Take the example of pack hunters like wolves or lions. They form strategies of working together to bring down prey, or chase off competition. How do they form plans on the fly without some sort of beliefs about each other, their prey and different competitors?

One other example. Hyenas go for the tentacles to disable their prey or enemies. Here is a video of a male lion surrounded by hyenas who keeps sitting down when warding off their attacks.

That's hard to explain without positing that the lion believes the hyenas are wanting to go for it's balls.

Sorry, but I'm through responding, this is going nowhere but around in circles. Thanks for all of the responses.

Hello, everyone. Great theme.

I checked out an excellent source mentioned earlier.

Logical pragmatism is the view that our basic beliefs are a know-how, and that this know-how
is logical – that is, that it is necessary to our making sense. — Moyal-Sharrock

To me it makes sense to stress social know-how as our immersion in a form of life. 'Bedrock beliefs' are 'what everyone knows,' with the important twist of this 'knowledge' being primarily tacit. It's doing/saying the 'right thing' in the context of a world with others. We can, with effort, articulate some of this tacit know-how. The lexicographer constructs plausible definitions of words like 'belief,' but this itself relies on the same 'blind' or 'pre-rational' know-how displayed in ordinary language use, even as it also relies on more conscious training and education. (We could all define a familiar word that we've never bothered to define or look up before. I don't think the definition we'd come up with was already there in our minds somewhere. We'd be employing skill in articulating for the first time what was reliably automatic.)

Related issue: It is only after we are trained into a form of life and a language that we can absurdly pretend to doubt the existence of others or the external world. This doubt is absurd insofar as it is articulated. The very language of the (impossible) 'radical skeptic' or 'solipsist' deploys a know-how that cannot intelligibly be doubted. In this sense language 'presupposes' a world with others, though it's important to stress that this 'presupposition' need not be conceptual or verbal. That we can, after the fact, articulate plausible explicit renditions of tacit knowledge does not IMV suggest that such tacit 'knowledge' was already made of concepts.

Hyenas go for the tentacles... — Marchesk

Strange balls...

:yum:

Hello, and nice addition.

'Bedrock beliefs' are 'what everyone knows,' with the important twist of this 'knowledge' being primarily tacit. It's doing/saying the 'right thing' in the context of a world with others. We can, with effort, articulate some of this tacit know-how. — path

Welcome @path. I agree with much of what you said. However, would you call this "tacit know-how" a belief (or set of beliefs), like @Sam26 does?

Welcome path. I agree with much of what you said. However, would you call this "tacit know-how" a belief (or set of beliefs), like @Sam26 does? — Luke

I think 'belief' is OK as a metaphor, but I do see how it can work against expressing the stuff we may agree on. (I like what you have posted on this thread.)

Hello, and nice addition. — creativesoul

Thanks!

I think 'belief' is OK as a metaphor, but I do see how it can work against expressing the stuff we may agree on. — path

It also brings out that knowledge-how is not JTB.

(I like what you have posted on this thread.) — path

Thanks and likewise! :blush:

I have a belief that the pub is at the end of the road means I have a tendency to act as if the pub were at the end of the road. My cat believes the floor is solid means my cat has a tendency to act as if the floor were solid. — Isaac

I like this. I think we 'believe' in language this way, trust in it radically, as we trust ourselves to step around furniture. To question its reliability or intelligibility is to trust it like an organ as intimate as the hand.

It also brings out that knowledge-how is not JTB. — Luke

Right. That makes sense to me. We could use the word skill for this knowledge-how. Skill is primary. We develop the skill of co-hosting a form of life, which is at least as visceral as it is 'conceptual.' To say 'hi' is to make an animal sound. What does waving mean? I think I'm saying that there's no radical break but instead a continuum from grunts to dissertations. There's a background of 'stupid' skill or uncooked can-do at work in all cases.

For context, I recently read The Social Construction of Reality, apparently a sociology classic. It was something like 'Dreydegger' and Wittgenstein in a different jargon. We are 'possessed' by a 'form of life' or 'zeitgeist' and for the most part enact it as 'one' does. For the most part we co-enact the what one does and what everybody knows. The depths of the so-called self are as much outside as inside, since the speaking 'ghost in the machine' relies on a skill that exists in some sense as a community habit. Language is a borrowed 'bone machine' that makes 'self-consciousness' possible but also already always 'falling.'

When we look at the structure of belief statements and expect prelinguistic belief to somehow have the same structure, we're thinking in the exact reverse fashion that evolutionary progression can possibly allow. — creativesoul

I like that you are stressing the biological continuum.

The idea that only humans have concepts because we're the only language users is a bit anthropomorphic. — Marchesk

Yes, to me it makes sense that certain animals have something like concepts. As others have mentioned, crows can count in some sense. Aliens might say that humans can count (only) in some sense for similar reasons.

Strange balls... — creativesoul

LOL! Indeed.

Yes, to me it makes sense that certain animals have something like concepts. — path

It seems the counter argument is that concepts can only be lnquistic, and language is an external, public thing. But there has to be something in human brains that forms language. And why would that be entirely novel in the animal kingdom? Also, why must concepts be only expressible in words? Do images not count?

John Watkins addresses all-and-some; I think it's in Science and Skepticism, characterising them as an existential quantification inside a universal quantification.

An existential statement can be verified: "There is at least one black cat" is verified by presenting a black cat. But it cannot be falsified - my not having a cat to hand does not show that there are no black cats.

A universal statement on the other hand can be falsified, but not verified. "All cats are black" is shown false by presenting a non-black cat; but looking around and not finding a non-black cat does not mean that there are none, unless you look everywhere.

Now if you put one in the scope of the other, you get something that is neither provable nor disprovable. — Banno

Well put, and applicable to some of my own claims but not all!

:wink:

...a belief as a relation between an agent and a proposition such that the agent holds the proposition to be true. — Banno

How can a language less creature believe that a proposition is true, unless - at the very least - that creature understands the proposition?

Cat's do not understand that "the floor is solid" is a proposition, let alone whether or not it is true. — creativesoul

What? He doesn't understand that "The floor is solid" is true. The would require language.

He understands that the floor is solid. — Banno

Something is off here...

In the old story, it would seem the crows have a belief about how many hunters are behind the blind, suggesting that you don't need language to form the equivalent of propositional content. — Marchesk

In order for that to be true, propositional content must somehow exist in it's entirety prior to language, and as such it would not be equivalent to what we call "propositional content".

Would it?

Are you suggesting that propositions somehow exist prior to language?

Are you suggesting that propositions somehow exist prior to language? — creativesoul

I'm suggesting there's more to belief than being able to express it in language.

Are you suggesting that propositions somehow exist prior to language?
— creativesoul

I'm suggesting there's more to belief than being able to express it in language. — Marchesk

Clearly, if language less creatures form, have, and/or hold belief... and they clearly do. The sticking point is what such belief is... what it consists of.

The sticking point is what such belief is... what it consists of. — creativesoul

True. What does cognitive science say about animal intelligence? Would it be the same for us, plus the linguistic ability where we translate beliefs to language? Or do we internalize the language as beliefs?

What does cogntive science say about animal intelligence? Would it be the same for us, plus the linguistic ability where we translate beliefs to language? Or do we internalize the language as beliefs? — Marchesk

The alternative being advocated for here is more like a propositional attitude, or behaving as if... the creature believes something is the case.

These renderings leave me unimpressed or certainly unconvinced. A cockroach satisfies Banno's criterion. If it is the fact that the cat does not pay attention to the solidity of the floor that leads us to say that he takes it to be the case that the floor is solid, then we could say the exact same thing about any and all creatures walking across the floor.

Taking something to be the case would not require paying attention to or otherwise ever thinking about it.

That's the reductio.

The introduction of the timeline eliminates it(the verb tense issue) while explaining how it has taken it to be the case in past, therefore no longer pays any attention to the floor. Our brains take short cuts all the time. There is no need to always think about the floor., but taking it to be the case that it's solid most certainly does require paying attention to it.

What does cogntive science say about animal intelligence? Would it be the same for us, plus the linguistic ability where we translate beliefs to language? Or do we internalize the language as beliefs? — Marchesk

I'm not sure what cognitive science says about it at the moment.

Translating beliefs into language seems to me to be the only viable option here, at least when talking about the creation of language via the invention of meaningful signs, symbols, and/or gestures.

After language use has begun it's notably more complex.

The very language of the (impossible) 'radical skeptic' or 'solipsist' deploys a know-how that cannot intelligibly be doubted. In this sense language 'presupposes' a world with others, though it's important to stress that this 'presupposition' need not be conceptual or verba — path

Replace "presupposes" with "is existentially dependent upon", and "presupposition" with "existential dependency" and we are in complete agreement on this aspect.

Replace "presupposes" with "is existentially dependent upon", and "presupposition" with "existential dependency" and we are in complete agreement on this aspect. — creativesoul

Nice. I'm not attached to 'presupposition.' We can say that language is existentially dependent upon the world, but the world-for-humans is existentially dependent on language too. It all comes in a single clump ('equiprimordial'). This 'holism' is maybe what various 'idealisms' have pointed at more or less awkwardly. We inherit world-and-language as a system, it seems to me.

It seems the counter argument is that concepts can only be lnquistic, and language is an external, public thing. But there has to be something in human brains that forms language. And why would that be entirely novel in the animal kingdom? Also, why must concepts be only expressible in words? Do images not count? — Marchesk

I agree with what I think is meant by 'language is an external, public thing.' But it also makes sense that the social sphere leaves its mark on the individual brain. Our computers can talk right now by using more or less the same software on different hardware. So 'form of life' is like the software that runs on the hardware of individual brains. Since we think with this 'form-of-life software,' the world-with-the-others is 'presupposed' in some sense and the hardware enacts the social, as it evolved to do.

As to concepts, I think images count. Though for me it's another term of art issue. The meanings of 'concept' and 'image' function mostly automatically. We philosophers can establish conventions and definitions in a local context pretty however we want. I try not to be attached to terminology, and it's nice to find whatever terminology facilitates mutual understanding.

That said, maybe we can meet here: Saying 'hello' is not a proposition, not 'conceptual.' It's like a cat's meow. There are examples like waving or flipping someone off. Humans move their hands when they talk, make facial expressions. What I'm getting at is that there is no clean break between the 'mental' and the 'physical' (or the concept and the gesture.) The 'mental-physical' distinction functions mostly automatically and practically. Philosophers are tempted to make this and other distinctions, like scheme/content, fundamental and absolute.

Nice. I'm not attached to 'presupposition.' We can say that language is existentially dependent upon the world, but the world-for-humans is existentially dependent on language too. It all comes in a single clump ('equiprimordial'). This 'holism' is maybe what various 'idealisms' have pointed at more or less awkwardly. We inherit world-and-language as a system, it seems to me. — path

Yes. I'm reminded of Heidegger.

What I'm getting at is that there is no clean break between the 'mental' and the 'physical' — path

Indeed. Especially when we're reporting upon that which consists of and/or is existentially dependent upon both. Thought, belief, truth, and meaning are such things.

That's a good point.

Yes. I'm reminded of Heidegger. — creativesoul

Right. I like what Dreyfus does with Heidegger. Of course I want to avoid getting swallowed by the jargon of any particular thinker, especially because I find the same basic idea in quite a few philosophers, for instance Hegel. I think Rorty is pretty great in his PMN book.

Indeed. Especially when we're reporting upon that which consists of and/or is existentially dependent upon both. Thought, belief, truth, and meaning are such things. — creativesoul

Right. And for me one of the trickier things is these philosophical master concepts are all caught up in that clump of automatic enactment before we can make them terms of art. I can relate to the Wittgenstein who mostly exists to swat down bad philosophy as it tries to get in the way of the otherwise smooth functioning of this automatic enactment.

Bad philosophy that gets tangled up in taken-for-granted but unnecessary and futile paradigms is something like a harmless vice. The Wittgenstein approach to me is almost aesthetically motivated. Lots of people just tune out a certain kind of philosophy as a trivial game. Others stick around and try to articulate in just what way it is confused or irrelevant.

There are two kinds of belief. Linguistic and non linguistic. — creativesoul

Perhaps you would be better served to simply say 'those which are expressed linguistically and those which are not".

Of course I want to avoid getting swallowed by the jargon of any particular thinker, especially because I find the same basic idea in quite a few philosophers, for instance Hegel. — path

Care to set out these basic ideas? I'm unsure what you're talking about.