Here's a basis for an epistemology: Some statements are true. And there are some statements which it is unreasonable to doubt. — Banno

Nah. Still doesn't work.

Can any statement be known to be true as opposed to being asserted as true, or defined as true, or believed and acted upon as if true?

Tell us how a statement can be known to be true.

And then what exactly do you mean to claim by slipping into the objective register when talking about something that is subjective in requiring a subject?

You are trying to avoid any locution which admits that for there to be knowledge, there must be a knower. For there to be belief, a believer. For there to be certainty, someone for whom doubt is at least a possibility. Etc.

So as usual you are trying to resolve the basic epistemic issues by using words in a fashion to talk past them. You simply say the statements are true, ignoring that statements need staters - who then have reasons and beliefs and doubts and all the rest.

In the same fashion you flip=flop between the subjective and objective framing to avoid the obvious epistemic elephants in the room.

That you are in Fremantle guzzling sprats is something certain - from your subjective point of view. As a statement you publicly make, why wouldn't other minds doubt that?

No. When it comes to the public issue, you switch to the objective phrasing. It is simply an objective and mind-independent truth to say "Banno is guzzling sprats in Fremantle" is true IFF Banno is guzzling sprats in Fremantle. Anyone of us could get on a plane and assure ourselves of this recalcitrant fact.

It's comical really. You seem to have started out with a decent philosophical education. Yet at some point you have become convinced by some very silly rhetorical positions on epistemology. Perhaps you love the scandal they cause?

But they do seem to infect all your views - such as when you go on to assert various moral positions as unquestionable and objective truths.

Modern life is so full of ambiguity and subtlety. Yet despite a training in critical thinking, you just want a pre-modern simplicity when it comes to any epistemological discussion.

Curious.

I am certain that I am in Fremantle.

What's your problem with that?

It is that you can't do truth, nor certainty. — Banno

Can't you image a scenario, however unlikely it is, that might prove the contrary to be true? Yesterday the municipal council ceded the parcel of land where you stand to the next city. Someone is playing a ridiculously overcomplicated practical joke on you. Etc...

Not saying you might not hold certain things to be certain, but your location, your perceptions, those a probably not the best things to hold as certain.

Half a dozen folk trying to convince me I ought not be certain of what cannot be doubted.

This is ridiculous.

Half a dozen folk trying to convince me I ought not be certain of what cannot be doubted. — Banno

Yep. People asking you to be reasonable and account for certainty in terms of a pragmatic limit on doubting?

Well fuck that. You are here to preach, not discuss.

Thanks for the questions. Metaphor is a whole new subject; but I think it clear that the mind does not have places. — Banno

I agree that it doesn't make much sense to speak of the mind having physical places. But are you familiar with the expression 'on the tip of my tongue'? I think that's a spatial metaphor for a place right beneath the threshold of consciousness. This threshhold is arguably another metaphor. I say 'arugably' because metaphors tend to become literalized. If the mind does not have places, then perhaps rivers do not have mouths? And this is where I was coming from, the places in the mind are like the mouths of a river, which is to say largely literalized metaphors.

I think it's reasonable to think in terms of a continuum that runs from fresh metaphor (the kind a poet might be applauded for) to metaphor so old and dead that it functions literally. Of course there are structural words in the language and words like 'hand' that I would not call dead metaphors, but I think lots of important words are dead metaphors. Apparently 'spirit' comes from a word meaning 'breathe.' Perhaps breathing or breath functioned as a metaphor for the soul. Perhaps it became so popular, this metaphor, that a new public abstract entity was thereby created. Then philosophers could debate the properties of this entity.

The brain, on the other hand, can provide some interesting material. One will not find a belief by dissecting a brain - but could it be found in an MRI? — Banno

I haven't looked into this, but I can currently only imagine some correlate of belief (some quantitative pattern reliably associated with beliefs or purported beliefs determined through language.) I can imagine a fiercely accurate lie detector, for instance. In short, I think we agree on this particular issue.

But I still think that 'the mind has places' is true when interpreted charitably in the proper context. I'm not too concerned with defending that statement, but rather with giving ordinary language its due. Even philosophers leave their studies and use/understand these kinds of statements fluently.

Half a dozen folk trying to convince me I ought not be certain of what cannot be doubted.

This is ridiculous. — Banno

How about we go back to this, then?

The individual must understand the meaning of the proposition in order to correctly be said to believe that proposition. — Banno

Remind me, what was the supporting argument for it? Some here have tried, but it has amounted to an informal fallacy each time (begging the question, bare assertion, irrelevant conclusion...) or it has amounted to trivial wordplay.

Half a dozen folk trying to convince me I ought not be certain of what cannot be doubted.

This is ridiculous. — Banno

If all these people are trying to convince you of this, perhaps you ought to consider that it's you who is being ridiculous.

The OP has been re-worked.

Humans are animals. Some animals have beliefs. Whether or not all animals do, how could we know for sure? Saliva and wagging tail does not confirm a relationship between dog and proposition. It may just mean a bell just rang.

I can't see this question as any more than "do we use the word belief for animals as well as humans?"

It may be common among some and never said among others. Which group knows how the word should be used?

Whether or not all animals do, how could we know for sure? — frank

So let's set that aside for a bit and work on what we can make sense of.

Did you not say we know for sure by listening to what people say? So you believe the answer will change depending on who you talk to.

Did you not say we know for sure by listening to what people say? — frank

I hope not. People do lie.

I would see if we could teach dogs to express themselves through language. Maybe start with tenseless language. If they master that, we would lean toward saying they have beliefs. If we can't teach them, we would lean toward not. Like good scientists we would hold out the possibility that we are wrong.

If you like. It's just that the language/belief topic has been done to death elsewhere. It is clear that it rests not on any particular aspect of animal psychology but on how we choose to use the word "belief". So a precursor to that discussion should be more clarity on the topic.

Hence my greater interest in the other questions now in the OP; especially certainty, dynamism and beliefs as explanations for actions. Answer these first then come back to the scope of belief statements. My suspicion is that we will then be able to identify the difference between beliefs that are linguistic and those that are not; that is, between human and animal beliefs.

Good luck.

The individual must understand the meaning of the proposition in order to correctly be said to believe that proposition.
This is a bit of cheating that I introduce in order to reduce the scope of the discussion. Of course, it will have the opposite effect as folk argue for animals having beliefs. This is not intended to dismiss that discussion, so much as to lay out some groundwork before we enter into it. It is clear that a dog can believe that his master will feed him; but not that his master will feed him next Wednesday. The conclusion is that animal beliefs are restricted in their scope. I want here, at least for a bit, to talk about human beliefs, with all their infelicities and horror. Perhaps after we are clear about what we mean there, we can move on to animal beliefs. — Banno

Except that I, for one, was never talking about nonhuman animals, which was always a secondary, nonessential consideration related to my argument. However, the beliefs of a pre-linguistic human would be similarly restricted in scope, and, if you want to exclude this from your discussion here, in order to focus on other aspects, then that's fine... so long as you acknowledge that excluding these arguable counterexamples doesn't justify your premise, but merely grants it immunity for argument's sake.

Setting that aside, I would have to look harder to try to find any potential disagreement with what you've set out.

It is not clear that dogs have beliefs.

OK. Granted.

Consider this approach to explaining Rover's actions:

Given that Rover is hungry, and that Rover believes eating a bowl of slop will remove his hunger, we have a sufficient causal explanation for why Rover ate the bowl of slop.

Compared with an explanation without a belief:

Rover was hungry, which caused Rover to eat the bowl of slop.

Does the explanation work without the belief?

Why not: he was hungry. This activated instinctive behavior.

Operant versus classical conditioning. Wouldn't the former require voluntary behavior, implying an understanding of outcome and some sort of belief?

if it could be determined that the behavior is voluntary instead of reflexive, that would support the thesis that dogs have beliefs, but we would further need to know if dogs can understand any tense of "to be". Obviously dogs can learn "no" as a command, but it would be necessary for the dog to recognize "no" as a logical operator.

I would say that without that understanding of "to be", we are only seeing instinctive behavior.

Sure; I was just drawing attention to the structure of the explanation...
Rover is hungry,
Rover believes eating a bowl of slop will remove his hunger,
Therefore Rover ate the bowl of slop.

The hidden assumption is perhaps that one will act on one's beliefs.

as against:

Rover was hungry,
Therefore Rover ate the bowl of slop.

You might of course add an assumption: hungry Rovers always eat bowls of slop.

The explanation you seem to prefer tells us about final cause. We don't know in the case of a dog if she has any consciousness of purpose. She would have to have this consciousness in order to act on a desire to fulfill a purpose.

Surely we are agreeing with one another to the basic fact that I can be wrong about most any observed fact, including whether my feet remain beneath me. — Hanover

The question - and it's not a small one - is what one ought believe.

An obvious answer is that one ought believe what is justified; but of course this leaves open what counts as a justification. And if justification is to serve us here, we must set it up without reference to belief... to avoid the circularity of saying no more than that one ought believe what one ought believe.

One might be tempted to say that one ought believe what is useful; but there are various arguments around pragmatism.

Or that one ought believe what fits in with one's other beliefs; but there are various arguments around coherentism.

Perhaps.

If asked to explain why you turned on the heater, it would be sufficient for you to say you were cold, together with the assumption that you believed turning on the heater would make you warm.

If asked to explain why the thermostat turned on the heater, it would be absurd to say it were cold, together with the assumption that the thermostat believed turning on the heater would make it warm. WE would instead talk perhaps about bimetallic strips bending as temperatures drop or whatever the electronic equivalent is today; our explanation would not be in terms of the belief of the thermostat but in terms of the physics of the thermostat.

Perhaps Rover fits somewhere in between.

SO we might distinguishing physical explanations, involving universal laws or whatever, from doxastic explanations in terms of beliefs and desires.

But I still think that 'the mind has places' is true when interpreted charitably in the proper context. I'm not too concerned with defending that statement, but rather with giving ordinary language its due. Even philosophers leave their studies and use/understand these kinds of statements fluently. — mrcoffee

OK, I can go along with this. But let's keep it in mind ( :cool: ) by remembering that it is metaphorical nd checking to see if we have pushed the metaphor too far.