• J
    2.3k
    entailment are 'logical rules', which could only be said to 'cause'(scarequotes intentional) someone to infer certain conclusions, if they know and follow the rules.creativesoul

    Sure. "Knowing the rules" is a background condition, just like "all things being equal at room temperature and normal gravity etc." is a background condition for many statements of physical causation. My questions was/is, Given that the mind in question does know the rules, do they actually have a choice about following them? (This is similar to the perennial question in epistemology about whether I can choose what to believe, given a set of facts.) (And yes, the links with JTB issues are obvious as well.)

    I'd like to understand this thought better. I think you're saying that I can have a belief without also having a propositional expression or equivalent of that belief? Thus, a non-linguistic animal can form a belief about, say, pain and fire, without entertaining any propositions about it?

    If I've got that right, I don't think it's tangential at all. It raises the extremely interesting question of what to do with beliefs, in the taxonomy of Worlds 2 and 3. If we're going to use causal language, as I'm suggesting we might do, what causes a bear to believe that fire will cause pain, and how does that belief in turn cause whatever mental process results in the bear's steering clear of smoke? Is all this happening in the world of psychological events, local to the bear, and explainable in terms of brain processes? Or is there a shadow, so to speak, of propositional content, such that the bear might be said to conclude that smoke is to be avoided?

    I think we can get some insight by consulting our own mental behavior when beliefs arise, but I'll stop here.
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