Belief requires the internal, the external, and a creature capable of connecting the two. — creativesoul
I think it more of a place holder, an amorphous region; an inferred nothing. — Banno
The move I was considering next was to draw some sort of closure by re-assessing each of the items in the ongrowing OP in turn. — Banno
Belief makes sense of error
Austin talked of words that gain their meaning - use - mostly by being contrasted with their opposite. His example was real.
"it's not a fake; it's real"
"it's not a mirage, it's real!"
It's not a mistake - it's real"
and so on.
Belief can be understood in a similar fashion, as gaining it's usefulness from the contrast between a true belief and a false belief. That is, an important aspect of belief is that sometimes we think that something is the case, and yet it is not.
We bring belief into the discourse in order to make sense of such errors. — Banno
There are versions of relativism, post modernism and pragmatism that attempt to replace truth with belief alone. The aim is often some honourable form of equity... — Banno
A belief is a propositional attitude.
That is, it can be placed in a general form as a relation between someone and a proposition. So "John believes that the sky is blue" can be rendered as
Believes (John, "The sky is blue")
B(a,p)
There's ill will in some circles towards this sort of analysis. Think of this as setting up a basic structure or grammar for belief. A belief is a relation between an individual and a proposition. That there is much more to be said about belief is not in contention; this is just a place to start. This is set as a falsifiable proposition. If there are any examples of beliefs that cannot be stated as relations between individuals and propositions, this proposal would have to be revisited.
It has been suggested that animal and other non-linguistic beliefs are a falsification of this suggestion. The argument is that non-linguistic creatures can have beliefs and yet cannot express these beliefs as propositions, and that hence beliefs cannot be propositional attitudes. But that is a misreading of what is going on here. Any belief, including that of creatures that cannot speak, can be placed in the form of a propositional attitude by those who can speak. A cat, for example, can believe that its bowl is empty, but cannot put that belief in the form B(a,p). — Banno
A belief is a relation between an individual and a proposition. — Banno
What form does a proposition take as the content of a belief? — Harry Hindu
beliefs are not necessarily bearers of truth. — Harry Hindu
"In particular, he [Nicholas St. John Green] often urged the importance of applying Bain's definition of belief, as "that upon which a man is prepared to act." From this definition, pragmatism is scarce more than a corollary; so that I am disposed to think of him as the grandfather of pragmatism."
Unless the analytical philosophers define a proposition as a string of scribbles in it's fundamental state, then I don't know what else they could be getting at, as any proposition in a language that you don't know is a string of scribbles.I think you're wondering if some ontology is being smuggled in with the concept of a proposition. There isn't.
I will say, I've been surprised since I've been here how many posters have the same misconception about what analytical philosophers mean by "proposition." — frank
What is it like for you to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow? How do you know that you believe it? Is your belief simply the sound of you talking to yourself in your mind saying, "I believe the sun will rise tomorrow".? — Harry Hindu
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