Banno has brought up this problem:

You and I may believe the same thing, but my cognitive act of belief is not your cognitive act of belief.

Some people say that the thing we both believe is a proposition. For various reasons that scenario is suboptimal. What's the alternative? — frank

The meaning, rather than the proposition. What we both believe can be expressed or represented with a proposition, but is not the proposition itself.

Might be some trouble there, because in some quarters "proposition" is the word for the meaning of a natural language declarative sentence. (That makes propositions into sort of equivalence classes, so you can say "the same thing" in different languages, or using different indexicals: you saying, in whatever language, [you're tall] to me means the same as when I say, in whatever language [I'm tall].)

But then propositions don't get to have meanings; they are meanings.

It's Banno's discussion, so I was going by his definition, which is also the one that Sam26 mentioned: a statement which can be true or false.

:up:

I think in a lot of ordinary speech, there are really two steps that get compressed in a propositional account, and which make the propositional account somewhat natural until you have to say what propositions are exactly.

People largely believe stuff about things; there's predication, and there's reference fixing. Rather than rushing to "I believe the x is F," it might be fruitful to pause at "I believe, with regard to x, that it is F."

Or maybe not.

Edit: "might" for "would"

Unfortunately that definition is borderline meaningless.

Riiight...

You're saying the proposition lacks reference?

Sometimes "statement" and "proposition" are used interchangeably. Sometimes a statement is said to express a proposition.

Some people don't like "proposition" and they never use it.

There could be a case where somebody says a proposition is a statement that can be true or false. I'm not familiar with that.

As long as we all know what were talking about, we're fine.

No, I'm saying that if you look at how people talk about beliefs, there are often two distinct steps that are treated differently.

We're watching a basketball game, and I say, "Man, that kid's tall." You say, "Who, Jones? He's only like 6'4"." Then I point out Smith, and you say, "Oh, wow."

The fixing reference stage is treated as a separate issue from deciding whether he's really a member of the class I suggested. All of this shows up as one claim in the propositional account, and you get puzzles over non-referring singular terms, and so on, problems that rarely arise in everyday conversation.

I don't know if there's any point to this, but I think people have different expectations, follow different norms, etc., for the two different elements of a "proposition".

Some people say that the thing we both believe is a proposition. For various reasons that scenario is suboptimal. What's the alternative? — frank

The meaning, rather than the proposition. What we both believe can be expressed or represented with a proposition, but is not the proposition itself. — Sapientia

But then propositions don't get to have meanings; they are meanings. — Srap Tasmaner

To further confuse the issues:

Someone says, “I’m feeling happily excited,” and this sentence has a proposition to it such that its underlying meaning can be true or false. My dog wags its tail at assuming I’m about to take him for a walk when I pick up his leash and thereby communicates to me that he is feeling happily excited; the dog’s tail wag is not propositional because of what reason?

Its meaning can be true or false. The more intelligent the animal the more capable it is of deception. While it’s rational to assume it is nearly always a communication of what the dog is truly feeling, with a sufficient amount of intelligence what is communicated could also be false. A human’s smile will illustrate this. And some dogs have been known to at least try to intentionally deceive—thereby holding a meta-awareness of what their behaviors convey … and with this, beliefs of what their behaviors impart in the understanding of the other.

(See for example: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2124087-dogs-use-deception-to-get-what-they-want-from-humans-a-sausage/)

More likely it is not propositional because the tail wag is not an underlying meaning to word-based concepts, I presume. But this would imply that propositions, while being the underlying meaning to word-based languages, are all the same contingent upon words. And prioritizing signs over their meaning to me doesn’t yet make sense; a sign that bares no meaning will be little more than white noise.

I’m among those who try to avoid the term “propositions” for reasons such as this, but then maybe a proper noncontradictory denotation for the term could be arrived at.

you're committed to the idea that a Vietnam vet's experience of watching a film reminding him of the horrors of the war is the same as a 12 year old child's? — Hanover

Of course not.

With cats and dogs we have a clear shared referent. So, in your account, where a belief is in your mind, what is this shared referent?

It seems it is eaither what we say and do with our beliefs, or it is nothing.

two different elements of a "proposition". — Srap Tasmaner

It is. It's two elements of the context.

?

Maybe I can make my point, if I have one, more clearly: maybe it's hard to figure out what someone is doing when they utter a statement that expresses a proposition because they're not doing one thing, they're doing two. That would make capturing the essence of the one thing they're supposedly doing a fool's errand.

Alright, everyone recognizes that propositions are articulated in this subject-predicate way, but consider that the rules and norms that govern establishing reference are quite different from the rules and norms that govern establishing class membership, and it begins to look more like two completely different activities rather than parts of one.

Still, I'm just speculating. Maybe there's nothing to it, or maybe this ground is already well-trodden...

With cats and dogs we have a clear shared referent. So, in your account, where a belief is in your mind, what is this shared referent? — Banno

I suppose the shared referent distiction is relevant for this analysis because it offers verification of consistent use over time whereas internal beliefs do not?

If I've got that right, I don't see where community usage is necessarily more reliable for consistency's sake than a single individual's recollection. In either case, we're relying upon memory, and if I've got the best memory in a community of fools, my memory of my private thoughts will exceed the collective memory of fools.

I get what you're saying. But is there even a working theory for how you and I settle on what "tall" means or commune on a referent? It's commonly assumed that we have the capacity to do those things (and note that this assumption permeates this very message I'm typing).

One might suspect that it's impossible to actually question that assumption because language speaks us, not the other way around, and that assumption is intrinsic to language. What I'm trying to express is that we may be stuck with the mind-boggling.

So it shouldn't be said casually that in a proposition the processes you mention have been completed (or that these processes select a proposition). It shouldn't be said as if we have any idea whatsoever what's actually going on. From our point of view it's magic.

Nevertheless, I think we're stuck with it. Or are we?

In either case, we're relying upon memory, — Hanover

...and written material and video and so on. It's external, analysable. Unlike your private mentation.

.and written material and video and so on. It's external, analysable. Unlike your private mentation. — Banno

And so the public verifiability advantage only applies where the public's recollection is superior to the guy with the best recollection? How prevalent were these recording devices in Witt's time?

You have utterly missed the point.

And yet I think the same of you. And this isn't meant just as a backatcha retort, but truly a failure to accept very basic notions and an odd resistence to fully engage and meaningfully explain things.

How prevalent were these recording devices in Witt's time? — Hanover

Are you suggesting that there were no books in his time? Of course not. The point is the quite simple one that if something is shared we can check it, if it isn't, we can't. Despite your protestation, your reply look quite disingenuous.

There is absolutely no way to establish truth when one only will acknowledge the concepts of ones own mind. Unless we can converse with others and reach a conclusion then we are idiots. Who cares the method of recording.

Where does the distinction between what can be shared and what cannot be shared come from? Is there any way to tell if a thing can be shared other than sharing it?

Are you suggesting that there were no books in his time? Of course not. The point is the quite simple one that if something is shared we can check it, if it isn't, we can't. Despite your protestation, your reply look quite disingenuous. — Banno

A less than generous read of my post, but understandable based on my specific comments. Simply put, the shared, objective, publically analyzable data need not be of superior quality than the personal recollection of a single person. In many instances it will be, as in a video, but where no such data is available, we often turn to individual witnesses who are left with nothing but the contents of their minds to recite their recollections from. That information might be considered more reliable than the recollection of a group or various writings that might not fully be trusted.

In my example of dogs and cats, there is a public referent, but the meaning of that referent still rests within the private thoughts of individuals. It is for that reason that we could insist that cats fetch and dogs purr if our internal belief of such things changed. The public event doesn't fix anything, especially if it's not ongoing, as the case may be if we were separated from cats and dogs for a long while.

you're committed to the idea that a Vietnam vet's experience of watching a film reminding him of the horrors of the war is the same as a 12 year old child's? — Hanover
Of course not. — Banno

So they saw the same movie, but had different experiences, meaning they had distinctly different phenomenal states as the result of observing the same object. Whose phenomenal state best represented reality?

There is absolutely no way to establish truth when one only will acknowledge the concepts of ones own mind. Unless we can converse with others and reach a conclusion then we are idiots. Who cares the method of recording. — Sid

So the only way I can establish that I am sitting here is to ask someone else?

The object of belief can't be a physical object anyway. I believe that brick. That makes no sense. I believe that the brick is red. That makes sense.

Where does the distinction between what can be shared and what cannot be shared come from? Is there any way to tell if a thing can be shared other than sharing it? — fdrake

From my perspective, unraveling the confusion, my own as well, has to do with understanding the Philosophical Investigations. The problem is that sometimes what we share, say, communicate is senseless. What confuses us is the grammar of what's said, i.e., the grammar is similar to statements that do make sense. So I say, for example, "I understand what pain is, based on my own pain," i.e., by looking at something internal, or focusing on something internal, and we think we've said something meaningful. In terms of this thread, we might be tempted to think that to understand what a belief is, we need to examine the internal mechanism of belief, i.e., what's going on in the mind when we say, "I believe..."

These same issues arise in reference to consciousness, soul, time, thinking, etc. To get clear on these problems one needs to have a good understanding of how language works, i.e., how we learn language. There are many examples that Wittgenstein gives to try to clear up some of the muddle. First, it's important to understand some of his ideas in reference to having a private language. Second, Wittgenstein uses the beetle in the box to show how nonsensical it is to talk about meaning in reference to something private. Third, and this is connected to the idea of private language, viz., the logical connection of rule-following and making mistakes in a social linguistic context, as opposed to something private.

The object of belief can't be a physical object anyway. I believe that brick. That makes no sense. I believe that the brick is red. That makes sense. — frank

What's your criterion for what makes sense? Grammar? And what is it to be the object of belief? Must it be limited to what would render the sentence grammatical?