There's a theory of communication that goes: I have head-stuff. I turn it into words. You hear it. You turn it into your own head-stuff. — Banno

Yeah, that sounds about right. :up:

I'd like to share my thougts nd know yours on belief but not on what belief is but rather on what are the consequences of belief.

I personally think that belief give to people like a reason to live and a real trust in what they do u know, even if the belief is not the truth, that's not the point, but there are a lots of examples on people who made/achieved awesome things because their belief pushed them into a succesfull mindset like they are more able to achieve what they aim. whatever it is, look at what people did on the 21 december 2012 or on highly religious people who made billions.

what do u think bout that ?

Suppose I'm looking for my keys in the kitchen. If asked why I'm doing that, I might say that I think I left them there. Someone else asked why I'm doing what I'm doing might say I believe my keys are in the kitchen. In each case, some belief is attributed to me as at least part of an explanation of my behavior.

The twin problems that arise are that (1) some other beliefs might also work as part of an explanation of my behavior, substituting for the belief previously offered; and (2) I might have that belief and yet not engage in the observed behavior.

Is that where we are?

I think this is right: acting on a belief is a way of expressing it. So in order to qualify as a belief it must be able to be either described, depicted or explained or else acted upon, at least in principle.

Here's a different version.

Suppose I want to have my keys. Then we might say

(A) Given that Pat wants his keys, if he believes they are in the kitchen, then ceteris paribus he will look for them in the kitchen.

Now (A) can fail if, say, there's a knife-wielding madman in my kitchen. It could also fail if I just happen to find them in the living room on my way to the kitchen. It can fail in lots of ways.

We could say (A) is like any other prediction, that it's really a claim that the consequent is probable, and it can be defeated by unlikely occurrences. But we might prefer something more like this:

(B) Given that Pat wants his keys, if he believes they are in the kitchen, and if he is rational, then ceteris paribus he will look for them in the kitchen.

That's still a prediction, and still probable. So maybe we need this:

(C) Given that Pat wants his keys, if he believes they are in the kitchen, and if he is rational, then he will wish to look for them in the kitchen.

And that can be true whether it's safe for me to enter the kitchen, and right up until the point that I find my keys elsewhere.

That only gives us an expected connection between a belief and an intended behavior, rather than an actual behavior, and lots of shadows can fall between the intention and the act. Does that bother us?

ADDENDUM

Beliefs here are how we get from one preference to another. How we get from preference to action is left for another day.

1. Why is a document written in my chicken scratch that is truly only decipherable by me "public," if It only conveys information to me and it helps me recollect prior events?, and

2. Why is having George available helpful in me recollecting past theories I've held if I have a better memory than him? — Hanover

Same answer. Putting it in writing or saying it out loud both bring it out in the open.

Apologies for the delay.

Yes.

Any belief can be made to account for any action, by adding suitable auxiliary beliefs. — Banno

Beliefs are of little use in explaining behaviour.

I still feel pretty good about the preference version, because I get to say "If you don't want to look for your keys in the kitchen, either you don't think they're there or you don't want to find them (or you don't reason like the rest of us)." That feels solid to me.

Nevertheless beliefs are residents of the domain of reflection. You swerve around the bump in the road and later work it out that you believed it was best not to hit it lest you destroy your front end.

You guys do have cars down there, don't you?

:grimace:

Strewth, that was quick.

Have you come across the book The Elephant in the Brain?

See https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/robin-hanson-on-lying-to-ourselves/

I was about to start a thread on it, but I might leave that for now.

You swerve around the bump in the road and later work it out that you believed it was best not to hit it lest you destroy your front end. — frank

So beliefs are post-hoc justifications for stuff we do anyway.

Hanson argues that our justifications serve to align what we do with the norms of our culture.

Given that Pat wants his keys, if he believes they are in the kitchen, and if he is rational, then ceteris paribus he will look for them in the kitchen. — Srap Tasmaner

So in effect the reason Pat looks in the kitchen is not that he believes the keys are there but that he wishes to appear rational.

Actually, I'm not sure that's right. It's rather that Pat searches the kitchen, and justifies his behaviour post-hoc by claiming to believe that the keys are there.

The belief is irrelevant. Pat does what Pat does.

Yes, but it's not like we justify willy nilly. We analyze events and put ourselves on a stage like soap opera stars. The question is: where does the script for the play (the analyzing narrative) come from? Social practices? Is it partly innate?

Kind of like this:

It's rather that Pat searches the kitchen, and justifies his behaviour post-hoc by claiming to believe that the keys are there.

The belief is irrelevant. Pat does what Pat does. — Banno

But that can't be right, because of the knife-wielding psycho in the kitchen. I can form a preference to look there even if it's overridden by my preference to go on breathing. Rationality does seem to have a foothold here: given some preferences and beliefs, you should also have this preference. Maybe you don't act on it for whatever reason, or for no reason. Different issue.

All of that assumes by "behavior" you mean outward, publicly observable actions. Are you throwing in what I think as behavior?

That map-teritory model was critiqued by Davidson, I think with considerable success.

All of that assumes by "behavior" you mean outward, publicly observable actions. Are you throwing in what I think as behavior? — Srap Tasmaner

What else would it be?

It's a hermeneutic circle. This one is good too:

.

Sure. But what it obviously leaves out is the world.

Oh, and the other.

Hence triangulation - me, you, the world.

(A triplet - Pierce would be so pleased)

There's surely a difference of some kind. We can say there's A's and there's B's, or we can say there's two kinds of A's. I don't suppose it matters unless we want to say "All A's are F"; then we'd want to be sure we don't mean "All type 1 A's are F."

In recent posts here, I've been kicking the can of outward behavior into another zip code.

The notion I am playing with is that we get the order of the explanation wrong.

It's not:
Pat believes the keys are in the Kitchen
So, all things being equal, Pat will search in the kitchen

but

Pat searched in the kitchen
Therefore Pat says he believes the keys are in the kitchen

What else would it be? — Banno

Yes, we learn what a belief is by what we observe, what we speak, and what is written. There are many observable actions that we correlate with beliefs. We learn the use of the word belief just as we learn the word pain. The outward signs show us what a belief is, just as the outward signs of pain, show us what pain is. The meaning of the words having nothing to do with anything inner, but with the outward sign of the inner process. We learn to associate a moan, a cry, a scream with pain, we use the word in conjunction with others, i.e., as a rule-based linguistic process. We are able to look at an animal and see that it too can show certain behaviors that show signs of pain, not unlike ours. However, the animal can only show us so much. As Wittgenstein pointed out, "A dog believes his master is at the door. But can he also believe his master will come the day after tomorrow?" Some things can only be shown if one has mastered the use of a language.

Hence triangulation - me, you, the world. — Banno

Culture and nature provide the forms of background practices from which we derive propositions (upon reflection.) Our reflections in turn affect future experiences.

If you're wanting you, me, and the world to stand as independent entities, you're going to become stuck in a Cartesian mudpit.

Describing Davidson as Cartesian would be... shall we say, odd.

Yes.

And, the post hoc justifications we use to explain our own behaviour lend themselves to ascribing beliefs to animals.

Describing Davidson's project as successful would also be fairly odd.

:grimace:

Which project? There were a few...