How can I agree when I don't know what you are talking about?

Do you know what a non-linguistic agent is? Do you know what a mental correlation is?

I think the problem is inherently within the notion of 'considered outside of a linguistic context'...

In one sense, we cannot consider anything outside of a linguistic context. In another equally germane sense, we consider all sorts of things that are not existentially dependent upon our considerations(upon our linguistic context)...

That is, we can become aware of that which exists, in it's entirety, prior to our discovery of it.

No, that's what I've been trying to tell you.

I'm not talking about us considering from within a linguistic context, something we can hardly avoid doing, but about considering agents and mental correlations as being outside a linguistic context. The latter I don't believe can coherently be done because we can't say what a non-linguistic agent or mental correlation could be.

"Semantic field" is a term used in structural linguistics and anthropology, and it's simply the range of meaning associated with a word or a set of closely related words. It's not the most precise concept out there, and it's theoretical in the sense that you cannot meet a pure semantic field "in the wild", because it's always already organised (say into a word, a set of words, a taxonomy...). It's a useful concept, I think, when comparing things like languages. I found it personally useful when figuring out the technical terminology of linguistics and sociology, since the same "sign body" (say "adverb", or "social role") doesn't always cover the same things (i.e. it depends on who uses the term).

You say a definition can be wrong, but before you can determine whether or not a defintion is wrong, you'd need to know what it is you're talking about, and that's sort of the problem in a thread titled "What is belief?" What I also meant to say, but what I probably buried a bit too much in excess verbiage, is that I think "A belief is an attitude towards a proposition," is an operational definition - not a theoretic one. It drives at methodology rather than meaning. Normally, such a line is connected to a theory that sheds light on all the short cuts in the operational defition. For example, the question of whether a belief needs to be linguistic or if it can be pre-linguistic would have been addressed in the theory. When I first replied to the thread, I probably took it to be a shortcut something like "A belief is an attitude towards something that's expressable as a proposition," but I didn't properly think this through until you brought it up (even though other people have been talking about pre-linguistic beliefs and I nodded in appreciation when I read 's post, here).

It's a bit premature to say a definition is "wrong", when we can't even be sure yet, whether we're talking about the same thing. Some people might indeed only use "belief" for propositional attitudes in its most literal sense, and whether that's sound or not depends on what other words they use and when and how. It's not like we can encounter unmediated beliefs and ask what they are: we encounter things that imply belief - behaviour, linguistic and otherwise. Or artefacts that represent language (like a forum post).

No, that's what I've been trying to tell you. — Janus

Cannot make sense of the above...

I'm not talking about us considering from within a linguistic context, something we can hardly avoid doing, but about considering agents and mental correlations as being outside a linguistic context. The latter I don't believe can coherently be done because we can't say what a non-linguistic agent or mental correlation could be. — Janus

I disagree. That would make a fantastic topic of debate. Care to join me in the appropriate section of this forum?

That's fine, but I would rather stick with Wittgenstein's analysis on much of this.

This thread is not specifically a discussion of Wittgenstein. All I have asked is why you think the term 'belief' is more useful in the context of this discussion than 'expectation', and why you believe that using the same term in both linguistic and non-linguistic contexts does not do more to obscure the differences between animal and human, and between human propositional and non-propositional dispositions to action, by making it more difficult to see the very distinctions that might lead to greater understanding and clarity.

OK, in my view an agent is someone who acts deliberatively by considering counterfactually the various courses of action available. Mental correlations are associations of concepts. You say believing is a mental correlation between the believer and "'objects' of physiological sensory perception".

Now, leaving aside the fact that believing can be of non-sensory 'objects', we have no way of saying what a non-conceptual mental correlation or belief could be, and since concepts would seem to be possible only in the context of language, we have no idea how to apply the concepts 'belief' or 'mental correlation' in the case of animals or pre-linguistic humans. If you think you do have a coherent account of how such concepts could be applied, then please have at it.

This thread is not specifically a discussion of Wittgenstein. All I have asked is why you think the term 'belief' is more useful in the context of this discussion than 'expectation', and why you believe that using the same term in both linguistic and non-linguistic contexts does not do more to obscure the differences between animal and human, and between human propositional and non-propositional dispositions to action, by making it more difficult to see the very distinctions that might lead to greater understanding and clarity. — Janus

I know it's not a discussion of Wittgenstein, but Wittgenstein has some important ideas that are relevant. The term belief is what the thread is about, is it not? Not expectations. The uses of these words are just different. I don't think "mental correlation is helpful either. To unravel some of the confusion would take a while.

Sure, the thread is about the term 'belief' and what would be its most useful ambit of application. And you have provided no argument as to why you seem to think that 'expectation' is not a better substitute term in the context of the non-linguistic human or animal. It might "take a while" to "unravel some of the confusion" (your own or others' I wonder); the question is whether you can be bothered or not.

To be honest the older I get the harder it is to post in these forums. Whether rightly or wrongly, I read some of this, and it makes me want to pull my hair out. It's not personal, I just don't have the patience.

What I'm probably going to do is confine my posts to a blog.

OK, I get it: it's beneath you. The irony is that if you have a good argument or objection to make it should only take a handful of sentences to present it. I agree with you about "mental correlations' at least.

"Semantic field" is a term used in structural linguistics and anthropology, and it's simply the range of meaning associated with a word or a set of closely related words. It's not the most precise concept out there, and it's theoretical in the sense that you cannot meet a pure semantic field "in the wild", because it's always already organised (say into a word, a set of words, a taxonomy...). It's a useful concept, I think, when comparing things like languages. I found it personally useful when figuring out the technical terminology of linguistics and sociology, since the same "sign body" (say "adverb", or "social role") doesn't always cover the same things (i.e. it depends on who uses the term).

You say a definition can be wrong, but before you can determine whether or not a defintion is wrong, you'd need to know what it is you're talking about, and that's sort of the problem in a thread titled "What is belief?" What I also meant to say, but what I probably buried a bit too much in excess verbiage, is that I think "A belief is an attitude towards a proposition," is an operational definition - not a theoretic one. It drives at methodology rather than meaning. Normally, such a line is connected to a theory that sheds light on all the short cuts in the operational defition. For example, the question of whether a belief needs to be linguistic or if it can be pre-linguistic would have been addressed in the theory. When I first replied to the thread, I probably took it to be a shortcut something like "A belief is an attitude towards something that's expressable as a proposition," but I didn't properly think this through until you brought it up (even though other people have been talking about pre-linguistic beliefs and I nodded in appreciation when I read ↪jamalrob's post, here).

It's a bit premature to say a definition is "wrong", when we can't even be sure yet, whether we're talking about the same thing. Some people might indeed only use "belief" for propositional attitudes in its most literal sense, and whether that's sound or not depends on what other words they use and when and how. It's not like we can encounter unmediated beliefs and ask what they are: we encounter things that imply belief - behaviour, linguistic and otherwise. Or artefacts that represent language (like a forum post). — Dawnstorm

Seems an unnecessarily complex way to talk about linguistic frameworks(conceptual schemes, taxonomies, etc.).

To say that a definition of a term is not theoretical but rather operational is simply to say that it is chosen to be put to use despite the fact that it is not universally applicable. It's a pragmatic move to get things going...

On my view, there are things that exist, in their entirety prior to our awareness of them. There are no examples of any usage regarding any sense of "belief" including the ones being put forth here that do not consist entirely in/of mental correlations.

All mental correlation attributes meaning by virtue of drawing a connection; association; and/or correlation between that which becomes sign/symbol and that which becomes signified/symbolized. This basic description serves as an accurate outline of each and every case of anything meaningful, including but not limited to all terminological usage.

So...

Linguistics is quite useful for lots of things... setting out itself isn't one of them. It consists entirely of thought and belief about meaningful language(s).

OK, in my view an agent is someone who acts deliberatively by considering counterfactually the various courses of action available. Mental correlations are associations of concepts. You say believing is a mental correlation between the believer and "'objects' of physiological sensory perception".

Now, leaving aside the fact that believing can be of non-sensory 'objects', we have no way of saying what a non-conceptual mental correlation or belief could be, and since concepts would seem to be possible only in the context of language, we have no idea how to apply the concepts 'belief' or 'mental correlation' in the case of animals or pre-linguistic humans. If you think you do have a coherent account of how such concepts could be applied, then please have at it. — Janus

Ah, I see. It is clear to me now why my account could be troublesome for you.

An agent in the sense I'm using the term here is simply a creature that is capable of attributing meaning by virtue of drawing mental correlations between 'objects' of physiological sensory perception and/or itself. The scarequotes are intentional, for as you say believing can be of non-sensory 'objects'. These, however are more complex beliefs and I'm aiming at the more rudimentary for those are the only ones that could possibly be formed by a non-linguistic agent.

It would be worth mentioning here that on my view concepts are existentially dependent upon language. No language, no concept of any kind whatsoever. However, some of our concepts aim to, point towards, and/or take an account of that which exists in it's entirety prior to our becoming aware of them.

So...

The concepts "belief", "imagination", "thought", "meaning", and "truth" all consist entirely of mental correlations... all concepts do. The correlations are facilitated by language use, and language use greatly expands the complexity of an agent's mental 'faculty'...

So, I'll leave it here for now. We're pretty far apart.

I find it odd when someone claims that something isn't helpful when it has the strongest justifcatory ground possible combined with explanatory power that is otherwise unmatched by any of the notions that are combined within and/or exhausted by this purportedly 'unhelpful' one...

Does it then make sense to say that ultimately all knowledge is predicated on a belief in the physical universe. Therefore knowledge requires belief?

Well, it makes sense for 'physicalists' - physicalists being those who believe exactly that only what is physical is real. But then, some physicalists are likely to say that theirs' is not a 'belief' at all, or that at any rate, the physical universe is the only kind of universe for which there is evidence, and so they're just stating an obvious fact that doesn't really require belief.

(As for the label - 'physicalism' is a slightly updated term for 'materialism'. A dedicated physicalist I used to know used the expression 'matter-energy-space-time' (M-E-S-T) as being the descriptor of everything there is; Carl Sagan used to say in a similar vein that 'cosmos is all there is'. But perhaps the reason 'physicalism' has displaced 'materialism' as a label, is because matter itself seems a lot less solid than it used to - after all atoms are nearly all empty space - and also Einstein's discovery of matter-energy equivalence expressed in his famous equation e=mc². So perhaps 'physicalism' seems to reflect these developments more accurately than the rather older 'materialism', although they're pretty well the same.)

As far as religious belief is concerned - that is obviously the belief in some form of unseen order, or being, or laws, of a different kind to those understood by purely physical means. But on that topic, I would encourage a read of this OP by religious studies scholar Karen Armstrong, whom I think identifies something problematical about the way 'belief' is generally understood in the modern world.

I want to say here that I am not denying the definition of "belief" as a relation between an agent and a proposition, nor as an agent's attitude towards a proposition. Rather, I'm merely pointing out the inherent limitations of that particular use. On my view, it points out a certain kind of belief:One that is clearly existentially dependent upon language.

It harks to what is state-able, and works from the long held view that all belief content is propositional. That vein of thought, however, can lead one astray when s/he begins to attempt to put a non-linguistic creatures belief into words/propositions. I mean, clearly an animal who does not speak English cannot have an attitude towards a proposition written in English. If we attempt to claim that the creature has a belief, and belief is a relation between the creature and a proposition, then we are saying that the creature has a relation to something that it doesn't understand. If it doesn't understand the proposition, then the only relation between it and the proposition is one that we draw. That would be meaningful to us, not the creature. It makes no sense to claim that a creature has a belief if that belief is not meaningful to the creature...

Still, it makes perfect sense to talk about belief in propositional terms, especially when it is the case that someone is claiming knowledge. That is the background for all this...

With that in mind, if my account is to have any 'bite', I must be able to frame all the different kinds of belief in terms of correlation... quite the task seeing how it hasn't ever been done to my knowledge...

after all atoms are nearly all empty space — Wayfarer

...just a note here Jeep. That is not actually true. The 'empty' space is filled by the electron cloud, according to quantum mechanics. The electron is everywhere it can possibly be... all at once. The physical model is mostly empty space because it cannot represent this. There's a name for this. I can't recall off the top of my head. Superposition of states... maybe???

According to Canada's National Laboratory for Particle Physics, if a golf ball represents the nucleus, the first group of electrons would be a kilometer away. The second group would be 4 kilometers away, and so on.

... if an apple were enlarged to the size of the Earth, its individual atoms would be the size of regular apples. Another way to illustrate the sizes of an atom's parts is to imagine that the nucleus of an atom was the size of our sun. In that case, the closest electron would be beyond Mars.

From here.

Hmmm...

I could most certainly be trusting my memory of another who was wrong. I do not have a source, nor do I feel compelled to dispute it. I'll go with what you've offered.

:up:

Thanks!

"Jack believes his bowl is empty" is a relation between a proposition and a cat who has only a limited vocab. That Jack cannot say "I believe my bowl is empty" is irrelevant.

But we keep repeating this discussion. It seems that you will not move away from the notion of a belief as a thing in a mind. But for me that view makes no sense. What counts is not a thing in Jack's minds, but what he does: meowing and staring at the bowl and following me around and so on, which all stops when I fill the bowl. These actions are not mental tables and chairs; they are Jack's interactions with the world.

What counts is not a thing in Jack's minds, but what he does — Banno

So does Jack have a mind?

If not, really?

If so, what is it for?

The individual thinks the proposition is true.
This is, if you like, the significance of a belief statement. It follows from Moore's paradox, in which someone is assume to believe something that the hold not to be true. For example:

"I believe the world is flat, but the world is not flat".

While this is difficult to set out as a clear contradiction, there is something deeply unhappy about it. The conclusion is that one thinks that what one believes is indeed true. — Banno

Interesting that Moore's paradox is in the first person.

"John believes the world is flat, but the world is not flat" is not paradoxical - John is just wrong.

"John believes both that the world is flat and that the world is not flat" - that's a clear contradiction.

The perforative paradox comes about only when expressed in the first person.

But we keep repeating this discussion. It seems that you will not move away from the notion of a belief as a thing in a mind. But for me that view makes no sense. What counts is not a thing in Jack's minds, but what he does: meowing and staring at the bowl and following me around and so on, which all stops when I fill the bowl. These actions are not mental tables and chairs; they are Jack's interactions with the world. — Banno

State 1 - I believe my cat is hungry, yet I do nothing to show it.
State 2 - I believe my cat is hungry, so I feed her.
State 3 - I do not believe my cat is hungry, so I do not feed her.
State 4 - I do not believe my cat is hungry, but I feed her anyway.

In what States do I truly believe my cat hungry? I say 1 and 2. Do you say 2 and 4?

the explanations are post hock and sufficient.

the explanations are post hock and sufficient — Banno

As usual, your responses are an insult to all Riesling. :razz:

The perforative paradox comes about only when expressed in the first person. — Banno

Again, you thus need to provide a theory of what makes for a point of view.

So does Jack have a mind? Curious how you avoid answering.

In what States do I truly believe my cat hungry? I say 1 and 2. Do you say 2 and 4? — Hanover

the explanations are post hock and sufficient. — Banno

Clarify. My question called for a yes or no.

In what States do I truly believe my cat hungry? — Hanover

My bolding.

Hmm. That's not at all a loaded question.

1 & 2.

Now what?