepts, not all, get their meaning based on certain behaviors. In particular, the concept pain gets its meaning from pain behavior, otherwise there would be nothing for the word pain to latch on to, in terms of sharing what we mean by pain. How would we know if someone was using the word correctly?
It seems to me that you're saying that our internal states, however you might want to describe them, are a necessary condition for meaning. After all, you might say, how can we mean anything without this internal thing expressing itself (rhetorical)? This is the way I see the confusion. There is the internal me, the subjective me and my experiences, I don't deny this, and neither does Wittgenstein. What is denied is that meaning is dependent upon this internal self, and since one cannot have a private language, one cannot have private meaning.
If you want to say that language is dependent upon minds, then of course that follows, but you're saying that meaning is dependent upon minds, which is much different. Meaning is developed amongst people, i.e., two or more people working together to share concepts. It's an agreement to go on in a certain way, to proceed based on rules of use. This doesn't deny our subjective experiences, it denies how the internal mind is expressed via language, and to our point, how meaning is derived.
I can only imagine how frustrating it is to talk to me about this because you keep repeating what you're saying and I seem to be non-responsive, right? I say that because I feel the exact same way. You and @Banno seem to be so non-responsive that I wonder if we're just on a completely different wavelength (which our lack of communication despite using shared words forms somewhat of an irony). Distinguish between language and behavior. That was the gist of my post. Language is just a conveyance of meaning from one being to another, and saying "come here," giving a come hither look, or the most subtle of expressions are all the same thing. I just candidly don't know where your distinctions are.Quoting Sam26
This just makes no sense at all. It's not the concept of pain that gets its meaning from pain behavior, it's the word "pain" that gets its meaning from that. But if you're asking what pain is, it's the hurt I feel. But to the extent you're just saying that I can't know what a dog is without someone saying "dog" and pointing at a dog, I disagree. I simply wouldn't know that you called dogs that until that was somehow communicated to me.Quoting Sam26Like I said, I get the conclusions that follow from the denial of the private language. I just don't accept there are no private languages. I fully understand that my private language might be irrelevant to the public, but I'll never follow you guys equating irrelevant with non-existent. Quoting Sam26These generalities drive me crazy. Meaning of what? If you want to say the meaning of the word "dog" is developed among people trying to communicate, that's pragmatically true, and should I develop a word I use privately, it would be odd and an irrelevant practice. But if you're saying that meaning generally cannot occur outside the public, as if Robison Crusoe could not derive the meaning of any of the events unfolding upon him because he lacked anyone to share any of the new events around him, I have no earthly idea what you mean by "meaning."
It strikes me honestly as if this isn't philosophy at all, but some attempt at explaining how words are used and why we need not worry about metaphysics and the things that confuse us. It's a pragmatic approach that relies upon behaviorism to somehow satisfy those who find the intangible aspects of philosophy antiquated and unhelpful. I feel fairly comfortable in my assessment provided in this final paragraph. Other than this, I doubt we agree on much else.
Are you saying that the concept of belief serves no purpose beyond explaining acting on error?
It's interesting to ponder the relationship between belief and action. Suppose a person lacks the courage of their conviction. Maybe their belief is a sham.
What doesn't follow?
Not at all. Firstly, the concept of concepts is a mess. SO instead I'm looking at what we do in making use of beliefs.
[s]To believe something is to act as if it is true. This includes making appropriate use of language.[/s]
By introducing belief, we can make sense of folk who act erroneously. They act as if such-and-such is true, but such-and-such is actually false.
Consider the difference between "the world is flat" and "Mad Mike Hughes believes the world is flat".
Belief is a grammatical construction (a language game, if you prefer) that allows us to entertain error in our conversations.
Philosophical problems - of the sort @Hanover is stuck with, and many others - arise when folk think that the grammatical construct is the name of a piece of head-stuff, of mental furniture. They suppose that because we talk of beliefs we must have beliefs somewhere in our heads. They think because we invented a noun there must be a something we have named.
Quoting frank
A corollary of the error theory I propose is that we can explain actions - although not all that well.
So to explain why he launched himself in a self-built rocket, buggering his back, we say "Mad Mike Hughes believes the world is flat, and he wanted to prove it by flying in a rocket".
What this means is that Mad Mike acts as if the world is flat. What this does not mean is that there is a thing in Mad Mike's head that is a belief that the world is flat.
We can apply this to Jack, my cat, too. Jack acts as if there is no food in the bowl. That does not mean that Jack has a no-food-in-bowl thing in his mind. The whole conversation about animal belief is based on a misunderstanding of the grammar of belief.
That the world is flat is a proposition. It's an abstract object. It is not a mental object.
So what sort of object is it? If it is abstract and yet not mental, where is it?
My suggestion follows Wittgenstein and Austin and others in pointing out that propositions are not objects so much as things we do; and hence, the above questions are not intended to elicit an answer, but to have you re-think your position.
Forget about meaning and look at use; the whole question "what is a proposition" dissipates.
There's a theory of communication that goes: I have head-stuff. I turn it into words. You hear it. You turn it into your own head-stuff.
It's wrong, too.
"Belief and language go together" doesn't follow from "Creatures with the ability to think about their own thought and belief - and those without - are capable of having true and false belief" and "Only the former can become aware of it."
Here, the "such and such" and the "something" are both statements. To believe 'something' is to act as if it is true. Note here that "it" - when taken account of by us - is a statement(often called a "belief statement").
We're thinking about Mad Mike Hughes' belief.
Quoting Banno
We can lose the notion that belief has a location. We cannot afford to lose the distinction between belief and thinking about belief.
What does "Jack acts as if there is no food in the bowl" mean if Jack does not believe that there is no food in the bowl?
This is an empirical statement, not a philosophical one, and not one that is logically deducible. It is a statement about the world, and I suppose you know it by introspection. It must be, as you've certainly not looked in my head or my thoughts and know how I form beliefs. I'm telling you, whether you wish to believe me or not, that I have beliefs with no language at all.
To say otherwise is just false. It's like your telling me the sky is green. It's just not.
Thank you. This is a most thought provoking reply - even though it goes back to things we already covered, it shows stuff that needs explaining.
Now, how does the corrected post look to you?
My objection has been all along that what you've been saying simply does not comport to my reality, and I just couldn't accept it, regardless of the pragmatic import of your position. That is, I'm constantly being told under your account that I can't intuit things, that I can't know something without first articulating it linguistically, and that I cannot really understand something prior to my village of idiots weighing in on it. It was an odd theory, suggesting that language was this necessary thing that was required for all sorts of ideas and beliefs. It also seemed that language had a brittle definition, requiring it be some complex system of symbols like English or French, but it could not be a dog barking at the mailman. It was so odd, I felt it unworthy really of consideration, yet it seemed to be taken seriously by many of you, and so I was left with the irony of there being this ineffable theory that could not be conveyed by you to me that denied ineffability.
And so now you are only saying "By introducing belief, we can make sense of folk who act erroneously. They act as if such-and-such is true, but such-and-such is actually false." And so I am now to see that you're simply a man looking for the definition of "belief" in certain contexts, trying to see why a group of philosophers might want to create and invoke that term. It matters not what it going on in the person's head that might constitute "belief," but it simply matters what the community of speakers means by it. In other words, you're not philosophizing so much as you're trying to figure out the meaning of a word through use, which makes sense to the extent there's really no other way to do it, considering you can't look inside my head and pull out my phenomenal state. There would be no way for you to confirm if my use of the term were consistent from time to time without a behavioral correlate. It all does make sense, but I must think I'm still missing something because this just appears to be a behaviorist's guide to finding meaning, which is dandy for those who feel they've received an adequate answer without delving into the elusive workings of the mind, but it's hard to convince those who think questions about consciousness constitute THE central questions of all of philosophy.
Well, I find it unacceptable for one to pursue a path of language use while denying that "belief" names some thing, at least in some senses of the term.
This "phenomenal state"...
I find myself wondering what it consists of. That's what I cannot seem to get a straight answer to.
Hanover...
Can you help me out?
We can talk about the child's belief in any number of ways. We use statements to take account of the child's belief. The child acts as if it felt pain after touching the fire. The child acts as if it is scared to touch the fire again. The child acts as if it believes that touching fire hurts. The child is not making a knowledge claim. The child is not stating his/her belief. The child believes that touching fire hurts none-the-less, and s/he does so without language.
What this shows us is that there are some beliefs that clearly do not require language. That is, there are some beliefs that can be formed and held by a non-linguistic creature. Not all belief is existentially dependent upon language.
So...
We clearly have the need to draw and maintain a distinction between our reports of the child's belief and the child's belief. That distinction needs fleshed out... filled in, as it were. We know what our reports consist of, but what is the content of the child's belief? What does it consist of? Certainly not a statement. Certainly not our report of it. That's a start...
The child's belief must be meaningful, in some way or other, to the child, and it cannot consist of statements. Let's assess the situation...
None of the following - the child, the fire, and the behaviour - are existentially dependent upon language. The child draws a correlation, connection, and/or association(all of those work) between it's behaviour and the pain that followed. The child's ability to do that is existentially dependent upon some things, but language isn't one of them. That is precisely what that child's belief consists of. The child has attributed meaning by virtue of drawing these correlations between the fire and his/herself. The child has recognized/attributed causality. The child's belief presupposes truth(as correspondence with fact/reality) by virtue of all correlation presupposing the existence it's own content(regardless of subsequent qualification as 'imaginary', 'real', or otherwise). The child's belief is also true.
There you have it folks:The initial attribution(origen) of meaning, the presupposition of truth as correspondence(origen), and the recognition/attribution of causality are all accounted for and/or necessary for rudimentary(pre and/or non-linguistic) belief formation itself(this one anyway).
Language follows suit.
What did I miss?
Sometimes, Jack's belief is true. Thus, either true belief does not require truth, or truth does not require language. The latter is clearly the case. Conceptions of "truth"(senses of the term if one prefers) require language. Correspondence with fact/reality does not. So, there is one sense of the term "truth" that points towards something that is not existentially contingent upon language, and it works exclusively with the notion of belief I'm putting forth.
Truth is relevant here because all belief presupposes it's own correspondence with/to fact/reality somewhere along the line... non-linguistic creatures' belief is not exempt here(as earlier explained).
This is relevant because the redundancy advocates treat "is true" as if it's equivalent to truth. That's a mistake though. It's not. "Is true" is a bi-product of thought and belief expression, which is in turn a product of thought and belief formation accompanied by language. "Is true" becomes redundant because belief presupposes truth(it's own correspondence with/to fact/reality), and if a speaker believes what they say then adding "is true" to a belief statement adds nothing more than superfluous language use. It's unnecessary and adds nothing meaningful to an already honest statement.
At any rate, much like Jack, my own cat is clearly attempting to get me to do something that she wants me to do. She is making a concerted attempt at changing the way things are so that they become more to her liking. She cannot know that she is doing this. She cannot think in these ways, for she has no language capable of isolating here own thought and belief as a means for thinking more about it. We do. I mean, that's what language allows here. She can, however, have wants and some idea or other about how to get something that she wants. Her so called 'ideas' consist entirely of her belief system, and it's rudimentary, to say the least.
So, if Jack is expressing his belief that Banno will feed him if he behaves in a certain way, then his expression will consist entirely in/of his behaviour. If Banno correctly attributes meaning to Jack's behavioural expressions, then both Banno and Jack will have drawn the same correlations between the behaviour and food(getting fed). Banno can know what Jack wants, and not oblige. Banno can know what Jack wants and oblige. That is, Banno can draw the same correlations, and thus meaning would be shared, regardless of whether or not Banno actually did what Jack wanted.
It's hard to arrive at this particular example of shared meaning, and deny language.
That's a concession of sorts Banno...
:wink:
I deny this. Unless you define "statement" as an utterance in a formal language, I fail to see why crying doesn't count as a symbolic representation of pain, but an utterance of "ouch" does. These theories of language must define language.
You're asking what the "mind" substance is?
Hey Hanover. I know that the above isn't a reply to me, however seeing that I have a healthy respect for Banno's position, I am one of the ones who take it seriously. Let's see if I can make the best of this opportunity.
I have several different concerns here. I'm not entirely sure that the above quote show an adequate understanding of what's going on here, particularly between the viewpoint you've put forth and what Banno has been (mainly)arguing for as long as I've been reading him(and you too for that matter, assuming you're the same "Hanover" as on the old forum).
To put it bluntly: I think both of you are about half right, because you're all the way wrong in the same way. Neither of you draw and maintain the pivotal meaningful distinction between thought and belief and thinking about thought and belief. Particularly what they both are existentially dependent upon, and what they consist of.
Quoting Hanover
It counts to you as a symbolic representation of pain. If the child is not crying as a means to state their belief, then they're not making a statement. You've drawn connections between crying and pain. Thus, the crying 'symbolizes' the pain... to you.
Unless the child has drawn the same connections between crying and pain, there is no such symbolization at hand in the child's thought/belief. The same holds good of an utterance of "ouch". That is sometimes not a representation of pain at all, particularly to the one in pain. It can be, but doesn't have to be. If there is no connection made between the crying or the "ouch" and the pain by the one who's in pain, there can be no justifiable symbolic representation attributed by us to them.
Such representation requires something to be symbol("ouch" and crying in this case), something to be symbolized(the pain, in this case) and a creature who has drawn a correlation, connection, and/or association between the two... anything less, and there is no such symbolism at work...
Uh. No.
I'm asking you to justify your claims, particularly the ones involving "phenomenal states". I'm asking you to set out the criterion which - when met by a candidate - would count minimally at least, as being a phenomenal state.
What does it consist of? What is it existentially dependent upon?
We can look towards an angry person, and know by their behaviour that they are in an angry state of mind. That is, the anger is strongly influencing what they say and do.
That's not belief, rather it's a result thereof. Belief has efficacy.
Is it a phenomenal state?
What can we say about this dog's behaviour, as it pertains to language and belief?
Well. Knowing what the dog is thinking is required, isn't it? I mean, if we are to claim that the dog is communicating with us, we would have to say what it is that is being communicated, wouldn't we?
I think so. So, we've already arrived at the mental ongoings of the dog.
Earlier it was suggested that the dog's barking communicated the dog's belief that an intruder was in the yard.
That's not too terrible an assertion is it? I mean, is it out of the realm of possibility that a dog can believe that an intruder is in the yard? It can certainly see an intruder.
The problem however, is this...
Does the dog see the intruder as an intruder?
I spoke earlier about wanting to deal with the dynamics of belief. I'm not at all happy with thinking of a belief as a state, a particular condition that presumably sometimes lasts over time.
A belief shows itself in a myriad of ways. Mad Mike manifests his belief verbally in interviews, as well a in tightening the nut on that bolt on his home-made rocket. Why? Because he believes that the earth is flat.
The one belief is used to explain a world of action.
Link this back to Wittgenstein's suggestion that we rid ourselves of the notion of a private belief by imagining that it changes over time.
Mad Mike says he believes that the Earth is flat, and this explains his behaviour. But in the long night of the soul he admits that the Earth is round, and holds himself up as the champion of empirical method who will show it to be so.
He never tells of this.
And yet both beliefs explain his behaviour.
Odd.
Sort of. You can drop the "first".
Knowing how to ride a bike is demonstrated by riding a bike; knowledge of addition is demonstrated by doing addition.
Knowledge of a fact is true and believed, and hence hence propositional. Hence any such knowledge can be articulated simply by speaking the proposition. Knowledge of fact can be demonstrated by stating that fact.
That's not a restriction; just a part of the grammar of knowledge.
Your village idiots set up the language in which you can articulate your knowledge. But your knowledge is not dependent on their agreement.
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting creativesoul
And? The belief can still be stated.
I rather like this.
A theory that could not be understood but with denies ineffability. Sweet! You can hear duck-rabbits marching!
And yet, since we understand it to deny ineffability, we understand at least part of it.
The story goes that if it cannot be said, it might be shown. So Mad Mike looks at a duck-rabbit and sees a rabbit. He is told it also looks like a duck, but he can't see it.
Perhaps he might move on by saying that Fred also sees a duck, but that he himself cannot; and thereafter remain silent.
Someone else (Apo?) comes along and says it's not really a duck or a rabbit, but a bunch of curved lines.
But Fred still sometimes sees the duck, sometimes the rabbit; Mike still sees the rabbit, but no duck.
Someone else says it's a dog. But secretly, they see the duck or the rabbit, and just threw the dog in to stir the pot.
And... it follows that your earlier notion of "belief" cannot take proper account of this everyday situation.
It follows that the child's belief is not existentially dependent upon language. It follows that the content of the child's belief is not propositional. It follows that the child cannot have a disposition towards a statement.
Regarding this tired go-to notion of being state-able. We've been here before, it seems necessary to go there again...
There is a difference between our setting out what non-linguistic belief consists of and what non-linguistic belief consists of. This difference has multiple facets, all of which need to be properly understood in order to understand the import of what's being argued here.
Our setting out a non-linguistic belief is a metacognitive endeavor. We are thinking about belief. We are reporting upon non-linguistic belief. This endeavor requires language.
Non-linguistic belief does not - cannot.
If a belief does not consist of statements(does not have propositional content), but we can state what it does consist of, are we stating their belief? If so, then we agree, and the fact that the belief can be stated is irrelevant.
Do not confuse our report with what we're reporting upon.
This is a contradiction on it's face Banno.
If we could say that his behaviour is explained by virtue of his believing the world is flat, and setting out to prove that, but we could equally say that his behaviour is explained by virtue of his believing that the world is not flat, and setting out to prove that, then there is inadequate evidence to warrant stating either, for his behaviour supports both equally.
This isn't quite right either...
Some knowledge is not existentially dependent upon it's being demonstrated. The fire example. The child can know that touching fire hurts without articulating it linguistically. It can acquire such knowledge in a room with no one else around. There is no demonstration necessary.
The child is not making a knowledge claim. Having knowledge does not always require that the creature have ability to state it.
There are all sorts of ineffable theories. There are certainly some students that no amount of discussion is going to explain to them algebra, others are limited at geometry, others calculus, and certainly plenty of people can't begin to understand quantum mechanics. If we can assume that there exists a single person who cannot understand Theory X, I don't see why we can't logically assume there is a Theory X that one person and one person alone can understand.. It is possible that Einstein arrived at his theories by himself and it could have been possible that he alone could understand his conclusions, with no one else being able to comprehend what he said.
Quoting Banno
And what do you see when you look at the duck/rabbit? I'd submit it's none of the things you've presented, but you actually use it as a symbol for the concept of symbol ambiguity and that context and perspective can influence an observer's understanding of meaning. Even should my summary of your thoughts be wrong, it is very clear to me that you aren't simply just trying to show me a cool optical illusion, but you mean to say something by it.
And so I don't see what you mean to invoke by the duck/rabbit in this discussion. It strikes me that if I continued to just say "Wow, that's a cool picture... I see a duck, now a rabbit, wait... now a duck." and I just kept doing that, you'd certainly think that I entirely failed to understand what you were saying. Is it not still the meaning of what you intend to convey (that mental thing in your head) that is what is relevant?
Hm.
One may wonder what the relevance is here, and that would be a perfectly understandable pondering. It has to do with belief and knowledge.
Making a knowledge claim is not equivalent to, nor is it necessary for, acquiring knowledge. What it takes to make a knowledge claim is not equivalent to what it takes to have knowledge.
The fire example. The child's belief is well-grounded. It is true. It is an example that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that one can acquire justified true belief despite the fact that they have no language.
Is that child's belief ineffable? Certainly not, we're effin' it now. Does that child's belief consist of propositional content? I've no reason to conclude that. Our report of it most certainly consists of language. We can become aware of that which exists in it's entirety prior to our becoming aware of it. Non-linguistic thought and belief is one such thing.
As a result, we can further know that knowledge can be gleaned by creatures' incapable of meaningful utterance.
All of this follows from a notion of "belief" that has it right.
Some reports of "belief" talk about that which exists, in it's entirety, prior to our identifying, isolating and further examining it. All other senses of "truth", aside from the one which equates truth and reality, take about that which is existentially dependent upon language.
All belief presupposes it's own truth.
Statements of belief do so by virtue of presupposing to be telling it like it is; to be setting out the way things are, were, and/or will be. Statements of belief are social mechanisms, that work best when understood for what they are. The are an irrevocably necessary ingredient of a successful society.
All of this follows from a notion of "belief" that has it right.
Earlier in this child's life, around six months ago, she was bitten by a medium-large sized dog, a shepard of sorts. The dog bit her in the face, and the scar remains visible, although it's healed nicely and may disappear with enough time. That experience of being bitten frightened the child and left quite the impression within the child's thinking.
The kitchen she is now meandering around in the walker belongs to friends of her parents. She's been here before, and the owners have a rather large dog, a Rottweiler, who's walking around the house and enters the kitchen. The owners' of the dog and the girl's parents often tell the dog "Go away" when they want the dog to go somewhere else. The girl hasn't been taught how to do the same, at least not intentionally so. She doesn't speak in much else aside from "Dada" and "Mama". However, the girl sees the dog enter the kitchen and says for the very first time, with obvious and clear intention, "Go away!", and the dog leaves.
The girl's parents were amazed that she had behaved like this, for they did not attempt to teach her to do this, although in behaving the same way, they actually had... sort of. She put it all together, as one must when learning how to do things with words.
She had witnessed others saying "Go away!" and observed the dog leaving afterwards, and in doing so had drawn correlations between others' behaviour and what happened afterwards. I put it to you that the girl saw the dog, believed that the dog was there, and further believed that saying "Go away!" would result in the dog going away. Her belief ended up being true.
She didn't state her belief. She didn't state anything at all. She couldn't state her belief. We can. She cannot understand her own mental ongoings, although when the time comes, she'll surely assent to our report on them...
If it is the case that all belief consists of the same basic(elemental) ingredients(amongst others), and those basic constituents alone are adequate and/or sufficient for belief, then we have the strongest possible justificatory ground to conclude that these are the basic elemental constituents of belief. Being comprised of these basic elemental constituents is what makes a belief what it is. The different kinds of belief are determined by the different elemental constituents; those aside from the common denominators(basic elemental constituents).
I once posited a distinction between linguistic and non-linguistic belief, and further attempted to work out the difference in terms of the belief content. That distinction finds significant trouble when it comes to a non-linguistic creature forming and/or holding belief about something that is clearly existentially dependent upon language. It only follows that non-linguistic belief can be about that which is existentially dependent upon language. Earlier I spoke of a toaster, a mouse, and a cat. Since a cat can believe that a mouse is behind a toaster, and toasters are existentially dependent upon language, it only follows that non-linguistic belief(drawn and held by non-linguistic creatures) can be about(in some way or other) that which is existentially dependent upon language.
If the content of non-linguistic belief cannot include that which is existentially dependent upon language, but can yet still be about something that is, then there is a distinction to be drawn between a belief being about something(about-ness) and belief content. When a non-linguistic belief is about something or other that is existentially dependent upon language(a toaster), that something or other need only to be perceptible to the creature. The toaster is part of the belief content, but not as a toaster. The cat doesn't perceive the toaster as a toaster, but rather the toaster is simply what the mouse is hiding behind. The cat also doesn't perceive the mouse as a mouse. Jack doesn't perceive the bowl as a bowl... an empty one not withstanding.
Quoting Hanover
We take care to distinguish the unexpressed,which might be said but so far hasn't, from the inexpressible, which cannot be said. And to this you now add a theory X which is expressible but not understood. And what you are saying is that Einstein might have been a crackpot.
I would replace this by saying that an unshared theory is not a theory at all; and further that a theory understood by only one person is not a theory.
There is a difference between a theory not being understood by George and a theory not being understandable at all.
What word do you use to describe a true explanation that no one in the kingdom of fools (minus one) understands?
His theory could be expressable in principle, but still kept private. He probably just got tired of dealing with mean girls.
If you can assume on an island of 2 people that George understands something that Bob does not, regardless of how hard George tries, then you would have a theory of only 1. Bob would hear the sounds and try to understand the theory, but he couldn't. I don't understand why you find that impossible.
I don't see your point here. Are you making an empirical claim about how knowledge is acquired where it must be understandable to another person in order for it to exist? Help me out here. Is it sufficient that George be able to explain it to himself just well enough for his homunculus gets it?
Your framing of questions such as this shows a misinterpretation of what is going on. IT's how you picture the situation that is problematic. There isn't an answer to the situation you set up.
IF Knowledge is justified true belief, and if belief is propositional, then knowledge is propositional.
IF knowledge is being able to act in a specified way - knowing how to ride a bike - then it is demonstrated in that act.
Either way, knowledge is not private.
Suppose that Bob's theory changes over the time spent on the island, but Bob doesn't notice. There's no written record to compare it to, and George has no idea.
Slowly, over time, Bob comes to think the exact opposite of what he first believed, but does not notice.
It would be very strange to claim here that Bob had a theory.
And getting back on topic, what makes beliefs worthy of consideration at all is that they differ from one person to another, and with one person over time.
If the world were epistemically transparent, in such a way that we always agreed, and that we always knew what was true, there would be no need to seperate truth and falsehood, and no need to distinguish knowledge from belief.
SO, how do we tell that one person has a different belief to another...?
Descartes failed to notice that in doubting all but his own doubt, he already admitted the language in which he could doubt; and hence he admitted the other that enables language.
Perhaps that 's @Hanover's error, too. The greater the primacy given to the self, the greater the need to contrast it with the other.
Indeed, if it is not expressible, why call it a theory? If it is not expressible, then it is nothing.
Bike riding is not private.
IF i can't tell you what I believe, I can show you. Beliefs are not private, though they may be unexpressed.
I can't show you how to communicate (I'm talking about the more basic aspects of it, not superficial stuff like wording). You must already know how to do it in order for me to point to it.
It's just an example of something inexpressable. Does that make it private? I'm not sure what that would even mean. I don't know if that bears on what you're talking about. It's just more Heidegger.
1. Why would it be strange to claim Bob had a theory?
2. If George understood Bob's theory, and both of their recollection changed over time, did Bob not have a theory?
So you are comfortable with Bob thinking that he has a theory that contradicts itself?
Bob believes A; over time, his belief changes to ~A, but he does not notice, and has no other way of understanding that his belief has changed, and hence he thinks he has the same belief.
You're OK with that?
Fine.
Really? So language is unlearnable?
How is this relevant?
We can see that he held two different beliefs.
That is, in order to understand this situation, we are needed.
Beliefs require the Other.
This is just an empirically incorrect epistimological statement, declaring that the only way to establish knowledge of prior events is through witness testimony. Recording devices, physical evidence, personal recollections are all other ways, not withstanding that witnesses can just as easily forget as you can.
You aren't persuaded by Chomsky?
I'm more interested in how we would manage to have the idea of privacy if, as you say, it's nothing.
How does that work in your view?
In the example - which you set up - recording devices, physical evidence, personal recollections are ruled out ex hypothesi. Any such device would make the example public, nullifying your argument.
I think the point is that it makes no sense to say that you could believe something which could not, even in principle, be either lingually expressed or shown by means of some perceptual behaviour; actions or pictures or whatnot.
Well if it cannot be expressed or shown then it may not be nothing, but it certainly cannot qualify as a belief. What could it be? Any ideas?
The interesting bit:
An individual's belief is inscrutable
I tried to defend the notion that to believe something is to act as if it is true. It didn't work, because one can act in ways contrary to one's beliefs. It's a result of the lack of symmetry between beliefs and actions mentioned above - Beliefs explain but do not determine actions. Thanks due to @Hanover.
Any belief can be made to account for any action, by adding suitable auxiliary beliefs.
Interesting, but not demonstrated.
Quoting frank
Yeah, serves me right for over-stating the case.
It's not nothing, it's irrelevant.
Edit: I see Janus said this before me.
As you and recently @Janus have noted, in a propositional account of belief one argues not that belief must be expressed in fact, but that it must be expressible in principle.
Why not follow a similar line here? You could argue that beliefs are things that could be acted upon. Or as you put it, it must be possible to behave as if the belief were true. (And for free you get a way of distinguishing beliefs from each other.)
What of the ambiguity mentioned above - any belief could be used to justify any action, given suitable auxiliaries.
This appears to undermine any causal link between belief and act.
All of which is serving to reinforce my intuition that belief is hollow.
Ceteris paribus? It's "in principle" after all.
You could head for something like: given a set of beliefs, belief P is the belief which, if added to the set, eventuates in action A.
Or: belief P explains action A if P and only P is a member of every set of beliefs that explains A.
I can think of lots of models to test drive.
OK, let's take it for a drive...
Mad Mike builds rockets to launch himself into space so that he can see for himself if the Earth is flat or curved. Mike says he believes that the Earth is flat, and this explains his behaviour. But in the long night of the soul he admits that the Earth is round, and holds himself up as the champion of empirical method who will show it to be so.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
So what would belief P be in Mad Mike's case?
Further, what if there is no belief P that is a member of every set of beliefs that would explain A? After all, why should there be such a belief?
Hence, are Max's beliefs inscrutable?
Two responses:
1. Why is a document written in my chicken scratch that is truly only decipherable by me "public," if It only conveys information to me and it helps me recollect prior events?, and
2. Why is having George available helpful in me recollecting past theories I've held if I have a better memory than him?
You're weh'cum
This reply is about a month late, but whatever. Yes, it is. Thank you for reminding me. But unless you or someone else says something that I disagree with, I will have very little to say. And, on the face of it at least, there's nothing in that quote which you've brought up that I disagree with.
This reminds of those old realism vs. anti-realism debates, except here it's like you've swapped sides and have borrowed the anti-realist shtick of saying, "It's just a narrative".
I suppose it's possible that he doesn't really believe that the world is flat, and is merely acting as though he does, but if he does, as we have reason to believe, then his belief at least has an obvious relation to that thing in his head. After all, beliefs could not arise if it weren't for those things in our respective heads.
Yeah, that sounds about right. :up:
I personally think that belief give to people like a reason to live and a real trust in what they do u know, even if the belief is not the truth, that's not the point, but there are a lots of examples on people who made/achieved awesome things because their belief pushed them into a succesfull mindset like they are more able to achieve what they aim. whatever it is, look at what people did on the 21 december 2012 or on highly religious people who made billions.
what do u think bout that ?
Suppose I'm looking for my keys in the kitchen. If asked why I'm doing that, I might say that I think I left them there. Someone else asked why I'm doing what I'm doing might say I believe my keys are in the kitchen. In each case, some belief is attributed to me as at least part of an explanation of my behavior.
The twin problems that arise are that (1) some other beliefs might also work as part of an explanation of my behavior, substituting for the belief previously offered; and (2) I might have that belief and yet not engage in the observed behavior.
Is that where we are?
I think this is right: acting on a belief is a way of expressing it. So in order to qualify as a belief it must be able to be either described, depicted or explained or else acted upon, at least in principle.
Suppose I want to have my keys. Then we might say
(A) Given that Pat wants his keys, if he believes they are in the kitchen, then ceteris paribus he will look for them in the kitchen.
Now (A) can fail if, say, there's a knife-wielding madman in my kitchen. It could also fail if I just happen to find them in the living room on my way to the kitchen. It can fail in lots of ways.
We could say (A) is like any other prediction, that it's really a claim that the consequent is probable, and it can be defeated by unlikely occurrences. But we might prefer something more like this:
(B) Given that Pat wants his keys, if he believes they are in the kitchen, and if he is rational, then ceteris paribus he will look for them in the kitchen.
That's still a prediction, and still probable. So maybe we need this:
(C) Given that Pat wants his keys, if he believes they are in the kitchen, and if he is rational, then he will wish to look for them in the kitchen.
And that can be true whether it's safe for me to enter the kitchen, and right up until the point that I find my keys elsewhere.
That only gives us an expected connection between a belief and an intended behavior, rather than an actual behavior, and lots of shadows can fall between the intention and the act. Does that bother us?
ADDENDUM
Beliefs here are how we get from one preference to another. How we get from preference to action is left for another day.
Same answer. Putting it in writing or saying it out loud both bring it out in the open.
Yes.
Beliefs are of little use in explaining behaviour.
I still feel pretty good about the preference version, because I get to say "If you don't want to look for your keys in the kitchen, either you don't think they're there or you don't want to find them (or you don't reason like the rest of us)." That feels solid to me.
You guys do have cars down there, don't you?
:grimace:
Have you come across the book The Elephant in the Brain?
See https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/robin-hanson-on-lying-to-ourselves/
I was about to start a thread on it, but I might leave that for now.
So beliefs are post-hoc justifications for stuff we do anyway.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
So in effect the reason Pat looks in the kitchen is not that he believes the keys are there but that he wishes to appear rational.
The belief is irrelevant. Pat does what Pat does.
Kind of like this:
But that can't be right, because of the knife-wielding psycho in the kitchen. I can form a preference to look there even if it's overridden by my preference to go on breathing. Rationality does seem to have a foothold here: given some preferences and beliefs, you should also have this preference. Maybe you don't act on it for whatever reason, or for no reason. Different issue.
All of that assumes by "behavior" you mean outward, publicly observable actions. Are you throwing in what I think as behavior?
What else would it be?
(A triplet - Pierce would be so pleased)
There's surely a difference of some kind. We can say there's A's and there's B's, or we can say there's two kinds of A's. I don't suppose it matters unless we want to say "All A's are F"; then we'd want to be sure we don't mean "All type 1 A's are F."
In recent posts here, I've been kicking the can of outward behavior into another zip code.
It's not:
Pat believes the keys are in the Kitchen
So, all things being equal, Pat will search in the kitchen
but
Pat searched in the kitchen
Therefore Pat says he believes the keys are in the kitchen
Yes, we learn what a belief is by what we observe, what we speak, and what is written. There are many observable actions that we correlate with beliefs. We learn the use of the word belief just as we learn the word pain. The outward signs show us what a belief is, just as the outward signs of pain, show us what pain is. The meaning of the words having nothing to do with anything inner, but with the outward sign of the inner process. We learn to associate a moan, a cry, a scream with pain, we use the word in conjunction with others, i.e., as a rule-based linguistic process. We are able to look at an animal and see that it too can show certain behaviors that show signs of pain, not unlike ours. However, the animal can only show us so much. As Wittgenstein pointed out, "A dog believes his master is at the door. But can he also believe his master will come the day after tomorrow?" Some things can only be shown if one has mastered the use of a language.
Culture and nature provide the forms of background practices from which we derive propositions (upon reflection.) Our reflections in turn affect future experiences.
If you're wanting you, me, and the world to stand as independent entities, you're going to become stuck in a Cartesian mudpit.
And, the post hoc justifications we use to explain our own behaviour lend themselves to ascribing beliefs to animals.
:grimace:
Yeah I get that. And my point was that this sort of post hoc fails if I don't act on my preference. You'd have to say my acquiring the preference is what I just do, and that belief figures in my post hoc justification for the new preference I have.
We'd have to work on that. Even if we just dropped all talk of belief or rationality or community norms, what would turn a desire to find my keys into a desire to look for them in the kitchen? Maybe there are substitutes for belief, but something has to get you from one to the other.
Edit: autocorrect
That's pretty much what I am suggesting: that your preference is what you do, and your belief is a (logically) post hoc explanation for your action.
"I did it because it was my preference" is as useful as "I did it because of my belief".
What happened to the connection between "I want to find my keys" and "I want to look for them in the kitchen"?
Okay, but the vibe I'm getting here is that this "explanation" is essentially fictive, that the right word for all this sort of stuff is "rationalization". Is that your view?
If so, is it the connections made that are fictive, or what is connected, or both? For example, if you're nervous about your intentions, maybe your brain rummages around among your actual beliefs and preferences and so forth, finds some stuff that will pass for an explanation and serves that up as why you want to do what you want to do. What's fictive there is not the beliefs and such, and hey -- maybe not even the logical connections between everything, since after all this has to be convincing. What's fictive is that this is the process you went through in forming your present desire.
Feels like this is cognitive science now, rather than philosophy, so I'm getting confused ... Are we waiting on brain scans to find out if beliefs are fictive?
Here's another version. When it catches a "need an explanation" signal, your brain thinks, "I could show you the machine code for what actually happened but you wouldn't understand it, maybe not even with drugs. I could show it to you in Python -- shit, you never learned Python. What have we got? Turbo Pascal? Are you kidding? Okay, here's what happened in Turbo Pascal.”
Lucky, most people are stuck in Brainfuck.
That seems to be precisely what happens according to some neuroscientists. Have you ever read anything by Ramachandran? He talks a lot about this. What seems to hound these discussions is the idea that the deeper level signals in the brain which lead to our concious thought should make any sense at all. A significant number of neuroscientists seem convinced they don't. Your memory seems to be able to serve you up any number of images and connections, your sensory signals deliver a whole jumble more, none of then correspond to each other or make any kind of sense. It's the job of our concious to make them seem coherent, but the important thing here is that coherence is the the only aim, correspondence to reality or consistency doesn't even enter the picture.
So, to answer your question about the preference without the action, could it be simply that your memory served you up an image of the keys sitting next to the fruit bowl? Why did that image pop into your head?... "Well," rationalizes the concious, "it must be because your keys actually are next to the fruit bowl, why else would you have such an image? The only other explanation is that you can't trust your memory, and we can't go around basing our next thought on that principle, can we?"
"I believe Paris is the capital of France" becomes, "when people ask me what the capital of France is, I want to say Paris, when I try to remember stuff about Paris, all these images of France enter my head, lots of related information about it's location on the Seine etc., the only reason why that could be happening is if Paris is the capital of France".
It explains how people can be brain-washed or hypnotised to have false beliefs.
I think our conciousness is just a story-telling machine, it's job is to come up with reasonable sounding explanations for all the varied and mostly contradictory information we get served up from the different parts of our brain so that we can act more quickly on a 'best guess' of what's really out there.
I tried, rather whimsically, earlier in this thread to convince people that a thermostat had beliefs. No-one was having any of it, but it's worse than that. I think if a thermostat could be said to have beliefs, it would be more rational than us. It at least, only has to decide how to act based on a single source of data (the room temperature) and so it will consistently make the same choice given the same data. We might make a different choice, given the same data set because it depends what story our conciousness comes up with to explain all the conflicting data in the set.
Yeah, because he believed that there was a good chance his keys were there.
Have not read Ramachandran, but cognitive science is enough in the air it's not hard to have a sense of these sorts of things. I'm just never sure what the philosophical upshot is. That was the point of the "machine code" post after the one you quote: of course a person's brain is doing all sorts of stuff below the level of consciousness, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everything we think about people and how they reason is wrong. That looks like a category mistake.
Suppose I argue that you don't "really" hear Giancarlo Stanton's bat striking the ball, that there is a vibration in the air, and your brain processes that as an auditory signal in some complicated way that isn't simply veridical, and puts it together with a highly processed version of the visual sensations you're having, makes some adjustments for a direction for the "sound" to be perceived to have come from, and "arbitrarily" assigns it to the image your brain has created of the Stanton-object swinging. I've left out ~1200 pages of detail. I've probably also left out too many of the "justs" and "onlys" that this sort of account relies on, but I got an "arbitrarily" in there.
Should be clear I don't think this is anything like proof I don't hear bat striking (the crap out of) ball. It's just an account of how I do that -- not sure what a more neutral phrase there would be -- at another level that doesn't include me or bats or balls.
For me, the philosophical significance is in both the malleability of the conscious experience, and in the unreliability of our intuitive model of the world.
The first I think has implications for the philosophy of mind, mainly in that (to bastardise Nagel) there isn't even a 'thing that it's like' to be us. I think pretty much any philosophical framework, from Descartes to Husserl, which has as it's centre the idea of the truth of introspection, must question its methodology in the light of the fact that out conciousness simply does not serve us any coherent or consistent story which might yield any deeper truths on analysis. It's not the sound of the cricket ball being hit that we might doubt, but that it 'means' anything to hear it.
The second part I think simply lends weight to phenomenalism, but perhaps more importantly reminds us that we have no reason to assume that theories which work are also ones which make intuitive sense. I think there's still a tendency, even among professional philosophers to err towards ideas which make intuitive sense, when the reality of our modelling tools means that other theories may work better for us, if we can just get over the weird feeling accepting them gives us at first.
Not true unless speaking insincerely counts as acting in a way. Here, there need to be a distinction drawn between what one says and what one does. One will not do something contrary to what they believe, unless for show and tell. Privately, it just plain does not happen. One will say, perhaps, all sorts of things contrary to what they believe. It's called dishonesty/insincerity/lying.
So...
Just because lying is possible, it does not follow that belief does not effect/affect behavior. It's quite a bit more nuanced than that. Jack is not capable of lying...
I think I'm cool with most of this. (But what's that intuition worth?)
We've talked elsewhere about the special use of introspection in linguistics. (The stuff about speaking on behalf of your speech community.) Something I'd like to know more about is the idea of theory in linguistics. It's my (limited) understanding that in trying to model a language formally, whether any speaker is or even could be conscious of the theory is not an issue. I think there are constraints on what could be computable, and thus conceivably instantiated in a human brain. And I guess there are also learnability constraints. But we know -- by introspection, no less! -- that people do not and need not consciously work through their knowledge of a language in order to speak it. I think there is some residual uncertainty, the usual anxiety of modeling, about whether it would be meaningful much less correct to say that your complete theoretical description must in fact be instantiated in the brains of speakers. I don't know where people come down on that.
Anyway, that would be a principled way of leaning away from what's agreeable to your intuition and toward whatever has the most predictive power, because the theory's structure might not look much like what you think the structure of your language is, if you think about it, or much like the sorts of things you think about when you do consciously intervene in the production of speech.
And in a broad sense I think the stuff we've learned about cognitive biases the last several decades -- with, you know, research, not anecdotes! -- is all to the good. It's notable that awareness of such biases can lead to corrective conscious intervention. ("Man this rookie shortstop is hitting like a god! -- Okay, okay, dial down the excitement a bit, that's only 50 PAs ...")
Not sure where that leaves me. There's tons of stuff that goes on "below" -- it's always "below", isn't it? -- the level of consciousness, and I'm cool with that. How we do intervene consciously in those unconscious, automatic processes is pretty interesting, especially since there's a whole lot of reasoning I'm interested in that does seem to take place in the exception room instead of the business-as-usual room. The use of intuition there does require considerable care -- not least because it might represent the automatic department trying to assert control and get consciousness off its turf!
Interesting thoughts. I'm a fairly committed realist (even, dare I say something of a materialist... I know, but we're fairly easily killed with silver bullets and a stake through the heart). So, for me, numbers present a problem to be solved. When it comes to a belief in the subjectivity, or unreliability, of intuition, language, I think, plays the same role. Its unreasonably effective given that no-one who speaks it understands how it functions.
I think the solution I tentatively apply to numbers though can be applied to language also. Both, I think, are meta-real, by which I mean the entities themselves don't exist as real objects (numbers, words), but are a shared fiction. We must tell each other what the fiction is before we can use them, but it is because our consciousness is so desperately searching (and with such efficiency) for a 'fiction' which can be used to unite our various empirical epistemologies that these fictions have such staying power.
Our views are very close.
I have almost irresistible impulses toward naturalism and nominalism. Almost started a thread yesterday on abstract objects as imaginary, supported by certain sorts of speech acts. I cannot make the details work though ... As it turns out, Darth started one, so I'll probably chime in there.
I often wish I'd never even heard of ontology.
This conclusion isn't true Banno. We know that dishonest/insincere behaviour happens. Thus, we know that behaviour alone does not always show belief(particularly when it's regarding creatures capable of insincerity). We still know that one's belief determines one's actions. Even those actions that are contrary to one's belief are caused by belief , because insincerity is intentionally misrepresenting one's own belief. In this instance, one's belief is not necessarily equivalent to the belief statement being professed. After-all, a liar does not believe what they say. One cannot accidentally do this.
Call this situation a case of mis-speaking and I'll respond by arguing how one cannot deliberately mis-speak. Lying is deliberate. Mis-speaking is not. One cannot accidentally say something that they do not believe. They know it every time. When it comes out, one knows whether or not one believes it, doesn't believe it or is unsure whether or not to believe it. A sincere speaker will immediately correct themselves.
One acts contrary to their beliefs, and they know it. It does not follow that that behaviour was not determined by belief. Beliefs most certainly determine deliberate, intentional, voluntary actions, even the act of making statements contrary to one's beliefs. Those insincere speech acts are what they are because one is deliberately misrepresenting one's own thought and belief. Not all belief is overt. All belief is operative(it influences behaviour).
Quoting Banno
Using a belief is not equivalent to having it. One cannot accidentally use a belief to justify an action, regardless of whether or not they have the belief. One can deliberately misrepresent their own belief. One way of doing that would be to use a belief that they do not have to justify an action. It does not follow that that justification behaviour wasn't determined by belief. It also does not follow that the original behaviour being justified wasn't determined by belief. It follows that not all speakers believe what they say. It follows that not all belief-caused behaviour shows the actual(operative) belief(s).
The two beliefs causing the insincere behaviour are one that is contrary to the lie(that's the one being deliberately misrepresented by the lie), and the other(that lying is the best thing to do).
You're thinking about your own belief frank...
One must first have belief, and the capability to think about it, prior to being able to think about it.
1. Agreed, but it can also be purely a physical proposition or a pure attitude disregarding the physical.
2. Belief can and cannot imply truth, but truth or falsehood are the essence of the tool of belief.
3. Totally agreed, unless they have Dissociative Identity Disorder, but I understand that is a stretch.
4. Agreed, but I like to think of it as nihilation rather then making sense of error. Acquiring knowledge is first and foremost a deductive process that leads to an inductive or inferential process.
5. I dont think so in essence. Yes, words change but the dynamic is always stemmed from Human Success and Human error, meaning love and fear. Our intentions change, yes, but our motivations are always the same: Security, Love, Fun.
6. This sounds like you're against cultural relativism, and I generally agree with that notion. For example, schadenfreude has no English equivalent, but it's basis of pleasure of others pain is just as knowable for English speakers, it's just a discrepancy of vocabulary.
7. I totally agree, if this were true, that would mean magic were real. Once something is real that was once imaginary it is subject to the rules of reality and then no longer purely immaterial in the mind.
8. This sounds like transcendence to me, so once again cultural and even on a person to person basis make this a very grey area.
9. I disagree, you can discern peoples beliefs even if you don't understands the minutae of every event that led to their actions. Is it difficult sometimes? Yes.
How?
I'll rephrase, yes every attitude has it's basis in physical reality, but when it comes to ignorning truth, like hard evidence that the Earth is a sphere and not flat, some people choose to ignore facts.
I supposed you meant that a belief can be a proposition stating a fact - a true proposition. But that's not right. A belief is not a true proposition since some beliefs are not true. Or you could mean that a belief is somehow always about the physical - Quoting Sum Dude
but that's not true either since on the one hand folk believe stuff that's not true, and on the other they believe stuff that's not physical - 1+1 is 2.
Wow.
I'm left wondering what the term "belief" is referring to here. You posit a notion of belief. You argue for that notion. You find that the notion doesn't hold up to scrutiny. So...
Belief is hollow?
That notion is hollow. It doesn't follow that all notions of belief are.
:wink:
The classic example is 'Do as I say not as I do". Here one is not acting in a way that contradicts their belief. It is hypocrisy nonetheless.
So is there a coherent notion of belief? What?
A distinction needs to be drawn between belief statements and belief, or perhaps reports of belief with belief.
That would eliminate the issue of Jack's belief not being meaningful to him, but rather to us. It renders the notion of belief as an attitude towards a statement/proposition as inadequate. And it eliminates the issue of one acting in ways contrary to one's statements.
Maybe you could start a thread on motive.
Perhaps; remind me of how you do this.
And if motive "remains" inscrutable, does that mean that you think it usually is? The rest of the world tends to assume it's very scrutable.
All statements are predication. All predication is correlation. Not all correlation is predication. All correlation is belief. Not all belief is predication. Not all belief is belief statements.
because...?
Oddly worded question my friend. Would you ask the same if I had asserted all belief presupposes it's own truth?
Are you asking me how I arrived at that claim?
To quite the contrary my friend, it's others who've gone wrong.
Animals without written language have belief. That conception of "belief"(as propositional attitude) contradicts the way things are. There is no stronger justificatory ground for dismissal. That's a misconception.
I would agree that belief statements can be put in form of propositional attitude. Not all belief consists of predication. As before...
There's more nuance than the discussion has gleaned thus far. It has been hinted at and skirted around...
It's a matter of complexity.
You don't see this as contradictory. OK. You think a belief can be both an attitude towards a proposition and yet not consist in a predication, as if a proposition need not be a predication. And yet you also say
Quoting creativesoul.
I don't find that at all helpful.
The parallel here is of course with the Quinean notion of the inscrutability of reference. Undetached rabbit-part.
https://www.rit.edu/cla/philosophy/quine/inscrutability_reference.html
Now as Davidson noted, we make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimises agreement. So we also make maximum sense of the beliefs of others when we interpret in a way that optimises agreement.
So even though as @Hanover pointed out we may never get it right, we might get close enough to make no difference.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Perhaps remembering that you last say them in the kitchen.
We have beliefs because we sometimes hold things to be true that are actually not true - we are sometimes wrong. It turns out to be useful to be able to say that "I searched the kitchen because I believed the keys were there", as opposed to "I searched the kitchen because the keys were there".
Quoting Sapientia
Probability?
I don't think so. I think we are using belief here simply to mark the fact that the keys might not be in the kitchen.
Then meaning is not use. Meaning is your internal idea approximated in the picture you paint through utterances, gestures, or an actual picture. Some are better at painting pictures and are easily and accurately understood and some are better at interpreting and understanding what is being conveyed, but others not.
Pragmatically, as you point out, it probably overall doesn't matter terribly. We do, in the end, generally communicate well. But to your linguistic theory that hinges on the idea that the use of the word is its public meaning, does not this concession do much violence? Aren't we now admitting that "rock" means my phenomenal impression of rocks, and my public use of that term is not its meaning, but just a close approximation?
When seeking meaning it's wise to look to use. Where "meaning is use" is used as shorthand for behaviorism, it's wrong.
Sure, but who disagrees with this? Is all we're saying now is that meaning isn't use, but use is just one thing to consider when trying to figure out what someone means?
Yes it's pretty obvious.
Nice. But just as meaning is a construal from use, belief is a construal from use. What we can get closer to is agreement, not meaning.
Try drawing and maintaining the distinction between belief and belief statements. That would be most helpful.
Belief can be put into the form of an attitude towards a proposition. That is not to say that all belief can be. Belief statements can be. Not all belief are belief statements.
The interesting thing about putting belief into the form of a propositional attitude is that in doing so we're changing the form...
So...
We have belief, belief statements, and belief reports...
Reports account for that which existed prior to the report. "I believe" is always followed by belief statement(when uttered by a sincere speaker). "S/he believes" is always followed by a belief report. The two can be one in the same, but not necessarily. Hence the distinction.
Belief statements are statements uttered by a sincere speaker, whether just talking or reporting upon their own and/or another's belief. Belief reports take an account of belief. Belief statements can be false if they contradict fact. Belief reports can be false if they contradict the belief being reported upon.
An insincere speaker offers a false account of his/her own belief(for what is stated is not what is believed). Your earlier account of Jack's belief conflated your report(which consisted of statements) with Jack's belief(which does not; cannot).
Is that helpful enough?
I'm being reminded of Gettier and complexity. When the simplest explanation suffices, it would behoove us all to place a measure of good value upon such. To the contrary when an explanation is inadequate, it ought be well noted.
Where complexity increases with regard to belief hierarchy, so too does possibility for mistake. That is to say that with regard to both, the belief itself and a report of it. Gettier Case II oversimplifies Smith's belief. It amounts to an incomplete and thus a false report. Salva Veritate.
That's an aside though. Well, sort of...
But unlike a Platonic ideal, meaning exists as a real qualitative state, known by the person holding it. Agreement is therefore unilateral, where the holder of the idea assents to the reiteration of the meaning by the other person. Meaning is therefore primary and critical, existing prior to agreement (i.e. unilateral assent) and it forms the very basis of the agreement.
This understanding makes the qualitative state worthy of discussion (metaphysics) as does it make pre-lingual meaning relevant.
How does this affect your Wittgensteinian approach if accepted as true?
So, Pat searched the kitchen, but not because he believed that there was a good chance his keys were there? [U]Then why did he search the kitchen?[/u]
Look, if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it. That's what I say. The common sense explanation works: it's most likely and most plausible. Your seeking an alternative explanation therefore makes little sense. It won't work as well. Is your motive to seek the best explanation or one which is unconventional?
I don't agree. Meaning, so far as it has any meaning, is constructed by folks doing stuff.
Consider the notion of a unilateral agreement. It's oxymoronic.
Consider the use of "real" in "real qualitative state"; what is it doing there? What sort of thing could it be opposed to, an unreal qualitative state? What could that be? a false qualitative state? An illusory qualitative state? Such things make no sense.
Let's get back on track. If the keys are in the kitchen, we say "the keys are in the kitchen" or, perhaps even "it is true that the keys are in the kitchen" in order to really push the point.
We sometimes use talk of belief to distinguish what is true from what is false - I searched the kitchen because I believed the keys were there, but as it turns out I was wrong.
Compare:
Pat searched the kitchen because he believed that his keys were there.
with
Pat searched the kitchen because there was a good chance his keys were there.
The notion of belief is used to bring out the difference between the keys being in the kitchen and one's thinking that the keys are in the kitchen - between being true and being acknowledged or accepted as true.
Now I take that to be the very common sense explanation you seem to think I deny.
I take it by "doing stuff," so to speak, that it's "doing stuff" in a particular way, i.e., one can do stuff, but the stuff we're doing may still lack meaning, even when it appears to have meaning. For example, Wittgenstein criticized philosophers for doing stuff, because some of it lacked sense. Note also, and I think we agree on this, that many threads appear to be "doing stuff," and yet, much of it is senseless. As I've gone through Wittgenstein's PI recently, I began to see much more complexity to the "meaning as use" idea.
I pointed out in another thread that use doesn't always translate into meaning, but that if we want to learn what it is to mean something, then use is the place to start. I say start because of the complexity behind Wittgenstein's ideas. I think sometimes we can oversimplify his ideas.
This is not a criticism of your point, but only an added observation.
I think I may have to go back to Anscombe's Intention.
Same here. That's my preferred method of communication and learning. It's very tedious and cumbersome though. Not something that will ever allow you to succeed in college. Maybe if you were ultra fast at this method, which I am not.
You do need some background, so I wouldn't recommend trying to do it if you don't know much about Wittgenstein. The Tractatus, for example, is one of the most difficult works in philosophy, so it's very difficult to read and to think you'll understand it. Many philosophers have misunderstood Wittgenstein's works.
Well, you got to start somewhere...
Moreover, the purpose here is not a commentary on Wittgenstein, but an analysis of belief. The two best accounts of meaning come from Wittgenstein and from Davidson. But they do not meet smoothly. The fun for me is to play with various modes of analysis to see what the result is; can it be made consistent?
Anscombe sits at a pivotal point where Philosophy of Language tipped over to Philosophy of Mind. Another bit part was played by Searle, of course, with his work on Intentionality that derives from Austin. A comparison, or perhaps even a contrast, with Davidson might well be worth considering.
Ant that seems to be the direction the line of enquiry I've taken here is heading.
The attempts at reduction, in terms of behavior, equation of belief with belief report, belief as distinguishing between truth and falsity, &c. can't be right.
Clearly we can be disingenuous and behave other than we believe. Clearly we can believe something and for this reason act on it – not all beliefs are backward rationalizations of behavior. Clearly a belief report is a linguistic act and a belief isn't. Clearly we can say someone believed something correctly. None of these notions seem to help.
Well. We're looking for what counts as belief; a criterion of necessary and sufficient conditions which when met by a candidate warrants our calling that candidate "belief". Belief must be meaningful, and it must presuppose truth. Those are necessary because if we remove either, what's left cannot count as belief.
So... all correlation is belief because all correlation attributes meaning(by virtue of drawing correlations) as well as presupposes the existence of it's own content(regardless of subsequent further qualification). Statements presuppose truth. Belief prior to language presupposes truth in the aforementioned manner(all correlation presupposes the existence of it's own content).
That's how "is true" becomes redundant. Another aside... sort of.
Are intentions mental states?
Redundancy is about meaning Banno, not truth. "Is true" is redundant as a result of being superfluous. It adds no further meaning to belief statements. You know this.
I agree that belief is not a mental state, so the "rather" is misplaced.
That's wrong. Some beliefs can be true, some false; therefore something is added to a belief in its being true.
I don't see that there is anything here that has not been already covered.
It's not wrong. You've misunderstood what I'm getting at.
Belief statements can be both true and false. We agree there. True belief has something added to it that false belief doesn't. I agree there with the sentiment, although the wording('something added') is suspect. So, the reply is sort of agreeable, but misses the point and is irrelevant.
Adding "is true" does not make a belief statement true.
Adding "is true" onto a belief statement does not change the meaning of the belief statement. That's the point. "Is true" is redundant. All belief presupposes it's own truth. That's why "is true" is redundant.
Redundancy is about meaning not truth.
Try this...
Quoting creativesoul
Yes, let's. To get back on track, I think we'll have to retrace the track a little.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
You denied the common sense order of explanation, you denied that it has to do with probability, and you put forward an inferior alternative. That's a mistake. [U]The right answer is that Pat believed that there was a good chance that his keys were in the kitchen, so he searched the kitchen[/u]. Your alternative leaves open the question of why Pat searched the kitchen - which is why I asked you that question, but for some reason you chose not to answer. If what Pat says is true, then you're back to the common sense order of explanation, but with a redundant addition of what Pat says. What Pat says doesn't matter. What Pat believed matters.
Contrary to what you said, we're not using belief here simply to mark the fact that the keys might not be in the kitchen. That's your less plausible alternative. It's wrong. We're using belief to explain Pat's behaviour. That makes a lot more sense. It's obvious, isn't it? Why skip past the obvious answer?
There's an underlying current here that it seems not many pay attention to. While Witt talked about looking towards use as a means of seeking meaning and that has most certainly allowed us to establish alternative methods for attributin meaning(Speech Act Theorists and what not), there already were some others that are still valid methods of attributing meaning. There are several different ways. Each unique in it's own way and quite useful. None are capable of explaining all of the others...
Well. No conventional ones anyway. They do all have something in common aside from what they're doing. They share a foundation of elemental constituents. They all consist of the same things.
I'm suggesting that it's because the keys might not be in the kitchen. On this I suspect we agree.
I am also sugesting we consider some more recent moves in our understanding of consciousness, such that it might be that our Quoting Sapientia might be wrong.
It's not rational counter to this, to simply repeat that our common sense order is right.
Performative contradiction. Incoherence. Self-contradiction. Poor language use.
We think that the keys are here or there. We look here or there. No keys. We consider other possible locations, but not just any possible location. Rather all the places we look are places we believe our keys will be. Otherwise, we wouldn't look. The neighbors top dresser drawer will not be searched, even though it's a logically possible location(if all sorts of other things are just so).
It depends on how you read it. Belief can be neutral – we can be undecided as to p, and so neither believe that p, nor that not p. When undecided, one might of course search the condition on the off-chance.
What does read as a pragmatic contradiction under normal circumstances is "I believe that the keys aren't in the kitchen, and I will search there anyway" – unless of course there is some reason one has to doubt one's own rationality or beliefs, or one is doing so to appease some external obligation or epistemic authority.
The problem is that negations of belief statements can often be read as "negation raising" – that is, we often read (by some process) "I don't believe that p" as "I believe that not p." On such a reading, what you posted is indeed a bit odd.
But either way, I think all this discussion doesn't matter. Yes, you can use belief reports to distinguish truth from merely purported truth (which in fact isn't so). But this is just an epiphenomenon of the fact that belief is taking something to be true, and there's no reason to think that taking something to be true makes it true. We can also use belief to affirm truth, rather than falsity. This simply isn't important.
It's worth paying some attention to the logic of denying a propositional attitude. There are four possibilities.
a. Pat believes the keys are in the kitchen.
b. Pat does not believe the keys are in the kitchen.
c. Pat believes the keys are not in the kitchen.
d. Pat does not believe the keys are not in the kitchen.
(a) contradicts (b). (c) contradicts (d). (a) contradicts (c). But (b) dies not contradict (d); Pat may have no beliefs relating to the keys.
For example, I have never seen an atom up close and personal. I have seen pictures and representations of atoms. I believe atoms are real based on the prestige of science, knowledge of science tools, and the credibly of those who have been able to see it, directly. Belief has a degree of disconnect from hard direct sensory evidence that you personally have. It is sort of a social short cut to a result that skips many steps. The result of belief can be right or wrong, but the disconnect is still there, so the unconscious mind will have some doubt ,that can result in fanaticism.
The unconscious is natural and dependent on direct sensory evidence to confirm. The conscious mind has imagination which does not have to jive with sensory reality. Belief is somewhere in the middle between sensory reality and imagination; empathy. The unconscious is not in the middle with the ego, but stands on one side of the bridge. The result can be unconscious dynamics which lends an emotional state to belief.
If you learn everything by reading, your belief system will be molded. But there is still a disconnect with reality; in the imagination, until you generate your own applied data. Then belief changes to confirmation, where the unconscious mind agrees with you. This adds a calmer emotional baseline to the belief.
What an odd question. If he searched the kitchen because he believed the keys were there, then why wouldn't I say so? Why would I miss out the part about his belief, which is the very reason he searched the kitchen for his keys? That the keys were in fact there is irrelevant to why he was looking for them in that place.
Quoting Banno
No, we don't. We sometimes use phrases like "I believe" or "I think" to convey or emphasise uncertainty, and uncertainty relates to possibility, which is what might or might not be. Maybe that's what you're getting at. But that has nothing to do with why I would say the former rather than the latter. I would say the former rather than the latter because it clearly states the truth, whereas the latter is either a less explicit way of saying something like the former, or, if taken strictly as worded, it's false. The former makes sense, whereas the latter is missing something which must be assumed in order to make sense of it, lest it be rendered a falsehood.
I see what we've been talking about as being about motive or cause, whereas you seem to see what we've been talking about as being about uncertainty or possibility.
Quoting Banno
I'm not simply repeating that our common sense order is right. I'm trying to convey to you the necessity of explaining why you think that your alternative is better, and I'm awaiting said-explanation from you. I see that you've raised an alternative, but why should I go with it? You'd need to actually displace the current understanding. The impression I'm getting from you is like a guy who comes up with the bright idea of painting a wall by using a paint brush back to front. "Like, hey guys, what if the handle part of the brush is better at applying paint than the part with the bristles?".
Which would be fine if there were no bristles...
By whom Banno?
Have you directly addressed what I've said? The answer(s) to your questions? A recap...
You claimed belief was empty, or words to that affect, after the failure of one particular notion thereof. I pointed out that that didn't follow, but rather that that particular notion failed. I suggested drawing a distinction between belief statements and belief as a manner of correcting a fatal flaw of that notion that led us to absurdity.
You did not cover any of it, nor have you in the past.
This piqued my curiosity...
What moves in our understanding of consciousness?
But there are, so it's not fine, it's a bad idea. And since you don't seem to want to defend your bad idea, I'm going to move on.
Are there? Again, that's the issue.
Denying belief?
:joke:
Word games are inadequate here. I know you're musing, but do you want to get serious about the subject?
If we get belief wrong, then we've gotten something wrong about everything ever written and/or spoken. I can think of no broader scope of consequence and application. There is no stronger justificatory ground for doing everything we can to get it right.
Here the reasonable skeptic may question what getting belief wrong would even look like. That's a fair question. There is no single answer, for there are all sorts of ways to get it wrong. Perhaps the skeptic would want to know how one could even come to know that this or that notion of belief is wrong as compared/contrasted to not, and would ask what counts as either. Again, a fair question. Perhaps the skeptic may point out that in order to know that we have gotten belief wrong, there would need to be a way to know that; a dependable means of comparing wrong notions of belief with right ones(assuming one can be right). Presumably whatever one uses to determine that a specific notion is right wouldn't - couldn't - be just another notion. Rather, there would have to be something that is entirely existentially independent of language and thus of all notions of "belief" by which to compare and thus evaluate our notions. That's quite the justificatory burden, and again a fair criticism. These are all valid concerns and are given due attention.
Seeing how our attention to the subject, and my own knowledge of the matter comes exclusively via complex language, it is imperative to consider different notions and/or accepted uses of the term "belief". Banno and the the thread have been helpful here, but it's been an inadequate discussion in several ways. For one, a crucial distinction between belief and reports thereof has been left sorely neglected. Adequate understanding of belief can only be had by virtue of doing so, and thus we must. A distinction that sheds much needed light on an otherwise darkened understanding is worthy of being drawn and maintained. This is one such distinction. The earlier failure to draw and maintain it led to a plurality of absurdities.
There has also been a lack of effort to isolate all the different uses of "belief" as a means to establish what they all have in common in terms of existential dependency and elemental constituency. There's much to be discussed. So beginning here by targeting belief reports and continuing in the vein of looking for common denominators, the following question is apt...
What do all belief statements have in common with all other kinds of belief?
One could loosely think of the methodology in the following way...
Apple pies consist of apples, flour, cinnamon, sugar, etc. Some of these ingredients can be removed and what's left remains a pie. Others, not so much. I put it to you, the reader, that we can perform much the same kind of analysis concerning belief, and we can do so with a warranted measure of confidence. In the end, we arrive at everything necessary to say that we have an example of belief.
Is there a set of individual elements - complete things all on their own - which, when combined, offer us all of the necessary 'ingredients' to have an example of belief? I can imagine such a group of necessary elemental constituents. If there is not such a set, we're wasting time. However, if there is such a group of elements then it will be the case that each will be found as necessary and the combination of them all will be sufficient. That is to say that a set of individual elemental constituents will provide everything needed for belief to be formed and/or held. Belief is emergent. It is also worth noting that their discovery alone provides more than adequate a negation against any previous and/or subsequent denial of their existence.
What's important here is to look for common denominators within all belief reports as a means for ascertaining common denominators in all belief, including reports thereof. If it is the case that all belief reports share a common basic core with all other belief, then that common core will be present in the belief statements. We have easy access to those. They are germane. So, we set out what belief reports are existentially dependent upon along with what they consist of first. Then we can compare this to other kinds of belief in order to establish if other belief is existentially dependent upon the same things, and if other belief consist of the same things. If we can rightfully say that they are and they do, then we can confidently conclude that that elemental constituency and/or that existential dependency is common to all belief. To the contrary, if belief statements are existentially dependent upon something that other belief is not, then not all belief are existentially dependent upon the same things. If all belief reports consist of the same thing, but other belief does not, then not all belief consist of the same thing.
Many throughout history have noted that all belief reports consist entirely of meaningful predication. There are no known examples to the contrary. It is rightfully granted. All belief reports consist entirely of common language. There are no known examples to the contrary. This is also readily granted. We look at the following consequence.
If all belief is existentially dependent upon common language and/or any other form of meaningful predication, then it only follows that non linguistic creatures cannot form and/or hold belief. So here one must choose between two contrary positions, lest incoherency results. Either non linguistic creatures can form and hold belief, or all belief is existentially dependent upon common language and meaningful predication. If we choose the latter, this exercise is complete. The consequence is that we cannot admit that non linguistic creatures believe anything at all. However, if we deny that all belief is existentially dependent upon meaningful predication and common language, then we can accept that non linguistic creatures have belief, but this has it's own serious consequence.
If non-linguistic creatures are capable of having belief, then it only follows that neither meaningful predication nor common language is necessary for all belief. Thus, non linguistic belief must consist of something other than meaningful predication and common language. In addition, meaningful predication and common language must also consist of the same thing that non linguistic belief does, otherwise we wouldn't be able to rightfully conclude the commonality. This should not be of surprise to us. Remember, that at conception we are void of all belief and belief grows in it's complexity. So, predication and common language are inadequate. We must look for other commonalities.
It ought be fairly uncontroversial that all belief presupposes it's own truth. That is also a commonality between belief reports. All belief must also be meaningful to the creature forming and/or holding it. Again, this is also common to all belief reports. So, upon further consideration, if we choose to deny that all belief is existentially dependent upon meaningful predication and common language, but we agree that all belief presupposes truth and is meaningful to the believing creature, then we must be able to provide adequate explanation of how non linguistic creatures' belief can presuppose truth and be meaningful to the creature themselves. That's yet another heavy justificatory burden.
Brute physiological sensory perception combined with spatiotemporal distinction and the ability to draw correlations(connections, associations, etc.) between objects of physiological sensory perception and/or the creature itself. Those are the basic conditions and/or elements required for the emergence of meaningful thought and belief, replete with the presupposition of truth(as correspondence no less!). It's a minimalist criterion with maximum impact.
Those are adequate for non linguistic belief, and remain at the very core of all other thought and belief.
So, I've worked out the answer to your earlier question of why all correlation constitues being belief. All belief consists of it. It presupposes truth. It attributes meaning, and thus is meaningful to the creature drawing the correlations.
Do you find fault?
Yes, there are. There is no issue, except your repeated failure to present reasonable grounds for doubting what we know. I have no more reason to doubt that there are beliefs than that there is knowledge or thought or eyesight or...
Belief is not equivalent to propositional attitude.
An important issue for our conversation.
As you suggest, we may distinguish formal (deductive, logico-mathematical) certainty from psychological certainty. I would also call out a sort of methodological, procedural, or practical certainty, for instance the certainty of the quality assurance manager. Perhaps this third is the most useful sort.
I'm not sure psychological certainty should be accounted for primarily in terms of affect. For one speaker might treat a strong feeling of certainty as merely a strong feeling of certainty, and still leave room for doubt, while another speaker might respond to the same feeling as a feeling of absolute certainty, and leave no room for doubt. It seems the difference is in general best construed as conceptual and practical, not affective. What matters here is how we've learned to think about, to speak and act in light of, such feelings.
I'm inclined to suggest that ordinarily, one who takes a strong feeling of certainty for a state of perfect indubitability and infallibility is epistemologically naive and less reasonable than one who leaves room for doubt even in the presence of such feelings. One always has recourse to a context of doubt.
Quoting Janus
My know-how and my belief that I know how are two different things.
Moreover: this doing, my memory of similar past doings, my experience of presently doing, my conceptualization of such doings, my linguistic descriptions and communication with others about the doings… Each is distinguishable from the others. There's plenty of room to wonder about the adequacy and correlation of such items and to insert hypothetical counterexamples and grounds for doubt into each case.
Quoting Janus
In some cases it may be appropriate, albeit cumbersome. A more direct approach would be to inquire: Do I (really) know how to do it? For my answer to this question informs us about the relevant belief.
Quoting Janus
I'm wary of this kind of recursive use of verbs like "to know".
If in fact I know how, and believe that I know how, and have good reason to believe that I know how… then we say I know that I know how.
What might it mean to question whether "I really know that I know how…"? Depends what we're asking: We could be asking about the know-how, does it really exist. We could be asking about the belief that I know how, is it clearly conceptualized, is it adequately grounded, is it overruled by urgent doubts? We could be asking about the characterization of the belief, does it count as "knowledge"?
Whether such questions are appropriate depends on particulars of each case. For instance, how uncertain is the agent in his own ability? How credible is the evidence of his past performance? How urgent is the need for action? How dire the consequences of poor performance?
Quoting Janus
How do you mean?
I might say most good philosophy involves conceptual elaboration of what's obvious.
It's obvious to me that I'm sitting in a chair. I believe I'm sitting in a chair, I believe I know that I'm sitting in a chair, and I am practically certain that I am sitting in a chair.
It seems to me I have today about the same practical certainty in such matters that I did before I lost my epistemological innocence. The difference is that I have learned to locate this practical certainty in a broader theoretical context. I understand that my practical certainty is compatible with theoretical doubt and hypothetical counterexamples, that even in such obvious cases my judgment is fallible in principle, my view of the evidence is fallible in principle.
I'm not sure I'd characterize the relation among these terms quite that way.
For instance, I might prefer at least in some cases to say that "belief is one of the results of knowledge", and in some cases to say "doubt is one of the results of knowledge". And I find myself inclined to deny that certainty (of every sort) entails belief.
Using two senses of "certainty" like those Janus pointed out above, I suppose "psychological" certainty entails belief but does not entail justification or truth, whereas "formal" certainty does not entail psychological certainty and in this respect may always be doubted in principle.
I suppose, moreover, that in at least many cases "formal" certainty may be theoretically reframed so as to make formal room for doubt.
I'll allow that at least some sort of JTB counts as knowledge. It seems there are other sorts of knowledge (acquaintance, know-how), and it's not immediately clear how to account for them in terms of the propositional knowledge that JTB models tend to take for granted. Accordingly, one might agree that at least some sorts of JTB entail knowledge, while denying that knowledge in general entails JTB.
Quoting Banno
I'm never sure what "internal" and "external" are supposed to mean in such contexts, and I prefer to avoid the whole distinction. Or let Moore clarify the matter till we have a clear idea what's at stake in his demonstrations.
It seems to me Moore knows, and has a justified true belief, that he has a hand. It seems doubtful to me that Moore's belief that he has a hand can play the role he's trying to force it into in his strange epistemologist's game.
We might say Moore's certainty about something called "the external world" is merely psychological, not based on any justification. On the other hand, if his theory leaves no room for an alternative, isn't he in a sense "justified" and "formally certain" in the context of his own thoughts? But we reject his conceptual framework, and thus undermine his justification. If he wants to persuade us, he'll have to do better.
I expect there's too much slippage between various senses of the term "certainty" in this approach.
Quoting Banno
It's never a sufficient causal explanation, whether the event is past or future. It's a sufficient explanation for us, who consider the matter casually at a rough level of description, and take the rest of the circumstances for granted without a refined understanding of them.
Quoting Banno
I can't picture it working that way. Unless maybe "actions" includes, or is restricted to, things like "thinking these thoughts" and "asserting these propositions".
On the other hand, I suppose we could blow it up the other way: Assign a "belief" to each of us, corresponding to the sum total of his actions…. It's not clear what use there is for such constructs.
Between these two extremes, note that some religious customs make proposals like yours: They define "true" members of their faith as individuals who perform certain prescribed actions. Of course we can pick out various collections of "believer" this way, but this is not the only way to carve up the universe of believers.
What is gained by this method of categorization?
Even scientists claim the sky is blue. But, if you question the validity of it, they admit that it's just something which represents 'sense-perception' but not actual reality. That is because the reality of it runs along the lines of, "...ozone diffusing the blue spectrum of light..., etc."
Suppose, if a thug held a gun to the face of a 'man of faith' and threatened to kill them, would the 'man of faith' proceed nonchalantly with their business because life is God's property or do they beg against it in attempts to gain salvation from that precarious situation? It would not be that the 'man of faith' does not claim to believe in God, but it's more that he knows when the situation calls for a different tactic, something close to what he can actually bring to fruition. This is probably because he knows that try as he might, his prayers may not bring him deliverance; or perhaps he just isn't sure enough to risk it. Is that still faith?
I think in both cases, the scientist and the 'man of faith' are alike. They use statements to reflect a generalized idea even when it is not the reality they hold in their understanding.
'Faith without action is dead' => This may actually support the definition of faith as being synonymous with understanding. We always act according to our understanding and that is the truth about our faith even against the statements we claim. If someone attempted to perform something they did not understand, they would fail. Hence, if the performance claimed a faith-relation then the failure would reveal it as a lie.
This puzzles me. I am not aware of any system of logic or mathematics that makes use of "certain" or "certainty" as a term.
Rather, they use "true" and "truth".
Certainty is not like truth. Being certain of a given proposition is adopting a particular attitude towards it; but things will be true or false regardless of one's attitude.
To me, something I believe is something I hold to be true. This carries with it the clear understanding that I may be wrong, and it may not be true. It's just that I believe it to be. I use this understanding often, saying mostly "I believe" to emphasise my own fallibility. Rarely, I say "I know", if/when I feel that I have justified and justifiable knowledge of something. [This doesn't happen often.] Careful use of "believe" and "know" contribute much to clarity of thought, IMO. YMMV. :wink:
Here is a statement of that fact: "The cat is on the mat".
There is a fact that is named in the statement of that fact. Hence the quote marks.
@creativesoul believes that the cat is on the mat.
Or is it:
@creativesoul believes that "the cat is on the mat"?
Is the belief a thing that has the name "the cat is on the mat"?
Back to the old chess example. When playing chess it makes no sense to doubt that the bishop moves diagonally. In plotting one's next move, we do not have to take into account that our opponent might move his bishop from a red square to a black square.
Doubt has no place here. The possible moves of the Bishop are certain.
Perhaps philosophers can become too awed by philosophical terms like "certainty". It's not always such a big deal.
"I'm certain that the cat is on the mat, but I don't believe it"...
I can explain the rules of chess by stating them; but also there is a way of showing them that is not stating them, but implementing them in the act of playing the game.
I think we can understand Moore as showing that there is a world, rather than stating it (dropping the problematic "external" form "world").
If for you bishop does not always stay on the same colour squares, then you have missed something fundamental about chess, and will not be able to proceed to play.
If you miss that, here is a hand, you have missed something fundamental about how we talk about the world, and will not be able to proceed.
Because you're ignoring the de dicto/de re distinction that Sapientia isn't:
Quoting Sapientia
Quoting Janus
That has a nice ring to it, but only because it is idiomatically suppressing "he knows". Without that, you'd be claiming that a possible event is causing my actions. But that's not the kind of "because" we mean here. We want the "because" of reasons. Because "know" is factive, we're once again trading on de dicto/de re ambiguity, with a an extra layer of "possibility". Maybe I only believed they might be in the kitchen. If they are actually somewhere else, we have to decide what we would mean by saying, "They are in the living room, but they might be (might have been) in the kitchen."
And I still say it has to do with our notions of rationality. If I believe my keys are in the kitchen, it is not rational, ceteris peribus, for me not to look for them there. On the other hand, knowing myself fallible, it's rational to glance around on my way to the kitchen just in case my belief is mistaken.
I don't think it is "he knows" that is implied by "the keys could be in the kitchen" but "he thinks". As far as he is concerned, if he doesn't know where the keys are, they could be anywhere. On the other hand if he was asked, of course he would say the keys must be somewhere. That the keys are somewhere is taken for granted. He doesn't know where they are, so he searches in places he thinks they might be. I'm not seeing any puzzle in this.
Am I? I did raise it here. Tell me more.
To be sure, the intent here is to point out that we do not say "He searched the kitchen because the keys were there"; If one knows where the keys are, one has no need to search.
We agree. I'm just making life difficult for Banno.
Why not, eh? :grin:
Quoting Banno
The idea is that a belief is not an individual, not a thing, so much as a series of actions, spoken about in a certain way.
We play accounts in which we set up a belief as a cause for our actions, only to find that the belief consists in those actions. Beliefs are not set pieces, mental objects, that cause our actions; instead they are a way of inferring coherence in our actions.
Hence one does not find out what one believes by mere introspection.
So before beliefs are spoken as propositions, do they not exist in any fashion? Do we just find ourselves suddenly blurting out words with no inkling we had meant to say something roughly of that kind?
And worse yet, do we always act without thought in general, then merely back-fill with a justificatory narrative?
What a curious understanding of human psychology. It is almost as if 1950s Behaviourism was still all the rage.
Internalism holds that the content of the belief is irrelevant; that the cat's being on the mat makes no difference to one's belief that the cat is on the mat. After all, one can hold false beliefs. On the other hand one ought believe only what is true; belief in cats on mats must after all somehow take account of cats on mats.
One's actions might be at odds with one's introspections.
So which is the real belief, the one reached by introspection or the one deduced from action?
Neither: there is no real belief...
It is worth noting that we work from different notions of fact.
To directly answer the question...
If I were to render "the cat is on the mat" as the name for a thing, it would be a statement. If I believe there is a cat on the mat, then "the cat is on the mat" would be a statement I believe to be true. If I uttered "the cat is on the mat", and I believed that there was a cat on the mat at the time I spoke, then it would be a statement of my belief, or a belief statement. This would be in the context of normal everyday parlance, as compared contrasted with thinking about our own thought and belief. With that in the forefront of thought...
If I were involved in a discussion, such as this one, then I would be engaged in a metacognitive endeavor. That is, I would be isolating and thinking about my own thought and belief. During these situations, I would be accounting for and/or reporting my belief to another. I mean, that is the purpose of these kinds of talks, as compared to just everyday parlance.
If Pat stated that he believed the keys were in the kitchen, solely as a means to say what he thought others deemed acceptable and/or appropriate in that situation, then Pat deliberately misrepresented his own belief to another. That is he said he believed something when he did not. He spoke insincerely. He was being dishonest. He was lying. He was not 'telling the truth'(scarequotes intentional).
...in either of these notions?
:wink:
That sums up this discussion.
Quoting Banno
Who is this "we" you're referring to? I have found no such thing, and I won't, because beliefs don't consist in actions. My belief that I can open my front door with my front door key does not consist in the actions of me opening my front door with my front door key. That makes no sense. This is baloney, Banno. How long are you going to continue with this false narrative?
Your belief consists in your being able to lock the door, pocket the key, give the key to a friend, ponder how locks work...
...if not, then what exactly is your belief?
The earth's electromagnetic field consists in the deflection of radiation, the movement of compass needles, and the creation of magnetic rocks.
... if not, then what exactly is electromagnetism?
I'm following various lines of thought here just to see where they might go.
One difference between electromagnetism and belief is that belief is supposedly accessed by introspection; not so much electromagnetism.
What they have in common is that they are both known purely because of their effects.
Why would you think that cause and effect are identical in one case, but not in the other? Or do you?
Actually, that's not true, is it?
Davidson. Can a belief be part of the cause of an act?
At the start of this thread I would have just said "yes", that in a straight forward way we use beliefs to explain actions, and that these are causal explanations.
Now I'm swinging away from that. Quoting frank
The claim I am critiquing is that a belief is known best by introspection. That is what I understand is behind Sapientia's position...Quoting Sapientia
And it's true that Sap can believe that the key opens the front door, regardless of whether the key actually does.
However it seems utterly wrong to suppose that Sap's belief that the key can open the front door has nothing to do with the key or the front door.
The volitional behavior of a human stands apart from that of other creatures in that it can proceed from reasoned reflection of a more sophisticated variety. Subtract belief from that scenario and you'll just have reflexive behavior. Are you OK with that?
Quoting Banno
Your own beliefs should be available to you via introspection. Aren't they?
There is no such thing as introspection... aside from asking others about ourselves.
The second sentence doesn't follow from the first.
Some linguistic rules are obviously social entities. But children learn to speak in avalanche fashion. There's good reason to believe that much of the capacity is innate.
I was more making the point about the importance of language. Namely, the framework being used and how it will limit and/or delimit what can be said and how. Some are better than others. With talk about belief, the framework needs to be able to draw a few crucial distinctions and avoid dichotomies which cannot account for things that are both, and thus neither. This is one such dichotomy: Internal/External...
There is also a mistake hereabouts regarding the notion of location... Belief is not like keys.
But now we place an x-y axes over it and we can have endless fun talking about the distinct points.
Having laid the axes and had all the fun, we struggle to think of the circle without the axes. We're confronted with a lack of distinction, so nothing to talk about.
Inner and outer are like the axes. We lay them over experience and subsequently have endless fun talking about our place in the cosmos. Take away the distinction and speech immediately betrays us because the distinction is built in.
Having realized that the structure of speech can't logically be the structure of the world we're an inextricable part of (and which is part of us), we once again discover endless fun swinging back and forth between unity and disunity.
No. You've gone from confusing belief and action to confusing belief and ability. Whatever next? My belief consists in my being convinced that I can open my front door with my front door key. And that, in turn, is a result of my being convinced of other related things.
Who's supposing that, though? Not I.
Shadowboxing?
Yes, they should.
Quoting creativesoul
That's so obviously wrong it's funny. What's up with you guys? Y'all sayin' some crazy shit.
Well, apparently not. Here we peel off into psychology. There are numerous experiments that show the falsity of our introspections. You have perhaps read of the infamous split-brain experiments.
Philosophically, beliefs do not have the solidity needed to ground explanations for our actions.
Meh. I could reply that you confuse belief and certainty. Such rhetoric gets us nowhere.
I'm pointing out that beliefs are not simple single things like "being convinced that I can open my front door with my front door key", but rather multifarious.
Another conclusion I'm moving towards is that the analysis in the OP, in which a belief is reduced to a single propositional attitude, is too narrow.
Yet something here keeps drawing responses from you. Something unsettling in the notion of belief.
Some of this actually supports my last claim. It seems we agree on some stuff. Having lived around these sites as long as I have, I'm prone to temper my own expectation.
The framework one uses will limit/delimit what one can say. If the framework one knows were suddenly taken, then one could most certainly be at a total loss for words. This would definitively be the case if that framework were the only one known.
One plus one always equals two because we will not let it be any other way. Talk about the circle is wholly determined by us because circles are human creations. Belief is not. We become aware of and/or discover our own thought and belief via language use. We do not invent it as we did maths. Discovery of something requires something to discover. We did not discover numbers. We did discover non linguistic thought and belief. We cannot get math wrong unless we break the rules.
We can be wrong about how human thought and belief works, and what it is, what takes, what it all consists in/of.
Meaningful attribution. All attribution of meaning counts as thought and/or belief. All difference in kinds of thought and belief is one of complexity. The simple and rudimentary mental act of attributing meaning does not require a creature with common language. It requires a capable creature, surely. It's just that the capability need not include common language.
This is what is necessary for language creation and use to even happen. For us to even be able to talk about our own thoughts and beliefs, these things had to have already been happening. Different creatures draw the same(or similar enough) correlations between the same things. The same things become symbol. The same things become symbolized.
Witt's "Block!" Austin's promise. These are all different ways of performing the same task. They all attribute meaning. As do all of the ways prior to these guys. Referents, designators, variables, etc. All of it is symbolic by it's very nature.
My drake, myself, and any noise I so choose to make - if it is consistent enough - just prior to feeding.
We can find belief when we 1.find something to become symbol, something to become symbolized, and a creature capable of making a connection, drawing a correlation and/or association between the two things and then 2. watching it happen. That is the origen of meaning.
All association, connection, and/or correlation necessarily presupposes the existence of it's own content(regardless of all subsequent qualification). That is the presupposition of truth.
We have meaningful non linguistic belief consisting of things also inherent to all other more complex forms of thought and belief.
What's missing?
We have belief. It presupposes truth. It is meaningful to the creature. None of it requires language.
Do split brain experiments show falsity? Or conflict? Conflict is a good thing as long the corpus callosum is intact so as to allow reconciliation.
I can't speak to the solidity of beliefs. What I can point out is one of the philosophical implications of rejecting belief as a cause for action. The act of assertion is generally considered to have some belief as its cause. So we have this:
1, An assertion is an expression of belief.
2. You assert that beliefs cannot ground action.
3. If your assertion is correct, then you are not able to make assertions.
How would you answer that?
:)
There are numerous experiments with similar results that apply to folk without damage. Introspection is not what philosophers sometimes take it for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introspection_illusion
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/introspection/
The research you mentioned doesn't deny access to mental content through introspection:
I think my argument about assertion has more bite than you think. Maybe I'll work it over to make it a little tighter.
No; but it should lead to some doubt as to the certainty of introspection.
Quoting frank
Quoting Sapientia
Not so fast...
Argument from illusion?
I don't see that. The stick looks bent; but the fact is that it is straight.
Beliefs... again, I'm forced to wonder if there is a fact to the matter of what one believes.
The researchers you referenced don't join you in that doubt. But philosophy is the Land of Doubt.
In regards to your assertion that you are experiencing doubt: is there any fact of the matter? Is the proposition you have asserted truth apt?
They show that introspection is not an infallible method of determining one's mental state. Beliefs are a metal state.
Certainty and belief are inextricably related. You can't be certain of something yet not believe it. You can find words such as "certainty" included in dictionary definitions of belief.
One thing is clear: beliefs [I]are[/I] things like being convinced that I can open my front door with my front door key. That's an actual belief that I have, and I wouldn't have it if I was not convinced of it.
Whether beliefs such as this are simple or multifarious is open for discussion. Why don't you sum up what more you think there is to it? You mentioned actions and abilities, but I think that it's mistaken to say that this is what belief [I]consists in[/I]. The only actions would be whatever is going on in my brain, and the only abilities would be whatever enables me to believe. In that sense, they're more like [i]prerequisites[/I] for belief than what belief consists in. I can't think of a better way of saying what belief consists in than that it consists in being convinced. That's the simple answer, anyway. I suppose one could then analyse what it is to be convinced, if one wanted to delve deeper.
These comments that strike me as quite clearly wrong is precisely what is drawing responses from me. It flies in the face of what I know, or at least what I think I know. I'm curious how you guys think up this stuff, and what makes you think that it's right, and, by implication, that I'm wrong.
No, they showed that people aren't good at explaining their mental states, for instance explaining why they're angry, via introspection. The researchers affirm that people have access to mental content by introspection.
At conception, no creature is capable of drawing a correlation, connection, and/or association between that which becomes symbol and that which becomes symbolized. Hence, at conception there is no thought or belief, because all thought and belief is meaningful, and there can be no attribution of meaning this early on. Thus, like knowledge, thought and belief are accrued.
It's the content of the correlations that becomes the target of this investigation. What can be rightfully said about meaningful non-linguistic thought and belief? Based upon the groundwork laid heretofore I ask the following...
What sorts of things could become symbol and symbolized(become meaningful) to a non linguistic creature?
There can be no linguistic construct operating in non linguistic thought and belief. They must be able to draw connections, correlations and/or associations. That which becomes symbol cannot already be one to the creature. The same is true regarding that which becomes symbolized. So, prior to the creature drawing correlations between things, and these things becoming symbol and symbolized, they must already be things in and of themselves. They must be things that exist in their entirety prior to becoming symbol and/or symbolized, and they must be directly perceptible.
So, we have my drake responding to a sound while clearly showing expectation of getting fed. He doesn't think in words. His belief can only be rendered in terms of the connections he has drawn between things and/or himself. While words are a way to make such connections, drake doesn't have words. We can clearly see that the drake perceives stuff like food, me. sounds, etc. He has clearly made connections between 'objects' of his own physiological sensory perception and himself. These connections presuppose the existence of their own content.
Drake doesn't believe "the sound exists" or "I'm about to be fed". To quite the contrary his belief consists of the connections. The existence of the content of his connections(the sound and getting fed) cannot be doubted by him. Drake cannot hold such strong expectation that he is about to be fed after hearing the sound without believing he heard the sound.
We can say that drake believes he is about to be fed, but the content of his belief is not linguistic. Rather, as I've been at pains to show... it is drawing meaningful correlations. Language consists of the same.
Sure; yet the research clearly shows that this access is not privileged.
One's beliefs change in order to justify oneself.
Saying things like "This key unlocks the door" is of course one of the actions affiliated to the belief that the key unlocks the door. As is saying it to yourself. Or thinking it.
Now I'm not sure what you are suggesting, but it appears you think that beliefs are in some sense to be understood as a purely mental phenomena; that the state of the world is not relevant to what one believes.
This is usually framed in terms of beliefs being either internal or external. I'm now leaning towards an external approach, after having started this thread with an internalist approach, as given in the OP. But I have one eye towards some sort of dissolution of this apparent schism.
It would be interesting to hear your view.
I don't think feelings are most productively thought of as "contents" at all. I don't "look inside my mind" to see how I feel. I know I feel angry, sad, elated or whatever directly, my body knows it. And further, beliefs are not like feelings, I would say; beliefs are part of the reflexively explanatory narrative that I tell myself about who I am. "I believe, this, I believe that: this is who I am".
I don't introspect (look inside) the mind to see its contents: beliefs, thoughts, feelings and so on; like I might look inside a physical container to examine its contents. I think this is a phenomenologically false and misleading analogy.
When we get to emotions it's a whole other ball of wax. Emotion is like music. It can be simple and profound or broad and symphonic. I think there are memory harmonics just like in music so that stuff from childhood blends with displaced guilt and some movie I really liked. Sometimes emotion is contagious so just looking at an angry face has me feeling angry, but I wasn't even conscious of staring at that angry man. I started wondering what I was angry about.
With emotion, a constructed narrative might be all the explanation that's possible. I still know that I'm angry because of introspection, not from staring at my own mug in the mirror.
Do you know by introspecting? Or are you just angry, with or without introspection?
As I already said above I think you know you are angry directly, immediately; your body knows it, you feel it.
Yeah, that's when you're trying too hard to introspect, or convince yourself of some reflexive explanatory narrative about yourself that fits your preferred self-image, or maybe your self-hatred, or how you want others to see you or whatever; it's complex.
Combat? That's terse! Combat what, who, how, why?
You know that when I wrote "you" in what you responded to with 'Combat', I was not referring specifically to you, right?
Sure thing: I had no idea you are so sensitive. Maybe I'm insensitive to the psychological states of others on these forums. I always assume they are here just to test their own and others' ideas. So forgive me if you thought I was being rude. :smile:
Quoting Janus
I think this only applies to emotions readily recognized in your conscious (directly-focused) mentation. There are subtle forms of emotions which we are not always aware of. For example: disatisfaction, complaints, blame, etc., are all precipitated from anger but we usually notice the aggressive representations. Subtle emotions such as jealousy and envy also usually go unnoticed in the earlier stages of their manifestation. Emotions are like waves in the ocean, most people only recognize the crests, and only those externally perceivable at that, and miss out on the rest of the motion.
Indeed, but this is still a bit too narrow.
I would only add that not all beliefs are simple things. However, it seems rather clear to me that all beliefs have the same basic constitution.
At first blush, that may seem crazy. However, think on it a bit. There can be no introspection without language. Language is social. Introspection requires others.
Belief that a disjunction is true requires multiple facets of understanding. In order for Smith to believe that a disjunction is true, s/he must first undertand what makes that disjunction true. Smith must ubderstand the truth conditions of that disjunction. That is a belief in it's entirety. Smith must also believe that those conditions have been met. Thus, Smith's belief is not (p v q). That is far too inadequate a description. Rather Smith's belief is (p v q) is true because p is true.
Some belief is an attitude towards a particular assertion/statement/proposition. Others are not. Think Jack.
Jack doesn't understand propositions. Thus, there can be no way for him to have an attitude towards a proposition, unless one wishes to also hold and argue that propositions somehow exist prior to language creation, and do so in a way that is perfectly understandable to Jack. That's the only way Jack could have an attitude towards a particular proposition. Propositions are language products. Thus, Jack's belief is inexplicable when using such terms. Propositions are utterly meaningless to Jack. Jack's belief must be meaningful to Jack. Propositions are not adequate descriptions of Jack's belief despite our being required to use them as a means for talking about it. Jack can think in neither words nor attitudes towards words.
Both these consist of the same basic elemental constituents.
I agree that emotions can be unconscious, but I think if we are attentive we can feel their bodily effects. Particular jealousies or envies may be inferred from paying attention to the thoughts that arise, but it's not a precise science I would say.
One must be careful if they are the only judge of themselves
Some folk have very questionable methods...
I haven't seen this argued for.
All explanation is belief-based. All explanation is grounded upon belief. The above makes little sense in light of that...
Some explanation is sincere, and others are not. What is the difference when it comes to situations where the speaker is explaining their own belief to another? Has nothing to do with the truth of the belief statement in general. Rather, it has everything to do with whether or not the speaker believes what they are saying.
Surely all these explanations are belief-based. One lies because they believe that they ought not let others know what they believe.
That would come under the heading of introspection. Did you not read the SEP article Banno posted?
@Hanover's opinion might be interesting here.
I guess it depends on how you define the term and what associations you think it has. I think the idea of introspection arrives the connotations of 'looking within' and 'examining contents'; they are visual associations, and I think those associations are misleading, as I think I have already explained.
It would be standard to consider attention to body sensations as an example of introspection.
Well, I don't know what "standard" is, but given such a broad definition of introspection then I would have to agree. It's often said that we cannot be mistaken about what we feel, or about how things, in the most direct of senses, seem to us, and I mostly agree with that. But I question the notion that we have infallible access to the "contents of our minds", because 'contents' and 'states' always become mixed up with lingually based conceptual narratives that are acquired from the public realm.
I would tend to say that I know what kind of person I am, not from "looking within" but from thinking about how I have interacted with others, and what I tend to think about others. The other point is that, for me at least, paying attention to what I am thinking is not a form of inspection or looking, much less introspection or looking within, but a matter of listening to a voice. When I know just what I am thinking, I can hear my own voice, just as I can silently intone the words of a song or of a text I am reading. The other ways I can know what I am thinking is by seeing the words appear as I write them, or hear them spoken out loud when I am talking.
Maybe it's not the same for everyone, though; I acknowledge that possibility.
I think language and possibly cultural symbols are like a musical instrument that's inherited. I think that what I am is basically like a theme album with certain recurring refrains played on that instrument. I have some ability to decide what's being played, but there are underlying currents to it that have to play out no matter what I might want.
Quoting Janus
If I try to directly feel my own being, I don't feel anything. Like music, what's happening now takes on meaning in the context of what's been before, so my view is parallel to yours.
Indeed. I'll give you one guess what the operative mechanism of that inter-relation is...
I think the inter-relatedness of beliefs is a manifestation of logic. Or that's not quite right. I want to say that it actually is logic.
What is logic? One way to show what it is would be to point to the necessary inter-relatedness of beliefs.
What's your take?
Yes, they're related. I haven't denied that. A bacon sandwich consists of bacon and bread, but it doesn't consist in saying or thinking something such as, "I like bacon", although that would be related in a way.
Quoting Banno
No, not quite. I'm not sure what I've said that could've given you that idea. That's a tad too vague and imprecise for me. What would or would not count as a purely mental phenomena? On what basis? And no, clearly there are many beliefs where the state of the world is of relevance to what one believes, although there might also be exceptions.
I would say that, [i]in a sense[/I], beliefs are mental phenomena. For one to believe this or that requires mental activity. They're internal, like thoughts, not external, like ordinary objects. But there's also a necessary physical aspect involved. So, [i]purely[/I] mental? Seems not. Mental activity entails brain activity.
But there's also [i]another sense[/I] where they're not really mental [i]or[/I] phenomena at all, but more like a status or a fact about me in relation to other things. My beliefs are a set of the things of which I am convinced, and they do not cease to exist or cease to be my beliefs when, e.g. I go to sleep. Although they do cease to be my beliefs if I am no longer convinced of them.
Quoting Banno
Well, after giving it some thought, and as is consistent with what I've said above, I would say that it isn't either one or the other, but both, in a sense. That is, they're internal, in a sense, and external, in a different sense. A complete picture of belief requires both.
At first blush [i]and[/I] after consideration, it seems crazily mistaken. And I think that it [i]is[/I] crazily mistaken [I]or[/I] you mean something other than what I think you mean, based on what you've said. You aren't exactly helping with these really broad and ambiguous statements like, "Language is social", and, "Introspection requires others". Statements like that ought to be qualified, clarified, explained... not just spurted out and left there in confusion. It's not very difficult to think of a sense where both of those statements are obviously wrong. Being a bookworm is commonly associated with being antisocial. And surely you won't deny that you and I can both introspect on our own, without others around. That's not mere speculation, it's demonstrably true. And I don't agree with your first premise, either. This reasoning of yours seems like it's based on some kind of [I]post hoc[/I] fallacy and/or hasty generalisation.
IF I understand this right, I think I agree with it. The underlying themes would be what is subconsciously determinative of my being and doing?
Quoting frank
What I directly feel is something like a diffuse field of the most dimly apprehended different intensities; nothing to precisely articulate without getting all cerebral. So, I think it's right that what's happening in the most immediate present is articulated (takes on meaning) in terms of the past (as continuity) and also as what is itself now past. I'm not sure what you mean by "parallel", though?
I was thinking of patterns that pervade experience: like spring, summer, autumn, winter.
Quoting Janus
What's the relationship between belief and identity? Are beliefs the the final solidification of identity? If being is ever changing like music, what are beliefs in relation to that flux?
I would not agree to saying that the way all beliefs are related is logic. Doing so would render logic in such a way that allows it to be illogical, because some beliefs are related in an illogical manner.
p1 Introspection requires language.
p2 Language is social.
C1 Introspection requires that which is social.(from p1 and p2)
p3 Being social requires others(by definition)
C2 Introspection requires others(from C1 and p3)
What part are you objecting to, and would you offer a valid form of objection?
By the way, aside from your characterizations about the argument here, nothing you've said conflicts with the argument.
A complete picture of "belief" requires eliminating the talk about different senses by virtue of effectively combining and subsequently exhausting all.
All belief is existentially dependent upon both the internal and the external. There is no belief without both and a creature capable of connecting the two.
Holding a belief is acting in some ways and not in others. Other folk are as likely to fathom your beliefs as you are to introspect them. Hence it is erroneous to give some sort of primacy to beliefs that one commits to as a result of introspection. One can be wrong bout what one believes.
Consider mind as the interaction of brains and world. Your belief that the your key fits the door is part of a web of ways in which your mind interacts with keys and doors... and where the boundary between belief and knowledge and certainty and doubt and intent lies is in a state of flux.
This is not too far from Quoting creativesoul
Quoting Sapientia
Nor from this.
Yes.
Well there's this:
I think Daniel Kahneman says somewhere in his book that cognitive biases are just the sorts of things we don't notice about ourselves but others do, so Burns was dead on.
Of course, that's primarily a matter of habit. We can learn to be more self-aware, more careful. We can learn to think better.
Must introspection be either infallible or non-existent? No middle ground?
We can get things right about thinking and believing creatures, and thus about ourselves, but not all by oneself.
Be careful who you trust. Some folk have questionable methodology.
So holding the belief that aliens do or do not exist is acting in some way and not another? Seems to me to just be something I think and has nothing to do with what I do or don't do.
Are you joking? A valid form of objection? The burden is on you to support your own premises, which are far from self-evident, besides the third premise. I don't care about the third premise, and I don't care about any conclusions at this stage. I would like you to explain your thinking behind the first two premises, not repeat them in the form of a logical argument, which is not a helpful response to my last reply. The problem remains unresolved, and I'm still waiting on you to explain yourself.
Quoting creativesoul
Look, your argument is worth jackshit thus far without the substance to back it up. It's not worth arguing over whether or not what I said conflicts with your argument, because you've presented no substantive argument, just an empty shell of an argument. Anyone can piece together a few premises and draw a conclusion. [I]P1) Socrates is from Mars...[/I] But is Socrates actually from Mars? No. Why would anyone think that?
Come again?
Quoting creativesoul
Yes, I agree.
Why wouldn't I be okay with both? And yes, I did reject the dilemma. I think that it's a false dilemma.
Quoting Banno
What do you mean? Holding a belief is simply holding a belief: being convinced of something. Of course, we'd [i]expect[/I] people to act in a certain way [i]as a result[/I] of their beliefs. But that's not what holding a belief [i]is[/I]. Did you mean the former or the latter? I have no problem with the former, although that differs from what you actually said, which seems plain wrong, as Michael's reaction attests.
Quoting Banno
No, that's not true. The likelihood varies.
Quoting Banno
No, it's not erroneous. It's not uncommon to have superior knowledge of your own beliefs in comparison to others knowledge of your beliefs.
Quoting Banno
Yes, of course, that goes without saying.
Quoting Banno
¯\_(°-°)_/ ¯
No. I'm not kidding. Valid refutation is required.
In short...
Introspection is metacognitive
Metacognition requires language
Introspection requires language
Just for you Sapentia...
Introspection is thinking about one's own mental ongoings(one's own thought and belief). In order to even be able to think about one's own thought and belief, thought and belief must be prior to thinking about it, and there must be a means of identifying, isolating, and further assessing it. That means is language. We use the terms "mental ongoings", "thought", "belief", etc.
With me yet?
At conception there is neither thought nor belief.
Please do.
No, you don't seem to understand. There's nothing to refute. Hitchen's razor applies. You've just kicked the can a little further down the road by swapping "introspection" with "metacognition" and reasserting that it requires language.
Quoting creativesoul
I understand the above, but it just won't do. "That means is language" won't do. What you're describing is some kind of mental process, not language. That makes me think that you don't know what language is, and are confused. [I]This[/i] is language. Feel free to try again, but I haven't got all day. I was expecting more from you. Was that expectation misplaced?
Quoting creativesoul
No, I don't need to do so at this stage, as the burden of proof lies with you. And, in case you missed the point, that was a criticism of the argument that you presented. I was pointing out that it' easy to do, and that it's pointless if your premises are false or questionable and you're unable to substantiate them. More than mere validity is required for an argument to succeed.
What is all of this? Was this directed at me? Can you please just explain, [i]clearly[/I] and [i]adequately[/I], (what you've said so far has been severly lacking in this regard) why you think that introspection or metacognition requires language and others? And in what way does it require others? What did you mean by that? That could mean a number of things.
Please answer along the lines of, "Introspection requires language [i]because[/I]...", or "Instrospection requires others, [i]in the sense of.... because...[/I]". And it would probably help if you defined key terms which you might be using unconventionally. Do you think you can manage that?
If you can't do this, but can instead do little more than repeat your original assertions, then you have no substantive argument, and any argument which asserts the contrary is just as good or valid.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/introspection/#EmpEviAccInt
Seems what little progress we made has here been rescinded. "Holding a belief is simply holding a belief" says nothing, does nothing, gets us nowhere. Denying the empirical data leaves this line of enquiry with no place to go. Saying "No" over and over is not doing philosophy.
Obviously I said more than just that, and you've addressed that quote out of its context. If I had said just that with nothing else to add, then you might've had an objection worth raising. That was indeed part of my reply, and I said it for emphasis. It doesn't do nothing, else it wouldn't be a commonly used rhetorical device.
Now, what empirical data are you suggesting that I'm denying? Nevermind, I've just seen the links above. I take it that that's what you're referring to.
Well, I've presented quite a few links to tertiary sources. LEt's go with this:
Quoting Banno
And oppose it to this:
Quoting Banno
It is apparent that the analysis in the OP is insufficient in that it just takes it for granted that John 's belief that he is hungry is infallible.
Is it? Do you have a definite opinion on this, or are you, like me, looking for some way to reconcile an apparent contrast?
Well, how often have you mistakenly believed that you were hungry? If not infallible, it's at least very unusual. There are multiple times each day when I know that I'm hungry, and where I know that I'm not mistaken, and where my subsequent actions attest to the fact. Genuine exceptions would seem rare. Maybe as a result of some sort of medical condition or disorder. It's not an unusual trait for a young child to say that he's hungry or to ask for food, but then not eat what he's given, but that's not quite the same. Adults can do a similar thing, but again, this seems different, less genuine.
Are you hungry, or thirsty? Or a bit depressed and looking for solace in a bite? Or really just wishing not to offend your host? That's the upshot of the psychology; we are not as good at judging as we like to think we are.
That's the empirical evidence.
Access is not always guaranteed, but to say that we don't have [i]any[/I] access is surely mistaken. There are times when I know why I behaved a certain way. There's a level of explanation that I'm perfectly capable of acquiring and sharing with others. So, if that contradicts this review, then so be it. I know what I know.
Quoting Banno
I'm hungry right now, without a doubt. That's direct evidence, though it's not publicly accessible. You may not know, but I do. This evidence is stronger than anything that you have to offer. I haven't eaten much all day, and I last had something to eat when I had an egg and cress sandwich at what is now yesterday afternoon. I had nothing for dinner. The time on my clock presently reads 1:43am. That's plenty of evidence. It's frankly silly to try to cast doubt on this belief by questioning whether I might just be a bit depressed or looking to please someone or whatever. That's just counterfactual speculation.
Access to what, exactly? The really, truly, true belief?
Quoting Sapientia
Sure. And when you do this, are you introducing some belief to explain your behaviour?
Quoting Sapientia
Notice how much more than just the sensation of hunger is at play here? All that other stuff about how you relate to the world. Is your belief just one part of this? Or is all of this part of your belief?
The conclusion seems to me to be that some mental state, called a belief, is in itself inadequate to explain what we do.
Yes. Or just "the belief" for short.
Quoting Banno
I would probably appeal to some belief to explain my behaviour, yes. If, by using the word "introduce", you mean to suggest something along the lines that this belief would be an invention or a useful fiction, then I reject that suggestion.
Quoting Banno
I haven't denied that worldly stuff relates and factors in to what I believe. But this is part of a cause and effect relationship [i]with[/I] belief, not what belief is comprised of ontologically, which is how I interpreted your earlier talk of what belief consists in.
Quoting Banno
Well, that would depend on what exactly you're trying to explain and what kind of explanation you're looking for, would it not? I can think of situations where it would be adequate enough, all else being equal. Obviously, there's always additional background assumptions which relate to other connected beliefs. Talk of my door key makes sense in relation to me, my body, my key, my door, my house, the world...
But a belief is something apart from just talk, isn't it?
What is it? Not an invention or useful fiction - although the empirical evidence shows that it can be such a rationalisation...
We push each other to the extremes of our positions. What do we agree on?
Which of these are you happy with?
What sort of thing is a belief?
I have... numerous times over.
What he doesn't seem to understand is that the only reason that he can do that is because he already speaks language. That is... because of others.
Fear is a mental state. Being excited is a mental state. Being confused is a mental state. Being content, relaxed, having peace of mind, etc.
Put simply, that's not how most philosophers talk.
Much more care is needed here. My apologies if i've misdirected anyone. In my case the pie is in the oven, and I believe it will be hot enough to eat in about twenty minutes. Pie for brunch. Hm.
Yes, of course, and there are beliefs relating to what I mentioned, which, it should have been quite clear, was what I was getting at, taking into consideration the context.
Quoting Banno
No, not an invention or useful fiction, and yes, it can be used in that way. But so can virtually anything. So does that really matter? Do you want to discuss belief or false explanations?
You shouldn't have to ask what a belief is. You should already know. I think that you do already know. And that seems to me to be the problem. What has caused you to doubt yourself? Do you truly doubt, or is this more of an excercise? You do have beliefs, do you not? You understand the meaning of the word? Of course you do. Are you really telling me that you don't know what these things we call beliefs are? Isn't there something about that scenario that strikes you as absurd? Only in philosophy do we seem to think it appropriate to question such things. In philosophy, things get special treatment. But is it [i]right[/I]?
What do beliefs have in common? What are their characteristics? I've given my own definition, and it's good enough for me.
Quoting Banno
I would accept all of those, although some of them with added qualifications.
It might be true that we aren't generally as good at judging our beliefs as we think we are, yet nevertheless sometimes we get it spot on. It wouldn't even be inconsistent for it also to be true that we get it right much of the time, with the thrust of the explanation having more to do with our tendency to overestimate our powers of judgement.
Although we might be able to doubt to some extent our beliefs, some beliefs can be so strong as to set aside any serious doubt.
Given a specific action there are innumerable possible beliefs that might explain it, though these innumerable possible explanations can typically be whittled down to just a handful, and sometimes just one: the best explanation. Countless of them can easily be rejected as remote, implausible, unworkable, and not worthy of serious consideration.
We can be mistaken as to why we acted in some particular way, but we can also be correct. As with many, many, other things. This in itself tells us little of significance.
So, I would say that these statements that you've collected together appear to lean more towards one side, outcome, conclusion or position, but under scrutiny, this is found to be misleading.
p2 Language is social.
C1 Introspection requires that which is social.(from p1 and p2)
p3 Being social requires others(by definition)
C2 Introspection requires others(from C1 and p3)
p1 in the above argument was questioned by Sapientia. The following argument was offered as support for p1 above.
p1 Introspection is metacognitive(by definition)
p2 Metacognition requires language(by existential dependency as offered below)
c1 Introspection requires language(from p1 and p2)
Introspection is thinking about one's own mental ongoings(one's own thought and belief). In order to even be able to think about one's own belief, there must be some pre-existing belief to be thinking about. This is just plain common sense. Prior to thinking about one's own mental ongoings, one must first have mental ongoings(belief) and the capability to identify, isolate, and subsequently talk about them. That capability requires a means. That means is language. We use the terms "mental ongoings", "thought", "belief", etc.
This is all just plain common sense. It's not that difficult to understand.
Yes. I am painfully aware of that fact.
:wink:
That's not my problem though. Rather, my problem is showing how that kind of talk is (a big part of)the problem...
Why?
Because they believe that they will be fed. They do not understand this explanation, so it would be wrong to equate my account/report of their belief with their belief. Rather, they've just drawn mental correlations, connection, and/or associations between me and what happens(more often than not) after they walk themselves over to me. I am meaningful(significant if you prefer) to those animals in a way that other people are not necessarily, although most of the animals tend to attribute the same meaning to anyone else who looks enough like me... most other humans...
:lol:
It's rudimentary... but it's there.
I did ask you to clarify your meaning, not once, but multiple times, though to little avail. I have had to press you. Don't you think that it's a bit of a piss take for you to take me to task over one possible interpretation I raised, out of a number of possible interpretations, the existence of which I have acknowledged? Do you know how problems like this can be avoided? They can be avoided if you express yourself clearly from the start, or at least do so as soon you're made aware that the ambiguity of your original wording is problematic. You shouldn't leave the hardwork of figuring out what the heck you mean down to others.
I'm just about done trying to make sense of you. It's tiring. And you can be very repetitive too, needlessly so. But please, let this be a lesson.
Quoting Sapientia
Mirror, mirror...
Your approach here leaves me little reason to continue with you Sap... I still love ya...
:halo:
Where in our recent discussion have I come out with ridiculously vague and easy to misinterpret statements such as those of yours which I've called attention to, if that is what you're suggesting?
:wink:
That's a contradiction right there. When you say "I'm hungry" with sincerity, belief is implied.
Quoting Banno
And that's another contradiction. If John believes that eating the sandwich will fix his hunger, then the implication is that John believes that he is hungry, and that this is the very hunger - [I]his[/I] hunger - being referred to, which the sandwich, so John believes, will fix. How can you believe in the solution if you don't believe in the problem? That is why he is seeking the solution in the first place.
You've got yourself into a right muddle here, it seems to me. What you're saying just doesn't make sense.
Is this Wittgenstein, with his bit about pain in [I]Philosophical Investigations[/I], that has got you thinking in this way?
We come to talk about our beliefs by virtue of language acquisition and metacognition(introspection).
What if we've gotten things wrong? Not in the sense of misunderstanding our own mental ongoings and being corrected by another whose framework is found to be more acceptable to us, but rather...
Since it is the case that thinking about thought and belief requires pre-existing thought and belief and language, certainly non linguistic thought and belief already existed in it's entirety(in and of itself) prior to our becoming aware of it, prior to our naming it.
Is that not precisely what is required for getting things wrong?
That's entirely fine with me. This is deja vu, and not the good kind.
Quoting creativesoul
That's true Sapientia.
That was the explanation you offered for saying that "introspection requires others" is 'demonstrably false'.
Well, you demonstrated no such thing. I've offered adequate argument for my position. Denials that amount to nothing more than "nuh uh!" aren't acceptable. I'm confident that you'll think about what I've said in the quote above, and your understanding will grow as a result. I'm not looking to convince you. The success of the argument I've provided doesn't require such a thing. Your belief is unnecessary.
I still love ya!
Yes, but being hungry and saying you are hungry are not the same. And even when you say you are hungry, the introduction of the notion of belief is a redundant elaboration. It's similar to the kind of unnecessary elaboration involved in the difference between saying 'It's raining" and "I believe it's raining". The same thing happens with the notion of truth; 'it's raining' and 'it's true that it's raining'. Belief and truth in these kinds of elaboration, can get reified as substantive states.
Well, yes, obviously. Why are you saying that? Did you think I thought otherwise?
Quoting Janus
Yes, but I haven't denied any of that. I don't know why you're bringing this up. It's just preaching to the choir. The only bit you've lost me on is that last sentence. It isn't entirely clear to me what you mean by that, but whatever.
Are you saying this because you think that that's what Banno was getting at? If so, it was worded poorly. He could have spoken in terms of what we do or do not need to say, but he didn't. He could have spoken of redundancy, but he didn't. Instead he just seemingly contradicted himself.
Actions speak louder than words, yes?
So what do my actions say? What do they tell you? What I value, what matters to me, that sort of thing, but also what I believe. My preferences and my expectations are two different things, and people will infer both from my actions.
If someone observes my behavior and says, "Pat seems to think that ..." I don't see how they could mean something like, "Pat is behaving like he's behaving that way." Not much of an inference, that. So what do people mean when they say, "You seem to believe X"? What do you seem like when you seem to believe something?
Because @Banno spoke about the difference between being hungry and believing you are hungry, and you responded by stating that saying you are hungry implies believing you are hungry; and that was obviously irrelevant to what he had said, and which made it look like you had thought he was talking about saying he was hungry.
I made the point about the redundancy of the notion of belief, because you emphasized that belief is implied in statements, which made to look as though you thought that was an important thing to point out. If you "don't deny" anything I said, then it leaves me wondering why you thought it was important to point out that belief is implied in statements.
Quoting Sapientia
I mean that when such notions get reified, people then start asking silly questions like "what is belief" as though it were some substantive thing that could be investigated to determine what it is.
Although, it doesn't anyway. Unless, again, you're just not being clear enough in expressing yourself and I've misunderstood. But a logical consequences of that would be that if everyone else were to suddenly cease to exist, then I wouldn't be able to introspect from that point onwards. But, again, that seems obviously wrong. Why on earth would that not be possible?
I still don't think that you've done a proper job of explaining yourself on this point.
Laters.
Well yes, I thought that because he said that he was hungry. It's not such an obvious misunderstanding, but I can see how I could have misunderstood what he said now. This is a conversation after all, and if someone had said that to you in conversation, "I don't believe that I'm hungry. I'm just hungry", then it would probably sound like they had just quite plainly contradicted themselves.
Forget it. (Although, in future, it would probably be clearer to talk about this kind of thing in third person, rather than first person, as in, "Someone can be hungry, yet not believe that they're hungry").
Maybe that should be "if and only if".
AND
There's a common asymmetry here: I don't want specifically to find my keys in the kitchen, just to find them; but my (partial) belief about their location has to be more specific to explain the specific action I take. Looking for my keys anywhere and everywhere isn't much of an option.
No.
The explanation is as clear as a bell and you've still misunderstood.
No.
Introspection is existentially dependent upon language. Language upon others. Thus, it is one's ability to think about their own thought and belief that owes it's very existence to others, even if others somehow ceased to exist after one has acquired the ability.
What happens to others after the ability is acquired has no bearing upon what the ability itself is existentially dependent upon...
You're just really bad at expressing yourself clearly. Or confused. You're either contradicting yourself, or you don't mean what you say. Apparently, you don't understand what existential dependency is, and you confuse it with a dependence relationship of origin. Existential dependence means that the existence of X depends on the existence of Y, and from that it obviously follows that if Y ceased to exist, then X would also cease to exist. So, if introspection is existentionally dependent on others, and others cease to exist, then introspection would also cease to exist. But that is false. If I was the last being in existence, I would still retain my ability to introspect, and could exercise it at will. And it is likewise false that language is existentially dependent on others, as demonstrated by the last being in existence thought experiment. I wouldn't suddenly lose my ability to speak English or to read English. There would obviously still be language, despite there being no others. So others are not required, contrary to your claims that they are.
It seems you mean instead that X couldn't have existed without the existence of Y. That is past-tense. You should be speaking in past-tense, not present-tense. It's about origins. Not the same thing. Use another term for that.
Alternatively, it's possible that you [i]do[/I] understand what existential dependency is, but you're denying the logical consequences.
I am existentially dependent upon my mother, regardless of what happens after I come into the world through her womb. My existence yesterday, today, and/or tomorrow was not, is not, and would not be possible without my mother.
The same is true with introspection and others.
Your notion of existential dependency is found wanting. Fill it in and see for yourself. Show it to me and others here if you'd like. Give me a list of things that fit your criterion. I'll give you a list of things that do not, and yet we would be talking nonsense if we said that they were not. My example above is a good start. That's a reductio... do you see it?
According to your criterion for what counts as A being existentially dependent upon B, whenever B ceases to exist, so too does A.
Let A be me, and let B be my mother. According to your notion, I am not existentially dependent upon my mother, even though my life is impossible without her.
Or acting under duress...
All else being equal. It is, as I keep saying, a question of our norms of rationality. In my first presentation of the lost keys, I put a man with a knife in my kitchen. Then it's rational not to look for my keys just then.
Aren't you shifting the focus from what counts as belief to what counts as acting rationally?
I'm insisting on another aspect of the connection between beliefs and actions. Banno has talked about our use of "belief" in giving post facto explanations of our behavior.
I'm just pointing out that we also say, if you want to find your keys and you think they're in the kitchen, you should want to look for your keys in the kitchen, and anyone who didn't must either have some good reason not to or they just don't think the way we do.
I don't see anything on offer that can take up the role of belief (or expectation, or something else in this neighborhood) in such judgments.
In the debate on metaphysical realism, idealists talk about an existential dependency between mind and other stuff. They're not just saying that other stuff originates in mind, and that other stuff depended (past-tense) on mind for existence. They're saying that, at any point in time, if no mind, then no other stuff.
Quoting creativesoul
That's just another example of your failure to use the right grammatical tense, which contributes towards your lack of clarity and liability of being misunderstood. Of course you're not existentially dependent on your mother! Your existence does not depend on the existence of your mother. Unless you're not telling me something. Is there some kind of lethal device strapped to the both of you, like something out of Saw, such that if she were to die, then that would immediately trigger the device, killing you at the same time? It is true that your life would have been impossible had your mother not have given birth to you. You were dependent on her for that. But that doesn't mean a thing, given a proper understanding of what the term "existential dependency" means.
Yes. I'm in agreement with using the term "belief" within an after the fact explanation for why one acted as they did.
I admire your tenacity Sapientia. It could use a little better baseline for judgment.
Here's what's happening...
I've used a phrase in a way unfamiliar to you. You objected to the phrase based upon another sense of that phrase which is familiar to you. I've explained to you what I meant. You now better understand what I meant, but yet continue to insist that my language use is wrong. You make that determination based upon a different sense of the phrase, namely the one that was already familiar to you, the classical idealist sense - I suppose - according to what you've said.
Do you not understand that that approach is invalid?
The first step of a valid critique is to take the argument/position on it's own terms.
This is just plain common sense, my friend. If your logic or terminological use leads you to a place where you cannot admit that your existence is dependent upon your mother, it's wrong...
If my mother had not given birth to me, I would not be here right now, in this moment. This conversation could not be happening if my mother had never given birth to me.
If that doesn't stop you in your tracks Sapientia, then nothing else I can think of will.
Quoting Sapientia
It's not at all irrelevant, my friend. Oblige me...
So...
This conversation could not be happening if my mother had not given birth to me. You agree with that much.
Do you disagree that this conversation is existentially dependent upon my mother?
I've already said enough for you to know [i]that[/I] I disagree and [i]why[/I] I disagree, so what's the point of this? Do you want us to talk past each other? You can either address the answers that I've given or not, but I won't oblige you if you're just going to needlessly drag this out, step-by-step, and make me repeat myself.
Going by [i]my[/I] interpretation of existential dependency - [i]the standard, or more standard, interpretation[/I] - it makes perfect sense to [i]deny[/I] that this conversation is existentially dependent on my mother, given that this conversation does [i]not[/I] depend on the present existence of my mother, [i]nor[/I] did it depend on much of her past existence, and [i]nor[/I] would it depend on her continued or future existence. To deny that would lead to absurdity.
I do [i]not[/I] accept [i]your[/I] interpretation of existential dependency - [i]the nonstandard, or less standard, interpretation[/I] - and I have no interest in temporarily adopting your understanding, for sake of argument, so that you may drag me along with you and your process of reasoning.
If you retrace our discussion, I hope that you'll at least recognise that your incomplete sentences have been problematic.
Some will hold to archaic convention even when it has been proven to be very problematic. The notion of belief suffers much the same fate, epistemologically speaking that is...
Banno, I'll redirect back to where we were in my next post, unless you beat me to it.
So, I think we were here...
Belief requires the internal, the external, and a creature capable of connecting the two.
I want to peruse the thread in it's entirety again and list all the agreements thus far, and see what we have to work with.
I disagree; belief requires the dissipation of the distinction between internal and external.
The move I was considering next was to draw some sort of closure by re-assessing each of the items in the ongrowing OP in turn.
In what way does belief require such dissipation?
I mean, what is the term "require" doing?
But I want to build up to that.
Ok. Here's where I'm at...
The internal/external dichotomy - if applied in such a way that everything is one or the other - cannot properly take account of belief, for it is existentially dependent(it requires) both. To put belief in strict terms of being internal sacrifices the ability to take account of the parts of belief that are not. The same holds good for "external".
Is that close to what you mean with regard to our grammar(how we talk about belief)? Is that agreeable enough?
A thing... Not the rest.
Do we agree that belief is foundational? That is not to say linear. The web description is better, I think. But it begins simply and grows in complexity, right?
Yeah, I think these all will do a good job of describing some beliefs.
Amorphous... indeed.
I'l wait for this...
:smile:
Thinking that belief and truth are the same - or that one can replace the other - leads to all sorts of rubbish.
It's the reason belief is important.
Or better, that belief and truth are different is important. Without a difference between belief and truth, we can't be wrong; if we can't be wrong, we can't fix our mistakes; without being able to fix our mistakes, we can't make things better.
Hence, Trump.
If you get all your information from reading, you will be reading only the final reports, which are organized to make the original belief look rationally and/or scientifically neat and tidy. But if you create your own ideas, you realize that belief is the starting point. The stronger the belief, the further one will go to make the belief a reality, so it is neat and tidy.
From the OP:
Quoting Banno
Having the idea of belief allows us to seperate what we think is true from what is indeed true. It allows us to be wrong.
There are versions of relativism, post modernism and pragmatism that attempt to replace truth with belief alone. The aim is often some honourable form of equity or freedom. But the result is often an inability to discuss error in a helpful way.
There are many examples, from Brexit and false news to climate change to dribble-down economics. If we forget that there are sometimes facts, we loose the ability to fix error.
Indeed! Here in the States, the aim is to 'validate' all people's thought, belief, and feelings as a first step in helping them deal with whatever it is(events in someone's life) that they are dealing with. 'Perception is reality' they like to say, simply because it's effects/affects are real. Then there's the all too common 'his truth'. 'her truth', 'your truth', and 'my truth'...
Sigh...
Inherently inadequate methodology(linguistic framework).
A belief is simply taking a proposition seriously. Lose of belief results in laughter.
I think what we call belief is really a relation between different propositions, whether or not they agree, and actual beliefs are our internal models of the world. Our models of the world are not entirely conscious, and that being the case, it can't be said that we always know what we believe.
Agrees (proposition a, proposition p)
If I offer a cat an empty bowl it will not mistakenly try to eat from it. I can't lie to the cat and tell it there is food when there is not, but I can trick the cat nevertheless. I can offer a cat an empty bowl, listen to its MEOWS of protest, and wait for the timer to go off in the electronic cat bowl that opens a compartment in the bottom which reveals a delicious feline feast. The cat's internal model of the world, perhaps just that specific bowl, is revised in some way. With enough experience with the electric bowl, the cat could reliably predict mealtime or 'believe' the bowl has food even though it's not immediately apparent.
Critters compete, cooperate, and freeload just like people do, they just don't do it with conceptual propositions as we do.
We should probably use agree instead of believe because it is more honest.
Quoting Banno
Searle has me re-thinking this. Rather then a relation, B(a,p), it's better to think in terms of "p" as the content of the belief. That brings out the intentionality of the belief. That is, B(a,p) hides the problems of substitution salva veritate.
That’s what a proposition is.
Years later, we've all gone around the circle and ended up right were we started! What form does a proposition take as the content of a belief?
What do you mean by "what form"?
The SEP has a lot of good information. One good article about belief and propositions is the one on truth bearers.
The same thing goes in describing that beliefs and propositions are bearers of truth, as if one is carrying another. But we all know beliefs can be false, so it seems to me that we can believe in false things and beliefs are not necessarily bearers of truth.
I think you're wondering if some ontology is being smuggled in with the concept of a proposition. There isn't.
I will say, I've been surprised since I've been here how many posters have the same misconception about what analytical philosophers mean by "proposition."
Look it up if you're interested. It's not really an issue for debate.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That's the prevailing philosophical view, yes.
I take such a 'definition' to be best understood as a convention suggested for adoption. A similar idea seems to be expressed in 'put your money where your mouth is.'
Unless the analytical philosophers define a proposition as a string of scribbles in it's fundamental state, then I don't know what else they could be getting at, as any proposition in a language that you don't know is a string of scribbles.
What is it like for you to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow? How do you know that you believe it? Is your belief simply the sound of you talking to yourself in your mind saying, "I believe the sun will rise tomorrow".? That is what I'm trying to ask. Beliefs have some kind of ontology for you to be able to talk about them and for others to agree that you have them.
I like this gap that you insert between the believer and the belief. Belief is only interesting if it determines action in the world. If I claim to believe I can fly and nevertheless carefully avoid high ledges, then maybe I'm wrong about myself or have an uninteresting conception of belief.
I assume that since you assert this, you believe it.
How would you say this particular belief determines action in the world?
I'd say it could/does inspire/constrain psychological research (eventually in actions which are not 'just talk', like this or that researcher getting a direct deposit or a chair being set up in a room.) It should be stressed though that talk/writing is a kind of measurable action (as opposed to immaterial thought), and that even influence of the speech acts of succeeding philosophers counts here. Of course public talk would be less interesting itself if we weren't animals using that talk to coordinate less talky things like work, war, and reproduction.
As I mentioned above, I compare the installation of this convention concerning 'belief' to Popper's suggested convention of understanding science in terms of falsifiability. It is a prescription for specialists, not a definition of the word used in the wild. I believe @Isaac is/was a psychological researcher. Perhaps he could provide some input on this.
But what about in your case? You believe it (we assume, since you asserted it). Does this mean anything other than that you'll utter a particular sentence at a certain time?
Quoting jas0n
Immaterial? If you think about P, is that not a concrete event in the world? If not, what is it?
Quoting jas0n
So it's a stipulation, not any sort of analysis?
Quoting Quine, Ontological Remarks on the Propositional Calculus
:rofl:
At least you have some vague idea what the word means. That's an improvement over some around here.
I understand the gist. It's roughly equivalent to checking whether Popper's falsification theory of science can itself be falsified. Even though your question misses the point, I'll still answer it.
My belief in the value of the convention of approaching belief in terms of tendencies toward various public actions will itself plausibly be 'cashed out' publicly not only in further speech acts but also in which books, friendships, and careers I pursue or fail to pursue.
Quoting frank
How many angels fit inside an intention? What is the square root of coveting your neighbor's ass?
Quoting frank
I'd call it a tentative articulation of an otherwise fertile but useless ambiguity. In other words, it's both. Examine the analogous theory of computability. Everyone had a rough idea of what an algorithm was, but that rough idea was too vague to do anything with. So Turing, Church and Post suggested concrete/detailed articulations of this vague concept that turned about to be equivalent.
The alternative to something like belief-as-tendency-to-act might be a sloppy folk psychology that never gets anywhere, a tour through the quicksand of grammar mistaken for necessity.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-belief/#NatBel
IMO, 'regard' as used above implies too much commitment, though qualifications must finally come to an end if one tries to communicate. The 'primitivists' may be right in some sense, but 'not admitting of analysis' does not exactly recommend a primitivist approach if one wants to figure something out and not just fetishize human ignorance. If your objection to behaviorism is simply an objection to pretending that tendency-to-act is an exhaustive description of the meaning of belief as opposed to a convention, then I concur.
So you're saying you don't really know what actions are determined by your belief, but you're sure some will be. Why are you so sure?
Just exploring the issue, that's all.
Quoting jas0n
So thinking is immaterial? Or there's no such thing as thinking?
Quoting frank
You tell me. I think you are trying to frame the fireman for your own act of arson here. Check out my thread on Popper's swamp. IMO, no one knows exactly what 'material' or 'immaterial' is supposed to mean. I think the issue is best approached in terms of basic statements, those which might be said to support or falsify a theory. Some thinkers have tended to speak in terms of sense-data. Popper evades such implicit quicksand by explicitly accepting the swamp at the bottom of theorizing. Ambiguity seems to be a fact of life, and we can adopt conventions to ameliorate its negative aspects.
Ah, thanks for clarifying. I was starting to think you were trolling me.
Reality doesn't care about aligning its truth to what you may or may not find interesting. I find it interesting that you believe that though.
A brutal dictator that is only interested in hearing what they want to hear from their subjects and not what their subjects actually believe and cannot act on because its not what the dictator wants to hear or see, then you can understand the difference between the thought (belief) police and the action police. If there can be a distinction between the way people act and what they believe, then I find that distinction very interesting.
It seems there are two basic kinds of intentions or propositional attitudes in belief, one that is meant to reflect the world (our coherent inner model of it anyway) and one that is meant to influence the world, or rather influence others, in some way. The latter can be outright deception or to express group solidarity, neither of which are good.
I'd be happy to, but I'm not very clear on what you're asking. Perhaps you could clarify, if it's still relevant?
What do you make of the convention of treating belief as 'that upon which a man is prepared to act' ? Or, in other words, of understanding 'belief' as a tendency to act in this or that uncontroversially observable way? I suggested that this wasn't a lexicographer's definition but the specification of a term of art, a convention that sharpens/operationalizes an otherwise too-foggy concept.
To me that response misses the issue entirely. It's too emotional for such a dry topic.
Searle uses it in his Phil of mind and social philosophy, some of which quiet cogent and interesting. He has an approach to intentionality that it distinct from that of the German phenomenologists.
@Jas0n's notion of belief touches not that, but of course Searle's has been worked out in greater depth.
I see. I have a lot of sympathy for the methodological behaviourist approach and most of my earlier work was from that perspective. The reason, at the time, was what seemed like a lighter reliance on theory. I felt that too much of psychological testing was about shoring up these grotesque theories rather than the more simple matter of making better guesses about behaviour, so in that respect I agree.
Such an approach runs into problems, however, when looking at the constraints the physical system (mind-body-environment) places on intention, especially over time. It's as if the contents of a box were analysed purely in terms of what it did when you opened the lid, like a spring (the contents) might fly out after the lid is removed (the behaviour). But if the box was damp, the spring might have rusted, we'd lack an explanatory framework for the new 'behaviour' of the spring because we bracketed out the interaction between it and the box.
I now prefer a slightly more cognitive approach, but I'm still extremely leery of allowing theoretical constructs to gain too much concreteness, so don't really fit well in that field either. Fortunately for me, I'm now old enough to no longer need to.
Interesting perspective. What are your thoughts on phenomenological approaches?
Thanks for the detailed response!
If nothing else, the behaviorist motive seems laudable, if even some compromise turns out to be necessary.
To be honest, I don't think I ever saw how it was a sufficiently unified approach to be collected under a single banner. I read Giorgi when I was at university and found a lot in there of interest, but didn't see it as ending up with anything much different to the behemothic theories of human minds to which I was so opposed. As an approach to therapy I understand it has had some great success (clinical psychology is not my field, so I can't really comment, but I've certainly heard good things about it). As an approach to social or cognitive psychology, however, it doesn't seem to offer much new and in fact re-enforces much of what I see as being wrong with the mainstream approaches in those fields.
I think all psychology suffers from the problem any form of anti-realism suffers from, in that you cannot get outside of a way-of-thinking to think about a way-of-thinking. So if one wants to do some work on the question of how we think, one needs not only to compartmentalise, but to do so within a model which allows for the fact that such compartmentalising has itself taken place within a framework which pre-existed it.
That, to me, is the advantage of methodological behaviourism. It compartmentalises the metal processing by 'black boxing' it in a manner which, whilst still reliant on some mental framework (here cause and effect), minimises that reliance to something about which there is little genuine doubt.
Re-introducing descriptions of those mental processes, therefore, should, as I said above, be an act of necessity, not one of foundation. One should avoid, at all costs, seeing any kind of foundational view of psychological systems as anything other than a story. A pragmatic narrative on which to hang the various results. And yes, that too is just a narrative. It's narratives all the way down - as the expression goes.
Quoting Isaac
Nicely put.
This is done quite frequently, with mixed results. The problem is in interpreting the statement. Statements are vague and it's not always clear what the speaker means by them, so any result contrasting their behaviour with the researcher's interpretation of the statement, is always going to be problematic if used to claim a relation between their behaviour and their interpretation of the statement. If you can track down a copy (though it's very old now and probably massively out of date) I suggest reading through 'The Problem of a Logical Theory of Belief Statements' by Nicholas Rescher.
Essentially, belief statements as either speech acts or acts of agreement are only tangentially connected to beliefs as 'tendencies to act as if X'.
More often, for example, they act like badges signifying membership of social groups - like a password one must utter to enter a building - and such belief statements are exchanged to ascertain groupings in uncertain environments. Take, for example, any divisive topic and look at the clichés exchanged. The semantic content of the statements doesn't matter and is rarely even considered. What matters are keywords which signify the group, the narrative, to which one adheres.
In other cases, they act as comforters, re-enforcing narratives which are important. For example, the belief statements one might use to reassure oneself, or those one might use to clarify in the face of uncertainty.
Finally, there's Rescher's problem that people do not always understand the logic of the statements they assert such that a person can assert the premises of a valid argument but assert the opposite of its conclusion. We cannot understand both assertions in terms of a belief - a tendency to act as if X - because one often cannot act as if two contradictory states of affairs are both the case.
No problem, glad you found it of interest.
That seems like an accurate description. Tribes and flags and badges. We're clever in some ways, but apparently quite simple in others.
Quoting Isaac
Spitballing, I'd think you'd almost need a survey with a finite number of options for choosing between or rating statements simple enough to neutralize the interpretation problem. But maybe that would be too constraining.
Quoting Isaac
Good point ! I like Rescher's style, very clear and focused (if memory does not betray.)
Yeah, that's how it's generally done, but nonetheless, I'm not sure one could ever devise statements of such clarity and circumstances wherein people felt no narrative pressure to ascribe to any given one, to elimiante the problem. That's not to say it's not a very useful approach. One just needs to be aware of the limitations.
Understood, which brings us back to temptation of behaviorism. Or maybe to deep learning models that aren't about understanding but simply manipulation (to mention another black box.)
Quoting Banno
Could you maybe say more about the way your thinking has changed?
I myself would not want to define beliefs in terms of relations between individuals and propositions. In your OP you shy away from calling this a proper definition, but because it is the primary characteristic of belief on offer, and because it is proposed as "a basic structure or grammar for belief," it effectively functions as a definition. Apart from the idiosyncrasies of modern logic, I don't know why the relation model should take precedence. I am also wondering why a definition of belief must be circular in some incoherent way.
As a jumping off point, Aquinas offers an Aristotelian definition of "to believe": to think with assent.* "To think" is the genus and "with assent" is the specific difference. He proceeds to clarify the exact meaning of each part of the definition, but because he is ultimately concerned with a narrower concept of 'belief' the clarification is not really important for this thread.
I agree with Aquinas: to believe is to think with assent. Namely, one is both thinking about some proposition and also assenting to it. A belief, then, is an adherence to some proposition that we have thought about and have assented to, and that we continue to assent to.
I largely agree with your OP. I agree that a belief is a propositional attitude, does not imply truth, involves affirmation, makes sense of error, is dynamic, and explains but does not determine actions. But I wouldn't want to use the relation idea as a definition or a quasi-definition of belief. I think it is a way to characterize belief, but that it does not capture the essence of belief, and therefore it will lead us astray if we come to depend on it in a tight spot. There are different ways to criticize it, but I would want to say that it doesn't provide us with much insight into what a belief is. We have relations with all sorts of things, and therefore to call belief a relation does not provide any useful way to distinguish this relation from other relations. Specifically:
I'm not sure what (2) adds to (1). I am not sure how it provides any additional information or insight into the reality of belief. If someone says, "What's a belief?" and I respond, "It's a relation between an agent and a proposition," then I haven't done much work to narrow down what we are talking about due to the fact that we have many relations to propositions which are not belief (e.g. doubt, ignorance, curiosity, guesses, proof, etc.). This obviously gets into your thread about Kit Fine and necessary properties vs. essential properties. For Aristotle a relation would be a necessary property of a belief, but if it does touch on the essence it surely doesn't get to the heart of the matter.
But anyway, maybe I am quibbling or barking up the wrong tree. I know you didn't offer the OP as a precise definition. I guess my main point is that if we are going to talk about belief in itself then we will have to talk about its definition. Perhaps the OP was meant to respond to certain misconceptions and that is why it was phrased in this way? Yet you mentioned Searle and trying to account for the intentionality of belief, and I think "assent" does something to capture this.
* Summa Theologiae, II.II.Q2.A1
It did little to head off the generally feeble treatment belief receives hereabouts.
For the most part my view hasn't changed, although the Searle stuff is more recent. It was provoked by Making the social world, p.27:
This struck me not as something novel, but as a clarification. In particular it relates to a conversation with @Sam26 and @creativesoul as to whether beliefs can all be expressed in words, or somethign like that. I had not expressed this clearly enough.
Stipulating definitions is treacherous, as I've shown elsewhere, and this thread should be read as analysing belief rather than providing a definition. If I were to choose the aspect of belief that is, as it were, most central, it would be that beliefs explain actions. Given that, while "to think with assent" has its merits, it is insufficient in that sometimes we act without thinking - that is, not all our beliefs are explicit. You believe, arguably, that I am not writing this while floating in space in the orbit of Jupiter, yet until now that belief had not been explicated.
Anyway, let's see where that leaves us. Welcome, it is pleasing to hear from someone with a bit of background in the topic.
There's definitely a relation between individuals and beliefs, this seems obvious. However, I would go further, viz., beliefs are relations between individuals and certain types of actions. Individuals show their beliefs by what they do (actions). So I can express that I believe that an object X is a car by using a proposition. I can also show my belief in cars without using language, by getting into the car, working on the car, changing a tire, etc. It's the conscious individual that gives life to a belief in relation to the world.
I agree with much of this. I never liked the phrase "propositional attitudes," it never struck me as correct. I also agree with - "Very few of our intentional states are directed at propositions. Most are directed at objects and states of affairs in the world independent of any proposition...The proposition is the content of the belief, not the object of the belief.(Searle)." So the proposition expresses the content of what I believe, but it's definitely not the object of my belief. The object is the world of facts.
How would you explain belief where there is no action? If I take a trek into the Amazon rain forest, where I perform no actions relating to cars (don't speak about cars, don't get into cars, don't see cars, etc) I do not stop believing in cars.
Where did your beliefs about cars come from? You didn't develop your beliefs in a vacuum. At some point you saw a car, or were told about cars, or interacted with cars.
Belief : (History of Observations x Set of Possible Actions) --> Power Set of Observations
"History of Observations" comprises the agent's understanding of his external world, and refers to his memory of observations up to and including his present observations. Conditioned on his observation history, he infers the consequences of performing a possible action. In order to accommodate causal and epistemic uncertainty, the agent will in general map a possible action to a set of potential observations, hence the use of the power set on the right hand side.
Nowhere in the above definition is the world, as we outsiders understand it, referred to by the agent's beliefs, for the agent's beliefs are understood purely in terms of the agent's mental functioning and stimulus responses. It should also be understood that from the point of view of the agent, his observation history is his "external world".
It makes no sense for onlookers to interpret an agent as referring to anything other than his memories and sensory surface. As far as an onlooker is concerned who is trying to understand the agent's beliefs, the world that is external to the agent is only relevant and useful to the onlooker in so far as the onlooker lacks knowledge of the agent's mental functioning - in which case the onlooker can infer the agent's mental disposition bu observing the agent's behavioural reactions to external stimuli originating in the world of the onlooker. But if an onlooker were to possess perfect knowledge of the agent's mentation, then as far as that onlooker is concerned, the state of the external world would be irrelevant with regards to understanding what the agent believes.
No matter how much a community of agents might appear to agree (or disagree) that "such and such is true of "the" real world", as far as linguistic designation is concerned they are merely talking past one another and gesticulating towards different and unsharable private worlds corresponding to their individuated mental processes.
You said, "in AI", but this is supposed to apply to the psychology of animals as well, right?
You talk about your model and I talk about my model, but we're never actually talking about the same things.
Quoting sime
Can you explain why this qualifier? Is there some other way in which agents do share a world?
Or imagined it or dreamed it?
Yes my belief in this specific example would be because of actions, but I don;t think it is necessarily so.
Thanks for the welcome. Yes, I have been doing a lot of resurrecting. :blush: I find that some of the older threads are more interesting than the newer ones.
It makes sense that the OP is based on more recent literature. I tend to read older philosophers and therefore some reorientation is often required, but I think Kit Fine’s distinction between modal and essential properties is lurking in the background of this topic, and he is himself resurrecting a much older notion.
Thanks for the interesting quote from Searle. It’s curious how strong he is in that last sentence. Often when I read Searle I find myself agreeing with him almost entirely, but with some remainder, like a single puzzle piece that is missing. In this case I think that an undue abstraction occurs when the emphasis is placed on the relational quality between proposition and believer. I think Searle believes that an undue abstraction occurs when the proposition is reified, which is apparently a common occurrence in contemporary philosophy. The more concrete and less abstract alternatives would be, respectively, an emphasis on assent, and designating the content of the belief as “objects and states of affairs in the world independent of any proposition.”
While I think Searle is right to resist an overly abstract notion of belief, I can’t agree with his claims about propositions. Searle seems to think it would make sense to say that propositions could be the object of belief. I mostly agree with that propositions point to content, not to a reified designator. Or as Aquinas says, “Now the act of the believer does not terminate in a proposition, but in a thing. For as in science we do not form propositions, except in order to have knowledge about things through their means, so is it in belief.”* But if Searle is responding to contemporaries who do reify propositions in this strange way, then what he says would make sense.
Quoting Banno
Perhaps it is only a difference of words, but your OP is quite emphatic that belief is propositional, whereas Searle is claiming that it is (usually) not. More specifically, Searle seems to think that propositions can capture the content of beliefs, but that the object of belief itself is usually not a proposition. Would you agree with Searle that beliefs are usually non-propositional?
Quoting Banno
This is a longer conversation, but as a throwaway comment I will just say that I’m not sure we can talk about a thing without a definition, stated or unstated.
Quoting Banno
Okay, that’s an interesting argument. For clarity’s sake:
First I want to note that in your OP you claim that belief explains but does not determine action, such that we can act contrary to our beliefs (and I agree—I do not believe that every action requires a belief which explains it, e.g. akrasia). That was years ago, but if you still hold such a view then apparently not all actions are explained by belief, which is what your argument would require.
Second, while I agree that beliefs often explain actions, I should also think that beliefs often do not explain actions. Searle’s example, “John believes that Washington was the first president,” has no apparent impact on action, and yet it is surely a belief. John might believe any number of trivial propositions about things like history or astronomy that have no impact on his actions. Thus it seems that the aspect of belief you have identified does not cover all belief. Furthermore, in general I don’t understand the rationale for making belief orbit around action.
Third, I am not convinced there are non-propositional beliefs, although perhaps I should read your exchange with Sam26 and creativesoul. I tend to think that implicit beliefs are propositional. For example, if I am driving and I brake when a child runs into the street, I am acting on the belief that, “If I brake I will not hit this child,” even though this belief is not explicit or formulated or conscious. Admittedly the thinking would not need to be discursive or consciously carried out. It is fast thinking, but it nevertheless involves a mental act.
But maybe the English word "thinking" is too narrow for this broad notion of belief. Certainly there is a mental or cognitive act occurring. Perhaps a different genus for the definition is preferable, such as 'propositional attitude', or Searle's, 'intentional state'.
Quoting Banno
This is a bit tricky. I would want to say that it is something I do not believe, but not something I do believe. Or rather, it was. Now that you have brought it to my attention I have assented to it and I believe it. That I believe you are sitting at a computer on Earth explains why I would assent to any entailed propositions that are brought to my attention, or which become generally relevant.
* Summa Theologiae, II.II.Q1.A2
Not necessarily. If I see lightning, I can develop a belief that lightning is caused by my ancestors being angry, in the complete absence of experience with my ancestors being angry causing lightning. I can synthesize my belief de novo from individual experience with lightning, stories that my ancestors existed and personal feelings of anger.
I think you might be confusing a belief with the revelation of a belief. Beliefs don't need to be shown or "given life." They still exist even when they are not shown or given life.
Quoting Sam26
Beliefs may arise from experiences or actions, but it does not follow that they are a relation between individuals and actions.
Perhaps that is the question that interests you, but it seems to me that the thread is about belief, not about how we come to know about the beliefs of others.
An easier example is tattoos. If there were a thread on tattoos, we wouldn't want to all of the sudden start talking about how we come to know about the tattoos of others, and think that we are still talking about tattoos in themselves. The two topics are quite different, no? One is, "What is a tattoo?" The other is, "How do we come to know about the tattoos of others?"
There seems to be some disagreement and confusion about beliefs and actions. Surely we can confidently say that if X believes that p, X will normally act, on occasions when p is relevant, on p. In other words, and in perhaps old-fashioned language, if X believes p, X can be expected to act on p, when X believes that p is relevant, and conversely. Note, speaking includes speaking to oneself and both are actions, so X can be expected to assert that p when X believes that it is appropriate to do so.
This give a context in which the use of "believes" might be helpfully explained. When we explain actions, we do so by explaining the reasons for them. But one very quickly finds that there are difficulties about this. First, It is not enough for p to be true for it to be correctly posited as a reason for X's action. If p is to count as a reason for what X does, it must be known by X. Second, there are occasions when X carries out an action which is best explained by p, but p is not true. The way to express this, is to say that X believes that p.
Whether it is appropriate to call such an explanation of the use of a word as a definition, I do not presume to say.
The question of the object of belief has always bothered me. I'm no fan of propositions. The idea that the object of knowledge is the world, the facts, the way things are makes sense to me. But it doesn't work for belief, because belief can be false. I always thought that was the reason for the invention of the concept of "intentional" objects. Perhaps it can be said that belief aims to have a relation to the world, etc. but may fail. Is that intolerably mysterious, or, rather, is that any more mysterious that the concepts of a proposition or an intentional object?
I see two more posts have arrived while I was writing this, so I had better stop at that.
I don't think you could be certain. You start with the conviction that humans have the faculty of thought which gives rise to beliefs. You don't believe that about bacteria or clouds. It's just humans.
So you assume others have beliefs, right?
It's actually interesting how far back some of us have been discussing philosophy. My first philosophy forum was Ephilosopher. I became a member of that forum around 2005. My first introduction to academic philosophy was around 1975. Just a little bit of background.
That's interesting. I was thinking about starting a philosophy forum myself. But if you've been thinking about this for 7 or 8 years, and you're now at a point where you are claiming that a belief is a relation between an individual and a certain type of action, then I can only conclude that you must have taken a wrong turn at some point.
Feel free to link me to a post where you defend that claim. It's tricky to search this thread because the search returns results from any thread with 'belief' in the title.
For example do not many people believe in evolution, that the Sun is at the centre of the Solar System, that the Earth revolves around it, that the Moon is smaller than the Earth and revolves around it, that there are distant galaxies containing stars and planets, that the Earth is roughly spherical, that there was life on Earth prior to human life...the examples of beliefs which do not show themselves in actions seem to be countless.
Alternatively, there is the idea that "actions speak louder than words," such that one's actions may more accurately reflect beliefs than self-reporting would. Still, this remains at the epistemic level, inquiring into how others' beliefs come to be known. It remains a step away from the topic: beliefs in themselves.
That's true. But is it absurd to go counter-factual and say that a belief would show in action (where thinking counts as an action) if appropriate circumstances arise? Or are you saying that there is no necessary relation between belief and action?
Your examples don't include bedrock beliefs, and I'm inclined to think that my belief that I have a hand or two shows every time I pick something up, so they couldn't occur on this list. Is that right?
The examples on your list all seem to be things that I have learnt or at least thought about, at some point. Would that be a necessary condition?
Quoting Leontiskos
You are, I think, picking up on the lingering traces of logical positivism in that philosophical tradition. But isn't it legitimate to describe what belief does, as a way of describing what belief is? I have in mind the role of belief in our language, which is not reducing it to the question how we know what people believe. Perhaps I'm just fooling myself.
I'm not saying that people don't have beliefs that are not readily known to others. I'm saying that if we're to say that Mary has a belief, then for us to know that Mary believes X it must be expressed in some action (linguistic or nonlinguistic).
But this is to talk about an effect of the belief, not the belief in itself. It is a conflation of effect with cause. Further, mere thinking is not an empirical effect, and is therefore not what Sam26 is talking about.
Quoting Ludwig V
It is legitimate to describe what belief does as a way of understanding what belief is. To describe an effect is not to describe the cause. That's the problem: says "beliefs are..." What he ought to say is, "the effects of beliefs are..." He is not talking about beliefs; he is talking about their effects.
Quoting Ludwig V
Belief has an effect on our thinking and our language as well. These are more subtle than empirical effects, but they are effects nonetheless. We know this because one belief can cause multiple effects, and therefore a belief and its effect are not the same thing (even when it comes to thinking).
I wouldn't object to saying that a given belief may never be expressed in action, only that it would be if circumstances were right. Though I would look for an episode of acquiring the belief. Just what that might amount to, I'm not sure about.
Quoting Leontiskos
That's enough for me.
Quoting Leontiskos
I agree that a cause is distinct from its effect, though how far that's an accurate description of science is another question. Since Hume, we establish a cause/effect relationship by observing correlation and contiguity between them. There is no more than that to it. We cannot observe beliefs independently of their effects, (any more than we can observe electrons and their effects independently - or the wind and its effects), so we cannot establish a cause/effect relationship between a belief and its effects.
Unless you are using "cause" (or possibly "belief") in a way different from the way it is understood in orthodox philosophy.
I'm sorry to be difficult. But the idea that belief causes appropriate actions seems perfectly commonsensical. I wouldn't deny that there must be something right about it. All I'm saying is that on the orthodox philosophical view of causation, it doesn't make sense. Maybe it makes sense in some other way.
Relations, in first order logic, have a form such as f(a,b); where "f" is the relation and "a" and "b" are individuals. When I, and I think also Searle, talk of believe not being a relation, it's this we have in mind.
Now it should be clear that belief is not a relation of this sort, since we may not substitute in to a belief salva veritate.
So here's a breakdown of what Searle is about, in the quote above. We might be tempted to analyse beliefs as standing over a proposition and a person, so: "Louis Lane believes that Kent wears glasses" may be parsed as "Believe (Lane, "Kent wears glasses"), which is reminiscent of the form above, f(a,b). But it would be wrong to suppose that this surface similarity shows beliefs to be first order relations. In particular, what the belief is about is not shown by this analysis, since what the belief is about sits within the range of the believed proposition, "Kent wears glasses", which this analysis treats as an individual.
That is, Clark Kent. And not Superman.
This is not a rejection by Searle of the analysis of beliefs as ranging over propositions.
Anyway, more to say, later.
Now you are bringing up Hume, which is a new topic. In short, I do not agree that Hume's view is philosophical orthodoxy; and no one in this recent discussion accepts the Humean claim that there is no causal relationship between a belief and actions. If there is one thing we all agree on, it's that beliefs and actions are related in an explanatory or causal manner.
But it seems like we are in general agreement, and that's good. If you want to run with the Humean devil's advocate you will need a different interlocutor. That's not the sort of thing I would want to discuss in this thread.
Quoting Ludwig V
I think that certain kinds of beliefs are necessarily associated with action. Beliefs about what we are capable of, about the nature of humans and the animals, plants and soils we deal with.
I'm not sure it makes sense to speak of (some at least) "bedrock beliefs" as beliefs. Regarding the example you gave, I would say we use our hands before we form any explicit beliefs such as "I have two hands", and even then, it seems to be more of an observation or realization than a belief.
The beliefs I highlighted are, as you point out, things we learn or have thought about. In short, I would say that beliefs that have no practical significance to me could be expected to have no effect on my actions. Will that belief, that beliefs that have no practical significance could be expected to have no effect on my cations, itself have an effect on my actions? It has had an effect on what I said, so if you count that as an action, I guess you could say it did.
But I think that is a different definition of action than the one I had in mind.
It seems like this is your definitional recursion conundrum in a slightly different context (first order logic). We could only substitute salva veritate if the equality relation was redefined to take into account belief, but that would result in the same recursive definition problem. For example, we could say that two beliefs are equal (substitutable) if and only if the subject (Lane) believes them to be equal (Kent's identity and Superman's identity), but this would result in recursively adverting to Lois Lane's belief within a function that is attempting to capture her belief in the first place. Is that the idea?
In your quote of Searle it seemed like he was rejecting the claim that a belief is a relation between a believer and a proposition, but was content with the claim that a belief is a relation between a believer and the content of a proposition. (I questioned the validity of the distinction between a proposition and a proposition's content in my last post to you.) Do you think Searle is rejecting the relation model of beliefs wholesale?
I think you are right that a belief cannot be captured by a first order relation, yet on my view the deeper problem is with logic, not with relations. Intentional realities like belief are not the sort of things that logic is able to capture, much less define. Part of it is that beliefs are more fundamental than logic, but another part is that logic is too blunt an instrument or too broad a brush to capture the nuance of intentional realities like belief.
Doesn’t logic just set out what it is we can say, consistently?
Is it inconsistent to say that Lois Lane believes Clark Kent wears glasses, because logic can't say it?
It seems to me that (formal) logic is something like the science of modal relations, and much of reality is not able to be modeled by modal relations. I'd say reality has more to do with regularities and natures than with modal relations, although logic is still vitally important. Of course I plead guilty to Aristotelianism, and see the world through the lens of substances and natures more than through the lens of necessity and possibility.
Edit:
So, for example, you say Quoting Leontiskos
despite
And then his example of Bernoulli's principle.
And
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't see where such a proposal fits. Indeed, I do not understand what it claims. It is not inconsistent to say that Lois Lane believes Clark Kent wears glasses, a sentence that can be parsed more formally.
I'm somewhat nonplussed.
Well, if you are happy for me to say that beliefs explain actions, I'm content to do so and to leave the notion of explanation undefined because it is off-topic.
Quoting Janus
So long as we agree, I won't quarrel about the words and I won't fuss about saying something to oneself silently or about that multifarious word "think".
Quoting Sam26
That seems to me to be exactly right. I was never happy with propositional attitudes, though on different grounds.
Quoting Banno
I wouldn't quarrel with the representation B(X,p), if that's what you mean. But I don't see that it helps any. I would suggest that before settling on a formal representation we need a good understanding of the use of the word in the wild.
I think most particularly that we need to better understand why beliefs explain actions even when the belief is false.
Thanks for asking. There are two things to address: Searle and the inconsistency bit.
First, Searle. Searle is saying, "X is Y, not Z" ("The proposition is the content of the belief, not the object of the belief"). Such a statement implies that it is in some way sensible or plausible, albeit incorrect, to say that X is Z. That is where I want to part ways with Searle. There is nothing sensible or plausible about reifying a proposition such that it would itself be the object of belief. That's not the sort of thing a proposition is. Hence Searle's conclusion seems to be invalid, namely his conclusion that beliefs are (usually) not propositional. In other words, I agree that reified propositions are not the object of belief, but I maintain that propositions are the object of belief. (It's hard to convey because the crucial difference is between two different conceptions of propositions.)*
But again, if Searle is merely rejecting an error of his contemporaries, then what he is doing is understandable. My critique here is admittedly a bit subtle. If someone reifies a proposition and makes it the object of belief, then we should not say, "Beliefs are not about propositions." Instead we should say, "You do not understand what a proposition is. When we talk about a proposition we are talking about a representation of 'objects and states of affairs in the world'." This is merely that "single puzzle piece" that nags at me in Searle's account. Whether it affects our larger conversation, I do not know.
Second, the inconsistency bit. Sorry - I had meant to edit that post because it is sloppy, but I forgot. The idea was that if logic cannot capture belief, and yet belief is subject to canons of consistency, then logic is not coextensive with consistent subjects.
Maybe a more formal example would be more helpful:
Quoting Banno
It's been awhile since I studied mathematical logic, but I believe that Gödel, in his 1931 paper which contains his incompleteness theorems, showed in effect that there are arithmetic truths that logic (in the Principia) cannot prove, such that arithmetic is not a branch of logic as Russell had hoped. I can try to dig out some sources for this if you'd like. If that is right, then arithmetic is a consistent discourse that logic cannot fully model or contain.
Quoting Banno
Do you think there is an analysis which shows what the belief is about? Do you think you would be able to draw up a deeper analysis that avoids the recursion problem I noted above?
* Edit: A proposition is like a mirror. Its whole purpose is to reflect something. When I stand in front of the mirror I am not looking at the mirror; I am looking at myself. More precisely, I am looking at a reflection of myself in the mirror. The mirror itself is not the object that my act of sight terminates in. So if I say, "I saw a bump on my eye when I was shaving," the listener will assume that a mirror (or something like it) was being used. There is no other way to look at my eye. If someone comes to believe that mirrors are things to be looked at, apart from their reflection, then they don't understand mirrors.
We are supported in understanding the "use of the word in the wild" by formal analysis.
That does not strike me as an adequate parsing of what Searle is pointing out. Indeed, it would appear that you are making much the same claim as Searle, the one I expressed as that beliefs range over propositions but that the object of the belief is (usually) not the proposition, but the object of the proposition.
There are, of course, various formal ways to represent beliefs. As with any use of logic, the formalism you choose is dependent on what you wish to do. The point here is not that beliefs cannot be formalised, but that there are inadequacies in just using first order logic to do so.
Quoting Leontiskos
Gödel showed that for any sufficiently advanced system (roughly, one that includes counting) there are true well-formed formulae of that logic that cannot be proved within that logic. Note the bolding. The unproven true well-formed formulae are part of the system. So I'm not sure that "arithmetic is a consistent discourse that logic cannot fully model or contain" is quite right.
And the mirror analogy just does not seem to work. Of course one can take a mirror and look at it, rather than what it reflects. One does so in order to clean it, or to check it for scratches. So with language, one can look to the logic of propositions in order to understand their structure.
That's what logic is for.
This conversation does not appear to be progressing.
That approach might be quite informative, although it bothers me that the set of beliefs is closed. And that it is dichotomous. It's different to human belief.
But interesting stuff.
While @Leontiskos and I quibble about whether belief can be formalised, folk such as yourself just go ahead and formalise it. Nice.
It is quite possible that I am misunderstanding Searle or saying the same thing in different words. Thing is, I don't know whether this question about the nature of propositions is relevant. If you think it's relevant and want to look at it, we can. If not, we can let it slip back into the water.
To help get us back on track, would you be able to clarify this post? Could you draw out your claim that we cannot substitute salve veritate using your Superman example? Specifically, what is the substitution that would fail to save truth? I don't disagree with your claim, but I want to make sure I am clear on what you are saying.
Secondly, if you do not think beliefs can be represented by first order relations, then what alternative would you turn to?
Quoting Banno
Yes, but the reason we know the unproven logical sentences are true is because they correspond to (provable) truths in arithmetic via "Gödel numbers". Is the unproven sentence "part of the system"? The unproven sentence is represented in that system, but is not provable in that system. (Maybe my logic is rusty, but I am wary of calling an unprovable sentence a theorem.)
Quoting Banno
I don't disagree that we can examine propositions qua propositions, but if we think that is what propositions are, or are for, then I think we have made a mistake. (Very likely the hangups around propositions have to do with their ontology.)
So when Searle says, "Most [intentional states] are directed at objects and states of affairs in the world independent of any proposition," it seems to me that he is saying something like, "Most of the time when we use our rear-view mirror to see what is behind our car, we are looking at objects and states of affairs in the world independent of any mirror." Just as I don't think using a rear-view mirror can be done independent of a mirror, so I also don't think intentional states can be directed at the world independent of propositions. We direct our beliefs at the world through propositions in the same way that we view the world through a mirror. Searle isn't a direct realist, is he?
already alluded to the idea that if beliefs are not propositional, then it is hard to understand how they could be wrong. If my belief is directed at the world independent of any proposition, then how could I ever be wrong about what I believe?
P.S. Thanks for the SEP article. I didn't realize this topic was so well-explored.
Yeah, I have a bad habit of calling true well-formed formulae "theorems", which is incorrect. @sime has picked me up on it before.
Later.
It's a standard example. Lous believes (knows, loves, is worried that...) Kent wears glasses. Kent is Superman. But Lous does not believe (know, love, worry that...)Superman wears glasses.
You must have seen it?
Right, I get that. But does Lois believe that Clark Kent is Superman? That's where the ambiguity arises for me. The falsity of the substitution is overdetermined. For example:
In (1) the substitution is false because of an ontological fact of identity that Lois does not hold as a belief. In (2) the substitution is false merely because Superman dons a disguise, and not because of any lack of knowledge or belief on Lois' part. Your example could be interpreted either way, and yet in each case the substitution fails for a different reason.
Of course the substitution would remain true in 3:
3. Lois believes that Clark Kent can type at 140 words per minute; Clark Kent is Superman; Therefore Lois believes that Superman can type at 140 words per minute (because Lois does believe that Clark Kent is Superman).
Mutual support? Interdependence? But perhaps not on topic here.
The standard way is to post an "intentional object" (in this case a proposition). But then, what's a proposition? The standard "meaning of a sentence" doesn't help much. I believe that Frege thinks it is something like thinking of a state of affairs without affirming or denying it. Are there no other proposals around.
The other way might be to push your metaphor a little harder and say that if a is directed at b, it can still miss.
Beliefs range over propositions.
Beliefs are stated as an association between an agent and a proposition. This superficial structure serves to show that a belief is always both about a proposition and about some agent. It might be misleading as the proposition is not the object of the belief but constitutes the belief.
This association is such that if the agent acts in some way then there is a belief and a desire that together are sufficient to explain the agent's action. Banno wants water; he believes he can pour a glass from the tap; so he goes to the tap to pour a glass of water.
Notice that I am using the word "association" and not "relation", for reasons explained above.
Some folk hereabouts think something like that there are beliefs which are not propositional. It remains unclear to me how that could work. It's supposed that there are hinge beliefs that are in some way not propositional, but that is quite problematic, since hinge beliefs are also supposed to ground other beliefs by implication, and implication relies on propositions. If a hinge belief cannot be expressed as a proposition, it cannot be used to ground other beliefs.
Far better to adopt the grammar described above, with "beliefs" restricted to range over propositions.
2. B(Lois, Kent (wears glasses)); Kent=superman; but ?~B(Lois, Superman(wears glasses)
3. B(Lois, Kent (types fast)); B(Lois,Kent=superman); ?B(Lois, Superman(types fast))
To my eye this sets out pretty clearly why substitution fails to preserve truth in (2) but not in (3): in (2) it need not be true that Lois believes superman is Kent. The various modal Doxastic Logics might be used to capture this more formally.
I must be misunderstanding you, since it seems you are saying that logic is inadequate to the task of dealing with beliefs, when it sets stuff out quite clearly.
Unless your point is that Lois might have inconsistent beliefs?
I dunno. Perhaps if we drag this back to your opening post. You proposed that to believe is to think with assent; I guess one might ask: to think what? If what you are thinking cannot be expressed as a proposition, is it a thought? Or is it better thought of as a sensation, a feeling, an impression, an intuition?
The last sentence, in particular, nicely reconciles the issue about the object of the belief. There might be more to be said, but it is a good starting-point.
Quoting Banno
Quite so. "Association" is vague enough to enable it to stand up even when he cannot pour a glass from the tap (because the water has been turned off).
Quoting Banno
That's at least partly about different uses of propositional forms. If I point to something red and announce "That's red.", I may be making an empirical observation, or teaching someone what "red" means, which case the object is a sample and to be used in a different way. That's only an example. There would be other cases to consider.
Quoting Banno
Isn't that a problem, though? Any proposition will have a cloud of implications around it. There's no guarantee that I can see that Lois will have drawn all those implication or that she would instantly agree to all of them if they were presented to her, or that she will not draw any false conclusions from what she does believe.
Quoting Banno
Your analysis of Lois' beliefs illustrates how useful formalization can be.
Quoting Banno
I would rather say that sensations and feelings (when expressed in the grammatical form of a proposition) and impressions (ditto) can give rise to beliefs, rather than being beliefs. Not sure about intuitions. One can intuit that...
Oh, that's quite right. You say that (2) fails to preserve truth, and this is undeniable. My question is whether you are saying (2) fails to preserve truth because Lois does not believe that Kent is Superman, or only because Superman uses a disguise?
This is why I am curious: When you say that first order relations fail to model belief because your example does not admit of substitution salva veritate, there are two different ways to understand your claim, because there are two different ways that your example does not admit of substitution salva veritate. I am wondering which of them you have in mind.
Quoting Banno
Well, does (3) solve your salve veritate problem? Could we "substitute salva veritate if the equality relation was redefined to take into account belief"? Perhaps the belief relation is only referentially opaque when it prescinds from belief in the equality of the substituted term. Namely, once Lois believes that the substituted term is equal (B(Lois, Kent = Superman)), the substitution saves truth.
Quoting Banno
No, I don't want to say that or go there. :grin:
Quoting Banno
To think a proposition. I agree with you that beliefs are about propositions ().
To clarify, I have been disagreeing with Searle when he says, "Most [intentional states] are directed at objects and states of affairs in the world independent of any proposition," and this goes back to my posts which compare propositions to mirrors. I have been positing a stronger notion of the propositionality of belief than Searle, not a weaker one.
Quoting Banno
At this point I am inclined to think we are just talking past one another. When you or Searle say that a proposition is not the object of a belief, presumably you are not flirting with direct realism. Instead, you are saying that the object of a belief is not a proposition qua proposition, just as when I look through a mirror to see a reflected object my act of sight does not terminate in the mirror itself. Yes?
I think I understand what Searle is saying now. The clause, "...independent of any proposition," felt strange at first, but probably he is saying that the subjective act of belief prescinds from notions of propositionality or representation. ...And I have no problem with Frege's account of a proposition.
It is curious, though, that 'belief' insofar as it is distinguished from knowledge really is propositional in the way that Searle is talking about. If I say, "I believe X but I do not know X," then apparently there is an intentional propositionality, and one which is much more common than Searle's example of Bernoulli's principle.
Another metaphor, but still, it works for me.
Quoting Leontiskos
I think this is OK. Where do we go from here?
Quoting Leontiskos
We are saying roughly that believing uses a proposition rather than mentioning it. But we are also saying that it is possible to believe something of a proposition - second order belief, presumably based on a proposition about a proposition.
"I believe X but I do not know X" seems to take back or modify in the second half ("..but I do not know X") something that is asserted in the first half ("I believe X"). But it isn't a flat contradiction. So I think you are saying that "I believe X but I do not know X" expresses a view about the certainty of, or evidence for, X - that certainty is less than complete, or that evidence is less than conclusive.
Is that something like what you meant?
I'll try one more time. Suppose we have some agent L a nd some possible state of affairs which we might present as either p or as f(a); that is, p ? f(a). Then that L believes this state of affairs as B(L,p); and for some purposes this will suffice. But the problem here is that B(L,p) looks like a first-order relation between the agent and the state of affairs, and this is not so. "p" is not the thing the belief is about. We might get to that thing by parsing the believe as B(L, f(a)). The belief is that f(a), a proposition, that is about the individual a.
And the quote form Searle seems to me to be making that point; that B(L,p) is somewhat inadequate, and that the belief is about the individual named "a"
@Sam26, @creativesoul, Searle is not saying that beliefs are not propositional. Beliefs range over propositions.
Yep.
But nup. Davidson's analysis.
That's extremely interesting. But I don't understand it. Could you give me a reference for Davidson's analysis?
Where did I say that?
Edit: The idea is something like that we sometimes both use and mention; SO "Galileo said that the Earth moves" might be analysed as a conjunct of "The Earth moves" and "Galileo said that", where the demonstrative "that" points to "The Earth moves", or even to Galileo's utterance of "The Earth moves".
But that'd be it's own thread.
So to believe something is to believe that something to be true; and what is true is this or that state of affairs, this or that statement.
I hope I have misunderstood.
Edit: Something to do with hinge beliefs not being propositional?
The other point is, even where language exists, many beliefs (those expressed in our nonlinguistic acts) are never put into statements, but that doesn't mean the belief doesn't exist as part of the act that shows the belief (the act of opening a door shows my belief that a door is there, apart from whether it's stated or not). The belief doesn't pop into existence just because the belief is stated. It can, but not necessarily.
Sure. It's not a product of such statements. The statement sets out an aspect of the grammar of belief, as between an agent and a proposition.
Quoting Sam26
I maintain beliefs can be stated.
Quoting Sam26
Sure. Beliefs can be shown as well as stated. But they can also be stated. Note also the word "exist' here, and the implicit hypostatisation. When one says that a belief exists, what more is one saying, apart from that thinking the world is such-and-so accounts for this behaviour... the beetle is in this box, but you still cannot see it, yet you can talk of it existing. Nothing is brought into existence here.
Quoting Sam26
Yes, I understand that you see it this way. But in the end all you have are the actions - both verbal and non-verbal; never the belief. You infer the belief from the act, beetle from the box.
Quoting Sam26
Yep. Stop there.
Yes, but that's not my only point. I'm pointing out that there's the agent and the proposition, but there is also those acts that show the belief. You keep reiterating that beliefs can be stated, no one is disputing this, that's obvious. And it's just as obvious that beliefs can be shown in animals, pre-linguistic man, and in modern man, apart from language. You seem to agree with this. However, then you say...
Quoting Banno
I've addressed this before, and you keep trying to put my account of belief into Witt's beetle in the box. I would agree if my account was limited to the subjective, viz., pointing to the thing in the mind as if that's the belief. Nowhere do I do that, that's simply your interpretation of what I'm saying, but it's not accurate. My account of belief is based in nonlinguistic actions (showing the belief), and in the statements that an agent makes about their belief or the beliefs of others. So there's no beetle in the box. The belief exists as a function of those two kinds of acts. So minds do bring into existence the proposition and the nonlinguistic acts that show one's belief. Exists, as I'm using the concept, refers to those things we do, both linguistic and nonlinguistic, that can be said to be beliefs. Again, so the ontology of belief refers to those things minds do in the world that can be said to be beliefs.
The meaning of the concept belief is a function of what we do in language (language-games and forms of life), it's not a function of something we can point to in the head/mind. Wittgenstein was pointing out that the meaning of a concept is not something internal to us. My account of what we mean by belief nowhere suggests that it's the thing in the mind that gives meaning to belief. Thus, the beetle in the box doesn't apply to my account. Even the way I'm using the word existence depends on the external, not the internal.
Around and around. Seems to me you talk as if the belief is something more than the behaviour, existing beyond that, until I push the point, then you agree with me that it isn't.
Oh, well.
The article doesn't seem to be readily available to me, though a number of criticisms of it are.
Sticking to the topic, then. This has to do with referential opacity or transparency. Correct? So do I take you to be saying that p in "Davidson said that p" may sometimes be used and sometimes be mentioned? I wouldn't resist that conclusion. I'm not sure that the same applies to belief.
In the case of belief, I think that substitutions are sometimes appropriate, even required, depending on the context of a) the believer's beliefs and b) my audience's beliefs. Specifically if the believer refers to an object in one way and the audience refers to the same object in a different way, substitution is needed to communicate accurately what the believer believes. (Roughly).
I think this is right. I think @Sam26 has confused an effect with a cause (link).
Quoting Banno
I'm going to let @Ludwig V take up your question about referential opacity, as I am somewhat pressed for time at the moment. I don't see Searle making any claims about the referential opacity of beliefs construed as first order relations, so I assume that's your thing.
Quoting Banno
Sure, I agree that Searle is saying that. I think I can see that better now.
What’s interesting to me is that Searle seems to be getting into the business of definitions and essences, much like Kit Fine in your other thread. To say that B(L,p) is inadequate is to say that there is some essence of belief that it misconstrues. Would you agree?
In your OP and elsewhere you seem to be implying that there is no real definition of belief, and formal logic merely models certain aspects of belief. This is on display in a recent comment:
Quoting Banno
When Searle thinks of B(L,p) as inadequate he is then either claiming that it is an incorrect interpretation, or else that it does not suit his purpose. But I think he he saying the former. I think he is saying that the very nature of belief itself is obscured by B(L,p). But how can that be? Beliefs do involve a relation between the believer and a proposition. B(L,p) could easily be construed in a way such that it does not imply that the proposition is the object of the belief. In fact such a rendering would be quite useful if we are talking about beliefs from a strictly third-person vantage point, where we are concerned with the proposition rather than the object.* But according to Searle that rendering is itself inadequate and misleading. So it would seem that for Searle parsing natural language into formal languages really does involve finding the correct interpretation. Or more precisely, there are some interpretations that are more accurate than others, even when both interpretations are not false, and this implies an essence that underlies the inequality of the two interpretations.
* For example, when you say, "The statement sets out an aspect of the grammar of belief, as between an agent and a proposition" (), you are saying that this is a legitimate aspect of the grammar of belief, but at the same time you agree with Searle that presenting beliefs in this way tends to misrepresent them.
Yes, but this also implies something about the propositionality of the belief. When the certainty is less than complete or the evidence is less than conclusive, then the belief becomes more intentionally propositional.
For example, you made a distinction between a first order belief and a second order belief, where a second order belief "believes something of a proposition." Lack of certainty/evidence brings us towards a second order belief, although not in the highly abstract manner of Searle's example of Bernoulli's principle. Namely, the "object" of this sort of belief may be a proposition, unlike first order beliefs.
My point is that this introduces a new and rather large category of belief (i.e. beliefs for which we have a conscious lack of certainty or evidence). If we accept Searle's dichotomy between first order beliefs and highly abstract second order beliefs, then his conclusion that most beliefs are first order beliefs holds. I am wondering if we ought to question that dichotomy and introduce an intermediate category (or else question the proportion between the two halves of the dichotomy and note that the second category contains this other sort of belief, which in turn means that the second category contains more instances of belief than Searle had supposed).
https://eclass.uoa.gr/modules/document/file.php/PHS180/davidson_on_saying_that.pdf
It's obtuse, but he shows how to analyse "Galileo said that the Earth moves" into two sentences: "The Earth moves" and "Galileo said that." We can apply the same analysis to belief: "Galileo believes that the Earth moves" divides into two sentences: "The Earth moves" and "Galileo believes that."
For Davidson, this helps make clear the truth-functional structure of such propositional attitudes. His project was to interpret English into a first order language using by making use of t-sentence. For our purposes, this is another way of showing the incompleteness of the B(a,p) analysis and the opacity of "p".
No. Adding essence here doesn't make things clearer. It's just that there is an aspect that is shown better by other analysis. I don't see much point in thinking in terms of an "essence" of belief, but rather a family resemblance of uses around the word "belief" and various cognates.
What we are doing here is exploring some of those uses. I am not looking for an ultimate, correct and complete interpretation of belief in some formal language.
And I don't think Searle is, either.
As for how logic might best be understood, see the thread Logical Nihilism
If there is no essence, then what does it show better?
Remember your quote from Searle:
The nature of belief... as a family resemblance.
To "It is impossible to exaggerate the damage done to philosophy and cognitive science by the mistaken view that "believe" and other intentional verbs name relations between believers and propositions" I might append "...in that they find themselves searching for that relation as if it were a thing in the mind, or worse, in the brain".
...it leads to the hypostatisation previously discussed.
This is just a confusion as far as I can determine. The concept belief has various uses, one use is to say "Mary believes X" because Mary made the statement that she believed X. So what Mary believes is found in the expression of her statement. Another use of belief has to do with Mary's nonlinguistic actions. For example, we can conclude as Mary sits in a chair that she believes there is a chair available to sit in. So the meaning of the concept belief is tied to the various uses of the word in our everyday actions. Beliefs are tied to our actions (linguistic and nonlinguistic), which is how we determine what people believe.
There is no need to bring in any causal connection in this situation, and I haven't done so.
But Searle isn't only saying, "That's bad." He is also saying, "This is better." Therein lies the trouble.
Quoting Banno
Then belief has a nature. From Jonathan Barnes:
Quoting Introduction to Posterior Analytics, by Jonathan Barnes, p. xiii
Presumably Searle is committed to the claim that his own construal of belief is more explanatorily basic than the one he repudiates, and that the superficiality of the construal he repudiates is inadequate to convey the nature of belief.
But your analysis betrays you. You are inferring a cause (
You want to focus on this relation between beliefs and actions, but it seems that in the process you have actually conflated beliefs and actions.
I'm a Wittgensteinian at least to a large extent when it comes to language. If we want to understand what a belief is, then we look at various uses of the word in our language. It's not a matter of cause and effect, it's a matter of learning the correct use of the word across a wide range of contexts.
I like the way you put words in my mouth. If someone was to ask "Do you know any of Mary's beliefs?" - I certainly wouldn't say "Yes, one of Mary's beliefs is sitting in a chair." Obviously this is nonsense. I would say that the action or act of sitting in a chair shows Mary's belief that there is a chair in the room. Just as the act of stating her belief is a reflection of what she believes. Both actions are ways of referring to beliefs in our language.
Beliefs are states of mind, but they come out in our actions, either linguistic or nonlinguistic. The only way to know a person's state of mind is by their actions.
But the difficulty is that you appear to be vacillating. Elsewhere you seem to want to claim that beliefs just are actions:
Quoting Sam26
("Things minds do that can be said to be beliefs," i.e. action = belief)
Quoting Sam26
Of course I can assent to the proposition that
I don't know what exactly Banno has in mind with the hypostatization idea, but if we are to take everyday language as our guide then surely beliefs do have some sort of hypostatization. For example:
Quoting Leontiskos
For example, that I believe Bonabo is a gorilla explains both why I keep my distance and why I feed him bamboo shoots. It is the single belief which explains both actions, and thus beliefs must be hypostatized at least beyond actions.
This is all a long way from anything I might be tempted by.
To deal with this we would have to look into what sort of thing an essential property of a kind might be, with all the modal complications that involves, then look to whether we can maintain a distinction between real essences and mere nominal essences within that modal structure, then look to all the issues surrounding natural kinds. Not just one minefield, but a series of them.
I don't see this approach as being of help here. It's a quagmire.
I must say, I do find the last few posts very difficult to follow. That's probably my fault. But to comment would likely be unhelpful.
Thanks very much for the pdf. I shall be busy for a while. I'm hoping that I shall at least understand referential opacity better.
The meaning of belief-behaviour isn't reducible to it's effects, for obvious causal reasons. Objectively, the meaning of an agent's "beliefs" can only refer to their stimulus-response disposition, which is in turn explained causally without appealing to teleology.
When an external observer interprets a performing agent as having beliefs, those "beliefs" only exist in the prejudiced mind of the external observer who interprets the agent using normative teleological principles.
That was an interesting and clarifying post.
---
Quoting Banno
It seems to me that those who attempt to reject the old-school Aristotelian approach are often already presupposing the very things they putatively reject, only without realizing it. Of course you are right that if we wish to try to fit real essences into the straightjacket of modal relations we will be hard pressed. But this does not circumvent essences in our present conversation. If Searle says, "A is a better X than B,"* then he is already committed to the entailment that there is some essence of X that can be approximated with more or less success. That entailment cannot be avoided by pointing to difficulties that arise in accounts of essences. The only way to avoid it in our present context is to revoke the claim that A is a better X than B (simpliciter). Some philosophers do attempt such a maneuver.
* In this case X is an interpretation of belief
---
Do you have something like this in mind?
By considering belief as, "the deliberate preparedness to act according to the formula believed," Peirce avoids the problems I am pointing to in your account, and yet he seems to retain much of the motivation of that account.
:eyes:
Do it!
Do it!
Do it!
Do it!
Yeah, does that. There's more going on here, though, as Davidson's truth-conditional semantics explicitly deals with beliefs. We'd have to get how he does this clear before concluding that he was wrong; that would be a substantial bit of work.
Seems to me those with a background in Aristotelian logic tend to view things through essentialist glasses. So:
Quoting Leontiskos
looks to presuppose essence. You seem to be making use of some as yet unstated transcendental argument, along the lines of the only way one account is better than another is if it is closer to the essence...
And I don't think that works. But I will not pursue that here, not unless you are able to set out with much greater detail what sort of thing an essence might be. For my part, I'd more likely drop the term. Too much baggage.
Nagase is a great resource for Davidson. We'd be lucky if he had time to stop by.
Quoting Banno
How do you propose that we coherently claim that A is a better X than B if we have no determinate and normative notion of X? There is nothing "transcendental" here, only common sense.
Quoting Banno
The idea of essence is quite simple and intuitive. I don't think it is abstruse or "transcendental." Modern philosophers seem to think that if we don't have a crystal-clear conception of the essence of some thing then the notion of essence itself is a dead end. But I don't find this idea anywhere in Aristotle or his heirs such as Aquinas (i.e. they never believed that a nominal definition could perfectly capture the real definition or essence).
The basic idea is that there is a real essence, defined by a real definition, and the real definition is approximated by a nominal definition. So when someone says, "A is a better (definition) of X than B," they must be approximating some real essence with their nominal definition, A.
So if we take your interpretation of Searle then we get, "B(L, f(a)) is a better construal of belief than B(L,p)." Once we understand what a real definition and a nominal definition are, then this is just to claim that the nominal definition B(L, f(a)) better approximates the real definition of belief than the nominal definition B(L,p). If there is no real definition, then there can be no approximation or comparison.
Of course one might reply that there is no real definition of belief, and the meaning of the concept is purely stipulative. That might work in certain cases, but it won't suffice to uphold the final sentence of your quote from Searle:
(This relates more directly to your thread on definitions, but I don't want to needlessly resurrect another thread.)
That's an extreme sort of realism. I don't see how you could maintain a differentiation between real and nominal definitions. Seems to me that all definitions are nominal; that is what definitions do.
As i said, Quoting Banno
I'm wondering whether the second sentence is a threat or a promise.
It would stretch my boundaries, but if one can't take risks here, where can one?
The article is interesting, but hard going.
For the thread, I would need to read slowly, so not too many pages at one go, please.
I encourage you and anyone else familiar with Davidson to do this.
Yes, of course all material definitions are nominal. But if you don't admit the existence of real definitions (or at least essences) then you cannot say that A is a better X than B, and you are obviously committed to saying such a thing. That is, you cannot say that one nominal definition is better than another.
Or we could return to my original point and talk about essences, ditching the notion of real definitions. If you say there is no determinate and normative notion of X, then you cannot say that A is a better X than B. And if you say that there is a determinate and normative notion of X, then you are committed to an essence or nature of X. Whether or not you want to label this notion a real definition is not important.
Why not?
Seems that "real definitions" are mere stipulations. Is it a better pair of scissors because it is sharp, or because it is harder to cut yourself with them?
So what counts as better depends on what one is doing.
But there is a bigger issue here, in that what you mean by "essence" is unclear. If not what is had by the thing in quesTion in every possible case, then what?
And isn't that what kit fine is doing by relying on definitions - stipulation - rather than necessity?
I dunno. I find this all a bit too fumbling to be getting on with.
http://lambdacalculator.com/#
So it seems Davidson's program is still active.
Well when you or Searle say that, "A is a better X than B," you could either be stipulating that it is better or asserting that it is better. If you are stipulating then you are apparently claiming that it is better according to some arbitrary standard that you have chosen. If you are asserting then you are doing something more, and you are making a claim that could be right or wrong, true or false.
As I have pointed out numerous times, the reason we know Searle is not merely stipulating is because of what he says about his claim:
Quoting John Searle
Quoting Banno
This is the elementary difference between a substance and an artifact. According to Aristotle, artifacts have no essence, although they can be usefully imagined to have quasi-essences in various ways. "Sharpness," for example, has a determinate and normative notion that is not merely stipulative, and we can assess artifacts according to this notion.
I think my previous posts are clear enough, but to try once more: when Searle says that his conception of belief is better than the prevailing conception, and that his own conception avoids the great "damage done to philosophy and cognitive science," he is not making a merely stipulative claim.
Let’s continue on then to see if there are different senses of belief. Provisionally (subject to assent), there at least appear to be different kinds of propositions to believe in. A proposition that can be false is, yes, an assertion that the proposition is true. And here is there actually a difference between the belief that an assertion is true, and an assertion being true? Are not “I believe the earth is flat” and “The earth is flat” both assertions? We might say one is me making a claim (say, not on behalf of you) and the other is a claim for a larger group (everyone?), but then, as you note, why stake an individual claim to a fact?
Maybe at times I am not asserting that the proposition is true, but I am predicting that something might be true (hypothesizing, Wittgenstein says, p. 162 3rd). If I believe it is raining (per Moore), then, when it is not, it is more than that my claim is false, I am said to be wrong (or correct). And we can now understand “I believe the earth is flat” as a prediction, though it makes more sense in examples such as: “I believe Mount McKinley is the capital of Vermont” or I believe 134x23=3082, in which cases we can look it up and find out—not if the assertion is true (though we do just that), but whether I was right or wrong, in the sense of guessing.
But we also propose to believe some things that cannot be looked up. “(I believe) The right thing to do is apologize.” Now the personal claim of belief makes more sense here. The proposition is not true or false, nor can we be “wrong” about this proposition; or, only in so much as misguided, foolish, appeasing, etc. depending on the claim and the situation. We can be said to stand for its truth, prepared to defend it, make ourselves intelligible, give reasons in favor, die before renouncing, etc. I believe this would be, as Wittgenstein puts it, a “tone” of belief, as conviction (#187)—though we need not be “convinced” to make a personal claim (as if it were necessarily rational; that it must be to be part of this category, this sense of belief). And maybe this is the same sense of belief as “I believe in God”, and here we may substitute for God: in the power of absolution, or in eating an apple a day, etc. And maybe we would say that belief here is faith, as “I trust in”, say, the promises of God’s scripture, or that I give control of myself over to God, or my future health over to fruit.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
Quoting Leontiskos
I've explained, a few times, I think, how it seems to me that you misinterpret this.
I must be misunderstanding you. You seem to be implying that the only way that something can be "better" than another thing is if it is closer in some ideal, essential characteristic. But we do judge one thing to be better than another without having in mind some ideal.
And all of this seems so obtuse, given the topic at hand.
So I must admit to being somewhat nonplussed.
This is very interesting. I find myself wondering why "The right thing to do is apologise" should not have a truth-value. And so I find myself here somewhat at odds with Wittgenstein, and leaning towards Davidson.
Nothing seems amiss here.
Such as...? Do you have any arguments or examples to give? You are remarkably tight-lipped for someone who is "nonplussed."
Quoting Banno
But your appendix doesn't affect my argument. You merely explained the manner in which the view is mistaken.
So taking your appendix:
Quoting Banno
The idea here is:
Now your ideal belief-relation here—whatever else we want to say about it—must not be a thing in the mind or brain. This characteristic is part of your own definition of the belief-relation, and it is a characteristic which must be in place in order for you to implicitly assert P1. If there is no such thing as a belief-relation (and it has no essence), then neither P1 nor Searle's claim can hold. If the belief-relation you have in mind is not a determinate and normative concept, then the "inferior" of P1 falls to pieces.
Quoting Banno
Well so am I. What I am saying seems the most obvious thing in the world. But at least I am providing arguments for my position, even though I think it is the most obvious thing in the world.
(As I said earlier, this tangent is closer to your thread about definitions, for I am focusing on the definition of belief that underlies your claims about belief.)
Well, I gave the example of scissors before, and you met it with some irrelevancies.
I made the point that what counts as "better" depends on what one is doing. Whether blunt scissors are better than sharp scissors depends on the task at hand, not on some ideal essence of scissor.
I suppose someone might reply that implicit in what one is doing is an ideal essence of the perfect tool for that task... seems a bit far fetched. I don't need a clear definition of the perfect screwdriver to choose between a Philips and a flat.
Quoting Leontiskos
I dunno. It seems to me you simply misunderstood Searle, and double down when this is pointed out. Meh.
Quoting Leontiskos
Not a notion of which I have made use. I try not to deal in ideals...
Well if you said “I agree” it might mean you intend to apologize. If you say “You’re right” it maybe means you are giving your assent to my analysis of the situation. And you could say “That is right” if you were teaching me about apologizing. If we look at saying, as Austin might, “That is false”, it is unclear what the implications would be (but something is amiss). This problem is not the same as a math problem or a fact (we can’t look it up). We can argue about what should be done, but neither of us has any inherent claim to what is right, and, as well, we may not reach a point where we agree, and so what is at stake is more than what is right, it is also our relationship, our community; I may shun you for refusing to acknowledge or do what I see as correct. In fact, you might say “That is true” if you agree that it is the right thing to do but you aren’t going to do it and don’t what to offend me.
p.s. Even though this situation does not value certainty, we nevertheless have a way of discussing what would matter in deciding what the right thing to do is. Does it matter if you feel remorseless? Do you intend to keep the relationship or is it more important to hold to the action or words that hurt the other? Can you fulfill the expectation of a promise to act differently?
I only have a passing familiarity with Davidson, but, if my understanding is correct, the structure of a separate discussion of the workings of a concept are similar to both. Wittgenstein would call it the grammar of the criteria of a concept where Davidson’s talks of a meta-discussion of an object-language. If this is a similarity, where is the space between them?
Well, do you think the scissors analogy maps to Searle's claim? Do you imagine that Searle might be caught saying something like, "It is impossible to exaggerate the damage done to philosophy and cognitive science by [the mistaken view that scissors ought to be dull rather than sharp]"?
If someone wants to make a bold and striking claim they can't immediately fall back into a kind of nominalism. To do so is, in effect, to say, "It is impossible to exaggerate the damage done to philosophy and cognitive science by the mistaken view that X is Y. Also, it makes no difference whether philosophers and cognitive scientists believe X is Y. It's merely a matter of perspective."
If someone makes a substantial mistake then there must be some matter of the fact that they are mistaken about. To say that they have made a mistake and then to simultaneously hold that there is ultimately nothing to be mistaken about is to contradict oneself. Searle's claim is normative, not merely hypothetical.
I think you are the one misrepresenting Searle, here. Suppose you write Searle a letter asking, "Are there certain facts about what belief is, such that some construals of belief are more accurate than others?" I think he would write back, "Yes, of course there are real facts about what belief is and what belief is not. The people who are mixed up about these facts are more mistaken than those who are not mixed up about them."
Quoting Banno
But when Aristotelians see people saying things like this, we can only wonder what sort of bizarre strawman is at play. When you look at a screw and decide to use a Phillips rather than a flathead screwdriver, you are inevitably appealing to "an ideal essence of the perfect tool for that task."
Quoting Banno
You need a clear definition of a Phillips screwdriver and a clear definition of a flathead screwdriver if you are to choose between them. When you look at a screw and think, "A Phillips will be better than a flathead for this screw," you have already appealed to the ideal screwdriver for this job. This is all the argument requires.
No. You are not appealing to any such thing by choosing a Philips head. One does not need a clear definition of a Philips head screwdriver in order to use one to remove a screw.
The Aristotelian view is really quite odd.
Images of a builder calling "Slab" and the assistant saying "...not until you set out the essence of slabbness".
That's a very good point.
S0 we have:
It's an unusual phrasing, but isn't it clear enough? "That's not true" would be a happier wording.
Interesting.
Davidson would have us translate such things into truth-functional first-order sentences. No easy task here.
In order to pick out a screwdriver you need to know what it is, and in order to know what it is you need to have an internalized definition of it. That's what a definition is. An understanding or concept of what something is. If you claim to know what something is then you have at least a nominal definition of it, and if you have a definition then you claim to know what it is.
What sort of strange misunderstandings are you laboring under? What do you imagine an Aristotelian (or an average person) means when they talk about the definition of some thing?
Continuing where I left of in my quote from <this post>:
Quoting Introduction to Posterior Analytics, by Jonathan Barnes, p. xiii-xiv
Or it's a slab if the builder places it horizontally, a block if he places it vertically...
Quoting Leontiskos
And what could "know what it is..." mean, apart from being able to pick the driver from the chisel, the flat from the Phillips? Knowing what screwdriver is, is exactly being able to make use of it, and not understanding what it's essence is.
And what's an "internalised definition"? One that is not explicit? One that cannot be made explicit? Could such a thing count as a definition?
Does a dog have an internalized definition of her food bowl when she "picks it out"?
Practical knowledge bears on the essence of a thing, yes. In the case of practical knowledge one does not need to be able to communicate their knowledge to others in order to possess it. A mechanic who can fix anything in the world but can't explain the mechanics of mechanic-ing to another person still knows the essence of a screwdriver. Whether he knows the definition of a screwdriver is perhaps arguable, but I would say that he does.
Incidentally, this bears on your thread about definitions. Definitions are about things, not words, and so circularity of words (description) does not undermine the notion of definitions. When we teach children by pointing, "dog," "grandpa," we are teaching them how to name things and take the first step towards definitions. The words are never ultimately about words. They are about things. The one who understands the thing possesses the definition, not the one who possesses mere words. ...Of course words are rarely "mere," for they themselves tell us about things.
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I rather doubt that dogs make choices with regard to their food bowl in the way that we make choices between screwdrivers. I see this as association vs. use.
How broadly are you defining definition?
I'd suggest that rather than a definition or an essence, you have pattern recognition which occurs in your brain.
Mmm, Banno has shifted this discussion quite far from its origin, which was not focused on practical knowledge or artifacts. My claim has been
His justification has to do with scissors and screwdrivers. Apparently the idea is that if one does not need an ideal conception of scissors or screwdrivers, then they do not need an ideal conception of belief (in order to make the claim that X is a better understanding of belief than Y).
It would be nice if there were a thread where random tangents could be taken...
I think a dog associates its bowl with the act of eating, and conditioning occurs, but it does not use the bowl as a tool (like a screwdriver). Thus the mode of recognition would seem to be quite different.
Getting back towards the topic, if someone says, "A is a better X than B," then they must have at least some vague notion of what the best X looks like. If they say, "The Phillips is a better screwdriver than a flathead for this screw," then they must understand the shape of the screw as well as the proper screwdriver needed to drive it, and that the Phillips is closer to the proper choice than the flathead. Or perhaps the Phillips simply is the proper or best conceivable tool for the job. Either way, they have a definition of "the right screwdriver for the job."
The dog doesn't have that definition, because they do not use things as means to ends in that way.
I think tangents are fine if they are relevant and I think this one is. We come to understand what screwdrivers are used for by association I would say, that is by seeing them used and by using them. The use of a Phillip's head driver is associated with the recognition of the configuration of a Phillip's head screw, and likewise with the standard screw.
The scissors example, the understanding of which pair of scissors is the better, is determined by seeing which one cuts more quickly, straightly and cleanly; I think this is all empirically observable and has nothing to do with essences per se, although we can think about it in those terms on reflection.
The missing premise is that belief names a substance, in the sense indicated here, which I suppose means something like "part of the natural world," and thus its essence can be sought by means of natural science, where we might expect theories ("only") to approximate that essence.
But that may be false. "Belief" is a category from folk psychology, which means it is just as likely to turn out to be defined only as well as "hammer" or "chair" or "government." You may disagree, and consider "belief" to name a natural kind, but you ought to recognize that in doing so you are relying on, if not advancing, very strong claims about psychology. Is that what you want to do?
Quoting Leontiskos
It's all of them.
Also: every thread turns into the same thread eventually, about the nature and status of concepts in general, as this one has.
I agree, and I would say that the essence of a scissors includes sharpness. Banno apparently disagrees, and thinks the essence of a scissors is neither sharp nor dull. Of course we are talking about artifacts, but we can still think of them as having quasi-essences.
So the best scissors cuts most quickly, straightly, and cleanly, and we will compare any two scissors according to this ideal. That's basically what a (quasi-) definition is: that conceptual ideal that you have in your mind when you compare or assess scissors. Or if we want to be precise we could call it a nominal definition. Really it doesn't matter what we call it. It's the thing that matters. If someone is superstitious about the words 'essence' or 'definition', we can go with something else. It seems to me that to deny the existence of such things is mistaken and also very odd.
Yes, you are right to point out that there is enthymeme at work, but I would express it a bit differently. (I would say that belief is not an artifact, but it is also not a substance. It is an accident. Let that pass for now.)
Yes, I would want to say that 'belief' is a natural kind, found among humans and accessible to natural science. Banno gave a <quote from John Searle>. Specifically, my claim has been that the final sentence of that quote commits Searle to the view that the notion of belief is both determinate and normative, and to the view that there exists a real definition of belief that the "mistaken view" has gotten wrong.
(This twofold point is getting at the same thing, but I broke it up at some point to try to help the argument along.)
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Ah, how soon you forget about the threads which end in us calling one another "Hitler"! :razz:
(In fact when I began pressing Banno on his claim, found elsewhere, that definitions do not exist, I admitted that my line was tangential.)
I don't think I said that - anywhere.
Quoting Leontiskos
No, he doesn't. He thinks that we would be better served considering use rather than essence. Hence sharp scissors are ill-advised in kindergarten. In that situation the better scissors are blunt.
Quoting Leontiskos
From the paragraph:
He's saying hat the structure of beliefs is not well reflected in the predicate form B(a,p).
Nothing here supports your claims. He's saying belief is not a relation. He doesn't appear to be saying anything about normativity, determinism or "real" definitions, whatever they are and whatever they might mean in this context.
And nothing about essences.
This discussion isn't going anywhere.
Really? I thought belief is like an experiment. You do your research, act upon it, modify it and then see if it stands still and you repeat the process.
Heh. I thought my response clever but upon inspection, not so much. I think the act of pointing has a place in the definition of "slab!", for the initiate. Or the act of the other builder bringing a slab such that the initiate sees what a slab is without an essence.
How it happens, so I'd maintain @Leontiskos, is not known to the Aristotelian, though the Aristotelian could probably derive a complicated enough description to satisfy the definition of "slab" that fits for all cases thus far seen.
But then I might give you a slab of steak.
:up:
I wonder what Aristotle would make of that? A nice derangement of epitaphs?
The upshot being that essences introduces more issues than it solves.
But “phrasing” and “clarity” do not take seriously a claim about the workings of our concepts (like belief, or apologizing). The method of looking at what we say when something is the case is to make explicit the implications of our acts—that our phrases are evidence (philosophical data) of the way the world works. “That’s false” sounds forced in this case (is “unhappy”) because it is an attempt to impose the criteria for truth onto a concept that has its own rationale. True or false just do not apply in a case of right and wrong in a moral sense (or correct or felicitous); in this case, the criteria of when an apology applies or is warranted, etc. The point being that the concept of believing has different senses (uses) which employ different criteria, not all of which are truth.
I'm not sure what it would mean to know something without knowing the essence, and I am not sure what people have in mind when they talk about knowing something without an essence. Hume ridiculed the idea of essences, but Hume hardly read any Aristotle. I think most moderns are following Hume in ridiculing something they do not understand.
Here is one possible introduction: Essential vs. Accidental Properties (SEP)
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Quoting Banno
You will have to say what you mean by 'essence' at some point. At this point I'm not convinced you have the slightest idea of what you mean by it.
It's almost exactly like when you <dismiss the logic of the middle ages>, yet clearly know absolutely nothing about the practice of logic in the middle ages. It doesn't often go well when one criticizes things they are perfectly ignorant of.
Quoting Banno
I have already addressed this <here>, and you continue to ignore the points at hand. "If there is no such thing as a belief-relation (and it has no essence), then neither P1 nor Searle's claim can hold. If the belief-relation you have in mind is not a determinate and normative concept, then the 'inferior' of P1 falls to pieces," etc.
Searle makes strong claims about what belief is and what belief is not. He is clearly committed to the position that there is a definition of belief and an essence of belief. If there were neither then such claims would be nonsense. If beliefs had no more of an essence than an artifact like a scissors then Searle wouldn't be able to make sweeping claims about the damage done to philosophy.
(NB: To say, "they are mistaken about X," is to imply that there is something normative about X. If there were nothing normative about X then one could not be mistaken with respect to it.)
Quoting Leontiskos
I had a tree fern in the front garden... and my apologies to those who have heard this story. Now you suppose that knowing how to correctly use the word "tree" requires that one knows what a tree is
That's just not true. We use words correctly without ever setting out exact definitions.
I might not know if the tree fern outside my window is actually a tree, nor if that shrub over there should really be called a "tree". That does not mean I do not know how to use "tree". Famously, there is nothing that is common to all, and only, fish; and yet, we use the word. That is, it is not possible to set out the essence of "tree" or "fish", and yet the words are used successfully.
Moreover, when an essence is set out it often lead to risibility; so if berries are simple fruits stemming from one flower with one ovary and typically have several seeds, then strawberries are not berries.
Learning what a tree is, is no more than learning how to use the word "tree".
Now, if you have a definition of "essence" that gets around the issues spoken of hereabouts, please set it out.
Quoting Leontiskos
I've addressed this multiple times. Your conclusion does not follow. And further, you've misunderstood Searle.
Okay, that seems probable.
Quoting Banno
The problem with this argument is that, just because one uses a word without setting out an exact definition, does not mean that they use the word without knowing what a tree is.
Quoting Banno
If the word didn't signify any determinate thing then it wouldn't be useful to us. For Aristotelians words are primarily about things, and things have a determinate form. To talk about the difference between two things, such as zebras and horses, is just to talk about the difference between the essence of a zebra and the essence of a horse. The reason we don't use the word 'essence' is because we are Aristotle's children, and it is implied. We believe there are real substances with stable, determinate forms, or at the very least this is the received view. There aren't many heirs of Parmenides or Heraclitus running around.
Fuzzy borders, such as those between trees and shrubs, reminds me of the Sorites paradox, and I don't see it as a debilitating difficulty. You would have to flesh out your argument if you think it presents a true problem for the Aristotelian.
Quoting Banno
I think this is a good place to start:
Quoting SEP | Substance and Essence
The first argument is that some properties are not essential. The color brown does not belong to the essence of 'horse', because not all horses are brown, and a thing need not be brown in order to be a horse.
A second argument relates to the Humean notion of contiguity. Just because two things are contiguous does not mean that one enters into the definition of the other. That you were born in Pisces does not mean that the celestial bodies entered into the definition of your birth, nor that they bear some essential relation to your being.
Quoting Banno
:brow:
That's supposed to be a belief we already had that was not yet explicated
We could neither assent nor agree with Banno's report until he penned the words. We could not have possibly believed anything at all regarding his whereabouts while he writing his report until we were aware that he had written one. His claim is that we had unexplicated belief regarding his whereabouts while he was writing despite the fact that none of us, aside from him, had any idea that he was writing such a report, and thus no one could possibly have any belief at all regarding his whereabouts while he was writing.
He claimed we had belief that had not been explicated, then explicated what we did not believe.
:meh:
We cannot believe Banno's report of what we did not believe at time t1 is true until we read it. He says we did not believe he was in Jupiter's orbit at time t1. He's right. We didn't. So...
Where is the belief that had not been explicated? He offered up something we did not believe.
His claim is that we had belief at time t1 about his whereabouts at time t1 that had not been explicated, but he then sets out what we did not believe about his whereabouts at time t1.
Am I the only one who finds this odd?
No:
Quoting Leontiskos
That is, you are not supposing the antirealist view that "Banno is floating in space in the orbit of Jupiter" was not false before being written in that post, nor was it true, and nor was it some other, third truth option, but that it didn't exist at all, and therefore was ineligible for any truth value?
With enough specificity, even you'll agree.
Call me whatever you'd like.
I find timestamps clear up a few things... no need to rely on the 'rules of logical entailment'(scarequotes intentional)
.
You might be claiming that belief statements are not bivalent - that "Banno is floating in space in the orbit of Jupiter" is now false, but before being considered, was neither true nor false. An antirealism towards belief.
Or, and this seems to be closer to what you are claiming, you might be saying that the belief did not exist in the time before being considered, and so is not the sort of thing that has a truth value. But the upshot of that might be interesting.
I've tried here to defend a view of belief roughly in line with mainstream analytic thinking, and you've been helpful in challenging that. It might be that I need to adjust my view somewhat. The view I was defending is that not all our beliefs are explicit. I find it puzzling, given our previous interaction, that you choose this with which to disagree.
I place considerable value on bivalence. I'm not claiming "belief statements are not bivalent."
I can't make sense of your use of the term belief.
Your statement at time t1 is not equivalent to my belief at time t2 after agreeing with it. <-----that's the gist of it.
I'm saying that it was never a belief of mine to begin with.
Not my intention...
I agree that "Not all our beliefs are explicit". I disagree with your example which was basically a report of all readers' belief. At time t1, you claimed we already believed a statement made by you at time t1. I didn't then, and I don't now.
At time t1, you misattributed belief to me.
Ok, so no antirealism towards belief. Good.
Then I don't understand your use of "belief". But we knew that.
Because you perhaps believe that I am in Australia, and hence that I am on Earth, and hence that I am not in orbit around Jupiter. Or are we not to make such deductions?
"The infant believes there is a dummy" is a statement of the infant's belief. All beliefs can be put into the form "M believes that p". This, I think, is merely a statement of the grammatical structure of belief.
Again, the core function of attributing beliefs is to explain actions. That the infant cannot indulge in such explanations is irrelevant.
Sure, we can say stuff about other creatures' belief(s) using that form. Not so much the grammar of belief, but rather the grammar of our report.
We can believe that a broken clock is working. No one believes that "a broken clock is working" is true.
If at time t1 someone believes that a particular broken clock is working, they would not say so.
All of these things point out problems with belief as propositional attitude as well as the common malpractice of treating all belief as equivalent to statements and/or propositions.
Sorry about that... accidental post. Corrected now.
Entailment has issues. See my recent stuff on Gettier.
You're trying to make a point that is something to do with de re and de dicto interpretations? Or substitution?
Sure, substitution into such contexts is illicit. Substitution within the context, not so much.
Quoting creativesoul
Not without a link.
My only point about de re and de dicto would be that they too fail to take proper account of someone's belief at time t1, when - at that time - they believe that a particular broken clock is working. As before...
Quoting creativesoul
Next time...
Cheers!
Here's what I would defend:
As for the Jupiter example, I erred. It's at least missing one premise - that creativesoul is rational, and so has consistent beliefs. I didn't think that worth doubting.
So we have
Creativesoul believes
{
}
And it may have indeed been true that
Creativesoul believes
{
}
provided that Creativesoul is allowed inconsistent beliefs.
Thanks for urging the correction.
At time t1, S believes that a particular broken clock is working.
Show me.
Show what?
There's an ambiguity here that can be expounded by getting the scope clear. It might be
There is a broken clock X and (S believes that X is not broken)
Do you see a problem with that?
Or it might be that
There is a broken clock X and S believes that (X is broken and not broken)
S is irrational or some such.
Cheers!
You complained about ambiguity, then added some.
Are you claiming that at time t1, S had an attitude towards your words now?
Time does not seem relevant, but if you must include it:
Quoting Banno
becomes
At time t, there is a broken clock X and (S believes that X is not broken)
S has an attitude towards the broken clock.
That's what I arrive at.
So where's the proposition/statement that S has an attitude towards?
That: X is accurate.
X rigidly designates the clock, broken or unbroken. That's what allows the ambiguity to be shown.
Perhaps we can jump ahead and re-parse this as
There is a clock, that clock is broken, but S believes (that clock is accurate).
I'm saying that this and other examples show the inherent inadequacy in the conventional understanding of belief as propositional attitude as well as the belief that approach.
I've a bit of time tonight, so...
I appreciate the kind words earlier, and I can only hope that you already know that I have quite a bit of respect and admiration for your participation in the forums throughout time. In addition, as you've said concerning my role in helping you, you've helped me in more ways than I can think of. Davidson, Searle, Kripke, and other respected academics have helped me via you.
I appreciate ya!
:wink:
Sure, the clock is not a proposition, nor an attitude. . But "The clock is broken" is a proposition, and to believe that the clock is broken is to adopt an attitude towards that proposition.
Quoting creativesoul
I still don't see how.
Quoting creativesoul
I don't. Trip to Bunnings, then a couple of meetings and seedlings to plant out. Maybe in between.
I'm still thinking that the way forward is to do with Moyal-Sharok's book, which seems to take your side of the discussion.
At time t1, S did not believe the clock was broken.
At time t1, S believed the clock was working. It was not. S believed a broken clock was working. What I'm asking you to do is show me how the accounting practice you're defending handles such a situation. We can - and do sometimes - believe that a broken clock is working. However, what I'm pointing towards is the fact that no one would say so at the time. After having been shown, they would readily admit that they had indeed once believed that a broken clock was working, despite never having an attitude towards the proposition "a broken clock is working" such that they believe it to be true.
Quoting Banno
Hopefully the above helps?
:yikes:
There are other issues as well. Following the practice you've defended, five different people can believe that you are currently in five different places, but the practice in question will render them all as having the exact same belief about your spatiotemporal location. The earlier example you set out about my being rational could be used by me to show you.
But someone who believed the clock was working would say that it was working. Not following you at all.
Russell's example is usually used as an early version of the stuff Gettier latter built a name around.
There's nothing here to indicate an argument against beliefs as propositional attitudes.
Quoting creativesoul
I don't see how. A believes that Banno is at x; B believes that Banno is at y; C believes that Banno is at z; and so on. Each has a different belief.
Not following your point at all.
May I suggest attending to what I've written?
If you go back a couple of pages, to the beginning of this discussion, you'll see that instead of addressing what I've written, you've addressed other things... consistently. I want to continue, but I need you to address the words I've written.
Quoting Banno
According to the practice you're defending, all of them believe that you're not at w.
Yep.
What's the problem?
I am. Maybe your position is not as clear as you suppose.
:worry:
I ask you to reread our exchange here.
Where does that get us?
For what it's worth, Banno's position is much more clear to me than creativesoul's. Creativesoul's posts aren't providing me with a great deal of insight into the position or the arguments. In fact I really don't understand what creativesoul is saying or getting at.
Quoting Banno
Right. I wonder if it would be easier to sort out past beliefs about working clocks before bringing in broken clocks, or at least to place the differences side by side. I mostly don't think false beliefs are a great starting point for these discussions (nor a great re-starting point).
I'm not seeing how time makes a difference here - a bit of a prejudice of mine, as an emphasis on temporal issues seems to often accompany phenomenological accounts.
So I'd start with the time at the widest scope:
At three o'clock, (there is a clock, that clock is broken, but S believes (that clock is accurate)).
And again I don't see how it changes the story. Compare
At two o'clock, (there is a clock, that clock is broken, but S believes (that clock is accurate)).
What's the point of specifying a time?
I haven't worked that out either.
Call me old-fashioned, but I think it would be helpful if @creativesoul provided a compass like, "Banno believes X. I believe Y. X contradicts Y."
The poisoning the well fallacy looms large here, my friend. I'm perfectly capable of making and defending my own position. I'm not going to spend the limited time I've available fending off strawmen.
You've been consistently misattributing belief to me throughout. I once saw you exclaim that the easiest way to win a disagreement with someone else(yourself at the time you said it) was to begin by misunderstanding it. Trust me when I tell you that you've misunderstood a few things - evidently.
I've asked you several times to explain the proposition that S had an attitude towards at time t1 such that they believed it to be true. We agreed that S's attitude - at time t1 - was towards a broken clock. Broken clocks are not propositions. So, either S's attitude towards the broken clock - at time t1`- was not a belief about the broken clock or not all belief is equivalent to a propositional attitude, because broken clocks are neither propositions nor attitudes.
Are you claiming that S's attitude towards the broken clock - at time t1 - was not that that particular clock was working?
Why can't it be said that S had a propositional attitude towards the clock; namely the belief that it was functioning. I must admit I'm struggling to see what issue you are trying to highlight here.
Quoting Banno
The above is what Banno believes about the notion of belief I'm working from. I do not take belief to be some form of mental furnishing. All furnishings have a fairly precise spatiotemporal location. On my view, belief is not the sort of thing that has a spatiotemporal location. Banno's account of my position on belief contradicts my own position on belief.
It's been around a decade ago that Banno and I participated in a debate about whether or not truth was/is prior to language. He argued in the negative. I argued in the affirmative. We have since had another debate about whether or not all belief have propositional form.
Banno holds that belief is imputed/attributed to another creature as a means for explaining its behaviour. I do not disagree completely with that idea. We do just that and we do it quite often. It's just not an explanation for how belief emerges onto the world stage nor what belief consists of.
I am of the carefully considered opinion that some belief is prior to language. Hence, it only follows that language less belief cannot possibly be equivalent to a propositional attitude unless propositions can exist - somehow - prior to language in such a way that a language less creature could have an attitude towards one. Most defenders of the position he's arguing from deny the very idea that language less creatures have belief. He does not.
That just scratches the surface of the disagreement between Banno and myself. The differences between his position and my own are often tied to the respective notions of belief that we're working from.
Well, that's not the sort of thing we say when discussing propositional attitudes. Those are attitudes towards propositions. We don't talk about having 'propositional attitudes' towards other things... clocks notwithstanding. Propositional attitudes are towards propositions... by definition nonetheless.
So, to directly answer your question, it could be said, but it would amount to nonsense or misuse.
Banno's law: the easiest way to critique some view is to begin by misunderstanding it.
But the issue I have here is that I havn't been able to put together what it is that you are arguing. So you insist
Quoting creativesoul
And I've replied several times, most recently with
Quoting Banno
...and tried to see what it is you are getting at, but I haven't been able to see it. You put me in the position of having to work out both what it is you are arguing and how to reply to it.
What is the relevance of time?
I dunno. There's stuff about reference here that has been dealt with elsewhere; perhaps you take "the broken clock" as some sort of rigid designator such that everyone must think the clock broke, and so conclude that S thinks the clock both broken and accurate.
But if I am not to attribute beliefs to you, there's not much more to be said.
You've given me pause to reconsider things more than once, but here I am at a loss to understand your point.
So, am I correct in thinking that you're claiming that S's attitude towards the broken clock at time t1 does not count as S believing that that particular broken clock was working?
My position here is neither difficult to understand nor somehow complex. I'm simply claiming that at time t1 S believed that a broken clock was working.
Yeah! That 's it. I was close...
:wink:
I'll call it by name from this point forward when using it!
Good. I am glad to be wrong here.
Quoting creativesoul
Let's try a slightly different approach. "The broken clock" cannot refer to the clock in S's beliefs, because that clock is not broken.
To be able to refer to the clock in S's beliefs and in our beliefs, we need to introduce a rigid designator, which I did above with "x". Let x be the clock.
In S's beliefs, x is not broken.
Hence S is not committed to the proposition "S believes that the broken clock is not broken", but to "S believes that x is not broken".
So yes.
Quoting creativesoul
Indeed, you believe both that x is broken and that S believes (x is not broken). There is no contradiction here.
How's that?
Propositional attitude, psychological state usually expressed by a verb that may take a subordinate clause beginning with “that” as its complement. Verbs such as “believe,” “hope,” “fear,” “desire,” “intend,” and “know” all express propositional attitudes.
So, according to that article saying that S had a belief about the clock and saying that S had a propositional attitude towards the clock could indeed be two ways of saying the same thing and would be in the case that the propositional attitude in question was a belief, rather than a hope, desire etc..
This looks suspiciously like unnecessarily multiplying entities.
The clock in S's beliefs is the one they looked at, and it is most certainly a broken one. On this... I'll not budge.
There is only one clock. x.
What differs is the propositions you, I and S take as being true of that clock
Quoting creativesoul
Sure. I agree entirely.
Beliefs "emerge onto the world stage" as ways of expressing what folk hold as true, as opposed to what is indeed true. S beleives the clock to be broken when it isn't.
Beliefs consist in an attitude of some agent to the effect that some state of affairs holds: that some proposition is true. "S believes that the clock is not broken" means that S holds that the proposition "The clock is not broken" is true.
What is it that is missing from this account?
I think we just made a bit of progress.
Next time!
Cheers!!!
:smile:
Quoting Banno
This looks like a contradiction to me.
Do you not see that?
The whole apparatus developed here shows the opposite. It's pretty simple.
You believe (the clock is broken)
S believes (the clock is not broken)
As it turns out, you are correct. Nowhere in here does S believe the broken clock was not broken.
________
You might construct the odd locution "S believes that the broken clock is not broken". By that you might mean either that
You believe ((the clock is broken) and (S believes (the clock is not broken)))
Which contains no contradiction; or
S believe that (the clock is broken and the clock is not broken)
which is not justified by (does not follow from)
S believes (the clock is not broken)
...which I pointed out back at the beginning of this exchange.
Thank you, creativesoul, that was very helpful. :up:
---
Quoting Janus
I tend to agree with you. S holds that, "The clock is functioning," not that, "The broken clock is functioning." "Broken" does not enter into their intentional act. They do not hold a belief regarding a broken clock; they hold a belief regarding a (working) clock. They just happen to be mistaken.
But I am probably not honing in on the exact difference that Banno and creativesoul are meting out.
I think @creativesoul is either trading on, or confusing himself with, an ambiguity of expression: "S believes a broken clock is not broken". The belief S holds is not that a clock is both broken and not broken, so while it is correct in one sense (from our POV) that S's belief is about a broken clock, from S's POV the belief is not about a broken clock. It's all about context.
Quoting Banno
Cool. Now we're getting somewhere useful. I'm afraid it will be much later in the evening before I can take the time needed to further explain other consequences/implications, but now we can at least begin to see the importance of timestamping S's belief.
According to all three of you, and I take that as current conventional practice, at time t1, S's belief was not about a broken clock. The clock in S's belief was not broken. I ask all of you to now imagine a later time, after S became aware that at time t1 the clock was broken.
Here, at time t2, S would readily admit that at time t1, they believed that a broken clock was working.
Well, the above reflects a large part of it. The differences are many but most all of them seem to be logical consequences of our respective positions regarding belief.
A question may help...
What does S's belief - at time t1 - consist of?
You all three seem to hold that S's belief - at time t1 - does not consist of a broken clock. Although Banno agrees with me that S's attitude at time t1 is towards a broken clock. You're now claiming that S does not hold a belief regarding a broken clock. Banno said much the same thing earlier. This seems to be a huge problem from my vantage point.
The particular clock that S looked at at time t1 was broken. That is true regardless of S's belief. Here, I think we all agree. On my view, if their belief was about the particular clock they looked at, and the particular clock they looked at was a broken one, then their belief was about a particular broken clock, and it does not matter if S realizes that it was broken or not.
The above applies to speaking. According to the accounting practice under examination, S would not say "I believe that that broken clock is working", and thus would not - could not - believe that either. I'm claiming that S believed that a broken clock was working, but would not say so... until after they came to realize that the clock they looked at was broken.
So, if we're to give preference to S, what argument or reasoning would support giving preference to what S would say at time t1 instead of what they would say at time t2, after realizing that they had believed a broken clock was working?
I've laid out several, and they've yet to have been given careful consideration. You've been drowning strawmen in the poison well instead. I've no idea what your intent is. I still like to believe that you're arguing in good faith, and I ought make my words as impeccable as I can.. That's worth saying. So, here goes...
The position you're arguing for/from arrives at either self-contradiction or incoherence. Neither is acceptable. You're all over the place. Earlier you claimed that the clock in S's belief was both... broken and not. Clocks cannot be both at the same time. We're talking about S's belief at time t1. The clock that S looked at is the clock in S's belief, and it was broken. There is no grey area here. None.
But, you want to invent a completely different clock - whole cloth. As if just because S does not believe the clock is broken, as if just because S does not know that the clock is broken, as if just because S does not know they were trusting what a broken clock said, as if just because S believed that that particular broken clock was working at that particular time....
Somehow - magically - there's now two clocks instead of one(according to you). The new one is not broken, because S believes it's working...
:yikes:
So much for the distinction between truth and belief. I was surprised to see that from you, but Janus, not so much.
:worry:
Perhaps it best to find places of agreement.
S's belief is about a broken clock. Do you agree?
Quoting creativesoul
There's an ambiguity about that, between the clock being broken and S believing it is broken. S's belief is about a clock, yes. But it's not, for S, a belief about a broken clock. As in, It's not true that "S believes that (the broken clock is not broken)"; but that, to get the scope right, "Of the clock, S believes (the clock is not broken) AND the clock is broken.
"The clock is not broken" has to stay within the scope of S's belief. And it seems to me that you miss this.
I don't think you have explained how this leads to a counterexample to belief being a propositional attitude.
I'm only guessing, but is it that you think the belief is about the clock, which is an individual, and so not propositional? But that's not right; since the belief is about whether the clock is working, or not, which is propositional.
On the one hand, if you could present a clear case of a belief that could not be put into propositional form, I'd give reconsideration to the proposal. But on the other hand, that beliefs are propositional is foundational; having a belief that p simply is having an attitude towards p such that p is the case - that's what belief is. So if you do provide a proposed example of a belief that is not propositional, it's unlikely that I would see it as a belief. It might be a sentiment, a feeling, but not a belief. You ma call this paragraph "poisoning the well" or some such, but if you will not present a coherent account of what you are claiming, I'm only left to make such guesses.
You say that my reply is all over the place. If so, that is a result of your own incoherence. The point of nearly all my replies has been to attempt to make clear the scope of the various beliefs about the clock. But again, in your most recent post, you seem to want to mash that scope. Hence again, this:
It seems to me that you cannot accept this rendering because it pretty much mashes your account.
You seem to want us to put your argument together from your hints, rather than presenting it clearly. If you are going to make accusations of straw man and so on, but not present your account, there's little more that I can do. If you really do doubt my good faith, don't bother replying.
:blush:
Ah my friend...
I've misunderstood you. My apologies for doubting your integrity. Stellar reply. Thank you for that. I'm still processing, but I think I understand a bit better now. I'll do my best to fill in the blanks that I've left. I've always been bad for mistakenly assuming everyone else is already on the same page as I am. I've become aware of the fact that I've actually not addressed your replies as they deserve to be addressed.
Again... stellar reply. Admirable. :point:
Okay.
Am I correct in saying that - according to the position you're working from and/or defending - the scope of S's belief is determined by what S would say at the time?
And no, I'm not just avoiding giving a straight answer. Scope is a point of logic, rather than of conversation.
Okay. No problem. I'm just attempting to understand the position you're defending.
How do you determine what would be included or not within the scope of S's belief at any given time?
Form the OP, beliefs explain, but do not determine, actions. Any belief can be made to account for any action, by adding suitable auxiliary beliefs.
So they are not determined.
Are you asking how one decides that S believes p? Well, by their actions, including what they say.
Again, it seems the core reasons for talking about beliefs are firstly in order to differentiate times when we are wrong or mistaken - when our beliefs are not true; and secondly to explain actions: S went to the fruit because he wanted an apple and believed there was fruit in the bowl.
How do you determine what would be included or not within the scope of S's belief at any given time?
You emphasized that a certain proposition had "to stay within the scope of S's belief". I'm asking how you determine what must be included or not within the scope of S's belief. Rules? Intuition? What S would assent to at the time?
That's not true.
Yep. My bad. This whole process is so wearisome, I lost track. My apologies. You specified that S believed the clock was working. That's what I'm working from.
Do you need me to guess your argument again? You claimed something like "S believes that the broken clock is working" and now perhaps you want to know why it's that the clock is working that is in the belief and not that the clock is broken?
Well, right back in my first couple of replies I pointed out an ambiguity. We're just assuming that S does not believe that the clock is both broken and working - that S is reasonable.
This discussion is about conventional belief ascription practices, particularly regarding propositional attitude reports.
I'm claiming that we sometimes believe that a broken clock is working, but never do we ever believe that "a broken clock is working" is true.
Do you agree with what I'm claiming... as set out directly above?
Make an argument.
p2 We never believe that "a broken clock is working" is true
C Not all belief is equivalent to propositional attitude
How is it invalid?
By the conclusion not following from the premises. Indeed, "propositional attitude" is not even mentioned in the premises.
The propositional content here is "the clock is working"; the bit after "that".
This is not an example of a belief that does nto have a propositional content.
If one believes that there is a tree in the yard, and we adhere to the conventional propositional attitude reporting practices, then we say S has an attitude/disposition towards the proposition "there is a tree in the yard" such that they believe it to be true.
We cannot do this with this example.
We do not believe (a clock is both broken and not broken)
You're saying that "a clock is both broken and not broken" is not a proposition?
P1. Sometimes we believe that a broken clock is working.
The propositional content here is "a broken clock is working"; the bit after "that".
This is not an example of a belief that does not have a propositional content. It is an example of a belief that we can have even though we would not agree to the propositional content at the time. This belief, when put into propositional terms, is not something that we would assent to at the time.
That seems to me to cause a problem for the current belief attribution practices...
Disquotation:If an agent A sincerely, reflectively, and competently accepts a sentence s (under circumstances properly related to a context c), then A believes, at the time of c, what s expresses in c.
You're having a lend.
:confused:
Maybe a different tack...
False belief cannot be true
S's belief is false
"That clock is working" can be true
"That clock is working" cannot be S's belief
:brow:
This just says that S has a false belief. Yep.
You're having a lend.
For three pages.
The above negates your rendering.
That's never true with your threads!
:cool:
Again, this is ambiguous. It might be either
Sometimes we believe that a clock is both broken and not broken
or
The clock is broken and sometimes we believe that it is not broken.
De dicto/ de re.
Where does disquotation fit here? Why are you now talking about theories of truth?
I'm finding this too ridiculous. Walking away.
Suit yourself.
Ignoring the negation does not make it go away.
The SEP article on propositional attitude reports places the practice under scrutiny as well, although Kripke and Frege take different issue than I. Disquotation plays a role in the practice you're employing.
From the SEP...
You're not helping.
The term "it" refers to the broken clock. Sometimes we believe that a broken clock is not broken.
That rendering best matches what I'm claiming, but again, never would we ever assent to "a broken clock is not broken".