I'm making a comment about failure of reference. If that example doesn't work for you, then see the earlier "the present king of France is bald" example. — Andrew M

Like I said, its a matter of some string of scribbles being useful or useless. Scribbles that fail to refer are useless scribbles, just as a dog's bark or the wagging of its tail must refer to something that isn't another bark or tail wag, or else the bark or wag of the tail wouldn't be very useful behaviors. Drawing scribbles that don't refer to anything isn't a useful behaviour. What else could Banno mean by saying that meaning is use? Words are used to refer. If you didn't use scribbles to refer, then you didn't use words. It is what distinguishes scribbles from words.

(referring) subject.
— Andrew M

was a typo?
— bongo fury

No, I meant it in the sense of "existing" or a successful reference, as opposed to a failure of reference (such as the present King of France). — Andrew M

So, not

"Snow" or snow?
— bongo fury

Snow. — Andrew M

At all. Not, one instead of the other. Rather,

"Snow"'s referring to snow.

Something like,

The point here though is that we normally use a sentence to assert something about the reference of its (referring) subject term to its referent. — Andrew M

A typo, then, but a different correction now?

Yes, it's not enough to look at the words in isolation, you also have to look at the context they are used in. — Andrew M

I wonder if that would work as an argument against Davidson: we can't tell if a sentence is truth apt unless we know the context of utterance.

"S" is true IFF S

That may be nonsense?

Plus the sentence could become truth apt (if we grant that sentences can be) if you named your dog 'The present king of France' — frank

What if the statement was made by a person that is hallucinating or delusional, or a habitual liar?

What if the statement was made by a person that is hallucinating or delusional, or a habitual liar? — Harry Hindu

Depends I guess.

Good questions, but I'm unwilling to discuss the debate here and now, while it's still in process. I will say that the bit about "the way things are" was introduced by Banno. I merely obliged by arguing how my position does not result in denying that statements can be about the way things are. Some clearly are. I do prefer different terminology, but my preferences are usually set aside when discussing this stuff with Banno. I would not introduce "states of affairs" either.

"The belief is not a statement" is not the same as "the belief has propositional content". It is not something I wish to defend. — Banno

Typo. (wish to attack?) Or unclear.

How about:

"The point here though is that we normally use a sentence to assert something about a subject (where the subject exists)."

I wonder if that would work as an argument against Davidson: we can't tell if a sentence is truth apt unless we know the context of utterance.

"S" is true IFF S

That may be nonsense? — frank

It's a rule (or definition) that states what it means for a statement to be true. We may not always correctly see how the rule applies. We might think that a particular statement is true that is not. Or we may think the rule applies in contexts where it doesn't.

But that's not a fault of the rule. It's just the fact of human fallibility even when we're being careful. So we develop pragmatic rules to help with that relating to the reasons/justifications for making assertions.

It's a rule (or definition) that states what it means for a statement to be true. — Andrew M

Truth is undefinable. IOW, if you don't know what it is, no one could explain it to you.

But that's not a fault of the rule. It's just the fact of human fallibility even when we're being careful. So we develop pragmatic rules to help with that relating to the reasons/justifications for making assertions. — Andrew M

What does the T-sentence rule have to do with justifications? It's usually associated with deflation of truth.

I actually didn't realise they were debating. I thought they decided not to.

Anyway, Banno needs to explain that beliefs are either true or false and make a case for his preferred truth bearer (whatever that is) and show that creative's candidate doesn't work.

If creative has chosen some sort of hardware event as his truth bearer, that's a fail.

How about:
"The point here though is that we normally use a sentence to assert something about a subject (where the subject exists)." — Andrew M

So, just to be clear, do you at last see why

(referring) subject — Andrew M

would have to be a typo?




Why the stubborn attachment to "subject" at all? Why not referent or object for snow, and term, word, phrase etc. for "snow"? Does a neo-Aristotelian perhaps need to equivocate systematically between the two senses?

Something to do with states of affairs having grammatical form?

That could explain the trouble it took to get you to examine the matter instead of presuming to lecture further.

Depends I guess. — frank

On what? What if the speaker was referring to a dream or a fictional story? There are many instances where the present king of France is bald would be true. So it would appear that it depends on what is being talked about. Propositions are always ontological in the sense that they are about how things are or are not. They are epistemological in the sense that the symbols and rules we agree to use to refer how things are or are not, are arbitrary. We could just as well use barks and tail wags to represent some state of affairs as we could use scribbles and utterances.

What if the proposition was, "The present king of France is imaginary." Does that not change what we are talking about, even though we are still talking about the present king of France?

Does this not show that some propositions have terms that are not clearly defined, or have multiple definitions, and which one is being used isnt clear? Thats why I demand definitions for these nebulous terms.

Just like a computer program, variables need to be defined before you can perform functions with them. Scribbles need to be defined before they can be used.

What on Earth are all of these scribbles in this thread is about? Is it about a debate? What is the debate about? Is it about something being the case - the ontological nature of propositions and beliefs? Does a debate not assume that one side is closer to the truth than the other side, and that each side tries to show how their scribbles are more of an accurate representation of the ontological relationship between propositions and beliefs? Are you not trying to show something with your use of scribbles? I'm inclined to believe that many people here are more interested in hearing themselves talk than in actually solving problems.

What is the debate about? Is it about something being the case - the ontological nature of propositions and beliefs? Does a debate not assume that one side is closer to the truth than the other side, and that each side tries to show how their scribbles are more of an accurate representation of the ontological relationship between propositions and beliefs? — Harry Hindu

Likely, when @Banno asserts that belief is always about states of affairs, this claim indicates a limited domain where beliefs are easily verifiable:
“If I were to say that belief is always about states of affairs, would you agree? Then it only remains to point out that a state of affairs can always be put in propositional form for us to see that beliefs are always about what can be put in propositional form”. However, one can believe in God because one cannot know for sure that He exists. Similarly, one could believe in democracy, communism, climate change, etc. Here, knowledge has to be supplemented by belief; a belief emerges in order to compensate for the failure of knowledge. Even if knowledge and belief can assume the propositional form, they nonetheless express different manifestations of truth.

“If I were to say that belief is always about states of affairs, would you agree? Then it only remains to point out that a state of affairs can always be put in propositional form for us to see that beliefs are always about what can be put in propositional form” — Number2018

Beliefs are not about what can be put in propositional form. How beliefs are communicated is a seperate problem than what beliefs are. Seems like you have to solve the latter problem first before solving the prior problem.

Putting beliefs in propositional form is just another state of affairs that is not the state of affairs that the proposition is about. We can talk about talking, just as we can talk about anything.

Beliefs are not about what can be put in propositional form. How beliefs are communicated is a seperate problem than what beliefs are. — Harry Hindu

If I believe that it is raining, there is my mental state that is expressed in belief. Yet, would my mental state be identifiable and recognizable if I could not understand and articulate it in a sentence “It is raining”? The existence of the statement has two propositional dimensions: ontological subjectivity and a completely objective fact.

Yet, would my mental state be identifiable and recognizable if I could not understand and articulate it in a sentence “It is raining”? — Number2018

Again, communicating beliefs is a seperate issue than having beliefs. Making sounds with your mouth is a behaviour that expresses your belief just as covering your head and running inside does.

As an observer of others, your only have access to their beliefs via their actions. Do you need to observe your own actions to know you have beliefs? Do you need to say, "it is raining." to have a belief that it is raining, or do you simply need to experience water falling from the sky to have the belief that it is raining? If simply stating it is raining means you have a belief that it is raining, then who needs water falling from the sky to believe that it is raining?

Truth is undefinable. IOW, if you don't know what it is, no one could explain it to you. — frank

Tarski's definition is, admittedly, abstract. However Aristotle's definition was:

To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true. — Aristotle, Metaphysics 1011b25

I could explain that if need be.

But that's not a fault of the rule. It's just the fact of human fallibility even when we're being careful. So we develop pragmatic rules to help with that relating to the reasons/justifications for making assertions.
— Andrew M

What does the T-sentence rule have to do with justifications? It's usually associated with deflation of truth. — frank

Nothing. I mean we develop other (pragmatic) rules.

So, just to be clear, do you at last see why

(referring) subject
— Andrew M

would have to be a typo? — bongo fury

I don't. Feel free to say why you think so.

Why the stubborn attachment to "subject" at all? — bongo fury

It's ordinary English. From Lexico:

subject:
1. A person or thing that is being discussed, described, or dealt with.

Tarski's definition is, admittedly, abstract. However Aristotle's definition was:

To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true. — Aristotle, Metaphysics 1011b25


I could explain that if need be. — Andrew M

Very generous of you to explain correspondence theory to me, but it's wrong, Tarski knew it was wrong, and did not propose to define truth.

Very generous of you to explain correspondence theory to me, but it's wrong, Tarski knew it was wrong, and did not propose to define truth. — frank

If you're referring to Tarski's undefinability theorem, then that's true for the object language, but not for metalanguages. And for that reason it doesn't apply to Aristotle's definition since, in effect, a metalanguage hierarchy is built in (i.e., statements presuppose a world but not vice-versa).

It's just a rule for the use of the predicate. It's not a definition.

subject:
1. A person or thing that is being discussed, described, or dealt with. — Andrew M

So subjects are nouns? Looks like objects and subjects are synonyms, unless you're saying that objects can't be discussed, described, or dealt with. :chin:

communicating beliefs is a seperate issue than having beliefs. Making sounds with your mouth is a behaviour that expresses your belief just as covering your head and running inside does.

As an observer of others, your only have access to their beliefs via their actions. Do you need to observe your own actions to know you have beliefs? — Harry Hindu

As far as I understand, your point is that our mental states are ultimately independent of the corresponding verbal expressions. This position fails to take account of the complex social and collective character of our beliefs. They are developed, shaped, and exercised within the networks of our interpersonal interactions. Can we reduce them to simple rituals and behavioural patterns, deprived of the signifying symbolic mechanisms?

My attempt at arguing against "belief content is propositional" in response to 's most recent post.

Intentionality is the capacity of agents to have directed states towards things which are not themselves and for those states to have content regarding what the state is directed towards.

Eg, I grasp the cup; my body and mind are directed towards the cup in a specific way, to grasp it, to reach for its handle, to lift to to my mouth etc. This state is directed towards the cup. The content will include the location of its handle, the type of liquid in the cup, that the cup is to be grasped for drinking and so on. SEP characterises intentionality as:

In philosophy, intentionality is the power of minds and mental states to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs. To say of an individual’s mental states that they have intentionality is to say that they are mental representations or that they have contents. Furthermore, to the extent that a speaker utters words from some natural language or draws pictures or symbols from a formal language for the purpose of conveying to others the contents of her mental states, these artifacts used by a speaker too have contents or intentionality.

I will call an instance of intentionality an intentional state. The state in the example was an example of an intentional state. I will call the content of an intentional state intentional content. IEP describes intentional content as such:

The intentional content of an intentional event is the way in which the subject thinks about or presents to herself the intentional object. The idea here is that a subject does not just think about an intentional object simpliciter; rather the subject always thinks of the object or experiences it from a certain perspective and as being a certain way or as being a certain kind of thing. Thus one does not just perceive the moon, one perceives it “as bright”, “as half full” or “as particularly close to the horizon”. For that matter, one perceives it “as the moon” rather than as some other heavenly body. Intentional content can be thought of along the lines of a description or set of information that the subject takes to characterize or be applicable to the intentional objects of her thought. Thus, in thinking that there is a red apple in the kitchen the subject entertains a certain presentation of her kitchen and of the apple that she takes to be in it and it is in virtue of this that she succeeds in directing her thought towards these things rather than something else or nothing at all.

Summarised, then, intentional content is the character of the agent's intentional state, what kind of disposition is held - for what, for what purpose, what is felt and so on. .

SEP gives "loving", "admiring" as examples of intentional states. They are thus marked by a few properties:

(1) Intentional states are relations between agents and some other domain; it might be an agent and an object (I grasp the cup), an agent and an agent (Sally loves Mary), an agent and some social institution (Robespierre was critical of monarchy), an agent and an abstraction (I believe 1+1=2) and so on. The agent comes in the first place in the relation, the other domain comes in the second place.

(2) Intentional states are directional; logically and in terms of disposition. logically - Sally loves Mary doesn't mean Mary loves Sally - it might be unrequited and so on. Dispositionally, Sally's love of Mary is a disposition Sally has towards Mary; it has behavioural commitments, emotional resonances and so on.

(3) The relation ascribes some content to the relation which characterises the relation in terms of the agent; Sally loves Mary ascribes an understanding of love to Sally which she directs towards Mary. These contents coincide with the character of the disposition.

(4) The content ascribed is somehow a representation of the item of the other domain (the cup) that the agent (me) embodies.

For the remainder of the post, I will use "intentional state" to refer only to states which satisfy the first three properties. "Intentional content" will refer to the content of an intentional state with the above restriction. I'm doing this because I don't believe the dispute turns on the representational aspect of intentional states, and I believe it is contentious to claim that beliefs are representational.

I claim that belief is an intentional state in the weakened sense. This can be checked by going through the three items.

(1) The state of belief is directed towards some other domain; I believe 1+1=2, I believe my cup is on the table and so on. So belief satisfies (1).
(2) Belief is directional: I believe that 1+1=2 doesn't mean the same thing as 1+1=2 believes in me. Belief is also dispositional; I believe that 1+1=2 tells you an opinion I hold regarding 1,1 and 2 and engenders other commitments, things I will find obvious and so on. So belief satisfies (2).
(3) Belief has content: that I believe 1+1=2 has specificities to it, regarding the relationships of 1,1,+,= and 2 - I understand what role the terms play and how they relate, and in doing that I believe the statement. The specificities serve to explain the disposition I hold towards the statement as well as characterising my disposition.

At this point, it is worthwhile to take stock of what (1) to (3) demonstrate; the intentional content of my belief that 1+1=2 regards 1+1=2, the intentional content of my belief that my cup is on the table regards the cup on my table. In the latter case, I do not believe any item of language is on my table. What this shows, then, is that belief as an intentional state can be directed towards pretty much anything; there is no privileged domain of entities - like agents, statements, substances etc - that serve as the sole targets of belief understood as an intentional state. The important result is that belief can be directed towards things which are not items of language. So they need not, and typically do not, occur with accompanying statements. Statements expressing them them occur afterwards.

The phenomenology of intentional content is multifaceted; shapes, colours, textures, purposes, goals, moods, context all superimpose to give an agent's disposition in an action its character. Lois Lane's beliefs about Clark Kent are much different from her beliefs about Superman, despite that the two names co-refer.

Fleeting images, recollections and impressions stabilise into the emerging landscape of our interpretation of the world. It raises the question; does the intentional content of belief require any kind of linguistic expression to have its intentional content? In other words - does having intentional content require that it can be stated somehow? By whom and when?

An indicator that intentional content does not require a statement for it to have the character it does is that intentional states occur without being directed at statements; statements play no part in most beliefs we hold, except to express some of them afterwards. A strong indicator is that we can observe intentional behaviour in animals that do not have statements, concepts, or any of the social furniture we expect to surround opinion and belief, and they behave intentionally to such a degree that it is appropriate to attribute beliefs to them for explanatory purposes.

One attempt to sweep this line of questioning away would be: that the intentional content of belief is simply irrelevant to another sense of belief content which is propositional, but I do not believe this is the case. The intentional content of a belief is what makes it a belief and not any other dispositional state, and that can be seen by mucking with it. A statement of belief that some event is occurring is a commitment to the claim that it is occurring. Statements of the form "It is raining but I do not believe that it is raining" are weird. paradoxical even, and the intentional content of asserting that it is raining comes with the rider that the asserter believes that it is raining, because the act of asserting that it is raining in normal circumstances is rightly assumed to come along with the intentional state of believing the statement! The intentional content of belief is a necessary part of a statement of belief in its normal function.

Now we need to swerve into Banno's argument:

"The belief is not a statement" is not the same as "the belief has propositional content". It is not something I wish to defend. — Banno

Very well!

The event is not a statement. But that the event occurred can be stated. The belief is not in the form of a statement. but it can be stated. And so on. The flow of your argument seems to be that there is an analogy to be draw between "The event is not a statement" and "The belief is not a statement" such that the conclusion is that the belief does not have propositional content. — Banno

There is a major tension between the lack of requirement for a belief's intentional content to be stated and Banno's requirement that the content of belief must be able to be stated. So let's examine it.

It seems the construal of "content" being propositional is that "that the event occurred can be stated". Let's focus on the modality and scope of that "can". Clearly agents have intentional content which they cannot state at the time the intentional state occurs for various reasons. That content could be fuzzy, temporary, weird, ultra specific, highly contextual, anomalous, idiosyncratic etc. To give an example from a detailed description of eye movement patterns when someone is looking into a box of teabags to pick one out to make tea: "during the search phase, subtask relevant teabag features are attentionally prioritised within the attentional template during a fixation" - "subtask relevant teabag features" are whatever aspects of the arrangements of teabags in that box of teabags which facilitate the belief that those teabag aspects are useful for using those teabags to make tea. At the time, the agent cannot articulate what teabag features promoted their actions. Notice that the agent's attention was drawn about the box without requiring any beliefs at the time towards statements of which teabag features were subtask relevant. In that respect, intentional content occurs irrespective of later translation into language. So there are circumstances where people have beliefs and they cannot be stated.

However, there is still the possibility that "can" has a much more ambitious scope; that there exists a statement, even if purely hypothetical and never uttered, which expresses that the belief occurred and its character. With this, we are quantifying over hypothetical objects that bear no relation to the context a belief is formed in and gains its character and content in. That seems sufficiently absurd to conclude the argument. If beliefs attain definite content absent the formation of statements which describe them at the time, why would the content of those beliefs depend upon hypothetical objects which are made later?

I am sure that there is a way to thread the needle there, to describe the sense of that modality without absurdity, but I don't see it in @Banno's argument. Yet anyway.

Why the stubborn attachment to "subject" at all?
— bongo fury

It's ordinary English. — Andrew M

Sure, but notoriously ambiguous between conflicting senses as a technical term, if not clarified in favour of one or the other.

From Lexico:

subject:
1. A person or thing that is being discussed, described, or dealt with. — Andrew M

Sure, and I offered

subject-matter — bongo fury

in precisely this sense, which is the one you chose when offered a choice.

Fine. Other words for the same kind of thing are available, but that needn't matter, as long as we aren't confusing the two senses. Attachment to "subject" in preference to "object" or "referent" only seems suspect because of,

So, just to be clear, do you at last see why

(referring) subject
— Andrew M

would have to be a typo?
— bongo fury

I don't. Feel free to say why you think so. — Andrew M

... which looks very much as though you are using the other, conflicting, sense of the word at the same time. Because, the only obvious reading of "(referring) subject" is to have it mean "word or phrase that refers".

This opposite sense is Strawson's, but he adopts it consistently and exclusively. He does discuss Russell's (further) distinction between grammatical subject and logical subject; but obviously both of these are "snow", and not snow. And we don't

normally use a sentence to assert something about — Andrew M

either of them (the types of "snow"), but only about the snow.

In that respect, intentional content occurs irrespective of later translation into language — fdrake

It's hard to picture what sort of intentionality could be connected with uninterpreted data.

IOW, I think you're assuming that at some base level of awareness I know the brownish data is tea. Or that I believe it's tea?

Are latent portions of your worldview really down there in the hardware?

Imagine people from several different time periods observing the sky. Their beliefs about the sky are radically different. Is their base awareness of it different? If so, then I think this would be a significant threat to any sort of realism, which requires an uninterpreted realm as a platform for variation in belief.

It's hard to picture what sort of intentionality could be connected with uninterpreted data. — frank

I don't think it's uninterpreted, nor do I think it's interpreted in the manner we'd usually associate with words, essays, statements and so on. I think it relates to your thread on types of information; is semantic content restricted to words? Maybe not! The underlying ideas motivating my post were regarding salience as director of actions and as a driver of the formation of intentional content. Do you characterise intentionality as a property of already formed spaces of perceptual features and agents, or do you characterise it as guiding their formation?

That underlying theme could've been developed more, and I agree that it's a hole in the account.

Are latent portions of your worldview really down there in the hardware? — frank

My specific account? I don't know, I just hope I'm right. People's worldviews in general? I think so. Priors are a thing, it's rare that we find something we have no frame of interpretation for.

I'm gonna have to think about that for a while.