Identity Elimination Schema
Major: t1 = t2
Minor: ϕ(t1)
Conclusion: ϕ(t2) — IEP
Isn't the move from
b. Lois is ready enough to say "Superman can fly."
to
c. Therefore, Lois is ready enough to say "Clark Kent can fly."
A supposed substitution? — Banno
It is reasonable to think that the relationship between L and some other category W that represents an alternative analytic conception of the world, can be described in terms of a functor F : L --> W. — sime
T1 has to show up in the b sentence, and it's not there. There's nothing to substitute. — frank
1. "Superman" = "Clark Kent."
2. Lois believes that Superman can fly.
3. ∴ Lois believes that Clark Kent can fly.
Yes, and arguably neither is Superman in 'Lois is ready enough to say "Superman can fly"', that that sentence is not about Superman, but about something Lous says. I gather your behaviourist is not inferring any intentionality to Lous or to the parrot. Do you know of any one who proposes such an approach?The rigid designator, Superman, isn't in sentence b. All that's there is a sound the parrot is ready to make. — frank
More simply, “Superman” and “Clark Kent” are not different names for the same thing. The whole point of a disguise is to create a “name” that does not reference the true referent. — Leontiskos
A judgment of equivalence is inherently a conclusion rather than a premise. Equivalence is never intuited or stipulated. — Leontiskos
How the heck is this case deemed so important? — Leontiskos
What’s weird is that the person interested in this sort of thing might respond, “Okay, so Superman isn’t the best example of this.” But what is the best example? — Leontiskos
Lois is ready enough to say "Superman can fly"', that that sentence is not about Superman, but about something Lous says. — Banno
Yes, and arguably neither is Superman in 'Lois is ready enough to say "Superman can fly"', that that sentence is not about Superman, but about something Lous says. I gather your behaviourist is not inferring any intentionality to Lous or to the parrot. Do you know of any one who proposes such an approach? — Banno
Behaviorism, the doctrine, is committed in its fullest and most complete sense to the truth of the following three sets of claims.
Psychology is the science of behavior. Psychology is not the science of the inner mind – as something other or different from behavior.
Behavior can be described and explained without making ultimate reference to mental events or to internal psychological processes. The sources of behavior are external (in the environment), not internal (in the mind, in the head).
In the course of theory development in psychology, if, somehow, mental terms or concepts are deployed in describing or explaining behavior, then either (a) these terms or concepts should be eliminated and replaced by behavioral terms or (b) they can and should be translated or paraphrased into behavioral concepts. — SEP
Sure. But not Davidson, nor any one else under consideration here. Arn't we here considering only those who do attribute belief? — Banno
You can't surmise belief from action? Why not? — Banno
Norman Malcolm tells this story, which is intended to show that dogs think:
"Suppose our dog is chasing the neighbor’s cat. The latter runs full tilt toward the oak tree, but suddenly swerves at the last moment and disappears up a nearby maple. The dog doesn’t see this maneuver and on arriving at the oak tree he rears up on his hind feet, paws at the trunk as if trying to scale it, and barks excitedly into the branches above. We who observe this whole episode from a window say, ‘He thinks that the cat went up that oak tree’2. (Malcolm added, we would say the dog was barking up the wrong tree.)
Malcolm claims that under the circumstances someone who attributed that belief to the dog might well - almost surely would -be right; he would have exactly the sort of evidence needed to justify such an attribution. Let me give a preliminary argument designed to put Malcolm’s claim in doubt. It’s clear that the evidence for the dog’s ‘belief‘ depends on taking belief as a determinant of action and emotional response. We are asked to infer from what we see that the dog wants to catch the cat, that he runs where he does because of this desire and a belief about where the cat has gone, and that he is venting his frustration at not being able to follow the cat up the tree by barking, pawing the ground, and so forth.
The details do not need to be right, of course. The point is so far obvious: if we are justified in inferring beliefs, we are also justified in inferring intentions and desires (and perhaps much more). But how about the dog’s supposed belief that the cat went up that oak tree? That oak tree, as it happens, is the oldest tree in sight. Does the dog think that the cat went up the oldest tree in sight? Or that the cat went up the same tree it went up the last time the dog chased it? It is hard to make sense of the questions. But then it does not seem possible to distinguish between quite different things the dog might be said to believe.
One way of telling that we are attributing a propositional attitude is by noting that the sentences we use to do the attributing may change from true to false if, in the words that pick out the object of the attitude, we substitute for some referring expression another expression that refers to the same thing. The belief that the cat went up that oak tree is not the same belief as the belief that the cat went up the oldest tree in sight. If we use words like ‘believe’, ‘think’, ‘intend’ while dropping the feature of semantic opacity, we are not using those words to attribute propositional attitudes. For it has long been recognized that semantic opacity distinguishes talk about propositional attitudes from talk of other things.
Someone may suggest that the position occupied by the expression ‘that oak tree’ in the sentence ‘The dog thinks the cat went up that oak tree’ is, in Quine’s terminology, transparent. The right way to put the dog’s belief (the suggestion continues) is ‘The dog thinks, with respect to that oak tree, that the cat went up it’ or ‘That oak tree is the one the dog thinks the cat went up’. But such constructions, while they may relieve the attributer of the need to produce a description of the object that the believer would accept, nevertheless imply that there is some such description; the de re description picks out an object the believer could somehow pick out. In a popular if misleading idiom, the dog must believe, under some description of the tree, that the cat went up that tree. But what kind of description would suit the dog? For example, can the dog believe of an object that it is a tree? This would seem impossible unless we suppose the dog has many general beliefs about trees: that they are growing things, that they need soil and water, that they have leaves or needles, that they burn. There is no fixed list of things someone with the concept of a tree must believe, but without many general beliefs, there would be no reason to identify a belief as a belief about a tree, much less an oak tree. Similar considerations apply to the dog’s supposed thinking about the cat. — Donald Davidson, Rational Animals
That conclusion (not premise) could only be made by someone who knew both the differences and sameness between what is a “Clark” and what is a “Superman”. — Fire Ologist
P1: X = Y
P2: Z is ready enough to say "X can fly."
P3: Therefore, Z is ready enough to say "Y can fly."
I don’t think this apparent controversy is about an apparent flaw in the notion “X = Y”, but from the insertion of the “Z is ready to say that…”. Z’s belief creates a new context in which we must redefine X and Y. So we can’t substitute the use of either X or Y from P1, in any sentence following P2; P2 has redefined X and Y according to Z’s belief. — Fire Ologist
Given the confusions here, I'm not keen on moving on to it quite yet - it presumes quite a bit about the way we might view belief, and won't be understood without those presumptions. — Banno
I'd say the fact that we don't really know what we are saying with (1) is significant. — Leontiskos
"=" is very well defined in both maths and logic — Banno
Analytics like Banno seldom have any idea what they are doing when they say, "x = y," as they assume that anything can be placed into that form. They don't recognize the mathematical context and the single genus of the relata that their formulation takes for granted. — Leontiskos
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