What you say doesn't make sense. You are claiming that the possibility of mistake is not grounds for questioning a belief. — Metaphysician Undercover
If we wait until a belief actually confounds our experience then it is an actual mistake, and the belief has already been proven wrong at this point. — Metaphysician Undercover
Doubt is justified prior to the confounding experience, in order to avoid that mistake. Your position could only be correct if you didn't think it was reasonable to attempt to avoid mistake. But that's nonsense. — Metaphysician Undercover
First of all, I was talking about the relationship between certainty, certitude, doubt, and mistake. I don't see how "constraints" is relevant — Metaphysician Undercover
Secondly, to say that a free choice decision by a human being is limited to a difference which doesn't make a difference, is clearly wrong, because then we wouldn't have to think about any of our decisions, because they wouldn't make a significant difference. — Metaphysician Undercover
That leaves private concepts and notions and languages and so on. Which is an odd but interesting way for us to differ.
Because I reject the very notion of such things, and suppose myself to be following Wittgenstein in so doing. Yet you also understand Wittgenstein but apparently leave room for private mental furnishings.
How can this be? — Banno
How does it seem like this? Care to offer an example? Perhaps this is nitpicking, but in the feeble examples I can imagine, it usually seems more suitable to say "he/it thinks..." rather than "he/it believes..." That is, the "belief" seems short-term or fleeting.
Instead of there being non-linguistic beliefs, could it just be that we apply statements of belief to the non-linguistic behaviours of others in an attempt to explain those behaviours? — Luke
You cannot genuinely (coherently and consistently) doubt that there are any 'thises' at all because to do so would undermine the coherence of all and any discourse. — Janus
Perhaps language just evolved from scratch, like life. It's similar to asking how did we get from the absence of life to the presence of life unless there was some mystical dormant life force (where the dormant life force is analogous to your non-linguistic belief).
How are beliefs causally formed? It seems to be the case that beliefs arise causally within the mind based on the interactions between our sensory experiences and the world around us.
— Sam26
This seems to apply equally to linguistic beliefs, including those beliefs that we learn in school and which are taught to us by others. What about instincts and natural physical/bodily reflexes - do you consider these to be a kind of non-linguistic belief? Is there a way to distinguish these just by observing behaviour? — Luke
So while a belief is uniquely yours, it is not private. — Banno
❡293, misquoted:The language which states a belief is not private, but my belief, it would seem to me, starts out at being private before there is any showing or stating. — Sam26
Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! --Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "belief". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a belief is only by looking at his belief. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "belief" had a use in these people's language? --If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. --No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.
And when we don't, it's merely because we decided not to do so. — Magnus Anderson
But if I wanted to, I could. — Magnus Anderson
The point is that nothing is immune to doubt. And what is rational and useful is relative. — Magnus Anderson
I do believe that language evolved from scratch, but not without very active and sophisticated brain phenomena. Even if you want to say they evolved together from one primitive state to another, I don't see how this hurts my position. I also don't think it's the same thing as going from the absence of life to the presence of life. I'm not saying we're going from the absence of something to the presence of something. I'm saying we're going from the presence of brain activity, to then, linguistic activity, which occurred very slowly and deliberately. Unless I'm misunderstanding you. — Sam26
Causal beliefs can arise in the following manner: Mary was bitten by a snake, and as a result of the bite she now believes snakes are dangerous. This is a causal explanation of Mary's belief, namely, it shows the relationship between the bite and her belief. The bite is sufficient to cause her belief. — Sam26
This kind of explanation is different from beliefs that arise based on evidence, or what we deem to be evidence — Sam26
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