I don't see how we can show you what we believe without showing you what the belief is about. — Sam26
Nonlinguistic beliefs are simply those beliefs shown in our actions. This is closely related to Witt's idea of showing vs saying. — Sam26
There's much liability for confusion thereabouts. Does showing have a broader reach than saying - are there things that can be shown but not said? — Banno
Hence it might be that at some future time belief comes to refer usually to neural networks. — Banno
I can't make any sense out of the idea that before there was a language there were no beliefs. — Sam26
Since a proposition is involved... — Banno
I don;t think that such an eventuality would be a good thing. — Banno
How would Banno answer that question?
You should know by now. — Banno
How can a language less creature believe that a proposition is true, — creativesoul
How can a language less creature believe that a proposition is true, unless - at the very least - that creature understands the proposition? — creativesoul
An old story says that crows have the ability to count. Three hunters go into a blind situated near a field where watchful crows roam. They wait, but the crows refuse to move into shooting range. One hunter leaves the blind, but the crows won't appear. The second hunter leaves the blind, but the crows still won't budge. Only when the third hunter leaves, the crows realize that the coast is clear and resume their normal feeding activity.
Helen Ditz and Professor Andreas Nieder of the University of Tübingen found the neuronal basis of this numerical ability in crows. They trained crows to discriminate groups of dots. During performance, the team recorded the responses of individual neurons in an integrative area of the crow endbrain. This area also receives inputs from the visual system. The neurons ignore the dots' size, shape and arrangement and only extract their number. Each cell's response peaks at its respective preferred number. — https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150608152002.htm
By way of summary, a relation between an agent and a proposition such that the agent holds the proposition to be true is not the same sort of thing as a neural network. — Banno
Beliefs and meaning both refer to things apart from the mind. In fact, they give evidence that we have a mind. — Sam26
I might ask you the same question I asked Banno. If they refer to "things" what are these things, for you? Where are they, what do they consist of? How do they come into existence? — Isaac
Also if a dolphin inspects itself in the mirror, the shows the dolphin believes it's seeing a reflection. — Marchesk
I don't think the dolphin believes it's seeing a reflection, reflection involves concepts that the dolphin doesn't have. It believes it's seeing another dolphin, or some such thing. — Sam26
open the door, then that act shows that I believe there is a door. Or, if I tell you my belief via language, then the act of telling you reveals what I believe. Meaning also is revealed in how we use words in social contexts. — Sam26
My cat takes it to be the case that the floor is solid. He does not, for example, tentatively test the floor with his paw to check for solidity before walking on it. He takes it to be the case that the floor is solid, despite his not being able to articulate this in English. — Banno
It's probably not even aware that it's acting in such a way. The cat just does what it does. — Sam26
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