There is a distinction between the statement "there is a fire in the next room" and the assertion "there is a fire in the next room. — Banno

• The second is a sentence token having, like a money token, currency and value in a system of interpretation. As such, within that system (of interpretation and production of sentence tokens as assertions), it is licence to produce more tokens, with similar value.
  
  
• The first, if not an assertion, is outside the system - a dud ticket, a void note, an invalid vote.

So, in this,

It's raining [on fire in the next room] but I don't assert that it is [on fire in the next room] — bongo fury

... we are confronted with, either:

• a system of contradictory assertions, one of them denying the true nature of a certain other one; or else,
  
  
• two different systems; or else,
  
  
• one system, and a dud token valid in no system.

"Belief" is (arguably) just a customary way of separating out a system of assertions peculiar to one or more persons (or momentary time-slices of a person), separate from some more general system. In which case, the same choice of analyses applies for "but I don't believe it" as for "but I don't assert it".

none of us are idealists, we all agree that the external world exists and affects us via our senses. At issue is only where along that chain it is sensible to say the object of the utterance at the end of it is.

The process goes

state of reality>sensory responses>belief that it's raining>belief that I'd be best off telling someone>speech act "it's raining"

That much is pretty much indisputable.

Correspondence theory would have the truth of the final stage measured by the first, but since no one can contemplate, feel or talk about the first without it having passed through at least stages 2 and 3 it seems an unnecessary conceit to pretend it's stage 1 we're talking about. Especially as we cannot, no matter how hard we try, disentangle those stages from our embeddedness in the world (both social and physical). — Isaac

So, because we use sensory responses to detect rainfall, we cannot talk about that which we're detecting?

but only in terms of what I intend each to do in the world — Isaac

Ah, so yo do see the distinction! Hope remains.

at no point did I say we don't have access to the world, merely that we don't access it when making propositions. — Isaac

So if I propose "I had oysters for lunch", am I talking about oysters, or something else - perceptions, brain states, beliefs or whatever?

I say oysters.

And if that's the case, how is it that my proposition does not "access the world"?

I found that difficult to follow. But then I don't see much use in the type/token distinction. It seems to me to introduce unnecessary metaphysical entities.

On reviewing the SEP article I discovered that the distinction is from Peirce. I'm not surprised.

The analysis I have in mind is from Austin, with its roots and branches in the work of other Analytic philosophers. The statement "there is a fire in the next room" has sense and reference, but no illocutionary force - nothing has been done with it. The assertion "there is a fire in the next room" has an illocutionary force - it is being used to make an assertion. Having an illocutionary force places the statement in a relation to the speaker.

Arguably, no statement is ever entirely bereft of any illocutionary force, and might be considered a "dud ticket". But we use them quite routinely when doing logic, so I'm not too concerned about that.

In my system of logic, I like to use the gerund for what you’re calling “statements”, things devoid of illocutionary force, to make it more clear that they are not assertions. “There BEING a fire in the next room” is an idea toward which we may have various different attitudes, and with which we may do various things. We can assert that that idea, or the state of affairs depicted in it, is real, by saying “There IS a fire in the next room”. We can also assert that that idea, or the state of affairs depicted in it, is moral, by saying “There OUGHT TO BE a fire in the next room”. Possibly we could do other things and adopt other attitudes toward it too.

And we can do all the logic we want on just those gerund ideas of states of affairs. “All men being mortal” and “Socrates being a man” entail “Socrates being mortal”, but in making that inference we haven’t yet committed to any claims that any of those states of affairs are the case, or ought to be the case.

So, because we use sensory responses to detect rainfall, we cannot talk about that which we're detecting? — creativesoul

So if I propose "I had oysters for lunch", am I talking about oysters, or something else - perceptions, brain states, beliefs or whatever?

I say oysters.

And if that's the case, how is it that my proposition does not "access the world"? — Banno

These seem like the same issue. One thing that frustrates me about philosophy is that it seems, to my untrained impression, to be sometimes trying to bridge a divide which there is no need to bridge, where each side merely butts up to the other seamlessly. Of course, in normal language we can talk of oysters and we all know what we're talking about. No one has the slightest problem with that. But as a result of no-one having the slightest problem with that, there's nothing further to say about it. There's no issue to solve, no problem of interest.

We might then want to look a little deeper for some specific reason - maybe a problem of language intrigues us, or some pathology we want to cure - we want to know what's going on in more detail and in order to do that we have to break up a normal process we're all quite happy with into stages and processes which seem strange to us (of course they do, we don't normally think of them this way). All this is fine too - we know we're doing this just to resolve the issue, not to dictate some new way of being in the world.

But here, in the middle of this (fairly scientific) process, philosophy will step back in and say "but that's not how things seems to us!". Well, we knew that. If we wanted to leave things how they seemed to us we wouldn't have started in the first place. No one says "It's raining, but I don't believe it is". So nothing about this is going to relate to how things 'seem to us'. If you want the resolution to come out as something which sits with what already seems to you to be the case, then there's no point even looking.

If, on the other hand, we want to see if the nature of this artificial problem gives us a frame we didn't already have, a map we weren't already making use of, then we'd be foolish to judge the results by whether things look the same as they do through the frame we're already using.

That being said, the actual answer to your questions is that in normal day-to-day life we're talking about aspects of the real world. Oysters. But if we want to know why "It's raining, but I don't believe it is" sounds weird, we're going to need a different frame, because no one says that in day-to-day life.

I suggested we look at the motivating forces producing utterances to see why they'd never produce such a one. Looking at these we see that utterances cannot be produced directly by objects in the world, objects must first have some effect on our senses, then on our beliefs, then finally on our speech centres.

Once we have this model we can see that the only way the rain (as a state of the external world) could prompt us to any utterance at all is via the exact state of mind we're describing in the second half of the sentence. We cannot, therefore, assess the former without it being an assessment of the latter. We might. It's not logically impossible, but we just don't appear to when we look at what the brain actually does.

One thing that frustrates me about philosophy is that it seems, to my untrained impression, to be sometimes trying to bridge a divide which there is no need to bridge, where each side merely butts up to the other seamlessly. — Isaac

What you see as seamless has perhaps been a great division amongst philosophers.

I found that difficult to follow. — Banno

I've been clearer.

But then I don't see much use in the type/token distinction. It seems to me to introduce unnecessary metaphysical entities. — Banno

That would indeed be ironic and a shame, since a focus on tokens is usually (e.g. in Carnap and Goodman and Quine, I don't know about Peirce) motivated by a nominalist aspiration to remove unnecessary metaphysical entities.

Doubly ironic that you contrast it with speech act theory, which seems to have continued an anti-abstract trend away from positing of (as entities) propositions to only sentences to only statements on particular occasions. (Yay, tokens! ... utterances, inscriptions.) Trouble is, Austin then starts multiplying unnecessary psychological abstractions (the forces, yuk). And the abstract metaphysical entities (states of affairs, yikes) have sneaked back in, as "content".

I read Goodman as saying, observe the discourse instead as a proliferation of sentence tokens which are acts of predication i.e. pointing of symbols at things.

Arguably, no statement is ever entirely bereft of any illocutionary force, and [such that it?] might be considered a "dud ticket". But we use them quite routinely when doing logic, so I'm not too concerned about that. — Banno

Great, and when you do logic, aren't you writing (or uttering) tokens, and excluding or contextualising (e.g. attaching "not" tokens to) contradictory ones, from within a system of proliferation of assertive tokens?

In the interests of comity, I'm going to speak here with a looseness I'm immediately disavowing.

I believe the sticking point is this: meaning, referring and believing are part of our frame not yours, part of folk psychology, not neuroscience. That's why you'll find no takers for your claim that when someone says it's raining they're talking about something that's going on in their head. No one anywhere will assent to that. Ask a non-philosopher and they'll tell you that people who believe things like that get locked up and put on heavy meds.

If you restrict yourself to telling the neurophysiological story of how rain is detected by our senses, how the brain generates predictions about the near future based on this new data, how we reflexively respond to seeing someone heading for the door without an umbrella and certain parts of the brain spring into action to prepare and then cause yet another complex subsystem to emit the sound "It's pouring outside!" -- tell that story and mostly people will be fascinated, marvel at what science has learned, and have no problem.

It's not entirely your fault, of course, because the early modern philosophy canon we're still obsessed with is full of groping attempts at psychology (as we can find groping attempts at linguistics, or physics or other sciences throughout our strange history), and since these philosophers weren't clear on the two frames they're mashing together, by and large neither are we.

The process goes

state of reality>sensory responses>belief that it's raining>belief that I'd be best off telling someone>speech act "it's raining"

That much is pretty much indisputable. — Isaac

Well, no, it's actually not. You see where you've placed a division between reality, sensory responses, and belief that it's raining, I reject those divisions based upon the fact that all belief consists - in large part - of the first two. There can be no removal of reality(rainfall) or physiological sensory perception. What's left would not have what it takes for belief that it's raining.

The problem I see with the model you're proposing is that it leads us to say that we're not talking about rainfall, or that we do not have direct access to the world. But we are, and we do. Therefore, the model is wrong somewhere along the line. It's also untenable. If held to strictly, you would be forced to admit, on pains of coherency, that 'state of reality' is just another thing you've arrived at via the second and third steps of the process... or end in self contradiction.

the risk of inducing apoplexy in banno et al, — Isaac

Banno "et al," forsooth.

Speaking on behalf of "et al", I wish to note something once wisely said about philosophy. No, not the comment made by my daemon Cicero that "there is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it," which is something of a truism. Rather, the statement of C. S. "Charlie Logic" Peirce: "Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts." Why? Because there be dragons which make Puff himself look like something we meet on the street each day.

I think Peirce would say, similarly, that we shouldn't pretend in philosophy that a paradox is presented by describing as true a statement which nobody would make about himself/herself, let alone make at all, in any circumstances which resemble what takes place in the life of humans. What we learn from such a fabrication, beyond the fact that it is clearly a fabrication (which can be determined with very little effort) can only be a fabrication itself.

I think Peirce would say, similarly, that we shouldn't pretend in philosophy that a paradox is presented by describing as true a statement which nobody would make about himself/herself, let alone make at all, in any circumstances which resemble what takes place in the life of humans. What we learn from such a fabrication, beyond the fact that it is clearly a fabrication (which can be determined with very little effort) can only be a fabrication itself. — Ciceronianus the White

My girlfriend similarly asked why anyone would say anything like the statement in question, and I said in response that they wouldn’t, because it would be such an odd thing to say, but the interesting question, what makes for the paradox, is WHY is it such a weird thing to say about oneself that nobody would ever say it, but it’s not at all weird to say about others? That difference is the origin of the paradox, and the thing that may be illuminating upon our understanding of language.

y girlfriend similarly asked why anyone would say anything like the statement in question, and I said in response that they wouldn’t, because it would be such an odd thing to say, but the interesting question, what makes for the paradox, is WHY is it such a weird thing to say about oneself that nobody would ever say it, but it’s not at all weird to say about others? — Pfhorrest

But it would be a weird thing to say about another. Because in order to say that another is saying the same thing, it would be necessary to say that they said or say it's raining, but don't believe it is, or said or say it's raining, but said or also says they don't believe it's raining. Only then would MacIntosh be saying, as does McGillicudy, that it's raining but he doesn't believe it's raining.

The sentence isn't "I say it's raining, but I don't believe it's raining", it's just "It's raining, but I don't believe it's raining." If you say "It's raining, but X doesn't believe it's raining", that makes perfect sense, unless X = yourself. The interesting question is why does it matter whether or not X = yourself.

My answer is because when you say "it's raining", you're not only telling someone ("impressing") about the rain, you're also showing something about your beliefs ("expressing") about the rain. If you say it's raining but someone else doesn't believe it, you're showing something about your beliefs, while telling about someone else's, so there's no room for contradiction. If you say it's raining but you don't believe it, you're showing something about your beliefs, while telling something to the contrary about them.

To get the same weird effect in talking about someone, you have to use a different sentence. You have to say something about what they say is a fact and about what they believe. You can't just say something is a fact and then say whether someone believes it, because that only has weird possibilities when the someone is yourself.

The sentence isn't "I say it's raining, but I don't believe it's raining", it's just "It's raining, but I don't believe it's raining." — Pfhorrest

It doesn't say "I say it's raining" because "I" clearly is speaking, saying, that it's raining. It isn't necessary to say you're speaking when you're speaking. That in itself would be peculiar.

When someone says it's raining, they merely say that. They say nothing about themselves. The say something about the weather.

They say nothing about themselves. The say something about the weather. — Ciceronianus the White

Then you agree the Moore sentence is not a contradiction. So what's wrong with it? Why is it something no one would ever say?

Why is it something no one would ever say? — Srap Tasmaner

Hoping this hasn't been previously addressed in this long thread:

We would say “It’s raining” when we do not believe it is raining whenever we would intend to lie to another about what the given state of affairs is. But since acknowledging one is lying while actively lying defeats the very intention of lying which one is engaged in, and since we in practice cannot experience intending to lie while simultaneously intending not to lie (this being a contradiction), saying “It’s raining, but I don’t believe it’s raining” is something no one would ever say in earnest.

But, then, in so arguing I find that the statement, “It’s raining, but I don’t believe it is,” is contradictory in terms of the intentions it implies on the part of the speaker who so affirms.

Then you agree the Moore sentence is not a contradiction. So what's wrong with it? Why is it something no one would ever say? — Srap Tasmaner

A statement is made regarding the weather by X. Then, X says he doesn't believe the statement he just made regarding the weather. When people say they don't believe what they just said is the case, that strikes me as indicative of a problem with the sentence, and possibly a much greater problem with the speaker.

Absolutely everyone agrees to all of this.

Now I'm the one rather puzzled here... I do not understand why this 'puzzle' remains interesting to anyone...

Moore's hypothetical speaker makes two separate claims in the same sentence at the same time. That much is clear and uncontentious. They cannot both be believed at the same time. That much is also clear and uncontentious. That's it. That's exactly why it "sounds absurd".

What else is needed here?

Moore described a situation of an individual speaker making two statements - at the same time - that cannot both be believed the same time.

What remains puzzling?

A different but equally effective de-mystification would be to just realize that Moore's 'puzzle' describes what would be taking place IF one were able to see themselves as they see another while in the midst of being mistaken about the weather. That's precisely what's going on in the first example. One person is watching another be mistaken about the weather as it's happening. That example is not a problem at all. However, one who is in that situation cannot recognize that they are mistaken. In such a situation, one IS NOT capable of watching themselves but that's what's being described - as is clearly shown by talking in the third person about oneself using present verb tense.

Yet again... that's it. What on earth remains so puzzling? Moore's 'puzzle' describes what would be taking place IF one were able to see themselves being mistaken about the weather as the mistake is happening. We cannot do that.

Moore set out a hypothetical scenario that does not - cannot - happen. We all know this, even if we cannot quite explain it to our own satisfaction. That's exactly why it "sounds absurd". If anyone has trouble de-mystifying Moore's 'puzzle', I would suggest taking a long hard look at your notion of human thought and belief, because that's precisely what is being misunderstood within the 'puzzle' itself.

If we want to see if the nature of this artificial problem gives us a frame we didn't already have, a map we weren't already making use of, then we'd be foolish to judge the results by whether things look the same as they do through the frame we're already using. — Isaac

What makes it puzzling is when and if it cannot be effectively de-mystified(solved) by using one's framework...

If one's framework takes adequate account of the sentence and why/how it seems puzzling, if one can explain away the puzzle, untie the linguistic knots, dissolve the issue, then there is no need for a new framework.

If I were to make some claim or another that human thought and belief could exist in their entirety without a complex brain with certain structures, you would immediately dismiss such claims... and rightfully so, because you(and I) both already know better...

We would say “It’s raining” when we do not believe it is raining whenever we would intend to lie to another about what the given state of affairs is. But since acknowledging one is lying while actively lying defeats the very intention of lying which one is engaged in, and since we in practice cannot experience intending to lie while simultaneously intending not to lie (this being a contradiction), saying “It’s raining, but I don’t believe it’s raining” is something no one would ever say in earnest.

But, then, in so arguing I find that the statement, “It’s raining, but I don’t believe it is,” is contradictory in terms of the intentions it implies on the part of the speaker who so affirms. — javra

Yup...

Regardless of sincerity... one cannot believe both statements at the same time.

It doesn't say "I say it's raining" because "I" clearly is speaking, saying, that it's raining. It isn't necessary to say you're speaking when you're speaking. That in itself would be peculiar.

When someone says it's raining, they merely say that. They say nothing about themselves. The say something about the weather. — Ciceronianus the White

Right, so the original sentence isn't of the form "X says P but X doesn't believe P".

It's just of the form "P but X doesn't believe P".

The former form of sentence would not sound contradictory for any value of X, even oneself; it just describes someone who is lying, saying something they don't believe. I can easily say "I say P but I don't believe P"; I'm just telling you I'm lying when I say P.

The latter form of sentence doesn't sound contradictory for any value of X besides oneself, but then it does sound contradictory when said about oneself. I can't say "P but I don't believe P" without seeming to contradict myself, even though it's totally logically possible and non-contradictory that P might be the case and yet I might not believe it. If I say it about anybody else, the lack of problem there is clear: "P but Bob doesn't believe P" just means Bob is wrong about P. It's logically possible that I might be wrong about P too, so why does it seem so weird to say "P but I don't believe P" that nobody would ever utter a sentence of that form?

(Because saying P shows that I believe P, so if I'm simultaneously telling you I don't believe P, what I show and what I tell are in contradiction. While if I say the same thing about someone else, I show you what I believe but tell you what they believe, so there's no possibility of self-contradiction there, because the beliefs I'm showing off and the beliefs I'm telling about are different people's beliefs).

I can easily say "I say P but I don't believe P"; I'm just telling you I'm lying when I say P. — Pfhorrest

I don’t think this is right (even though I conceded to @Michael earlier that it was). I find the sentence to be absurd whether the speaker is lying or not. Also, it’s not much of a lie.

It is absurd to assert ‘P but I don’t believe P’ whether honestly or not. You, @Pfhorrest, previously made the distinction roughly that ‘P’ is a strong form of assertion and ‘I believe P’ (or ‘I don’t believe P’) is a weak(er) form of assertion. The absurdity of honestly expressing ‘P but I don’t believe P’ is clear enough. But even if a speaker were lying about one or the other, there seems to be no reasonable circumstance in which someone would express both simultaneously. And it’s a terrible lie! Why would someone lie using that absurd form of expression? Why would one lie about P and also claim not to believe their own lie? Why would one honestly assert P and also lie about disbelieving it?

Additionally, I think someone previously raised the example where it would make sense to assert the paradoxical statement, such as ‘I’ve won lotto; I can’t believe it’. This is not true disbelief; only an expression of great surprise.

I was talking about two different forms of sentence:

S1: "P but X doesn't believe P."
S2: "X says P but X doesn't believe P."

You're talking about the first, S1, which is the form of the original sentence Moore was concerned with, and you're right in everything you say about that. That sentence is absurd in some way or another when X = the person saying it.

Ciceronianus was saying that the sentence is equally absurd whether or not X = the person saying it, but then he gave S2 as the form of the sentence. I agree that S2 is equally absurd no matter the value of X, but that's because it's a different sentence, and it's not really absurd at all. It's saying that someone says other than they believe; in other words, they lie.

If I were to tell you that "I say my dick is enormous but I don't actually believe it is", say in the context of me talking to women, I'd just be telling you that I lie about my dick size. I'd be telling you that I lie to them, not trying to lie to you in the moment right there.

That's a different sentence though than "My dick is enormous but I don't believe it is". That's absurd, just like the original Moore sentence, which is of the same form.

But "Bob's dick is enormous but he doesn't believe it is", of the same form as that, makes perfect sense. Bob is underconfident about his dick size. It's not absurd to say that about someone else, only about oneself.

But that's a different sentence than "Bob says his dick is enormous but he doesn't believe it is". That just means that Bob lies about his dick size, exactly like the sentence where I did, which is of a different form than Moore's sentence.

So... "thanks, but no thanks"?



I think there's a lot of confusion in this thread about what Moore's paradox is a paradox of. Here's Wittgenstein

Moore's paradox can be put like this: the expression "I believe that this is the case" is used like the assertion "This is the case"; and yet the hypothesis that I believe this is the case is not used like the hypothesis that this is the case...

...the statement "I believe it's going to rain" has a meaning like, that is to say a use like, "It's going to rain", but the meaning of "I believed then that it was going to rain", is not like that of "It did
rain then"...

..."But surely 'I believed' must tell of just the same thing in the past as 'I believe' in the present!" — Wiitgenstein PI p190

And Moore himself is reported to have said the sentence is "an absurdity for psychological reasons" - According to Wittgenstein's report of the lecture.

Despite the herculean efforts of most posters here to avoid any psychological talk and focus on the 'say-ability' of the sentence, this was never the object of the paradox. The object of the paradox was entirely psychological - according to Moore. It was entirely about the proper truth judgement of each part, why we are (seemingly) incapable of judging it 'true' that it's raining, but also true that 'I believe it's not raining' when those two things appear to have different subjects.

As I said earlier, Moore, Wittgenstein and (inadvertently) Ramsey had different solutions, but what they were solving was not "can we say 'It's raining, but I don't believe it's raining'?". All agree that the answer to that question is "yes we can, under some odd circumstances". Nor are they answering the question "does saying 'It's raining, but I don't believe it's raining', sound like a contradiction because it would be odd to believe both at the same time?". All agree that the answer to that question is "yes".

The question they're answering is "why can't I believe both at the same time?" Why can't I hold one belief about my state of mind and another about the state of the world?

If, however, "I believe it is so" throws light on my state, then so does the assertion "It is so". — Wiitgenstein PI p190

So all this talk about say-ability misses the point which is about why we cannot hold those two beliefs, the words we say (as I've tried to explain) merely reflect some belief, literally cannot but do otherwise.

Moore himself is reported to have said the sentence is "an absurdity for psychological reasons" - According to Wittgenstein's report of the lecture.

Despite the herculean efforts of most posters here to avoid any psychological talk and focus on the 'say-ability' of the sentence, this was never the object of the paradox. The object of the paradox was entirely psychological - according to Moore. — Isaac

You appear to suggest that Moore, Wittgenstein and Ramsey were in agreement on this. However, according to Marie McGinn, Wittgenstein did not agree with Moore about this:

Wittgenstein expresses his dissatisfaction with Moore’s resolution of the paradox
in the letter he wrote immediately after the meeting of the Moral Sciences Club:
‘To call this, as I think you did, “an absurdity for psychological reasons” seems to me
wrong, or highly misleading. (If I ask someone “Is there a fire in the next room?”
and he answers “I believe there is” I can’t say: “Don’t be irrelevant. I asked you
about the fire, not about your state of mind!”)’ (Wittgenstein, 1995: 315–16)

You appear to suggest that Moore, Wittgenstein and Ramsey were in agreement on this. However, according to Marie McGinn, Wittgenstein did not agree with Moore about this: — Luke

Yes. I didn't mean to imply they were all in agreement about the cause of the dissonance, that's why I tacked on "according to Moore" at the end of that bit. What I think they're in agreement about is that it is the beliefs themselves which are at odds.

But that just perpetuates the claim with which Wittgenstein expressly disagrees: that the paradox is "an absurdity for psychological reasons".

But that just perpetuates the claim with which Wittgenstein expressly disagrees: that the paradox is "an absurdity for psychological reasons". — Luke

Yes. Unfortunately we can only gather very little of Moore's meaning from that one letter which is why I quoted from PI. It seems clear, at least to me, that Wittgenstein's objection to merely psychological was not about moving the issue from belief to grammar, but about not limiting the issue to one of mere cognitive dissonance, which I'm guessing from the context is what Moore might have implied in his lecture. If we don't adopt that understanding of the passage in PI it make Wittgenstein's later comments in 'On Certainty' difficult to understand, no?