When translating languages, that is what is translated - the state-of-affairs the scribbles refer to. — Harry Hindu
Meaning, however, is not arbitrary. It is the relationship between cause and effect. What some scribble means is what caused it to exist on the paper or on the screen. It is caused by a mind — Harry Hindu
So non-language creatures have beliefs in that they learn by making observations and what they learn is what they believe to be the case in other similar states-of-affairs. Their beliefs are not in the form of propositions, but the visual experiences they had. The same goes for scribble-using humans, and is how they learned a language in the first place by believing that scribbles can be used to refer to what is the case or not. You have to believe that before you can begin using scribbles. — Harry Hindu
Jack - mistakenly - believed that a broken clock was dependable; read true; was running; was trustworthy; was where he ought look to find out what time it was; etc. Hid did not know that it was broken, but he most certainly believed it! — creativesoul
But you want to say more than just this, don't you? Somehow this is supposed to show the be;eifs are not propositional.
Fill in the gap. — Banno
Jack - mistakenly - believed that a broken clock was dependable; read true; was running; was trustworthy; was where he ought look to find out what time it was; etc. Hid did not know that it was broken, but he most certainly believed it! — creativesoul
How can a belief, necessarily concerning reality, be nonpropositional? — Agent Smith
He believed it was broken? Or he believed it was working?Hid did not know that it was broken, but he most certainly believed it! — creativesoul
...so far as I can see you have presented no argument. — Banno
a belief that cannot be put into the form of a propositional attitude? — creativesoul
Take a couple of English sentences with their relative translations in French:
A1) Alice loves Jim
A2) Jim is loved by Alice
B1) Alice aime Jim
B2) Jim est aimé par Alice
I would take all 4 statements to be about the same state-of-affairs (and you?). Yet B1 is a correct translation of A1 only, and B2 of A2 only. If it was true that the translation is based on reference to the same state-of-affairs then both B1 and B2 would be equally good translations of A1 or A2 indifferently. — neomac
Jack believed a broken clock was working. — creativesoul
Russell, Gettier, and Moore all took JTB to task. — creativesoul
It's just that not all belief are equivalent to propositional attitudes, and thus those exceptions cannot be sensibly rendered in those terms. That's what my broken clock example shows us, and quite clearly it seems to me. — creativesoul
Jack - mistakenly - believed that a broken clock was dependable; read true; was running; was trustworthy; was where he ought look to find out what time it was; etc. Hid did not know that it was broken, but he most certainly believed it! — creativesoul
Yet look at all of the posts you have created since my last post. You're willing to engage but only if you dictate the topic, which is off the topic of this thread that you want to avoid so that you don't have to address my points.This is why I don't engage. You have no sense of charity and your posts are unpleasant. — ZzzoneiroCosm
You engaged me up to the point where I asked my question then abandoned it and would now rather waste thread space with your ranting. Your behavior is off-putting by not being intellectually honest.It's the tone of your insistence. It's off-putting. — ZzzoneiroCosm
Sounds like you're describing an emotional attachment to me. My only goal in being here is to learn from others by asking them questions and to subject some of my own ideas to criticism. You aren't willing to do either and only seem to be willing in entertaining the ideas of someone with delusions of grandeur. Good luck.His heart is in it. He feels he's created or uncovered something devastating or catalytic to the history of philosophy. That foments a profound experience of life-meaning: wakefulness, inspiration, excitement, a superior feeling,* a sense of domination - of philosophical material and of philosophical opponents. — ZzzoneiroCosm
Animals, since they lack human-like languages, may think in pictures/images. Picture theory of meaning?
If so,
1. Are pictures/images propositions?
or
2. Are (some) beliefs nonpropositional? — Agent Smith
What are propositions if not images of scribbles? So to think in propositions is to think in visual images, or sounds if you're talking to yourself in your head.Good question. Here is another one: if all propositions can be rendered in linguistic form, then what proposition would correspond to the following image? — neomac
I agree that all 4 statements to be about the same state-of-affairs so we are agreeing that all four statements are translatable with the other. In saying that all 4 statements are about the same state-of-affairs you are saying that they are all translatable with each other. You can even have two different sentences in the same language that mean the same thing (A1 and A2), meaning that translating isn't necessarily between two or more languages. It is between two or more symbols (scribbles).Not sure about that. Take a couple of English sentences with their relative translations in French:
A1) Alice loves Jim
A2) Jim is loved by Alice
B1) Alice aime Jim
B2) Jim est aimé par Alice
I would take all 4 statements to be about the same state-of-affairs (and you?). Yet B1 is a correct translation of A1 only, and B2 of A2 only. If it was true that the translation is based on reference to the same state-of-affairs then both B1 and B2 would be equally good translations of A1 or A2 indifferently. — neomac
I didn't say means are caused. I said meaning is the relationship between cause and effect. Causes leave effects and when we look for the meaning of the effect, we are looking for the cause. Examples would be a criminal investigator using the crime scene (effect) to find the identity of the criminal (cause) so this fingerprint means Crooked Joe Smith committed this crime, or tree rings in a tree stump where the rings (effect) are caused by how the tree grows throughout the year (cause) so tree rings means the number of years the tree has existed.The idea that “a mind” is causing “scribble means” doesn’t sound right to me.
“Scribbles” may be the kind of entities that can be caused, but “means” are not caused, nor can be rendered in causal terms. — neomac
Thank you for the detailed response which is more than I can say about many veteran members on this site.I’m inclined to agree with you in general, but the devil is in the details. So, I agree that animal cognitive skills and consequent behavior are much more constrained by their experience than human cognitive skills are. Yet it doesn’t sound right to me to claim that animals’ beliefs are “in the form of their visual experiences”. The problem is that experience (visual or other) doesn’t seem to be enough to grant belief (see the case of optical illusions like the Müller-Lyer illusion [1]: the 2 arrows keep looking different in length even if one correctly believes that they have the same size), therefore animals’ beliefs too are not necessarily nor tightly coupled with their experiences.
Besides the claim that human’s beliefs are “in the form of propositions” does sound right, at least in part. However I would complement it by saying that a belief in propositional form is just a belief that is expressed through a declarative sentence, i.e. through a specific linguistic behavior, that doesn’t imply that humans are equipped only of propositional beliefs. — neomac
We know that substituting within the scope of a propositional attitude need not preserve truth value... — Banno
Jack's mistaken belief that the clock is working when it actually isn't doesn't imply that beliefs are nonpropositional. Am I missing something here? — Agent Smith
You're willing to engage but only if you dictate the topic — Harry Hindu
Sounds like you're describing an emotional attachment to me. — Harry Hindu
I had a compassionate feeling for creative — ZzzoneiroCosm
You engaged me up to the point where I asked my question — Harry Hindu
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