I think I would say this: conscious beliefs of the sort we express by saying stuff aren't just sitting there waiting to be retrieved, but are produced as needed, on the fly. The whole time the cup was in the cupboard but I wasn't thinking about it, I had no need to express a belief so I didn't produce one. If asked, I check my model of the cup and find there was no update, so I go with what the model last 'recorded', but really what I'm doing is not retrieving a belief but inferring how I should answer the question.

If I have to give reasons for that expressed belief, I can, easy as pie, but those are justifications, not the reasons from which I inferred the belief I expressed. There probably aren't any of those. The model does its own thing, and I'm not privy to how it inferred what I should say about the cup.

I think you just replaced beliefs that are just sitting there, to a model that's just sitting there. What sort of thing is this model?

I think you just replaced beliefs that are just sitting there, to a model that's just sitting there. — frank

Then I expressed myself poorly.

What I intended was to agree with Lewis Carroll (is that right?), that I'll know what I think when I see what I say.

Something produces what I say, and broadly that something is guiding my expectations and actions, but it needn't be any sort of representation of the world or of myself in it, not that kind of model. Saying "I check my model" was meant as a kind of transitional description, between thinking you call up a belief and recognizing that you aren't generally privy to what produces your candid speech.

But this is new territory for me, and I'm still getting a feel for it.

So the model is a black box. I think it is for neuroscience as well. It's just that some organisms behave as if there is a model, so science posits one and quests to find it.

What you're saying is that we don't really know how it works. We shouldn't assume we know what's going on before an organism acts, or in the case of a person, before speech.

How many beliefs does one mind hold? — Moliere

A very good question, one that overlaps a conversation I am having with @Sam26 in PM. Beliefs are not discrete pieces of mental furniture, despite our tendency to treat them as such.

For the rest, that's a neat argument; I like it. So, that we do agree as to some things is insufficient to conclude that we agree on most things. Lovely!

But I will maintain that even given this problem, there is good reason to suppose that our points of agreement far outnumber our points of disagreement. Taking again the Assange case mentioned by @Tom Storm above, those who think his freedom has not been unreasonably curtailed will agree as to his role in Wikileaks and at least the outline of the events surrounding "collateral murder", and that there was a broader military engagement, that certain videos were shared, that Assange's organisation was involved, as were the Ecuadorian Embassy and so on - pretty much all the events listed int eh relevant Wiki pages.

And I think it reasonable to suppose that this case can be generalised, such that if in any conversation we were to list the points of agreement against the points of disagreement, it would be unusual to find the former to be shorter than the latter.

This is of course a simplification of Davidson's more rigorous argument concerning the incommensurability of conceptual schemes, from which I am convinced, contrary to the popular view, that talk of the map not being the territory mis-pictures what is going on; that in the case of language one cannot distinguish the map and the territory in this way.

And that's what I think is in error in the posing of the question in the title.

There are some patterns we can see, and we know something about the hardware, but yeah black box, and 'model' is kind of an approximation of what goes on. We are able to answer questions and we are able to look for and fetch teacups but we don't really know how we do any of that. 'Belief' is also a useful approximation, especially when predicting how other people are going to behave. *

* Should have said we probably 'model' ourselves in quite similar ways.

'Belief' is also a useful approximation, especially when predicting how other people are going to behave. * — Srap Tasmaner

People used to think conscious divinities coursed through the world causing storms and crop failures. Schopenhauer focused on how that way of understanding the world is still built into language. So maybe "belief" is really an all purpose black box for why?.

Sellars has that cool story about how the uniformity of nature is derived from the predictability of people, if you imagine how the natural world was seen before it was depersonalized. Big River is an old man set in his ways, freezing and thawing about the same time every year, flooding fields when the snow melts, a predictable person.

I really think there's something to that. :grin: :up:

It's almost always interesting to flip the script, just to see what you get.

In this case the idea that our inferences about people might be the basis for our inferences about the inanimate world, so there's no ancient problem of 'other minds' only a process of noting how predictable some minds are, and eventually instead we say there's no mind there at all.

Right. It even extended to creativity. There was a god who gave humans paper, another god who invented iron smelting, as if the human psyche was turned inside out, broadcast over the cosmos.

Over centuries, we dehumanized the natural world and pulled all those psychic elements into individual minds, each one like an island floating in a dead, unconscious world. Now the problem of other minds is insurmountable. In philosophy, you can see the pendulum trying to swing back, like with the idea of the extended mind.

So that offers another way to answer the OP: a true statement, in the abstract, is what we think the world would say if it could talk.

Now the problem of other minds is insurmountable. — frank

Is it? :brow: It's not a problem for me... :yikes: I suspect not really for you either(aside from talking philosophy). Nor would I think that the overwhelming majority of people in the world have such an insurmountable problem...

I think that if there is such an insurmountable problem, it probably is a great indication that academia has went horribly wrong when it comes to what counts as a mind...

Yup. That's my guess.

...and it has, as evidenced by the sheer inability to provide a conception, notion, model, or accounting of minds that lends itself to and/or dovetails nicely with terms of evolutionary progression...

A very good question, one that overlaps a conversation I am having with Sam26 in PM. Beliefs are not discrete pieces of mental furniture, despite our tendency to treat them as such. — Banno

I've been referring to beliefs as states of mind reflected in our actions (linguistic and non-linguistic), but the one thing that I should also emphasize is the transient nature of these states. For example, when I open a door, that action is partly a reflection of my belief that a door is there, but it's fleeting.

This state of mind, reflected in our actions, is also a reflection of what it means to be conscious. However, the meaning of belief or the meaning of consciousness is not something contained in the mind, but something reflected in our actions (again linguistic and nonlinguistic actions). Hence, my agreement with you, that the meaning of a concept is not something we can point to in the mind, i.e., there is no mental thing that gives meaning to the concept.

I believe there is a confusion about mind/consciousness in relation to all of this. For e.g., the belief that some philosophers (and others) who deny consciousness or deny our subjective experiences as an illusion. I think this is a grave error.

One thing that interests me is how deeply embedded this is. When I find my misplaced cup of coffee, I might say, even to no one, "There it is," or I might say to the cup, "There you are."

I used to think about how readily we say things like, "The sign says they close at 8." A philosopher might insist this is metaphorical, or that it's short for "There is an inscription of the words a person would use to say that they close at 8." But either way, you'll be told "The sign doesn't *say* anything." I remember wondering what would happen if we reversed that, if we took words as saying things and instead said it was us borrowing that capacity, that we're the ones who don't literally *say* anything, only our words do.

what we think the world would say if it could talk. — frank

My all time favorite quote about a writer is on the back of a collection of Boris Pasternak's poems. Might have been Tsetayeva, I don't remember, and it was something like "He wrote as someone might who had witnessed the creation of the world, a man who understood the voice of the mountains and of the rain." Now that's praise.

the belief that some philosophers (and others) who deny consciousness or deny our subjective experiences as an illusion. I think this is a grave error. — Sam26

I think that Dennett has a very particular target that he's denying and calling an "illusion". For whatever that's worth.

He has a youtube video on the evolution of purpose(well, it's more like a video of his lecture)... Very interesting. I recommend watching it several times. It's about an hour long.

Edited to correct the title of Dennett's lecture...
Hi Sam! Hope you're well.

Ya, I disagree with him. I'm not a fan of Dennett.

I'm doing fine Creative. How about yourself?

I remember wondering what would happen if we reversed that, if we took words as saying things and instead said it was us borrowing that capacity, that we're the ones who don't literally *say* anything, only our words do. — Srap Tasmaner

Yea, or maybe you're like a dark cloud that says it's going to rain. You're both up on the stage speaking, and in the audience listening to yourself, interpreting your own performance.

My art is that way. People ask me what it means and I just stare at it, realizing I'm in the same boat they are. I'll hazard a guess as to what it might mean based on what I remember thinking at the time I painted it. After I've spoken, I'm in the audience with everyone else. :razz:

Ah. All good. You'll have that! Well, if you're not a fan, then you probably would not want to watch that then! It was quite interesting to me, probably as a direct result of my strong methodological naturalist bent!

:wink:

I am also doing well.

"He wrote as someone might who had witnessed the creation of the world, a man who understood the voice of the mountains and of the rain." — Srap Tasmaner

Wow. Mine is a quote from the back of a Somerset Maugham novel: "...an autobiographical novel in which fact and fiction are inextricably intertwined."

It's the "inextricable" that gets me.

Is it? :brow: It's not a problem for me... — creativesoul

It's just a logical problem. "I think, therefore I am you" as Feuerbach said.

It was quite interesting to me, probably as a direct result of my strong methodological naturalist bent! — creativesoul

Ya, and my disagreement is because of my strong metaphysical leanings. :grin:

maybe you're like a dark cloud that says it's going to rain — frank

This is a Grice thing, natural meaning vs non-natural meaning, which then splits into sentence meaning and speaker's meaning (what you mean by saying something rather than what it means). Most philosophers treat natural signs (it's always dark clouds) as a completely different sense of the word "means" but not Grice.

:up:

And I think it reasonable to suppose that this case can be generalised, such that if in any conversation we were to list the points of agreement against the points of disagreement, it would be unusual to find the former to be shorter than the latter. — Banno

In any conversation -- I think that makes sense. We usually end conversations when there's too much disagreement or we're confused.

And truth be told, given the intuition I presented on beliefs -- that they evaporate rather quickly -- that'd be enough to counter my example.

This is of course a simplification of Davidson's more rigorous argument concerning the incommensurability of conceptual schemes, from which I am convinced, contrary to the popular view, that talk of the map not being the territory mis-pictures what is going on; that in the case of language one cannot distinguish the map and the territory in this way.

And that's what I think is in error in the posing of the question in the title.

I think you're right in the case of language. The closest thing to a map of language is something like the OED -- but they keep on adding things because we keep on coining new words. So you can't really go back to the map to figure out the meaning of a word -- you have to use it.

In any conversation -- I think that makes sense. We usually end conversations when there's too much disagreement or we're confused. — Moliere

It looks like we agree. How would you determine that we really do think the same things? As opposed to just appearing to?

It looks like we agree. How would you determine that we really do think the same things? As opposed to just appearing to? — frank

I think we assume truth and trust in communication until we have a reason not to trust. So insofar that there's no reason to disbelieve then you're probably close enough to count for "really agreeing" as opposed to "apparently agreeing".

Im So insofar that there's no reason to disbelieve then you're probably close enough to count for "really agreeing" as opposed to "apparently agreeing". — Moliere

Apparently there is reason to disbelieve:

Indeterminacy of translation

I agree.

:D