Debate: "The content of beliefs is propositional" (Banno and creativesoul)
@Banno and @creativesoul will debate the motion "The content of beliefs is propositional", with Banno arguing for and creativesoul against the motion. They have agreed on:
(1) A word limit of 1500 words.
(2) No more than 5 posts each.
(3) Maximum 3 days between posts.
This thread is for Banno and creativesoul only. Commentary may be posted in the parallel Debate Discussion thread. Posts by non-debaters in this thread will be moved or deleted.
(1) A word limit of 1500 words.
(2) No more than 5 posts each.
(3) Maximum 3 days between posts.
This thread is for Banno and creativesoul only. Commentary may be posted in the parallel Debate Discussion thread. Posts by non-debaters in this thread will be moved or deleted.
Comments (10)
"The mouse ran behind the tree."
...they believe that that proposition is true. The proposition is sometimes said to 'sit well' with the individual's other beliefs whenever there is no readily apparent disagreement between the proposition and the individual's worldview. I've no argument against that much.
Rather, a complaint is being lodged directly against the (in)adequacy of that accounting practice. The practice is taking account of whether or not an individual believes a proposition is true. Not all belief is about whether or not some proposition is true. All belief about propositions(including whether or not they are true, or truth apt even) can be rightly said to be propositional in content, but that is simply because propositions are what's under consideration. That's a problem if the discussion is belief content, and there is a difference between propositions and belief, and there most certainly is.
Belief about mice running behind trees is not belief about propositions. To quite the contrary, it's always about the mouse, the tree, and the spatiotemporal relation between them; none of which are propositions. Believing a mouse ran behind the tree need not be talked about in order to be experienced. Believing a mouse ran behind the tree does not require a focus upon propositions at all. Believing a mouse ran behind the tree does not require the believer to know the names of anything at all. Believing a mouse ran behind the tree does not require language use at all.
The wedge between belief about propositions and belief about things other than propositions need to be driven even deeper...
Believing that the proposition "the mouse ran behind the tree" is true, most certainly requires believing the mouse ran behind the tree, and learning/knowing how to talk about that.
The take-away here is that believing a mouse ran behind a tree is not propositional in content, whereas believing that the proposition "the mouse ran behind the tree" is true most certainly is. The two are not one in the same thing. The belief does not need the proposition, but the proposition is most certainly existentially dependent upon the belief, for it is a meaningful linguistic expression thereof.
I was awoken an hour or so ago by two cats attempting to fight through a window. One of our cats, Lilly, believing the house under imminent threat of invasion by the local strays, set to screeching and spitting ferociously at something out in the dark of the night, beyond the keen of my bleary too-quickly opened eyes. Sleep driven away, I've settled in my armchair to do a bit of writing. The topic is belief, the puzzle, what sorts of thing could a belief be?
Lilly apparently believed that there was something objectionable out the window, and that her hissing and spitting were imperative in order to drive whatever it was away. This is at least part of what belief is about: that our actions follow from our beliefs, that what we do, we do in the light of what we hold to be true.
The sort of belief I intend to discuss is not the sort found in church, and that might better be called faith. The beliefs to be examined are the common everyday stuff, that the cup is on the shelf or that the sun is rising. Nothing too transcendent here. But if we start with the everyday, we might work towards such profundity.
Our beliefs are the way we see things. They are what we take to be the case. They are what we hold to be true.
Now it serves us well to be clear about the language we are using here. Philosophy is built with words, so we had best understand how they fit together if we are going to build something worthwhile. The words we will need are found in Creative's opening post; words like belief, proposition, true. We might be tempted to look around at the way words such as these are used, but I fear that we will find little by way of consistency in our observations. We might better force some order onto the chaos, though, by an act of fiat.
Statements are combinations of nouns and verbs and such like; Some statements are either true or false, and we can call these propositions. So, "The present King of France is bald" is a statement, but not a proposition. Since there is no present King of France, he can be neither bald nor hirsute. "The present king of France is bald" is not the sort of sentence that can be true or false.
Propositions are a more abstract entity, being supposed as what is common between certain statements. So "the cup is on the shelf", "la taza está en el estante" and "bikarinn er í hillunni", I am told, are all different sentences in distinct languages that all express the same proposition. One might say that the proposition gives the meaning of a statement, but meaning is perhaps an even more contentious term than proposition. My preference would be to talk in terms of propositions as statements that can be either true or false, with the understanding that to a large extent the words statement and proposition are interchangeable, and with the option of returning to this issue if necessary.
On to truth, then. I will contend that a statement is true when what it says is indeed the case. So the statement "the cup is on the shelf" will be true precisely when the cup is on the shelf. Immediately some of my readers will be drawn to the problem of how we might know that the cup is indeed on the shelf, and this is of course an important issue. However I would like to set this to one side, perhaps for consideration later, and appeal for agreement that if the cup is on the shelf, then "the cup is on the shelf" will be true. How we might know such things is perhaps a separate issue.
Now that you have followed me through these somewhat tedious preparatory remarks, we may be in a position to set out something more of the nature of belief. We have that propositions are statements that can be either true or false, and that they will be true when and only when what they state is indeed the case. It seems then that we are led to conclude that what is true can be put into propositional form. Since what is held to be true is what we believe, it would follow that what is held to be true can be set out as a proposition.
It should be immediately objected that this is plainly not the case. Many beliefs, including those we hold most dear, are considered to be beyond words. At least since Shakespeare it has been held that one can have an inexpressible love. Around the edges of expression language curls back on itself in an attempt to get beyond its own boundaries. When I say "I love you more than words can say", I have expressed that love, and in words.
But such things are not beliefs in the same way that I might believe the cup to be on the shelf. It remains possible that my belief in regard to the cup might turn out to be in error, and that the cup is still in the dishwasher. Could my inexpressible love also turn out to be mistaken? That love is not a mere belief, but a certainty. It has a foundational quality that places it beyond doubt, and hence beyond mere belief. It is not part of what we might find in the world, but constitutive of the very bedrock of the world. In short, it is not the sort of thing that might turn out to be false.
My contention is that the content of beliefs are propositional. What is believed can be stated, and is held to be true. What is beyond language cannot be stated, cannot be doubted, and stands outside of what we should properly call belief. Is that sufficient? Doubtless not for Creative, but it will do for me.
I suppose we should leave this struggle with the ineffable and say something of the mouse running behind the tree. It's odd that Creative claims that the mouse running behind the tree is not propositional; after all, what is "the mouse ran behind the tree" if not a statement that might be true or false? Creative thinks of driving a wedge between belief about propositions and belief about things other than propositions; but that wedge instead tried to go between the proposition and what it proposes; and there it breaks.
A statement is true when what it says is indeed the case."The mouse ran behind the tree", like all statements, will be true if and only if the mouse ran behind the tree. Creative would have us believe that these are not the same thing. Their truth-functional equivalence shows this to be wrong. To believe that the mouse ran behind the tree is exactly to believe that "the mouse ran behind the tree" is true; to deny this is to deny that our statements are about the way things are.
I had thought that this debate might address something of the ontology of belief, a place where Creative and I have further disagreement. I understand that Creative holds some form of a representational view, that beliefs are somehow things stored in one's mind. My own inclination is more towards beliefs being a way of talking about, and hence explaining, our actions; that is, that they are not things stored so much as interpretations of what we do. This view locks beliefs into their role in our intentional acts, and hence to the more interesting and difficult discussion of what we ought do.
Perhaps we can go there in later posts.
Quoting Banno
The above conflates what accounting practices require with what that which is being taken into account requires. Another conflation here is between our accounting practice and that which is being taken into account by virtue of using that practice. These confusions are part and parcel to Banno's approach, for they are built in. There is an utterly inadequate notion of belief at work here as a direct result.
A mouse running behind a tree is an event. That event does not require language in order to happen. Such events happen everyday in places where language has never been a part of life. Surely, we can agree here. Mice, trees, and spatiotemporal relations all exist in their entirety prior to becoming part of some creature's belief about them. Language is not needed for the event to happen, nor is it needed to believe that a mouse ran behind the tree. The event is not a statement. The belief is not a statement. The event is not in the form of a statement. The belief is not in the form of a statement. The event is not about statements. The belief is not about statements. Rather, some belief - just like some statements - are about events, but differ from statements in that they do not require language use. These aforementioned beliefs are language less, and the simplest of two different kinds of belief about events(the way things are, were, and/or will be). Notably, there is also a third kind of belief that is not about events at all, but rather are belief about language use, including belief about statements themselves. Here Banno conflates.
A mouse running behind a tree is an event. Believing that a mouse ran behind a tree is belief about those events. "A mouse ran behind the tree" is a description of an event. The statement, just like belief, is about the events. So, contrary to what Banno has claimed, of course some statements are about the way things are, were, and/or will be, and believing a mouse ran behind the tree is not exactly to believe that the statement "the mouse ran behind the tree" is true. The former is about events, and the latter is about a statement describing those events. Here, Banno conflates.
Believing that "a mouse ran behind a tree" is a true statement is belief about the statement itself. Not all belief are about events, and that's important - crucial - to firmly grasp. Some belief is about statements, such as whether or not they are true, truth apt, and/or meaningful. Belief about statements is not equivalent to belief about events. The former requires language use. The latter does not always. Here Banno conflates, and he's not alone. The three are entwined, but not exactly the same. Allow me to further explicate for it's imperative to understand rightly...
The events and the statements describing those events are as distinct as the names and their referents. Belief about events and belief about whether or not statements describing those events are true are distinctly different beliefs. We can believe that a mouse ran behind a tree long before language acquisition. That's made possible because some belief is about events that do not require nor include language use. This is the simplest of three kinds of belief under consideration.
We also report upon and/or talk about such events like mice running around trees with meaningful statements such as "a mouse ran behind the tree". When one uses the statement "the mouse ran behind the tree" to describe what they believed to have happened, they've stated their belief about events. That's an expression of belief about events made possible by using naming and descriptive practices about the same events. It is here, at this intermediary level, that belief and statements thereof could be considered the same, or close enough anyway. It is here that they are both about the same events, and neither is about language use.
Then there's the third kind of belief under consideration, and Banno's position here is based upon accounting practices thereof; belief about whether or not some statement is true. That is belief about a statement, as compared/contrasted to the other two, which are both about events(the way things are, were, and/or will be). We believe that some statement is true, if and only if, we believe that the events they describe have already happened, and we know what the statement means.
That's how it works.
There are three different kinds of belief here, two about events and one about statements themselves, and Banno unfortunately cannot effectively discern between the three.
Quoting Banno
As just argued heretofore, this is mistaken. To believe the mouse ran behind the tree requires simple observation of directly perceptible things, and doing that much does not require language at all. To sincerely state "the mouse ran behind the tree", is to believe that the event being described by the statement happened. Believing that the statement "the mouse ran under the tree" is true is belief about the statement itself, and that requires knowing what it means, and believing that the events being described by the statement have already happened.
That's how it works, and drawing and maintaining the distinction between believing a mouse ran behind the tree, and believing that a description of those events is true does not in any way, shape, or form deny that some statements are about the way things are. In fact, it reinforces that by virtue of offering much better description than the approach Banno employs can possibly render.
Happy holidays!
:smile:
It seems this is to be a discussion of logic rather than of the nature of belief.
I mentioned our cat, Lilly, in my previous post. It seems natural that we attribute beliefs to animals and small children, despite their lack of language. Now this seems to be at odds with the notion of belief as an attitude towards a proposition - very roughly, if a belief consists in an attitude towards a proposition, and creatures that lack language cannot form propositions, how is it that they can form beliefs?
This strikes me as a much better argument against my view than that offered so far. It is also more in keeping with the philosophical literature. Few, if any, will agree with Creative that beliefs do not have propositional content. But many, indeed I suspect most, would be comfortable attributing beliefs to those who lack language.
Take a look at the SEP article. I'd be interested in defending Interpretationism and yet defending the notion that we can attribute beliefs to cats. I had thought you, Creative, to be thinking along the lines of Representationalism. That's were I thought this debate might go.
Anyhow, in reply to your post...
I've been trying to see the flow of the argument you are proposing. I agree that the mouse running behind the tree is an event. I agree that it does not need to be put into word in order that it occur. I agree that language is not needed for these events to happen.
But then you jump to the conclusion that it is the same for belief, without drawing the link. Saying "the belief is not a statement" is not an argument. Nor is it something with which I would disagree.
"The belief is not a statement" is not the same as "the belief has propositional content". It is not something I wish to defend.
The event is not a statement. But that the event occurred can be stated. The belief is not in the form of a statement. but it can be stated. And so on. The flow of your argument seems to be that there is an analogy to be draw between "The event is not a statement" and "The belief is not a statement" such that the conclusion is that the belief does not have propositional content.
Quoting creativesoul
Well, no; here Banno equates. and correctly so. That the mouse ran behind the tree and that "The mouse ran behind the tree" is true, are truth-conditionally equivalent. If one is the case, so is the other.
Yes, indeed, there is a difference between the statement that p, and the statement that "p" is true. But if one is true, then the other will be true, and if one is false, then the other will also be false. Yes, one is about language, the other about trees and mice.
If I were to say that belief is always about states of affairs, would you agree? Then it only remains to point out that a state of affairs can always be put in propositional form for us to see that beliefs are always about what can be put in propositional form. And this can be rephrased as that the content of a belief is propositional.
So what might show that a state of affairs can always be put in propositional form? What sort of thing might a state of affairs be, if not that which can be put in propositional form. Read the Tractatus.
Perhaps it was too much to expect a well-crafted discussion over Christmas.
Quoting Banno
I have not claimed that, and that much is crucial to understand. To quite the contrary, I acknowledged that some belief does... not all.
Quoting Banno
There is an argument I've levied at different times elsewhere that led to this debate, and it dovetails to what I've been offering here so far. Hopefully, the connection between the following argument and what I've been saying here will become clearer throughout the remainder of the debate.
If all belief is equal to having an attitude towards a proposition/statement, then either propositions/statements exist in their entirety in the complete absence of language such that a language-less creature is capable of forming and/or having an attitude towards them, or language-less creatures have no belief. And...
Neither is true.
Propositions and statements do not exist in their entirety in the complete absence of language use, such that a language-less creature can develop an attitude about them, and language less creatures do have belief. There is no stronger ground for rejecting the notion that the content of all belief is propositional than knowing that some belief cannot be. Furthermore, what follows from all this is that not all belief is equivalent to having an attitude towards some proposition/statement, and not all belief is propositional in content.
Believing that a mouse ran behind a tree is not always equivalent to believing that "a mouse ran behind a tree" is true, or stating it. It cannot be. Language-less belief cannot have propositional content. Our accounting practices do. It does not follow that the content of what's being taken into account is propositional simply because our accounts are, or because it can be taken into account. The content of Mt. Everest is no different in that regard.
What we can say, for the moment anyway, is that the content of that language-less belief includes directly perceptible things such as a mouse, a tree, a spatiotemporal relation between the two and correlations drawn between these things, and others, by the creature capable of belief formation(attributing meaning).
Not all belief is about propositions. It's not all about statements. It's sometimes about mice, trees, and spatial orientation. It's sometimes about events. It's sometimes about states of affairs. It's sometimes about language use itself. Belief can be about all sorts of things. Not all belief is about the same stuff.
I take it that you believe that you have more than one eyelash. But I suppose that up until now, you had not given this much consideration. If that example does not suit, perhaps you might consider if you believe that you have more than five eyelashes, or less than 12,678. Or you might bring to mind some other belief about something which you had up until now never considered.
The point is that we each have innumerable beliefs that we have never articulated, indeed which we never will articulate, but which nevertheless we do hold to be true.
All this to make the point that there are unstated beliefs.
Each and every one of these has the structure of a proposition that you hold to be the case.
It would be absurd to suppose that each of these innumerable beliefs exists somewhere in your mind.
Hence, one's beliefs are not things in one's mind; nor, it should be clear, could each of one's beliefs correspond to some neural structure in one's brain; as if you have a specific neural structure corresponding to the belief that you are taller than 3cm, which up until now had never been activated.
Beliefs, then, are not pieces of mental furniture, nor neural structures. Their existence, such as it is, ranges from the concrete belief that Moscow is the capital of Russia through to the fleeting belief that you just saw a bird fly past out of the corner of your eye.
Beliefs are needed because sometimes we are wrong. Sometimes what we take to be the case is found not to be the case, or what we take to be the case differs form what someone else takes to be the case. We have a need to distinguish what is true from what we take to be true.
What we believe, then, is just whatever we might take to be the case, what we take to be true.
The argument that there are innumerable beliefs also applies to states of affairs. There are innumerable unstated state of affairs; the exact number of eyelashes you have, the area of that leaf on the tree outside your window, that there are fungal spores in your left nostril. What these states of affairs have in common is that they can be put in propositional form; this, because that is what a state of affairs is.
Similar considerations should convince you that there are innumerable propositions, some stated, some not.
This does not imply that every fact has indeed been put in to propositional form.
Hence, that every belief has propositional content does not imply that every belief has indeed been put in propositional form.
Now we might take a look at this muddle:
Quoting creativesoul
Creative has simply not recognised the connection between a proposition and a state of affairs. It should be clear from the preceding discussion that while it is not the case that every proposition has been stated, every possible state of affairs can be put in the form of a proposition.
Now a state of affairs can exist in its entirety in the complete absence of language. Further, a beast lacking in language can have an attitude towards some state of affairs - a constipated way fo saying that they can act as if something or other were true. Those with language will recognise that a state of affairs is equivalent to a true proposition. Nothing in that debars those without language from having an attitude towards what is around them.
My cat Lilly believed that there was another cat outside. She demonstrated that belief not by vocalising it, but by screeching and spitting ferociously out the window. Lilly cannot articulate her belief in language, but she can demonstrate what she takes to be the case. She cannot put her belief in propositional form, but we can. The content of each and every one of her beliefs can be put into propositional form, just not by her.
I hope it is also clear that since, as argued, not every one of your beliefs exists in propositional form in your mind or as neural states in your brain, it would be ridiculous to expect that each and every one of Lilly's beliefs exists in propositional form in her brain.
What we take to be true is what forms the content of a belief. What we take to be true can be expressed in a proposition. Hence, the content of our beliefs is propositional.
If you are left with the impression that this debate is much ado about very little, then we are in agreement. Saying that beliefs have propositional content is nothing more than saying that beliefs are about how we think things are.
Banno, you're now claiming that holding 'X' to be true does not always include 'X', and that holding 'X' to be true does not require considering 'X'???
:brow:
The justificatory ground for that is that there are innumerable statements/propositions that we've not yet stated, that we've not once heard, that we've not once articulated, that we've not seen articulated, but we would believe and/or hold to be true, if we ever considered them?
Belief that 'X' is true is belief about language use... it's belief about 'X' to be a bit more precise. Belief about 'X' always includes 'X'.
I'd presumed a common ground of realism; that we agreed there were things in the world about which one could make true statements; in a word, that there are facts; but further, that these facts were true regardless of their being stated or unstated.
Hence I thought there would be agreement that there are unstated truths; and my puzzlement at your denial that beliefs are about what we take to be true; that beliefs are about propositions.
I might try to summarise our relative positions, again in a search for common ground. I take it we agree that at least some beliefs have propositions as their content. But your supposition is that not every belief is about whether or not some proposition is true. My counter is that a belief is, by fiat, a relation between an individual and a possible state of affairs such that the individual holds, (takes, understands, acts as if, affirms...) that the state of affairs is the case. That is, there cannot be a belief that is not a belief in some possible state of affairs; there cannot be a belief that is not about how things are.... what could that mean?
The error in the OP is perhaps in supposing that beliefs are things in the mind or in the brain. Roughly, if a belief must have propositional content, and if a belief is a thing in the mind or brain, then there must be some proposition in the mind or brain to be the object of the belief.
I set out an argument in my last post to show that there are indenumerable beliefs, and that since a mind or brain can only hold some finite number of beliefs, not all beliefs can be in the mind. Beliefs are not bits of mental furniture.
It might be objected that while there are indenumerable possible beliefs, only those that are held before one's mind, present to one's thoughts, are properly called beliefs. There are other problems with such a view, to do with the way we use beliefs to account for our actions.
I just reached out, picked up a cup and sipped some hot coffee. I did it without considering my belief that the cup contained the coffee, or that my hand could hold the cup, or that the coffee was worth the effort; and yet all these were beliefs without which an explanation of my action would have been incomplete. All of our actions include beliefs that are not being held before one's mind, not subject to active consideration, but instead are part of the background against which our actions make sense. Consider how few of your beliefs you actively bring to mind as you drive to the shops. Some consideration will show that most of your beliefs are not subject to active consideration.
The Content Of Belief Is Propositional
We've been considering whether or not the content of belief is propositional. It is worth noting that the motion itself was introduced by Banno himself. I take that to mean that the content of all belief is propositional, and that reading has been supported by virtue of Banno's replies supporting that. I've also taken it to be the case that by virtue of agreeing to such terms, that both Banno and I implicitly agree that there is such a thing as belief, that belief exists in such a way that it has content, and that we are capable of acquiring knowledge thereof.
It is my contention that not all belief content is propositional, and have since argued to that end. For the sheer sake of better understanding, I implore the reader to very carefully review my own arguments in their order of succession, setting Banno's to the side while doing so, and vice-versa. During such readings, examine the coherency of the arguments themselves by noting the consistency of terminological usage(or lack thereof), as they are written. I ask you - the reader - to do this, because it is only after one has come to understand both of our positions as they are written, that one is capable of correctly judging the quality of any counter-arguments levied against either.
Banno begins by describing belief in terms of the way we see things; what we take to be the case; and what we hold to be true. The sheer ambiguity of "the way we see things", and the differences between these three descriptions creates plenty of wiggle room for ad hoc argumentation, and an astute reader will certainly note that there's no shortage of that. Be that as it may, the phrase "the way we see things" is far too obtuse, is neither revisited nor further explicated, and as such it can be considered as relatively unimportant to Banno's position. Rather, Banno repeatedly returns to "what we take to be the case", and "what we hold to be true" as his working definition of belief; that what is held to be true is what we believe. In addition, he also clearly states that beliefs are about propositions, going on even further to argue that what we take to be true is what forms the content of a belief.
So, Banno's notion of belief presupposes a creature capable of holding something to be true, whereas that something is a statement/proposition. It's emaciated because only we are capable of such complex belief, and that is only one of three distinctly different kinds of belief that we form during our lives. While I agree that we are indeed capable of holding statements/propositions to be true, holding them as such is remarkably different than just simply using them. The former requires the latter, but not the other way around. This is important to grasp:We use language to talk about the world and/or ourselves long before wondering whether or not what we've said is true. Banno's notion of belief requires the wondering; focuses upon only what happens after the wondering, and draws no distinction at all between believing X, stating 'X', and holding that 'X' is true(after wondering). He used the fact that the second and third have the same truth conditions to ground a conflation that he called "an equation".
As if having the same truth conditions is equivalent to having the same content, and/or being about the same things. It's clearly not, and he even admitted that believing 'X', and believing that 'X' is true not about the same things. One was about mice and trees(events), and the other was about statements/propositions(whether or not a description of those events is true). He never noted the problem.
That failure to effectively discern between the three different kinds of belief noted above is a fatal flaw in that it renders any and all such accounts completely incapable of providing an acceptable notion of belief; one that is readily amenable to evolutionary progression. It paves the way for anthropomorphism by virtue of claiming that language less creatures are capable of holding something to be true. They are not. Banno has not drawn and maintained the distinction between statements of belief about events, and statements of belief about descriptions thereof(the second and third kind in their evolutionary progression). Nor has he drawn and maintained the distinction between language less belief about events, and belief about those same events using language(the first and second kind in the evolutionary progression of belief). The third requires the second. The second requires the first. The first requires a creature capable of drawing correlations between different directly perceptible things. That's how it works.
Hence, in an attempt to begin drawing the aforementioned distinctions between different sorts of belief as it pertains to their content, I noted that some belief is about mice, trees, and spatial relations, amongst other things like events, and that such belief does not require language, statements, or propositions. Mice, tree, spatial relations, and events are not equivalent to statements/propositions. Ergo, not all belief is about propositions. The content of belief is what that belief is about. Not all belief content is propositional. Banno has yet to have conceded that point. To quite the contrary, he dug his heels rather deeply into conflation.
Banno's task was to effectively explain how a language less creature can hold something to be true, can take something as true, despite it's having no language, and thus despite not being able to take/hold statements/propositions to be true. His solution was conflating all of the key terms. I've taken the liberty to identify some of the key points to Banno's reasoning below, as a means to show that throughout this debate, his use of the key terms statements, propositions, states of affairs, and facts is problematic. As any astute reader can see for themselves, Banno conflates these four terms as is clearly shown by the remarks below, which represent just a few of which that have peppered this debate.
1. Propositions are statements that can be either true or false.
2. A state of affairs is equivalent to a true proposition.
3. A state of affairs can exist in its entirety in the complete absence of language.
4. There are things in the world about which one could make true statements; in a word, that there are facts; but further, that these facts were true regardless of their being stated or unstated.
That pretty much says it all, and with that I rest my argument against Banno's position.
The rest is padding. But I'm enjoying it.
In my first post here I pointed out that a statement is just one grammatical form among many. At least some statements can be assigned a truth value; so we might differentiate between those that can have a truth value and those that cannot. A statement that can be assigned a truth value, I'll call a proposition. So some propositions will be true, some will be false. True propositions are statements of fact. A fact is how things are; a state of affairs.
So we have true and false propositions, and we have possible states of affairs. We also have the notion of truth, which, despite protestations, you all do know how to use correctly, and which does not need definition, even if that were possible.
The interesting thing is that a proposition will be true exactly when the state of affairs to which it applies is indeed the case. That's the role of the T-sentence. "X" is true IFF X. The "X" is a proposition, the X, a state of affairs. They are different - Creative left the quote marks in on the state of affairs in his account; but (X) and ("X" is true) are truth functionally equivalent.
Let's go through it step by step:
Here's a possible state of affairs: Jack is on the back of my chair. It says how things might be.
Here's a statement: "Jack is on the back of my chair". It's a set of words. We mark this by setting it in the scope of quotation marks.
If the statement is true, then the state of affairs will the case; that is, Jack will be on the back of my chair:
"Jack is on the back of my chair" is true IFF Jack is on the back of my chair.
It seems, from what was written, that Creative takes me to be saying is "Jack is on the back of my chair" is the same as Jack is on the back of my chair. I'm not; perhaps Creative thinks the "?" is the same as the "="; it isn't.
Further confusions arise when folk think about "the cat is on the mat" being a statement, while that the cat is on the mat is a fact... Well, indeed; but you just stated that the cat is on the mat - as if that there is a distinction to be made here. There is no distinction to be made between the cat being on the mat and the fact that the cat is on the mat. As Davidson put it, the world is always, already, interpreted.
So, yep, I stand by what I have written. Propositions are statements that can be either true or false. There are things in the world about which one could make true statements - there are facts; but further, that these facts were true regardless of their being stated or unstated. T-sentences set out how a state of affairs is truth functionally equivalent to a true proposition. There is no conflation or misuse here; nor is there a coherent objection to any one of these or an alternative account in Creative's writing.
Now the simple move that takes us from here to the need to talk about belief comes from noticing that sometimes we make claims that are not true. We need a general relation between an individual and a possible state of affairs, to use when someone is wrong as to the truth. That's what belief is; it's a relation between an individual and a possible state of affairs that can be true regardless of the truth of that state of affairs. Which is to say that Banno can believe Jack is on the back of his chair, even when Jack is out in the other room eating. Banno can even believe this without putting it into words; and yet it remains a belief about Jack, and is propositional in form.
In summary,
Quoting creativesoul
All Creative had to do was to provide an example of a belief that has no propositional content; that is, a belief that cannot be put into the form "Fred believes that P", for some Fred. That's all the claim that beliefs have propositional content amounts to; It says nothing about cats and small children, let alone claiming that they cannot have beliefs. Even all that stuff above about propositions, facts, statements and so on is irrelevant to this simple observation; it could all be put in alternate forms and said in different ways and yet beliefs would still be beliefs about something's being the case.
Yep, this whole debate derives from Creative misunderstanding, creatively, what is being claimed.
Thanks again are due to, @fdrake, to @jamalrob, and especially to @creativesoul. Thanks also to the peanut gallery, to whom I now turn over this debate. Have fun.