I can talk about the content of a lemon. My account comes in propositional form. It does not follow from that that the content of the lemon is propositional in form.

I can talk about the content of a proposition. My account comes in propositional form. It does not follow from that that the content of a proposition is propositional in form.

I can talk about the content of the government. My account comes in propositional form. It does not follow from that that the content of the government is propositional in form.

I can talk about the content of my cupboards. I can talk about the content of my cat's stomach. I can talk about the content of the ocean. I can talk about the content of...

The question then is what does such meaningful belief consist of? — creativesoul

Visuals, sounds, smells, feelings, etc.
Words are a particular type of visual or sound.

Thinking in words is no different than thinking in visuals and sounds. Words are typically one color - black, and come in simple shapes. What they represent can be multicolored and complex, or not colored at all as in a smell, taste or feeling. So words are simple symbols meant to represent more complex concepts that are more than one color and more visually complex than a scribble on paper. We ultimately use words to simplify communication of ideas and beliefs to others.

Visuals, sounds, smells, feelings, etc. — Harry Hindu

Yep, those too are part of it(some of the content of some language-less belief).

Thinking in words is no different than thinking in visuals and sounds. — Harry Hindu

That is not true. All words are visuals and/or sounds. Not all visuals and sounds are words.

This may be of interest, or perhaps take the discussion in a new and hopefully fruitful direction: http://christianebailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Davidson-Rational-Animals-1982.pdf

I agree with you about truth consisting in correspondence between propositions, statements or beliefs and actuality. I have never been able to understand why many want to deny that Tarski's formulation just is a minimalist formulation of truth as correspondence.

Nice link. Thank you!

:smile:

Yep, those too are part of it. — creativesoul

What else would there be?

Thinking in words is no different than thinking in visuals and sounds. — Harry Hindu

That is not true. All words are visuals and/or sounds. Not all visuals and sounds are words. — creativesoul

If all words are visuals and sounds then you think in visuals and sounds. :roll:

I can talk about the content of... — creativesoul

... a correlation?

Or is it already the content? Of a belief? Or is it the belief?

The binding of terms (not simply as referring phrases, but universals, existence claims) depends on the precise context. — simeonz

:up:

If Strawson wants to interpret claims of ordinary sentences in the intuitionistic sense, as indicated from the "neither true nor false" remark, the two statements above are not complementary, but "there exists no king of France" is still not the opposite of "exists a bald king of France" and doesn't prevent Russell from inferring (however frivolously) that there is some implicit existential quantifier in the original sentence. — simeonz

I think Strawson is just saying that such a statement isn't propositional (due to a false presupposition), rather than interpreting in the intuitionistic sense. As he puts it:

And this comes out from the fact that when, in response to his statement, we say (as we should) "There is no king of France", we should certainly not say we were contradicting the statement that the king of France is wise. We are certainly not saying that it's false. We are, rather, giving a reason for saying that the question of whether it's true or false simply doesn't arise. — On Referring, p330 - P. F. Strawson

This idea can be found in traditional (Aristotelian) logic, as Strawson notes in Introduction to Logical Theory (where, in this case, he's discussing vacuous statements):

The more realistic view seems to be that the existence of children of John's is a necessary precondition not merely of the truth of what is said, but of its being either true or false. And this suggests the possibility of interpreting all the four Aristotelian forms [A, E, I, O] on these lines: that is, as forms such that the question of whether statements exemplifying them are true or false is one that does not arise unless the subject-class has members. — Introduction to Logical Theory, p174 - P. F. Strawson

Strawson goes on further to distinguish between sentences and statements:

It is important to understand why people have hesitated to adopt such a view of at least some general statements. It is probably the operation of the trichotomy 'either true or false or meaningless', as applied to statements, which is to blame. For this trichotomy contains a confusion: the confusion between sentence and statement. Of course, the sentence 'All John's children are asleep' is not meaningless. It is perfectly significant. But it is senseless to ask, of the sentence, whether it is true or false. One must distinguish between what can be said about the sentence, and what can be said about the statements made, on different occasions, by the use of the sentence. It is about statements only that the question of truth or falsity can arise; and about these it can sometimes fail to arise. — Introduction to Logical Theory, p174 - P. F. Strawson

Fair enough. This makes an interesting point that mathematical and ordinary language have different objectives, which result in different kinds of senses of the word "useful". — simeonz

It seems so. Certainly with ordinary language, the focus is on what is said by someone on a specific occasion (i.e., the use of a sentence).

Yep, those too are part of it.
— creativesoul
What else would there be? — Harry Hindu

Mice, trees, cups, cupboards, and tables...

Strawson goes on further to distinguish between sentences and statements. — Andrew M

This sheds some light. But when do we consider a sentence truly "complete". Is the sentence's encapsulation related to us by the author? Do we realize that the author had no presuppositions by being at a vantage point that simply allows it? Better yet, is any sentence ever complete? We make statements from sentences all the time, by pivoting our reading of the author's intent as necessary.

I think Strawson is just saying that such a statement isn't propositional (due to a false presupposition), rather than interpreting in the intuitionistic sense. — Andrew M

I am sorry to quote out of order. So sentences have no corresponding statement, and statements have no corresponding proposition. That is a lot of relativism. I can speculate that Strawson considers certain statements deliberately relativistic as per the author's intention? How does he know which ones, especially when, if I understood his taxonomy correctly, the sentence has no unique corresponding statement.

Mice, trees, cups, cupboards, and tables... — creativesoul

So your beliefs are composed of actual mice, trees, cups, cupboards and tables, rather than visuals and feelings OF mice, trees, cups, cupboards and tables? Lazy thinking on your part.

I'd previously understood the pieces in and around your quotes as a breaking of the 'crystalline purity of logic' (§ 97, 107, 108) that is embedded in the Tractatus. It's the expectation that language should be made to conform to subject-predicate form, central to the project of the Tractatus, that is being rejected. Where Wittgenstein had thought that philosophy was the revealing of the hidden logical perfection of our everyday language, he now "rotates" the angle of our examination so that common language use takes primacy. He thus expands his view of language from nothing but propositions to everything, including propositions.

You it seems would take this further in positing that we might somehow have a language (or some such) that is outside of propositional forms, that in effect cannot be put into propositional form. — Banno

I think the rejection is of the glasses. Part of that rejection is the "subject-predicate form", but I believe that's not all which is rejected. The metaphysical vision associated with logic in the Tractatus is what is rejected. But what is that metaphysical vision - the filter that wearing the glasses puts on?

The world is all that is the case, and what is the case is the existence of states of affairs/atomic facts, a proposition is a truth function of elementary propositions. — Tractatus, Wittgenstein

What is the connexion between atomic facts and elementary propositions? That's the glasses, the "picture frame" that ensures accordance (truth) and discord (falsity) of the elementary proposition with the atomic fact represented in the picture frame. That things/events (atomic facts) can be mapped in to a corresponding picture element - truth function of elementary propositions - is a restatement of the doctrine of propositional content; everything that can happen can be stated.

Given that this is rejected, how is it rejected? Not through a negation; as if some things that can happen cannot be stated ("the manifest"), that negation remains within the ambit of defining the world through how it comes to be embedded in a logical picture of facts, and is the "final move" so to speak in the Tractatus - a realisation of how limited a vocabulary a logical picture alone provides.

The general form of propositions is: This is how things are." (4.15 Tractatus)——That is the kind of proposition that one repeats to oneself countless times. One thinks that one is
tracing the outline of the thing's nature over and over again, and one is merely tracing round the frame through which we look at it.
115. A. picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably. — PI, Wittgenstein

It's rejected through improvisation, a metaphysical "yes, and" to a doctrine which purported to hold a monopoly on the sense of things. Recognising the contingency of the connexion between elementary propositions and atomic facts is enough to refute it, as it was before construed as a necessary component of language. Within its operation; with the glasses on; yes, necessarily, everything that happens is the disquotational image of a true statement - the atomic fact kernel of an elementary proposition. Outside of it? Well... There's a lot.

General speech acts just don't fit into it; how could flipping someone the bird be true or false? Why would truth matter for it? Truth would only matter when parsing it later as an event in game which required the glasses to be played. "X flipped Y the bird". The sense of the act isn't spelled out in truth or falsity, it's spelled out through the analysis of the role it plays in a "language game" - truth and falsity might be grammatical mistakes within that game, not eligible moves, but they may still play a role in a meta-game of language game description. It can be true, or false, that truth or falsity have nothing to do with the sense of flipping someone the bird. But a description, a "logical picture" of flipping someone the bird might be able to be true or false - eg "you only flip the bird to people you love" would be false, "people tend to flip the bird to insult people or things" would be true.

Taking aim at Davidson: In putting on the glasses, and setting out a speech act through the truth of a statement which represents it "X P'd Y at t", the sense is expressed in how the interpreter would assign truth or falsity to it, not in the truth or falsity of it. This sleight of hand is rendered imperceptible if one has forgotten the glasses can come off. The centrality of truth to meaning only makes sense in terms of this sleight of hand - truth is central to the filter.

With the glasses off, things that break the schema of the glasses seem commonplace, because they are. But you can put the glasses on again to assess descriptions of things which break the picture frame.

I can talk about the content of...
— creativesoul

... a correlation?

Or is it already the content? Of a belief? Or is it the belief? — bongo fury

The content of any and all belief is only understood and/or known by considering the correlation(s) being drawn by the creature in question. The content of any and all belief is naturally limited to and facilitated by biological machinery; that is to say that the content of any creature's belief is naturally limited to what is made possible by virtue of their biological capabilities. This next bit of paving ought go uncontested.

The content of each and every(all) belief includes exactly and only the things being correlated one to another by the very creature drawing the correlations; by the very creature associating between the different things; by the very creature that is making connections between the different directly perceptible things(at first, anyway); by the very creature that is attributing/recognizing causality; by the very creature attributing meaning; by the very creature having conscious experience.

Thus...

A creature devoid of the ocular structures we currently deem necessary and/or responsible for our color vision capabilities will not draw correlations between visible light, the visually perceptible effects/affects of reflected light(color emission), and anything else. A creature devoid of those ocular structure can directly perceive red cups. However, it cannot possibly perceive the color aspect at all, due to the not having the necessary biological machinery to do so. The color of, and/or reflected by the cup, is simply incapable of ever being or becoming part of the experience of such a creature. No such creature can form belief about red or experience red in any way, shape, or form unless it is a creature capable of directly perceiving any single one of a number of different particular ranges of frequencies within the visible light spectrum that we've long since named "red", and drawing a correlation between red and something else.

A creature devoid of olfaction definition will not draw correlations between the smell of an apple pie and anything else. A creature cannot actually form belief about or experience the smell of an apple pie, unless it is a creature capable of smelling apple pies. A creature that cannot smell an apple pie cannot possibly know what it means when someone says that they smell an apple pie, even if they know what counts as "an apple pie".

A creature devoid of language will not draw correlations between language use and anything else, unless it is a creature amidst language creation and/or acquisition. The very ability to create and/or use language requires a creature capable of drawing correlations between language use and other things. Propositions are existentially dependent upon language.



The process of drawing correlations between different things offers us as simple an outline as possible, as it very well must. It's amenable to naturally occurring evolutionary progression. It's capable of growing in it's complexity. Human belief began simply and accrued in it's complexity. An acceptable criterion/description of belief must be capable of taking proper account of all belief, ranging from the simplest through the most complex. Convention seems to be at a remarkable loss for adequate explanation/description of language-less belief, and many analytics and post-moderns outright deny that such a thing even exists. They are wrong.

Many pragmatists, analytics, and post-moderns hold that both meaning and truth are somehow, in some way, existentially dependent upon language. That is quite simply not true. Neither is. We can know that as a result of knowing that language-less creatures are capable of forming, having, and/or holding belief about what's happened, what's happening, and what has yet to have happened but is expected to(what will happen soon).

There is no such thing as meaningful true belief devoid of meaning and truth.

If we hold that meaning and truth are dependent upon language use, then either meaningful true belief can somehow exist without meaning or truth(in the case of the meaningful true belief of a language-less creature), or meaningful true belief cannot be formed by a creature devoid of language; language-less creatures have no belief. Coherency demands that those who hold that meaning and truth are dependent upon language reject the very possibility that meaningful true belief can exist in it's entirety prior to language.

Any and all positions based upon the ideas that all belief presupposes truth and all truth depends upon language arrive at a crossroads of sorts - a choice to be made - when considering whether or not language-less creatures are capable of presupposing truth(having belief). Coherence alone demands rejecting the claim that language-less creatures are capable of forming, having, and/or holding belief, for all belief presupposes it's own truth somewhere along the line, and those who hold this view believe that truth depends upon language.

At what cost do we continue to maintain this basis of falsehood? At the cost of successfully acquiring a basic understanding of human thought and belief.

Language-less creatures most certainly form, have, and/or hold belief. If our accounting practices, if our linguistic devices, if our linguistic framework, if our conceptual schema, if our worldview, if our belief system, if our definitions, if our philosophical beliefs and/or positions cannot make sense of language-less belief while avoiding self-contradiction, then that does not constitute adequate ground for believing that language-less creatures do not have belief. To quite the contrary, it serves as more than adequate ground to realize and/or conclude that we've gone horribly wrong somewhere along the line.

If language-less creatures are capable of forming, having, and/or holding belief, if all belief is meaningful to the creature forming, having, and/or holding it, if all belief presupposes it's own truth somewhere along the line, and some language-less belief is true, then it must be the case that both meaning and the presupposition of truth somehow exist in their entirety prior to language use.

I've been setting out exactly how that happens; how truth and meaning both emerge from within the process of belief formation(drawing correlations between different things).

Does that answer your question?

:wink:

So your beliefs are composed of actual mice, trees, cups, cupboards and tables, rather than visuals and feelings OF mice, trees, cups, cupboards and tables? Lazy thinking on your part. — Harry Hindu

Of course. My beliefs about my cat include the cat. A visual of a cat may not.

Lazy thinking?

Pfft.

:zip:

My beliefs about my cat include the cat — creativesoul

Then what does it mean to be about your cat if it includes your cat? You either have beliefs about cats in your mind (realism), or cats in your mind (solipsism). Not both. Which is it?

Neither.

:brow:

Not helpful.

:roll:

Beliefs are not the sort of things that have spatiotemporal location.

Sure, they do. Beliefs exist only in minds for a period of time before you think of something else. Thinking takes time.

Not interested. I've argued extensively on this matter.

Sure you have, and you haven't gotten anywhere. So maybe it's time to think about it differently?

You make an assertion. I show you how your assertion is wrong. You say you aren't interested. Predictable.

General speech acts just don't fit into it; how could flipping someone the bird be true or false? — fdrake

Well, Davidson would simply put it into a proposition: "fdrake flipped the bird" is true iff fdrake flipped the bird.

Taking your analogy on board, it's not that you can take the glasses off. It's that you can put on a different set of glasses. The world is always interpreted.

Davidson's argument (in On the very idea...) is that what you see in some other glasses will be a transformation of what you see with subject-predicate glasses; and hence with suitable interpretations the very same things will be true in both. I'll not present his argument here, I'm sure you are familiar with it.

You use scribbles and sounds, not words. — Harry Hindu

No, Rousseau, I use words. These are a subset of the scribbles and sounds.

Well, Davidson would simply put it into a proposition: "fdrake flipped the bird" is true iff fdrake flipped the bird. — Banno

That's very much a statement that fdrake flipped the bird being true, not fdrake's act of flipping the bird being true.

Indeed.

As my old professor would ask, if you knew what needed to be the case for it to be true that fdrake flipped the bird, well....

What more would you want to know about "Fdrake flipped the bird"?

But that's not the important part of my reply. That's "The world is always interpreted."

As my old professor would ask, if you knew what needed to be the case for it to be true that fdrake flipped the bird, well.... — Banno

And you've been trolling us with his remarks ever since.:roll:

Pretending not to understand is exceedingly frustrating; the onus is on you to give an account of how the statement "fdrake flipped the bird"'s truth or falsity spells out the meaning of the speech act of flipping the bird, not to turn the question around for the 9 millionth time. What does truth or falsity have to do with the speech act of flipping the bird?

But that's not the important part of my reply. That's "The world is always interpreted." — Banno

Why would "the world is always interpreted" imply "the world is always interpretable as a statement".

And you've been trolling us with his remarks ever since.:roll: — fdrake

You don't gotta reply if you don't like it. Again, if you know what makes "fdrake flipped the bird" true, what more do you need in order to understand "Fdrake flipped the bird"?

What is it that is not included in the propositional analysis?

Why would "the world is always interpreted" imply "the world is always interpretable as a statement". — fdrake

Pretending not to understand — fdrake

Hmmm... So you want to change the topic to On the very idea of a conceptual scheme? We can do that.