Yes I am. I know how to use the word properly, but I have zero confidence that I know what I'm talking about.

What's an idea? — frank

If you know how to use the word then you know what you are talking about. It seems to me that you are asking what an idea *really* is in some imagined ultimate or metaphysical sense. We don't need to know that to know that two atheists share in common the rejection of the idea of God, whatever the idea might *ultimately* consist in.

Where would you place the temporal genesis of this foundation of indifference? — frank

Again, you are back to a search for a "concrete foundation" as a matter of inveterate mental habit. It's getting comical now. :wink:

Why would it matter when the epistemic indifference first starts? Why wouldn't it instead be a question of when the development of a state of indifference reaches its final terminating limit?

Again, remember the Peircean answer. Truth is what a community of rationalising inquirers would converge on by the end.

So you just expect the answer to be bottom-up. Everything true would have to be anchored in something deep, basic and hard.

But instead, the alternative is that everything is only held together by a structure of habits sufficient to suppress the innate irregularities of chance and uncertainty. Reality - epistemic and ontic - has to arise in bootstrap fashion via the steadily emergent suppression of ambiguity and chaos.

It all works top-down ... by the end.

If you know how to use the word then you know what you are talking about. It seems to me that you are asking what an idea *really* is in some imagined ultimate or metaphysical sense. We don't need to know that to know that two atheists share in common the rejection of the idea of God, whatever the idea might *ultimately* consist in. — Janus

I agree. Worrying over the ontology of ideas is wasted time.

It's getting comical now. — apokrisis

OK.

Some... belief is prior to language. All belief is meaningful. Some meaning is prior to language. — creativesoul

But is belief prior to syntactic structure? Is meaning prior to syntactic structure?

Forget language for the moment. I already accept that semiosis - a modelling relation - takes place at multiple levels in complex minds. We humans are modelling the world at an evolutionary/genetic level, a developmental/neural level, a social/linguistic level, and even now a rational/numeric level.

You can argue for a continuity of belief/meaning across all those levels. They are all examples of information regulating dynamics, syntax regulating semantics. The same essential semiotic mechanism or modelling relation. The genes believe something meaningful about the world. The genes propose a body organisation and learn the truth of that particular guess. Our brains form neural habits - meaningful beliefs about how to get stuff done with reliable results.

So you are showing concern about temporal priorities. Belief exists, then linguistically-structured beliefs. Meaning exists, then syntactically-structured meanings.

But this is just a faulty reductionist analysis driven by a felt need for concrete foundations to explain anything more complex.

I am arguing the holistic or systems view. There is something foundational, but it is semiosis or the modelling relation itself. So you have the same thing happening from the start. But also it undergoes such radical phase transitions as it shifts from genes, to neurons, to words, to numbers, that the disjuncts come to matter just as much.

The telling of the tale has to do equal justice to the continuity of semiosis and the discontinuities of new grades of semiotic mechanism.

You can't go back and fix all the tired old epistemic terms - belief, truth, justification, proposition - by pursuing a reductionist foundationalism.

That was the "too simplistic" mental image of how things should happen that got you into all the confusion in the first place.

If you know how to use the word then you know what you are talking about. — Janus

That's not true. Ahem... Donald J. Trump uses all sorts of words when he has no clue...

If so, he doesn't use them, he ab-uses them. :joke:

Some... belief is prior to language. All belief is meaningful. Some meaning is prior to language.
— creativesoul

But is belief prior to syntactic structure? Is meaning prior to syntactic structure? — apokrisis

What does syntactic structure consist of? I'm being reminded of mentalese here...

You are pushing the semantic content story, the mental object story. Words describe ideas. — apokrisis

I wouldn't say that. Just for clarity.

So, folks like frank talk about ideas, make assertions concerning ideas, and then admit to not knowing what they are talking about...

:mask:

What does syntactic structure consist of? I'm being reminded of mentalese here... — creativesoul

Cute.

But you are right. We would have to wade through the thickets of Chomskyian universal grammar to get to a proper answer on that.

It definitely ain't mentalese. But some of that structure also has to be innate genetics - the bit that isn't neural network induction, cultural idioscyncracies, or mathematico-logical education.

So yes, I would spread the syntactic load across all four levels of semiotic mechanism I just identified. And even for me, that would be some book chapter length posts.

It is not mentalese as that is a claim about a language of thought which creates a semantic content that then only needs a syntactical translation into grammatical speech. So it suggest there is some wordless flow of ideas and images that then get turned into speakable words - with reasonably content-preserving accuracy.

Again, my neurocognitive account would see something right about that. It is not absolutely wrong. But that is because all action generated by the brain is hierarchical - and constraints-based. All voluntary and attentional action starts off with a vague general idea that has to be made concrete by a cascade of firming up steps - the prefrontal cortex connects to the supplementary motor cortex, which connects to the premotor cortex, which connects to the primary cortex. As more specific constraints get added one on top of the other, a final articulated act emerges.

So the difference again is the basic one of causal expectations. The computationalists see mentalese as a way to explain how inputs become outputs. For content to be created, it already had to be there. Hence the paradoxes. Where did the input get into the story? Mentalese just claims the creation process is hidden behind a convenient firewall. And don't ask difficult questions.

My approach - the one that neural networkers take - treats output as a matter of constraints-satisfaction. The mind is alive with free possibilities. All you have to do is to become focused enough on the fact of a problem for the connecting path to pop out - given the right multi-level feedback or cybernetic structure.

Anyway, rather than write that book chapter, again I simply say that there are these two choices - a bottom-up constructive view of things vs the top-down constraints-based view. How brains think was where the switch from the one to the other first happened for me when I got into the neuroscience some 30 years ago.

By looking at examples of belief, we are looking at uses of the term... at first. I mean where else is there to begin. Some of these uses are quite complex. Others not so much. So, the endeavor of setting out belief must have a top-down element.

The project becomes problematic when we attempt to distinguish between belief that is existentially dependent upon language and belief that is not. Belief about calculus is definitely dependent upon language. What about belief about a toaster oven?

Toaster ovens are existentially dependent upon language. I mean, when and where there has been no language, there can be no toaster oven. However, I would be hesitant to say that my cat could not believe that the bird she lost is now behind the toaster oven. She can see the oven. She can hear the bird, perhaps smell it as well. She has no conception of "toaster oven". She has no conception of "bird". She can however sense that which we call "bird" and "toaster oven", and thus draw correlations between them and herself.

So, it only follows that non-linguistic belief content can include that which is existentially dependent upon language, as long as that is perceptible.

I cannot answer your question if you do not answer mine...

On my view, with my very limited understanding, there is no syntax of any kind without language.

So, it only follows that non-linguistic belief content can include that which is existentially dependent upon language, as long as that is perceptible. — creativesoul

Revisiting Jack...

Can Jack believe that his bowl is empty if he has no conception of being empty and/or being full? Jack can see the bowl, despite his not knowing it is called a "bowl". Jack can see that it is empty. Am I speaking correctly here? Does he see that it is empty? Does he see that there is no food. Is there a difference?

The one is about the bowl. The other is about the food. I do not think that Jack thinks in terms of the bowl being full or empty or partially full or partially empty. I do not think that Jack thinks in terms at all. He is hungry. He goes to were the food is. There is no food. He wants food. He pleads to Banno by virtue of behaving in all the ways that have resulted in getting food in the past.

His belief is that that sort of behaviour results in getting fed. Banno says that Jack believes the bowl is empty.

How do we further discriminate between our reports of Jack's belief?

I say that Jack has made a connection between his own behaviour and what happened afterwards. That connection is the content of his belief. He formed it the first time he attributed causality by engaging in what can be fallacious thinking... but is not always.

Post hoc ergo prompter hoc.

An interesting thing to consider here is how one's language use helps to determine how one 'sees' the world. This is better put a bit differently...

When all of one's experience involving muslims has to do with terrorist acts against one's own people(those one care about), and there has been no other circumstances of any kind to show that not all muslims are terrorists or to place muslims in more positive light, then that person really has no choice but to enter into a new interaction with someone in stereotypical muslim clothes with that sort of negativity in the back of their mind.

Never-mind the particular details here, the point is broader...

Belief is accrued.

The first connections one makes between 'objects' of physiological sensory perception and/or themselves constitute the beginnings, the origen, of one's belief system(worldview).

The aforementioned rooster, the older one...

It is of no surprise to me that only he and the hens that are with him all the time are fearful when I act like I'm throwing a rock. The others' don't pay attention to it at all, even when they're in close proximity to the ones who are scared by the action.

On my view, with my very limited understanding, there is no syntax of any kind without language. — creativesoul

But now the definition of language comes into play. If neural signals are syntactic, then do neurons speak a language to each other? And if computers also operate in languages - as we say they do - then where does the semantics enter into the picture as they whir and click in a programmed blizzard of transistor gate switches?

So yes, to get anywhere, we have to get down to a deeper level of discussion. Everyday notions about language, grammar, meaning, belief, truth, etc, won't yield the answers being sought.

What is syntax and what is semantics?

I am identifying syntax with constraints - habitual structure that serves purposes. Semantics is then a material state of constraint - an actual state of interpretance where a set of signs could have a positive meaning.

For human language, the new level of constraint that made all the difference was the simple one - the evolution of an articulate vocal tract that then imposed itself on the hierarchical organisation of an intentional brain.

Once noise-making became restricted in a particular fashion - a serial concatenation of distinct phonemes, the sing-song expressive sounds that only we have the right lips, tongue, palate, throat and vocal chords to make - then already there was a syntactical choice implicit. At the level of a motor act chain, we had to decide what sound was followed by what next sound.

The attention of others was already captured by the fact we did make these chattering expressive noises to each other as the most highly social and big brained apes. We only had to stumble into the value of grammatical form. We just had to discover the trick of breaking up the holism of our thoughts into a regular subject/object/verb patterning that could be used to tell logical causal tales.

The vocal tract placed a general serial constraint on the motor holism of the brain. And then grammatical form added a further telling constraint on its conceptual holism. A limitation on the brain's freedoms became a telling improvement. We found ourselves being forced to speak of the lived complexities of our world in terms of displaced social simplicities.

"Buffalo in the next valley." "The wind gods are angry." "The camp needs firewood." The most rudimentary division of an animal level of conception into words and rules, semantic reference and syntactic order, was the breaking of a huge intellectual barrier.

Articulate speech gives you infinite possibility from finite means. And it is the very limitedness of the syntax which is crucial to the open, unbounded, nature of the semantics. Computation is what you arrive at when you get down to bare binary distinctions - a 1 and 0 - and create as complete as possible a divorce between the two sides of the equation.

The more general or universally functional the habit of structure imposed on expression, the more numerous become the specific states of intentionality or meaning that can be expressed.

So tighter constraints = more countable degrees of freedom. A sharper division between syntax and semantics = an exponentially greater space of possible expressions.

Syntax and semantics, rules and words, are both separated and connected by their being in this reciprocal, inverse or dichotomous relation.

And again, it is this essential connectedness - the fact they are two faces of the one symmetry breaking - that makes it silly to argue for hard distinctions in terms of "what came first?" - which is chicken, which egg.

If you say an animal can have semantic states - language-less beliefs - then it goes without saying that syntax has to be present as well. You just need to learn to recognise it.

And that is what psychology does. Ecological or gestalt approaches to perception are seeking out the syntax that structures thought at an animal degree of development.

Language is a big deal as it gives humans displaced thinking ability. We can think thoughts where the thought is of us in the world. Animals can't do that. They have in place thinking where they just are acting in relation to the world as it presents itself.

So there is a syntactical structure in play - just the rather embodied and unmediated one of the way the world currently imposes its own syntactic structure on the animal's store of behavioural possibilities.
What does the animal think about next? Whatever its environment, its dynamic context, might suggest.

This picture puts the semiosis, the modelling relation, at the centre of things. If the division of syntax and semantics is a thing, then we should be able to see that in the essential continuity of the semiosis that powers life and mind at its every level.

I guess this is the sticking point. It might be a surprise to think that nothing essential has in fact changed from the first bacterium. A language-like relation was at the heart of abiogenisis - the moment an organic molecule first became a message or signal.

Even propositional language is simply the same trick amplified through a series of continual displacements. Sentences seem as displaced and un-embodied as could be imagined. Universal Turing computation made the notion of information truly Platonic. But really, it is just the same semiotic breakthrough unfolding towards its ultimate limits. Nothing new under the sun.

So again, to identify syntax as strictly a property of human speech leaves you short when it comes to telling the deeper story of semiotic continuity. It sets up an explanatory hurdle where one need not be.

On my view, with my very limited understanding, there is no syntax of any kind without language.
— creativesoul

But now the definition of language comes into play. If neural signals are syntactic... — apokrisis

It seems to me that if we need to redefine the terms "language" and "syntax" in order to make sense of our viewpoints, then we are much better off coining new terms.

You seem to be looking for a structure where none exists. The same flaw with mentalese. Moreover, you also depend upon the notions of purpose where there is no agency. I'll pass.

If you find yourself in San Fransisco, go to Green Apple bookstore, head upstairs to the philosophy section and ask them to unlock the rare philosophy books cabinet... There is an entire library of Peirce. Large books. Six maybe seven volumes...

So again, to identify syntax as strictly a property of human speech leaves you short when it comes to telling the deeper story of semiotic continuity. It sets up an explanatory hurdle where one need not be. — apokrisis

If the story of semiotic continuity requires first denying that syntax requires language, then it's wrong and not worth repeating...

...that is what psychology does. Ecological or gestalt approaches to perception are seeking out the syntax that structures thought at an animal degree of development. — apokrisis

That's why they've gotten so little right... epistemic luck. In my experience, from what I've seen with regard to the descriptions and/or explanations of what animals are thinking...

It is almost always chock full of anthropomorphism. The personification of beast. No different, in the flaws, than the personification of God...

There is no syntax, no such structure, to non-linguistic thought and/or belief. There are only correlations...

Sure, we can observe non-linguistic creatures and infer that they hold belief...

But that is just plain utterly inadequate for any in depth discourse about that belief. — creativesoul

You replied...

It's not inadequate, inadequate to whom? And what is inadequate here?

It is utterly inadequate for understanding the belief you've inferred. It's not a matter of 'inadequate to whom'. It's a matter of being inadequate for knowing what we're talking about when we say that a non-linguistic creature believes. If we do not know what non-linguistic belief is, then we cannot know what we're talking about when we claim that a non-linguistic creature has belief.

That's pretty straightforward...

You seem to want to get to the essence of the belief. Here's how I see what we're talking about: Let's again use Wittgenstein's example of a game. I'm looking at baseball, chess, patience, monopoly, children playing catch, etc., as examples of games, which is the same as looking at people and animals doing a variety of things apart from language that are examples of beliefs. One can say, but there's much more to the game than these examples, the intentions of people, the correlations being made, the poor gamesmanship, the coach, but, I don't need to know all of this to properly use the word game. It seems to me that you are over-analyzing the word as if you're trying to find some precise definition that gives the word belief some final meaning, or some meaning that is special to your idea of belief. It doesn't exist. You also seem to be making the mistake that Wittgenstein said was one of the cardinal problems of philosophical analysis (viz., definitions and theories), i.e., that there is some final analysis that explains these concepts, but that's like looking at a family and thinking that there's some final analysis that will explain the many family resemblances there are between family members.

So your response that my use of the word belief is inadequate as I use it to say this or that example IS an example of a belief, is like saying that the word game is inadequate as I use it to say this or that IS an example of a game. Moreover, even your use of the word inadequate is improper. All you're saying is that it's inadequate to you.

Not all things sharing the same namesake have anything more in common aside from moniker. Some things do. That's just plain how it is. Some things share more than just names. Some things are precisely what they are prior to our awareness of them. Human thought and belief that is prior to language is exactly one of those things. So...

Applying Witt's argument about games is irrelevant. Wrong target.

There's a problem with treating a brick as merely a physical object. When you see a brick and recognise it as a brick, you activate knowledge about bricks you have. The knowledge about bricks that you have also prevents from seeing the brick as it is: brick-naively, so to say. What you see is always already an object-subject relation. This is especially the case with human artefacts, like bricks, which are made to purpose. Seeing a brick as a brick is not so different from understanding the meaning of a word, or not understanding the meaning of a word but recognising it as a word whose meaning you don't understand. So in that sense believing "that brick" could be affirming your learned world view, while centering your attention on a brick. Whether or not it's useful to stretch the term "belief" this far, again, is a question of what you're intending to do with the word. I could designate that sort of meaning to "I believe that brick," using an ungrammatical and thus unintutive phrasing to highlight an unintuitive concept.

If that's too long and confusing, my central point here is this: You can't just assume that a proposition is identical with its phrasing. Saying that a proposition has stable meaning, no matter how you formulate it, and saying that proposition is identical with its phrasing has different implications.

Physical objects are out there in the world and can be perceived by anyone (capable of perceiving physical objects), but you can only perceive them as a specific type of object (say, as a brick), if you have that type already in your mind. If you come to an object naively, you'll still have a world view, and your attempt to deal with an object will eventually create a type. As soon as we have a type, there's potential for calling that belief. I wouldn't, but it's not absurd. — Dawnstorm

I'm still waiting for you to explain the problem mentioned in the first sentence above. It does not follow from the fact that we have all sorts of knowledge about bricks that that knowledge is problematic for treating a brick as a physical object.

I really have difficulty with the way you're employing the notion of perception. Perception is not equivalent to understanding. We perceive a brick. We understand it as "a brick". The dog perceives the same brick. He doesn't understand it as(something called) "a brick".

All in all though, there's not much else for me to disagree with...

Naming stuff is belief formation in process.

I'm still waiting for you to explain the problem mentioned in the first sentence above. It does not follow from the fact that we have all sorts of knowledge about bricks that that knowledge is problematic for treating a brick as a physical object.

I really have difficulty with the way you're employing the notion of perception. Perception is not equivalent to understanding. We perceive a brick. We understand it as "a brick". The dog perceives the same brick. He doesn't understand it as(something called) "a brick". — creativesoul

Sorry for making you wait. I'm too slow a writer, reader and thinker - and this thread outpaces me. Also sorry that my answer's likely going to be unsatisfactory since simply catching up with the thread takes up most of my forum time.

I think percpetion is a complex mental activaty that involves understanding what we see at various steps. Every individual, whether human or dog, faces the same stimulus: a brick. But we're not perceiving something and then interpeting it; our interpretations don't come after perception; they run simultaneously to the point that by the time the brick enters our consciousness it's already a brick - fully integrated into our full perceptory state (that includes everything we see, hear, feel...). It's not that we see a physical object that is a brick, it's that we end up seeing a brick and sometimes it's relevant that it's a physical object. Our interpretations of what we see guides what we pay attention to and sometimes supplements what's not there (I'd need to find evidence in experiments for that and don't have the time) - by the time we "see" an "object" a lot of interwoven mental activity has taken place, so that you simply can't say (other than analytically) that by the time you've isolated a brick as an object what you see is merely a representation of what's there in the physical world.

Seeing isn't just "burning the image into the retina", and if it is what you're seeing is not yet "a brick". And perceiving isn't just "seeing" - integrating various input, I think, is already a meaningful activity guided by interpetation.

I don't think that's all that different for dogs either, maybe a ted less complex (but maybe not).

I'm not sure. The previous discussion seemed to center around paint.

What I would say, is that belief has to have an object just like knowledge always does. Knowledge is always of something. Belief is always in something. That something is not a physical object like a brick, or paint. At the same time, the object of belief is something people share. The situation tempts the philosopher to come up with some alternative to endorsing a non-physical sharable object like a flaming objective idealist.

But I think any alternative will collapse into behaviorism, which is actually worse. What's your perspective? — frank

Well, I agree with the following:

• Belief has to have an object just like knowledge always does.
• Knowledge is always of something.
• Belief is always in something.
• That something is not a physical object like a brick, or paint.
• At the same time, the object of belief is something people share.

Although, on second thought, I'd alter the last point to state that the object of belief is something that people can share.

Beyond that, I'm not sure. What's wrong with behaviourism? There's certainly something about it that strikes me as correct, even if I don't believe that it's entirely correct.

It seems to me that if we need to redefine the terms "language" and "syntax" in order to make sense of our viewpoints, then we are much better off coining new terms. — creativesoul

Redefine? When did you bother to define them?

...Every individual, whether human or dog, faces the same stimulus: a brick. But we're not perceiving something and then interpeting it... — Dawnstorm

I agree with this, at face value. Our reasoning is remarkably different however...

One thing worth mention here...

All interpretation is of that which is already meaningful. All interpretation is the attribution of meaning. That's how we can get interpretation wrong.

Your notion of perception includes thought and belief, whereas I find that thought and belief require physiological sensory perception, but not the other way around. Venus flytraps come to mind. They most certainly perceive...

I believe that...

Belief is not always in something...

I'm good with normal use.

I believe that...

Belief is not always in something... — creativesoul

True, but pedantic. I gave it a more charitable reading. I doubt he meant to exclude belief-that.

the action of believing
— frank

Even though "believe" is a verb, it's not obvious to me that believing is an action. Say you believe that X. That looks to me more like a partial description of your mental state than a description of something you're mentally doing. — Srap Tasmaner

When he referred to the action of believing, I interpreted that as the cognitive action of becoming convinced. To believe is to become, or to have become, convinced. Once you've become convinced, you have a belief that persists until something happens for it to cease to be a belief. I'm not sure that it's correct to call it a mental state, either. In one respect, yes. But in others, no. It might relate to a mental state, but that doesn't mean that it is one. My beliefs don't evaporate when they're not there in the form of a mental state. But if you were to arouse in me a mental state such as consciousness of a belief, then I could affirm to you that it is indeed a belief of mine.

What is the notion of "object of belief" doing here aside from unnecessarily overcomplicating the discourse? — creativesoul

The word "slap" is a verb that has to have an object. If I say, "John slapped.", it's just assumed that he slapped something or somebody.

Belief is just such a verb. It just has to have an object. If we abandon this scenario, I think it would be necessary to stop using the word belief and make up a new word. Sneag. Let's discuss sneag. — frank

Belief is not a verb. Belief is a noun. — creativesoul

If John had belief, he believed something. — frank

If John had fleas, he flead something.
If John had bad hair, he bad haired something.
If John had apple pie, he apple pied something.
If John had smarts, he smarted something. — creativesoul

Sorry creative, but frank won that debate. You're trivially correct that "belief" is a noun, not a verb. But frank is correct that if John had belief, then he believed something - your mimicry does nothing to change that - and he's right that a discussion about the object of belief is of relevance to a general discussion about belief, which is what this seems to be, or to have become. If you don't want to talk about that here, you don't have to.