...the belief itself... is "a description of one's mental state"

That's what I've never claimed. So when you said it "was not the belief itself which is a description of one's mental state", I would agree.

I said "I believe" can be a description of one's mental state, or part of one anyway. I adopted that terminological choice from others here. I wouldn't necessarily choose it. There are much better ways to untangle the knots here.

You're not saying that "I believe" is a description of one's mental state; you're saying that the certainty/doubt associated with a belief is a description of one's mental state. — Luke

No. I'm saying exactly what you claimed I'm not. I'm not saying exactly what you said I was.

:brow:

The certainty/doubt is the mental state.

"I believe, but I'm not sure..." refers to(is all about) one's own mental state. "I believe, but I'm not sure that X" is about one's own doubt concerning the truth of X.

"I am confused" is both a belief statement about one's own mental state, and describes and/or refers to one's own mental state...

Come to think of it.

:wink:

They are virtually innumerable such true statements(if that's what you mean by "truths") about one that they cannot assert about themselves without sounding 'absurd'. — creativesoul

Speak for yourself. Though I can, of course, make statements about myself (whether false or true) in an tone or voice which will make those statements sound absurd, or in a manner which will appear absurd, or in circumstances in which the statements are absurd. But I'd guess that's not what you mean.

The photograph thing is clever. I had matter-of-factly observed that we can't deduce p from someone's asserting p -- never occurred to me to imagine deducing p from my believing that p.

But this is another point of divergence between the first- and not-first-person cases: we regularly infer p from the fact, which we (let's say) infer from what they say, that someone trustworthy, either in general or just in the matter at hand, believes that p. It is plausibly our principal way of gathering knowledge. This sort of inference is clearly reasonable even if we grant the point at the top, that there's no logical but only probable implication to be had here.

But in the first-person case? 'It must be true because I believe that it is' is a non-starter. Not only not deductive but not even probable, and in fact just not conformant with our standards of rationality. This looks wrong, on second thought. Of course someone could say, 'I'm probably right about this, because I'm usually right about this sort of thing.' No, the issue is whether they could take their own belief that p as evidence that p, and if it's evidence then it could count as a reason for believing that p!

That's pretty interesting.

They are virtually innumerable such true statements(if that's what you mean by "truths") about one that they cannot assert about themselves without sounding 'absurd'.
— creativesoul

Speak for yourself. — Ciceronianus the White

Surprising answer, given that I thought that you and I shared quite a bit of overlap(agreement) in our respective views in this thread.

Do you not agree that there are a large group of true statements about an individual that the individual cannot assert about themselves without sounding absurd?

Do you object to the following paragraph?

Assuming linguistic competency, each and every time an individual observes another being surprised by rainfall, the observer has the ability to talk about the observations in terms of another individual's lack of true belief. We can watch another from the beginning to the end, so to speak, have no clue that it is raining outside before being suddenly surprised. We can do a live report.

In times like these, we can most certainly say something true about another in terms of their lack of true belief about the weather.

We cannot say the same of ourselves, while it's happening to us, because it's happening to us; which means that we are the one lacking true belief about the weather. Moore wonders why we cannot same the same about ourselves. Had he kept in mind that we are not aware of our mistakes while we're making them, he would better understand why it sounds so absurd to say the same of ourselves.

I would guess that 'It is raining' is about the weather, whereas 'I believe it is raining' is about one's belief. The belief may be implied by the former statement, but it is not asserted. Perhaps your views are different to Moore's. — Luke

That just seems to beg the question. If we're going to assume the object of propositions from the outset, then we're only going to get limited range of possible solutions to the paradox.

This misses the point. In the present tense, 'P' and 'I believe that P' have the same meaning, as Ramsey contends. However, Wittgenstein's example demonstrates that these two statements each have a different meaning in the past tense. Since 'P' and 'I believe that P' do not have the same meaning in the past tense, then Ramsey is incorrect to make the unqualified assertion that they both have the same meaning/use. — Luke

What I'm saying is that it has a different meaning in the past tense in any case - Wittgenstein's, Ramsey's, Moore's... "I believe that..." is not, according to Wittgenstein, intended as a third party description of one's mental state, yet "I believed that..." is so intended. See the quote...

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”. (PI, p.190) — Isaac

Believe has a different past tense use to it's present tense use. I don't understand what might be so problematic about this, lots of words have different uses in different contexts. "I believe that P" could well be spoken referring to one's mental state in odd circumstances. say a neuroscientist interpreting his own fMRI scans (in a future where we're better at it) - "Oh look! I believe that P". So I see it as completely unproblematic to see "I believe that P" as meaning different things in different contexts, and equally so that some of those contexts only normally arise in the past or present tenses.

I consider this a unique view of the matter. This would imply that all assertions are about beliefs rather than, e.g., about the world. — Luke

In philosophy maybe. It is the standard model in psychology and neuroscience and has been for at least thirty years. Philosophy has an unhealthy obsession with absolute truth. I've asked this in this thread before, but not to you directly, so..

If assertions are 'about' the world, then how does the world become the subject? When I form the words constituting the assertion, how does the world tell me which words to choose without first being inferred by my beliefs about it?

As far as all of neuroscience is concerned, my beliefs about the world trigger word selection from my linguistic cortices which then form sentences. The words are selected from several areas of the brain holding information on associations between words and my beliefs, which are then strung together. If you have some plausible mechanism whereby the world directly determines my word selection then I'd be interested to hear it. If not, then it seems strikingly odd to me that we should say something outside of our direct awareness is the object of a sentence we constructed. It would imply that we're not in control of the object of our sentences, that we have no choice what they're about.

When we ask "what are you talking about", people do not reply "I don't know yet, I'll just go and check"

Surely there are at least some cases in which we know for certain whether it did in fact rain, like the time I got drenched walking home without an umbrella. — Luke

Certainty has nothing to do with it. even something we have 100% confidence in is still a belief.

If Wittgenstein's aim is to show that 'I believe...' is not a description of my own mental state, or that this is not how the expression 'I believe...' is used, then how is Wittgenstein making it a psychological issue? He is trying to avoid viewing it as a psychological issue. — Luke

I think this is just a lack of clarity about what 'psychological' refers to here. See...

‘[o]ne can mistrust one’s own senses, but not one’s own belief ’ (PI, p. 190).

How is that not a proposition of psychology? It is a clear assertion about what the mind can and cannot do. To mistrust one's own belief, one would have to have a belief about one's own belief (a low confidence belief). Wittgenstein is saying here (and quite rightly), that one cannot generally do this, and is supported by the evidence - we have higher level hierarchical structures which unify the dissonant output from lower level structures, it is generally impossible for us to have a belief about a belief, it simply get unified into a single belief.

...it is generally impossible for us to have a belief about a belief — Isaac

If that were the case, then there could be no such thing as what many classify as reflective thought, a change in one's own sense of self worth, belonging, identity, self-examination, superego, self policing, or any other sort of metacognition aimed at deliberate improvement by virtue of aiming to avoid forming, having, and/or otherwise holding false belief. There could be no understanding of our own pre-existing belief, if we cannot form, have, and/or hold subsequent belief about them. There could be no such thing as identifying, isolating, and subsequently removing false belief from our worldview.

Yet, all these things exist and/or happen regularly.

A current lack of confidence, reliability, trustworthiness in some statement or other that we once believed with nearly unshakable conviction comes from exactly such a metacognitive endeavor.

We're equivocating on the meaning of 'belief'. A belief in the sense I'm talking about, is an inference about the state of the world. It already (in it's output) contains a level of confidence. There's no secondary 'belief' about the the original 'belief' by which our confidence in it is measured. we might have beliefs about our general metal state, but they would not speak differently of the confidence the belief about the state of the world shows in it's output.

my beliefs about the world trigger word selection — Isaac

I would concur... completely... if... we added beliefs about ourselves too... we are both objects in the world, and subjects taking account of it, and/or ourselves.

Witt said something much stronger(too strong by my lights)... the limits of my language are the limits of my world... or something similar.

I would concur... completely... if... we added beliefs about ourselves too... we are both objects in the world, and subjects taking account of it, and/or ourselves. — creativesoul

Yes, absolutely. I think a lot of confusion about much of what I write here results from the fact that we can at times treat ourselves as objects about which we form inferences. The whole of psychology is the forming if inferences about the human mind as an object, despite using the human mind, as ourselves, to make those inferences.

Some see that as problematic, I don't, but it's worth remembering which we're talking about and not mixing the two.

We are using the term "belief" in remarkably different ways. Both uses are picking something out of this world to the exclusion of all else, but we're picking out very different things. You are picking out an inference about the state of the world, in addition to further claiming that the inference already (in it's output) contains a level of confidence.

Psychology is belief about that which existed long before the discipline(much simpler thought and belief). This holds good even when using the sense you've described above.

The whole of psychology is the forming if inferences about the human mind as an object, despite using the human mind, as ourselves, to make those inferences.

Some see that as problematic, I don't, but it's worth remembering which we're talking about and not mixing the two. — Isaac

I see no issue at all with using our mind to acquire knowledge of that which existed in it's entirety prior to it...

Human thought and belief are such things. All minds consist - in large part at least - of thought and belief about the world and/or oneself.

the assertion can be about nothing else but the belief (not the fact of their belief, the content of it) — Isaac

A belief in the sense I'm talking about, is an inference about the state of the world. — Isaac

Just to connect some dots here -- what you called the belief's 'content' above, that's the inference about the state of the world. (And 'inference' you're using here not in the sense of 'an act of inferring' but in the sense of 'a conclusion reached by an act of inferring,' a proposition, yes? Not trying to be pedantic here, but that word's ambiguous and we're already having enough trouble.)

So beliefs are about the world and assertions are about the content of beliefs, namely, inferences that have been made about the world.

Alright, suppose I have inferred that Dewey defeated Truman, and I hold a belief the content of which is 'Dewey defeated Truman.' If I were to assert that Dewey defeated Truman, for instance by saying, 'Dewey defeated Truman,' I would be, as I understand it, saying something about the proposition (expressed here as) 'Dewey defeated Truman,' the content of a belief I hold. What would I be saying about it? That it is true?

what you called the belief's 'content' above, that's the inference about the state of the world. (And 'inference' you're using here not in the sense of 'an act of inferring' but in the sense of 'a conclusion reached by an act of inferring,' — Srap Tasmaner

Yes.

a proposition, yes? — Srap Tasmaner

No. I don't see the results as propositions, just 'tendencies to act as if...'. A proposition is a speech act. It could be done for all sorts of reasons. I know philosophically, a proposition need not be spoken, but I think this is where a lot of the confusion comes in. We do not necessarily think in words, so converting all beliefs to propositions muddies the content of those beliefs by injecting rhetorical syntax into psychological processes - we might well 'talk as if' such-and-such were the case, but if we do not 'act as if' such-and-such were the case then we have cause to doubt that our grammar actually reflects our psychology.

So beliefs are about the world and assertions are about the content of beliefs, namely, inferences that have been made about the world. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, mostly. As I said, speech acts are performed for all sorts of reasons, so an assertion might be about the content of some belief, but not necessarily the one people listening to it would take from the words used.

suppose I have inferred that Dewey defeated Truman, and I hold a belief the content of which is 'Dewey defeated Truman.' If I were to assert that Dewey defeated Truman, for instance by saying, 'Dewey defeated Truman,' I would be, as I understand it, saying something about the proposition (expressed here as) 'Dewey defeated Truman,' the content of a belief I hold. What would I be saying about it? That it is true? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, in that instance, bearing in mind the caveat about using propositions as proxies for mental processes. This is how I agree somewhat with Ramsey's conclusion that truth is more rightly thought of as a property of beliefs, not of propositions (Ramsey got there another way). Not all beliefs can be properly expressed as propositions.

Also, according to later Ramsey, for a belief to be true is merely for you to have the expected results from acting as if it were the case. So your believing 'Dewey defeated Truman' to be the case results in a likelihood to say such things as "Dewey defeated Truman", it's a true belief to the extent that when acting upon it, the result you get is what you'd expect it to be if it were the case that Dewey defeated Truman.

I'm generally more emotivist about truth. 'Truth' is just a label applied to things we really, really want other people to act as if were the case. I think our actual beliefs are more subtly graded in terms of Bayesian probabilities, but we could hold that 'true' ones are just some subset (I just don't think that's mostly how people use the word).

That last bit of writing was really confused and I've edited it too many times already.

What I mean to say is that I think the word 'true', or 'truth' means what it is used to mean - and what it's used to mean is "I really, really want you to act as if this were the case", so that's what it means as far as I'm concerned. This becomes a classic deflationist position (as per Early Ramsey) because we simply don't say "'It's raining' is true" we just say "It's raining". We only add "...is true" to anything for rhetorical effect, or shorthand "everything he said was true" (saves us from just repeating everything he said).

The extent to which I agree with later Ramsey is that I think it a useful distinction to have a technical category of beliefs which, when acted upon as if the were the case produce the expected results. Using 'true' this way as a technical term seems advantageous. we just need to bear in mind that it's not how the majority of the population use it.

The photograph thing is clever. I had matter-of-factly observed that we can't deduce p from someone's asserting p -- never occurred to me to imagine deducing p from my believing that p.

But this is another point of divergence between the first- and not-first-person cases: we regularly infer p from the fact, which we (let's say) infer from what they say, that someone trustworthy, either in general or just in the matter at hand, believes that p. It is plausibly our principal way of gathering knowledge. This sort of inference is clearly reasonable even if we grant the point at the top, that there's no logical but only probable implication to be had here. — Srap Tasmaner

It's an interesting observation. As I understand it, Wittgenstein's aim is to undermine the assumption that 'I believe...' is a description of a mental state, in order to demonstrate that 'I believe that p' has a meaning/use which is equivalent to 'p'. That is, he sees this as typically how 'I believe...' is used, without reference to anything psychological. Wittgenstein's resolution to the paradox - why it seems paradoxical - is because it practically and actually is a contradiction. 'I believe that p' effectively means (has the same use as) 'p' (in the first person present indicative use only). The 'photograph thing' is one of the arguments he uses to break the psychological assumption.

That just seems to beg the question. If we're going to assume the object of propositions from the outset, then we're only going to get limited range of possible solutions to the paradox. — Isaac

Beg which question? I'm just trying to make sense of Moore's paradox by way of McGinn's article. I tried to answer the question you raised about her article. I'm not interested in a debate over realism/idealism. Anyway, I suppose the same could be said about assuming the "subject" of propositions from the outset.

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”. (PI, p.190)
— Isaac

Believe has a different past tense use to it's present tense use. I don't understand what might be so problematic about this, lots of words have different uses in different contexts. — Isaac

Wittgenstein's point is that the meanings of the present-tense statements "I believe it's going to rain" and "It's going to rain" are equivalent, but the meanings of the past-tense statements "I believed then that it was going to rain" and "It did rain then" are not equivalent. It's not simply that the meaning of each statement changes due to tense, but that the meaning of the two statements is not equivalent in the past-tense, as it is in the present-tense.

Ealier you stated: "Ramsey's solution is simple, it's because 'I believe that P', 'P is true' and 'P' all amount to the same thing in ordinary use, just asserting P." Wittgenstein's example intends to demonstrate that these different statements do not "all amount to the same thing" or have the same meaning in the past tense. This is "problematic" only insofar as Ramsey's solution fails to account for it.

If assertions are 'about' the world, then how does the world become the subject? When I form the words constituting the assertion, how does the world tell me which words to choose without first being inferred by my beliefs about it? — Isaac

How do you get from 'making assertions about the world' to 'the world tells me which words to choose'? I can't make any sense of this.

I think this is just a lack of clarity about what 'psychological' refers to here. — Isaac

I meant it in the philosophical sense of psychologism. In this case, it is the view Wittgenstein is attempting to counter: the assumption that 'I believe...' refers to a description or reading of one's own inner/mental state.

We cannot say the same of ourselves, while it's happening to us, because it's happening to us; which means that we are the one lacking true belief about the weather. — creativesoul

What is the "true statement about ourselves" here?

This is clearly what LW was up to -- without even going back to the Investigations, you could guess that what's going to interest him here is the grammar of "I believe ..."

What is lovely is the observation that a belief is not like a sense impression. Sense impressions have this sort of authority, like scouts or emissaries who actually come from the lands beyond to report how things stand. Beliefs aren't like that at all.

When I tried to think of counterexamples, I kept finding things much more like sense impressions. Say you're looking for your car keys, and suddenly remember seeing them on the kitchen table; you can indeed take your own mental state as evidence that your keys are on the kitchen table, but you wouldn't describe this as suddenly remembering that you believe they're on the kitchen table and had merely forgotten that you believe this. That's cool.

A proposition is a speech act. — Isaac

This is all very helpful. (At the moment, I'm really just trying to figure out how we can stop talking past each other.) We're still having serious terminological problems -- in my world, the above is either a contradiction or just nonsense! -- but that can be remedied. And I know perfectly well that Ramsey had truth-deflationist leanings, which is why it seemed odd to me that what we land on as "assertion" is claiming, of some proposition, that it is true.

I think what you want to say is something like this: I have enough confidence in some of my beliefs that among the actions I am willing to take on the basis of those beliefs is, in the appropriate circumstances, to say out loud that this is how things stand, to agree with someone else who says it, to answer in the affirmative when asked if this is how things stand. Speaking is a way of acting upon a belief.

But something is getting garbled when you also tell the causal story of how we produce an utterance, and then call what caused the utterance what the utterance is 'about'. I'm just not getting the connection you see between the causal chain or process that results in an utterance and 'aboutness.' If I assert, by making an utterance, that this is how things stand, what I'm talking about is how things stand. Your occasional use of 'about' to mean something else has me befuddled.

Not all beliefs can be properly expressed as propositions. — Isaac

Example?

We cannot say the same of ourselves, while it's happening to us, because it's happening to us; which means that we are the one lacking true belief about the weather.
— creativesoul

What is the "true statement about ourselves" here? — Ciceronianus the White

I'm not even sure what you're asking me.

Mac does not believe that it's raining outside, but he's wrong. <------------that is what we can say about another that we cannot say about ourselves without sounding absurd. Others can say it about us, when we're mistaken about the weather, but we cannot say it about ourselves in the same scenario, when we're mistaken about the weather, without sounding absurd.

"I do not believe that it's raining outside, but I'm wrong" describes the very same scenario as "It's raining but I do not believe it".

Others can say it about us, when we're mistaken about the weather, but we cannot say it about ourselves in the same scenario, when we're mistaken about the weather, without sounding absurd.

"I do not believe that it's raining outside, but I'm wrong" describes the very same scenario as "It's raining but I do not believe it". — creativesoul

Yes. But you said there are virtually an innumerable number of true statements we cannot make about ourselves without sounding absurd. In what sense are the statements "I do not believe that it's raining outside, but I'm wrong?" or "It's raining but I do not believe it" true? I assume they'd have to be made by someone who doesn't believe something is taking place though aware it's taking place, or someone who knows something is taking place but does not believe it's taking place. Otherwise, it strikes me they wouldn't be true statements.

Who would make such "true statements" in virtually innumerable instances?

Others can say it about us, when we're mistaken about the weather, but we cannot say it about ourselves in the same scenario, when we're mistaken about the weather, without sounding absurd.

"I do not believe that it's raining outside, but I'm wrong" describes the very same scenario as "It's raining but I do not believe it".
— creativesoul

Yes. — Ciceronianus the White

Ok.

So it seems you agree with the above bit. Good. I thought we were in agreement about that much at least.

But you said there are virtually an innumerable number of true statements we cannot make about ourselves without sounding absurd. — Ciceronianus the White

Indeed I did, and there most certainly are. In light of being mistaken...

Moore provided only one example of innumerable actual situations when one holds false belief, when one does not hold the right sorts of true belief, or when one is otherwise mistaken. That is the key here; an irrevocably crucial consideration that seems to have been left sorely neglected.

Each and every time one is mistaken - and those situations are innumerable - there are most certainly at least a few true statements about the scenario, that that particular individual cannot say about themselves without sounding absurd, despite the fact that others can. That is the scenario put forth by Moore.

His subsequent 'puzzling' question, however, is far too vague, for we can make all sorts of true statements about ourselves without issue. So, asking why I cannot say something true about myself without sounding absurd doesn't put a sharp enough point on the question, especially given the rest of the hypothetical scenario he provided. A far better question would have been to ask "When I am mistaken, why can't I say the same things about myself that others do without sounding absurd?"

The absurdity is the result of 1 not being able to believe both statements within the Moorean sentence at the same time, 2 not being able to knowingly hold false belief, 3 not being able to recognize our own such mistakes while making them, and 4 being perfectly capable of stating the sentence anyway.

In what sense are the statements "I do not believe that it's raining outside, but I'm wrong?" or "It's raining but I do not believe it" true? — Ciceronianus the White

In the exact same sense that they are true when spoken by another.

The statements are true in the sense that they are meaningful and they correspond to the way things are; the case at hand; reality; the world; the universe; what's happened; states of affairs; etc., and that meaningful correspondence obtains regardless of whether or not the speaker actually believes the statements.

"I do not believe it's raining outside, but I'm wrong" is true if, and only if, I do not believe it is raining outside but I'm wrong. "It's raining outside, but Mac does not believe it" is true in exactly the same way.

What makes statements true(what makes a statement obtain correspondence) are actual events; what's happened, what is happening, and/or what will happen(in the case of prediction/expectation which aren't even capable if being true when spoken). If it is raining, and one does not believe it is raining, and one says(quite absurdly) "It's raining, but I do not believe it", then the sentence(both statements) would be true on both counts.

When taken separately, the one about the weather would be true if it was raining when spoken, regardless of the speaker's belief. However, "I do not believe it is raining" is true if and only if the speaker does not believe it is raining, and as such it's truth is not determined by the weather, but rather, by the speaker's belief about the weather.

I assume they'd have to be made by someone who doesn't believe something is taking place though aware it's taking place, or someone who knows something is taking place but does not believe it's not taking place. Otherwise, it strikes me they wouldn't be true statements.

Who would make such "true statements" in virtually innumerable instances? — Ciceronianus the White

All individuals that attempt to say the same things about themselves that another says so easily when the individual is mistaken about something or other. Anyone using accounting practices typically used by others as a means to talk about their own mistake, while they are in the middle of making it.

Anyone, perhaps, looking to show the inherent inadequacies of conventional understanding(logical notation/propositional logic)?

Someone, perhaps, who took note that while others can recognize and point out that we are mistaken, while we're mistaken, it doesn't make much sense at all if we say the same things about ourselves, but they could not effectively explain how and/or why that's the case.

Someone, perhaps, looking to further discriminate between all the different meanings/uses of "I believe..."

Someone looking to further the idea that philosophy is doing something important?

No one at all practicing common parlance.

I'm just trying to make sense of Moore's paradox by way of McGinn's article. I tried to answer the question you raised about her article. I'm not interested in a debate over realism/idealism. — Luke

It's not about idealism. recognising that the access we have to the real world is indirect does not entail idealism. All I'm saying here is that if you're trying to make sense of Moore's paradox, it limits your options to simply assume that the proper object of an utterance is the real world and the truth judgement of that utterance is the state of the world. You may well have ideological commitments by which you'd like to assume that from the outset, and that's fine. I'm only saying that my understanding of the paradox doesn't assume those things and so we're not going to get any further if yours does.

Wittgenstein's point is that the meanings of the present-tense statements "I believe it's going to rain" and "It's going to rain" are equivalent, but the meanings of the past-tense statements "I believed then that it was going to rain" and "It did rain then" are not equivalent. It's not simply that the meaning of each statement changes due to tense, but that the meaning of the two statements is not equivalent in the past-tense, as it is in the present-tense. — Luke

That seems the same to me. "I believe it's raining" can be a description of one's state of mind (as I gave the example of someone reading off a super-advanced fMRI scan of their own brain), it just rarely is, but nothing is preventing it from being so. As such, it is this meaning which is implied when the sentence is in the past tense. The other meaning ("It's raining") is expressed in the past tense as "I believe it was raining". I don't really see what insight Wittgenstein is pointing at here. We have two different meanings (description of state of mind and description of states of affairs) and a way of expressing both in either present or past tense. I'm not seeing the significance of the actual structures we use to form those expressions, we still have all four combinations available to us in our language.

Wittgenstein's example intends to demonstrate that these different statements do not "all amount to the same thing" or have the same meaning in the past tense. — Luke

I think they do, it's just the grammatical rules for expressing them that Wittgenstein is getting wrong "I believe that P", "P is true", and "P" are all present tense. The past tenses (in terms of assertions of belief about states of affairs) are "I believe P was the case", It's true that P was the case", and "P was the case". Saying "I believed that P" is the past tense of the sense of an assertion about my state of mind. A legitimate use (uncommon in the present tense, but common in the past tense).

How do you get from 'making assertions about the world' to 'the world tells me which words to choose'? I can't make any sense of this. — Luke

?I'm simply trying to make the pragmatic point that we run into problems of intent if we assert that the object of our utterances is something further back in the chain of causation than we can identify. Here is a chain of causation...

The actions of sub-atomic particles cause edges to form in matter where properties change

The reflection of photons off that part of the world into my retina cause an electrical signal to be sent to my occipital cortex.

The activity of that cortex causes several feedback loops (including the selection of more samples from the world) eventually releasing signals to higher level cortices.

---

After several iterations of this process, that particular pattern of particles and edges is associated with my concept of 'table'

(skipping quite a few stages)

I want to make someone aware of what I see, Various linguistic cortices send and receive signals from those areas which send out object recognition signals and produce the vocal twitches which sound like "There's a table", or "I believe there's a table", or "Watch out for that table!" to get that job done.

You want to say that the 'object' of the utterance is located at the 'outside world' point in that sequence (above the dotted line (sub-conscious activities in our brain are also outside of our conscious Markov blanket). But note, it's not a 'table' at all at those points, it's not a 'table' until well within the inference levels of conscious awareness, quite deeply within our own belief models.

I think the proper 'object' of a sentence is something we assign (it's not a state of the world we can be right or wrong about. So we could have it at the actual state of affairs the sentence was ultimately prompted by if we want. I'm just saying that this would be confusing, as we don't even know what that is, we just infer it.

something is getting garbled when you also tell the causal story of how we produce an utterance, and then call what caused the utterance what the utterance is 'about'. I'm just not getting the connection you see between the causal chain or process that results in an utterance and 'aboutness.' If I assert, by making an utterance, that this is how things stand, what I'm talking about is how things stand. Your occasional use of 'about' to mean something else has me befuddled. — Srap Tasmaner

Much as I said to Luke above. If we want to talk about the object of our sentences, to answer questions such as "What are you talking about", we only have access to the selection of object identification models that we have in our brain. Imagine it like a bag full of marbles, we pick out a marble and show it to someone (form a sentence about it), then someone says "which was the marble you showed us?" - you can only delve back into that bag to produce the answer to that question.

Objects are stored as such in our brains, belief models which store recognisable breaks in the symmetry of reality to more rapidly infer predictions about them the next time they're seen (this is a 'table', tables hold cups). Outside of our brains, they are not objects, they're just matter, or processes or whatever, we'll never quite know, but they don't have objectively defined edges and properties, we do that bit inside our minds. So if we want to talk about the object of our sentence, to answer questions such as "what are you talking about?", then we'd be better off, I think, using these models as an answer (most people have very similar ones so it makes communication easier). But if we use these models as an answer, then the object of a sentence is in our minds, not in the outside world. The model (the thing that gets the label 'table') is in our minds. That which it is a model of is what's in the outside world.

Not all beliefs can be properly expressed as propositions. — Isaac


Example? — Srap Tasmaner

I couldn't very well do that without thereby disproving my theory could I? There are activities in the brain which we do not properly understand yet, yet they produce action and as such count, for me, as a belief (disposition to act as if...). As such, I think there are probably beliefs which cannot be properly expressed as propositions. It seems unlikely on the face of it that we have words for processes and concepts we've been thus far unaware of.

Not all beliefs can be properly expressed as propositions. — Isaac


Example?
— Srap Tasmaner

I couldn't very well do that without thereby disproving my theory could I? — Isaac

A non linguistic(language less) creature's...

:wink:

No problem for your theory or mine!

It's not about idealism. recognising that the access we have to the real world is indirect does not entail idealism. — Isaac

Okay then, I'm not interested in a debate over direct/indirect realism.

All I'm saying here is that if you're trying to make sense of Moore's paradox, it limits your options to simply assume that the proper object of an utterance is the real world and the truth judgement of that utterance is the state of the world. You may well have ideological commitments by which you'd like to assume that from the outset, and that's fine. I'm only saying that my understanding of the paradox doesn't assume those things and so we're not going to get any further if yours does. — Isaac

Couldn't exactly the same thing be said regarding your assumption of indirect realism? I just don't see the need for direct/indirect realism to be introduced into this discussion. Why are you trying to force it?

That seems the same to me. "I believe it's raining" can be a description of one's state of mind (as I gave the example of someone reading off a super-advanced fMRI scan of their own brain), it just rarely is, but nothing is preventing it from being so. As such, it is this meaning which is implied when the sentence is in the past tense. The other meaning ("It's raining") is expressed in the past tense as "I believe it was raining". I don't really see what insight Wittgenstein is pointing at here. — Isaac

It seems you're still not getting it.

The following two (present tense) statements have the same meaning/use:

(1) "I believe it's going to rain"; and
(2) "It's going to rain"

Both (1) and (2) have the same meaning/use.

The following two (past tense) statements have a different meaning/use:

(3) "I believed then that it was going to rain"; and
(4) "It did rain then"

Both (3) and (4) do not have the same meaning/use.

The following two (present tense) statements have the same meaning/use:

(1) "I believe it's going to rain"; and
(2) "It's going to rain"

Both (1) and (2) mean the same as (2). — Luke

That's not always the case.

You responded prior to my edit. I meant that they are both used to mean the same thing, usually.