Care to further discuss the topic, as compared/contrasted to my interlocutor? — creativesoul

I don't see how we can further it. I and you seem to agree on points that he fails to address. And apparently proudly so.

I have a question more about your own views, but maybe that's not the place to discuss it: how do you see the relation between concepts and beliefs?

↪neomac
Be interesting and you might warrant a reply. — Banno

Well I'm just afraid that this one is by far the best reply you can come up with on the topic under discussion, sir.

@creativesoul,

Banno is excellent at engaging others — creativesoul

so far with half-backed stipulations and random links which he doesn't even care to support or understand. mmmkey.

Or he could try to claim that indeed the content of the proposition can not be rendered with "the proposition X is true" — neomac

Poorly articulated, sorry, I meant: or he could try to claim that, in this case, the propositional content of the belief that the present King of France is bald can not be rendered with "'the present King of France is bald' is true" but with "'the present King of France is bald' is a proposition"

@creativesoul

If "The present King of France is bald" is not a proposition, and yet it can be believed nonetheless, then it cannot be the case that either all belief has propositional content or all belief is an attitude towards some proposition or other. — creativesoul

Indeed this is what I already remarked in my previous comment:

You mean your pointless challenge: " If there are beliefs that cannot be presented in propositional form, give us an example".
What about this example: X believes that the present King of France is bald. Did I win anything? — neomac

Maybe he could try to claim that either X doesn't really believe that, which is intuitively preposterous and justifiably so. Or he could try to claim that, in this case, the propositional content of the belief that the present King of France is bald can not be rendered with "'the present King of France is bald' is true" but with "'the present King of France is bald' is a proposition" . However this line of reasoning looks an ad hoc move, at least until it doesn't get properly integrated with the rest of his account (good luck with that!). Besides the metalinguistic sentence "p is a proposition" is not a proposition according to W.'s Tractatus. And we are more and more far from understanding how such an account could ever explain what a belief is about and explain the related behavior not only for non-linguistic creature but also for irrational/ignorant linguistic creature.

@Banno
I've argued at length and to the point what I think about your arguments. While you didn't serve me with the same treatment, instead you are continually dodging my direct challenges to your views, with cheap excuses and attack ad personam. Despite the treatment, I don't take it personally as much as you do. So I'm still waiting for a more focused feedback on my last comments about your views. I'm even ready to thank you for the effort, go figure ;)

@Banno

You can quote someone by highlighting their text; a pop up will appear that will link their name and the text. — Banno

Unless there is a specific reason to adopt it, I still prefer my way of quoting. Anyway thanks for the hint.

> If I were half as good a teacher as @creativesoul suggests, he would have been convinced of the error of his ideas long ago.

Unless he too was just being sarcastic. Just kidding.

> You have come in after what is literally years of discussion.

Well that's an open forum, I'm afraid this happens especially if anybody is invited to debate.

> To suggest that I have not provided "some good philosophical arguments" is puerile.

No sir, I didn't mean to suggest that you didn't come up with "some good philosophical arguments" at all in your entire life. I didn't find good arguments in the posts I've read from the formal debate entitled "The content of beliefs is propositional" (Banno and creativesoul). Therefore I quoted your remarks literally and explained my doubts.

> I wonder, did you perhaps miss the debate from whence this discussion came?

I don't remember if I read this specific post that you are linking. But it doesn't add any argument to better support the claims I quoted and commented. On the contrary I found just more claims to question.

> you do not seem to be addressing what I actually wrote, so much as a half-understood inference from the writing of other folk.

Let me repeat it once more: I didn't find good arguments in the posts I've read from the formal debate entitled "The content of beliefs is propositional" (Banno and creativesoul). Therefore I quoted your remarks literally and explained my doubts.
So I am exactly addressing what you wrote. While we can't say the same of your claims about what I wrote. Can we? Indeed you never even quoted any of my last comments to your statements on the subject under discussion.

> It looks like it will be a slow wet day, so while I have no great desire to further flog this dead horse, I might rely if addressed directly.

You mean your pointless challenge: " If there are beliefs that cannot be presented in propositional form, give us an example".
What about this example: X believes that the present King of France is bald. Did I win anything?
You are forcing us to play a rigged game based on some unjustified assumptions. And when one is addressing what is wrong in your assumptions, in challenging them with the same question, you are implicitly accusing them of cowardly refusing to play your game. This looks either puerile or dishonest, to me.

> Bye the bye, this supercilious style is intended to get on your goat. It keeps me as the centre of attention.
Now it's your turn to address my last comments to your statements on the subject under discussion.
From my exchange with @creativesoul (the notes are quotations of your own statements @Banno):

- If proposition is a “more abstract entity” [1] supposed to be “common between certain statements”, then proposition are not statements, and they are not interchangeable with statements, yet he prefers to talk in terms of propositions as “statements that can be either true or false” [2]. Well if they are statements then they can not at the same time be intrinsic truth bearers and the content of our beliefs, why? Because believing that “the cup is on the shelf” is true, doesn’t equate to believing that "la taza está en el estante" is true, yet “the cup is on the shelf” and "la taza está en el estante" have the same truth value.
- Commands and desires are also considered propositional attitudes but they have satisfaction conditions not truth conditions as beliefs. And as long as beliefs and desires can express different attitudes toward the same propositions, propositions themselves are not intrinsically truth bearers by themselves [2], but only dependently on the direction-of-fit conferred by the intentional attitude.
- The manifest inconsistency of claiming that beliefs about statements are exactly the same as beliefs about the way things are [3] has been already spotted by you. But his other formulations elsewhere [4] turned out to be even more preposterous because claiming that beliefs are about how we think things are is exactly like saying beliefs are about how we believe things are (kind of intrinsically reflexive beliefs).
- He claims that both beliefs [5] and state of affairs [6] can be put in the form of a proposition, but if the possibility of putting in propositional form a belief is enough to claim that belief have propositional content, then it should be also enough to claim that state of affairs have propositional content. And since propositions are sentences that can be true or false [7], then also state of affairs can be true or false as much as beliefs can be, thanks to their propositional content.
- Implicit beliefs [8] can’t be verified until properly expressed (e.g. stated): “holding a belief true” can have both a dispositional and a non-dispositional account. In any case, considerations about truth-functional implications or equivalences based on propositional contents are fallible ways for belief attribution, because there are also irrational beliefs, conceptual indeterminacies and background knowledge that affect doxastic dispositions.
- The actual propositional content of a belief seems to be identified with the possibility of being put in propositional form [9][10][11], and that sounds like claiming that the actual content of a glass is water because one can pour water into the glass.
- If belief is a way to explain action [12][13] and cats do not show human linguistic skills, how could one possibly explain Lilly’s behavior by attributing to her a belief that a certain sentence about her environment is true? However this sounds too preposterous and it’s probably not what he means, what he more probably means is instead that the human capacity of rendering Lilly’s beliefs through sentences that can be true or false is what explains Lilly’s behavior. Which sounds as preposterous, doesn’t it?


[1] Propositions are a more abstract entity, being supposed as what is common between certain statements. So "the cup is on the shelf", "la taza está en el estante" and "bikarinn er í hillunni", I am told, are all different sentences in distinct languages that all express the same proposition.

[2] My preference would be to talk in terms of propositions as statements that can be either true or false, with the understanding that to a large extent the words statement and proposition are interchangeable

[3] To believe that the mouse ran behind the tree is exactly to believe that "the mouse ran behind the tree" is true; to deny this is to deny that our statements are about the way things are.

[4] Saying that beliefs have propositional content is nothing more than saying that beliefs are about how we think things are.

[5] that every belief has propositional content does not imply that every belief has indeed been put in propositional form.

[6] It should be clear from the preceding discussion that while it is not the case that every proposition has been stated, every possible state of affairs can be put in the form of a proposition.

[7] Statements are combinations of nouns and verbs and such like; Some statements are either true or false, and we can call these propositions. So, "The present King of France is bald" is a statement, but not a proposition. Since there is no present King of France, he can be neither bald nor hirsute. "The present king of France is bald" is not the sort of sentence that can be true or false.

[8] I take it that you believe that you have more than one eyelash. But I suppose that up until now, you had not given this much consideration. If that example does not suit, perhaps you might consider if you believe that you have more than five eyelashes, or less than 12,678. Or you might bring to mind some other belief about something which you had up until now never considered …
The point is that we each have innumerable beliefs that we have never articulated, indeed which we never will articulate, but which nevertheless we do hold to be true. All this to make the point that there are unstated beliefs…

[9] What we take to be true is what forms the content of a belief. What we take to be true can be expressed in a proposition. Hence, the content of our beliefs is propositional.

[10] beliefs are always about what can be put in propositional form. And this can be rephrased as that the content of a belief is propositional.

[11] My contention is that the content of beliefs are propositional. What is believed can be stated, and is held to be true.

[12] Lilly apparently believed that there was something objectionable out the window, and that her hissing and spitting were imperative in order to drive whatever it was away. This is at least part of what belief is about: that our actions follow from our beliefs, that what we do, we do in the light of what we hold to be true.

[13] My own inclination is more towards beliefs being a way of talking about, and hence explaining, our actions; that is, that they are not things stored so much as interpretations of what we do.

@Banno

> It's wryly amusing to find oneself again the topic of discussion.
And the good news is that I didn't finish yet.

> For a negotiated fee I will appear as a special guest speaker.
I'm afraid @creativesoul's cornucopia of ceremonious compliments to you are all you are going to get, sir.

Sarcasm is surely fun, so pls go ahead. It's simply that if you could add some good philosophical arguments on top of it, it would be even more fun.

@creativesoul

Thanks a lot for your feedback and pls take your time in commenting whatever I said you find worth it.

Just let me add that your understanding of his views seem more charitable and probably more accurate than mine due to your past exchanges with him.
Yet I’m still reluctant to agree with what you claim in his defense because:
- I have no reason to indulge in his over-confidence. The content of a belief is what the belief is actually about, while his clearly trying hard to identify the content of a belief based on the ways what a belief is about can be (meta)linguistically rendered or based on its logic implications/equivalences (like if p implies “p” is true or p can be rendered as “p” is true, then the content of believing in p is “p” is true) and based on that explain the related behavior. I find that simply preposterous.
- If we are not clear on what proposition or propositional form or propositional content are supposed to mean and how they relate to beliefs or state of affairs or behaviors, it’s hard to understand what we agree or disagree on.

@Athena

Thanks a lot for the additional information! I think that your manifest passion and knowledge could be better shared on a dedicated blog where to collect your forum posts, thoughts and findings on these topics. This would certainly let others better explore/assess/popularize your views. If you already did, I'd definitely like to have the link because I've been always fascinated by the subject "family", maybe more from an anthropological and sociological point of view, than from a political or moral point of view, but that's why I also see your approach as complementary.

@creativesoul

I read your three posts, and I’m inclined to agree on all points. Still the comments of @Banno to them look pretty messy to me both in addressing your points and in providing a consistent account on his own terms.
Since you abundantly discussed the former issue already I would like to take a closer look at his own view. I would appreciate if you could give me your feedback on my remarks (notes are quotations of his statements).

- If proposition is a “more abstract entity” [1] supposed to be “common between certain statements”, then proposition are not statements, and they are not interchangeable with statements, yet he prefers to talk in terms of propositions as “statements that can be either true or false”. Well if they are statements then they can not at the same time be intrinsic truth bearers and the content of our beliefs, why? Because believing that “the cup is on the shelf” is true, doesn’t equate to believing that "la taza está en el estante" is true, yet “the cup is on the shelf” and "la taza está en el estante" have the same truth value.
- Commands and desires are also considered propositional attitudes but they have satisfaction conditions not truth conditions as beliefs. And as long as beliefs and desires can express different attitudes toward the same propositions, propositions themselves are not intrinsically truth bearers by themselves [2], but only dependently on the direction-of-fit conferred by the intentional attitude.
- The manifest inconsistency of claiming that beliefs about statements are exactly the same as beliefs about the way things are [3] has been already spotted by you. But his other formulations elsewhere [4] turned out to be even more preposterous because claiming that beliefs are about how we think things are is exactly like saying beliefs are about how we believe things are (kind of intrinsically reflexive beliefs).
- He claims that both beliefs [5] and state of affaires [6] can be put in the form of a proposition, but if the possibility of putting in propositional form a belief is enough to claim that belief have propositional content, then it should be also enough to claim that state of affaires have propositional content. And since propositions are sentences that can be true or false [7], then also state of affaires can be true or false as much as beliefs can be, thanks to their propositional content.
- Implicit beliefs [8] can’t be verified until properly expressed (e.g. stated): “holding a belief true” can have both a dispositional and a non-dispositional account. In any case, considerations about truth-functional implications or equivalences based on propositional contents are fallible ways for belief attribution, because there are also irrational beliefs, conceptual indeterminacies and background knowledge that affect doxastic dispositions.
- The actual propositional content of a belief seems to be identified with the possibility of being put in propositional form [9][10][11], and that sounds like claiming that the actual content of a glass is water because one can pour water into the glass.
- If belief is a way to explain action [12][13] and cats do not show human linguistic skills, how could one possibly explain Lilly’s behavior by attributing to her a belief that a certain sentence about her environment is true? However this sounds too preposterous and it’s probably not what he means, what he more probably means is instead that the human capacity of rendering Lilly’s beliefs through sentences that can be true or false is what explains Lilly’s behavior. Which sounds as preposterous, doesn’t it?


[1] Propositions are a more abstract entity, being supposed as what is common between certain statements. So "the cup is on the shelf", "la taza está en el estante" and "bikarinn er í hillunni", I am told, are all different sentences in distinct languages that all express the same proposition.

[2] My preference would be to talk in terms of propositions as statements that can be either true or false, with the understanding that to a large extent the words statement and proposition are interchangeable

[3] To believe that the mouse ran behind the tree is exactly to believe that "the mouse ran behind the tree" is true; to deny this is to deny that our statements are about the way things are.

[4] Saying that beliefs have propositional content is nothing more than saying that beliefs are about how we think things are.

[5] that every belief has propositional content does not imply that every belief has indeed been put in propositional form.

[6] It should be clear from the preceding discussion that while it is not the case that every proposition has been stated, every possible state of affairs can be put in the form of a proposition.

[7] Statements are combinations of nouns and verbs and such like; Some statements are either true or false, and we can call these propositions. So, "The present King of France is bald" is a statement, but not a proposition. Since there is no present King of France, he can be neither bald nor hirsute. "The present king of France is bald" is not the sort of sentence that can be true or false.

[8] I take it that you believe that you have more than one eyelash. But I suppose that up until now, you had not given this much consideration. If that example does not suit, perhaps you might consider if you believe that you have more than five eyelashes, or less than 12,678. Or you might bring to mind some other belief about something which you had up until now never considered …
The point is that we each have innumerable beliefs that we have never articulated, indeed which we never will articulate, but which nevertheless we do hold to be true. All this to make the point that there are unstated beliefs…

[9] What we take to be true is what forms the content of a belief. What we take to be true can be expressed in a proposition. Hence, the content of our beliefs is propositional.

[10] beliefs are always about what can be put in propositional form. And this can be rephrased as that the content of a belief is propositional.

[11] My contention is that the content of beliefs are propositional. What is believed can be stated, and is held to be true.

[12] Lilly apparently believed that there was something objectionable out the window, and that her hissing and spitting were imperative in order to drive whatever it was away. This is at least part of what belief is about: that our actions follow from our beliefs, that what we do, we do in the light of what we hold to be true.

[13] My own inclination is more towards beliefs being a way of talking about, and hence explaining, our actions; that is, that they are not things stored so much as interpretations of what we do.

@Athena

Thanks a lot for your feedback and the references!

> I lost my best source of information about what Eisenhower did to embed the MIC

Isn't Eisenhower also the one who warned the US about the danger of the MIC?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg-jvHynP9Y

@creativesoul

> I will say this, the question itself is based upon the belief that all those things mentioned are concepts. I do not share that belief.

In this context I used the term “concept” as equivalent to “notion” so not in theoretically loaded terms as to categorize the type of referents of those notions. And therefore I see this use in this context as philosophically neutral and harmless.

> Banno and I are in agreement regarding historical use of these terms.

Well I don’t know much about your reciprocal knowledge and terminological agreements. And I didn’t mean to interfere. I was just curious to understand better what these terminological agreements amount to, because I found your exchange stimulating.

> We're much the same amount of Wittgensteinian, in that regard.

Well I'm not sure yet what you mean by that, I don't k now if you are referring to some Wittgensteinian approach (in this respect we can say at least that there is the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus and the Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations [1]) or stance on specific topics, in this case which ones and how you would understand that stance. Anyways this is a marginal issue wrt the current topic so let's just drop it.

[1] In both cases I don't think e.g. that Wittgenstein believed in fregian propositions

@Banno

> Yeah, come on, @creativesoul, write us an explanation of how the whole world works. Preferably in less than a hundred words.

Your sarcasm is understandable but there is a specific reason for my request. Indeed in the literature these notions can be all related in a way that it is not possible to understand one without reference to others: e.g. the notion of “proposition” and that of “concept” are related if one understands proposition as a mental representation made of a combination of concepts, the notion of “proposition” and that of “belief” too are related if one understands proposition as a mental attitude toward propositions, etc.
I wasn’t looking for arguments but more for some terminological coordinates to better understand his exchange with you.

> What this shows is that you have not understood how the word "proposition" is used

I can admit it was just poor phrasing. My skepticism is more related to the metaphysics of propositions e.g. fregian propositions. For me propositions are just abstract representations resulting from metalinguistic analysis on the truth-functionality of our descriptive statements. So there are no “propositions” as mind-independent entities, nor as original bearers of truth values. Since propositions for me require developed human linguistic skills then they can not constitute the content of perceptions.

> The only out you might make would be to vacillate between propositional truth and "true" as in "accurate", which you verge on.

Indeed, I think that perceptions have mind to world “accuracy” conditions.

> However I expect that accuracy is ultimately parsed in proposition terms. The plank is true if it conforms to specifiable criteria.

Whatever you think you are parsing in proposition terms: 1. Either that content wasn’t a proposition before that parsing, but if that content wasn’t already representational without being a proposition, the parsing would be arbitrary, and there would be no criteria for establishing if the parsing was correct or not. 2. Or it was already a proposition then there is no need for parsing.

Besides, can you clarify what you mean by proposition? There are different ways of understanding it.

@Athena,

your wrote:

Athens imitated Sparta for military reasons when Prussia began invading but it never took care of its people as Sparta did

Prussia?

This is astonishing to me. We use the term "New World Order" as though we in the US invented that idea. It is not our idea. It is a Prussian idea, developed before the first world war, and is what Eisenhower called the Military/Industrial Complex. It is what Hitler was about, and when the US adopted the German bureaucratic model that shifted power from the individual to the state, and replaced its liberal education with the German model of education for technology and military and industrial purpose, and replaced classical philosophy with German philosophy, it put itself on the same path Germany followed. Calling this a conspiracy is non sense. It is what the Prussians did when they took charge of the whole of Germany. They applied Prussian military bureaucracy to citizens, and focused education on technology for the rapid development of military technology. Industry is used to support the military and the military is used to defend a nation's economic interest.

I'm curious to know more about your views. Di you publish anything on this subject? Can you suggest any readings that support or elaborate more on your statements?

@creativesoul
Could you pls elaborate more on this "He is more Wittgensteinian than I. Much more actually"?

Would you be able to briefly clarify how you understand the following concepts and their relation: "sensation", "intentionality", "representation", "perception", "concept", "belief", "proposition"?

I couldn't read all the comments but what I would add is that the expression "head of State" looks as a combination of metonymy and metaphor, b/c heads are literally part of human bodies (this is the metonymic aspect) but not States (metaphoric aspect). Compare:
- he is the leader of the football team
- he is the chair of the Department of Political Science
- he is the head of State

Some thoughts that do not directly answer the question of the main post but settle some useful hints on how to address it:

- As long as democracy, capitalism, socialism, fascism are taken to denote abstract ideals nothing will destroy them. And this is worth to keep in mind if we reason in historic terms, because not only there are historic events that can more or less favor or oppose the popularity and implementation of such economic-political regimes, but we may also notice some cyclical patterns in their emergence and decline.

- Democracy was a disparaging term probably invented by some “Old Oligarch” in ancient Athens to define a form of government where the low-class populace (poor, uneducated, emotional, superstitious) could directly govern (meaning electing and proposing not only officials but also laws by referendums). Its bad reputation persisted so long that even the American “democratic” constitution didn’t dare even to name it, differently from its presidents. The name became much tolerable when its meaning progressively and slowly shifted from its original usage to the current usage (at least in the western tradition) that comprises a family of institutions like representative government based on universal suffrage & majority rules, rule of law (constitution, divisions of power, system of rights like human rights), and welfare system (at least, in some minimal form). Of course these institutions can be more or less well designed and implemented, my contention is however twofold: 1. what we understand now as democracy should be the right kick-start for any comparison between democratic and non-democratic countries or when we assess democratic claims (as Russia, China and Iran do). 2. Yet the history of the democratic ideology (not only of the implemented democratic regimes) is dark from its onset. And we wouldn’t be far from the truth if we claimed that philosophy as popularized by Plato begins as an intellectual war against the democratic ideology of his time. So I’m not surprised by the resurgence of “populist” (“democratic” in its original meaning) feelings which can go so far as to vote to death the wrong people and cheerfully elect dictators.

- Interestingly enough, in any information technology revolution there are always 2 sides of the story: the side of those who can consume the information made available by the technological revolution and the side of those who master or can exploit the prodigies of the new technology to win over their competitors. This is also true in Ancient Greece where the transition from oral to literate culture contributed to the rise of populist elites aligned to the democratic ideology of that time, as much as internet social networks are now favoring the rise of populist representatives.

- The much celebrated victory of the US at the end of Cold War supported the idea of the capitalist democracy primacy over other ideologies (whence the confidence on the thesis of the end of history by Fukuyama): unfortunately once the major threat of the common enemy (a totalitarian communist regime) disappeared, the support for the much celebrated alliance between the democratic and capitalist ideologies started to crumble down, and internet became the battle field where this much celebrated alliance is progressively but bitterly torn apart.

@Joshs lately I don't have much time/concentration for intellectually challenging readings, but I very much appreciate your suggestions about "theoretical psychology" texts, if you can provide some titles (in pvt, if you prefer).

@Bartricks

Indeed if you understood, you would see how catastrophic your argumentation still looks to me. And it’s catastrophic for 2 main reasons:
1. It’s grounded on very bad premises.
2. Even if the premises were acceptable (and they aren't), the entire argumentation would still be completely useless to prove your point.

OK let me try once again:

1. Concerning your premises, a very bad one is that we become aware of the world through sensation by sensory-resemblance. Why? Because it is unsustainable not only for entities inaccessible through direct experience (like physical particles) but also for entities accessible by direct experience: e.g. a red apple is a physical entity that reflects some electromagnetic waves which hit our sensory organs and may result in a sensation of red. Now how does the red sensation resembles the electromagnetic wave or the apple that reflected that electromagnetic wave? Since electromagnetic waves and apples are not visual entities per se, but physical entities existing independently from the experience we have of them and can not share ontologically intrinsic sensory properties, it’s impossible to detect such sensory resemblance. So if entities that we can access through direct experience and entities that we can not access through direct experience are not sensations, how can changes affecting them be sensations? And here, I’m assuming that you are not committed to a pure empiricist (say, humian or berkleyian) ontological framework. If you are, then just tell me in advance and we can spare ourselves from arguing further. Besides this is also why your example of the painting look completely misleading in explaining how sensations refer to the world, unless they are suggesting that everything in the real world (not only change) can be reduced to sensation.
The other very bad assumption is that change can be sensed (which for me it’s impossible, even when change concerns sensations, go figure!) but I’ll leave it for next time.

2. Even if your assumptions were sound (and they aren’t to me), your argumentation is useless to prove your point, namely that change is a sensation due to a sensory resemblance to the sensation of change. Here are the 2 steps to get that:
A. Reference by resemblance is logically warranted by resemblance not the other way around. If you want to talk about X referring to Y by resembling it, then I challenge you to clarify the relationship between the “referring” and “resemblance” between X and Y because “referring” and “resemblance” are logically distinct predicates: indeed there can be X referring to Y (but not the other way around) without X resembling Y ; and there can be X resembling Y without X referring to Y (nor the other way around). So how do we explain the co-occurrence of both predicates when X is referring to Y by resembling it? Your example of the portrait shows that claims of reference by resemblance is proven by prior resemblance detection, not the other way around: it’s because a portrait painting resembles Rembrandt in the first place that then we can take that portrait to refer to Rembrandt by resemblance not the other way around. So, by analogy, only the prior detection of resemblance between sensation of change and real change that can allow us to take the sensation of change is referring to real change by resemblance not the other way around!
B. The detection of sensory resemblance is possible only by comparing entities directly and independently experienced: it’s because the Rembrandt perception, the painting perception, and the mnemonic images can be directly and independently accessed that one can do the comparison among their visual properties and detect similarities. In other words to detect visual resemblance between X and Y, then X and Y need to be directly and independently experienced as visual entities. By analogy, you can detect the sensory resemblance between the sensation of change and change only if each of them would be independently and directly accessible as sensory phenomena. Hence if change was not evidently a sensation independently from any comparisons, it would be impossible to detect any resemblance between change and the sensation of change. Indeed as much as you do not need a sensation of a sensation of change to know that the sensation of change is a sensation, then you do not need to have a sensation of change to know that change is a sensation. This is true for all sensations: sensations are categorized as such by evidence and without any need of comparisons or ensuing resemblance detection or second-order sensations, were this the case this would lead to an infinite vicious regress! There is no need to argue that change is a sensation based on resemblance, or worse, based on reference by resemblance (as you fancy to do), were this really the case.

If you do not address my points as they are, after reading them carefully, it’s useless to continue the exchange. Of course, if you feel so badly the urge to remind me once more that “So far as I can tell, you have made no real objection to my case” (when I made plenty and didin't even finish yet), be my guest but pls skip at least the part were you pretend to counter my objections.

@Joshs,

By “you are conflating ontological with epistemological concerns”, I simply meant that some of your comments sounded as objections to my views on the ontology of emotions and moods but the main arguments you provided were all about the epistemology of emotions and moods (how to better understand human behavior). To say that moods are emotional dispositional states and emotions are actual states is compatible with both behavioristic and holistic approaches to understanding the emotional life of human beings. So I didn’t understand why you were repeatedly bringing up this issue.

> A behavioral definition of such things as moods and emotions will be different than a cognitivist or neurophysiological or embodied enactivist one. I’m trying to find out which approach to psychology you are getting your definitions from.

Mine are ontological considerations that are not inspired by any of those scientific approaches or research programs you mentioned. However if you think that any among them could object to my understanding of moods as emotional dispositional states and emotions as actual states, I would like to hear which one and why.

> Soluble means salt will definitely dissolve in water. Bad mood doesn’t mean a person will definitely get angry.

Agreed, but that wouldn’t prove yet that moods are not dispositions, maybe would only prove that the dispositions of salt to dissolve in water are nomological and simple, while the dispositions of a person in bad mood are either nomological but hugely more complicated that the case of salt, or simply irreducible to nomological regularities.

> If calling mood an emotional disposition just means that in a given mood the chances of having a certain emotion are more probable than when not in that mood, then I agree. But this doesn’t seem very interesting to me if that’s all you’re trying to say.

Yes that’s all I’m trying to say. Even if it is not very interesting to you, we better agree on some background definitions before proceeding further.

> We don’t need to know any background motivation if we want to do a lousy, unreliable and superficial job at detecting mood. We will end up treating ‘predisposition to emotion’ the way a person ignorant of chemistry treats solubility; in a very limited fashion with poor predictiveness.

Talking of “psychological acumen” was a quick way for me to show that I have no problems to admit different degrees of understanding emotions (and therefore also moods as emotional dispositions). So I have no doubts that having a background personal knowledge of motivations, characters, biographical episodes of someone’s life, or a background knowledge of human psychology as wise old men, priests, doctors, psychologists, and writers seem equipped with would boost our predictive capacity in deciphering human emotional life. But I wouldn’t be so dismissive even with rudimentary emotional assessments because their relevance and effectiveness may also depend on the social context: often to have a better understanding of the emotional life of an employer is not only practically unattainable but also unnecessary to correctly understand if it is the right moment e.g. to ask for a pay rise. In other words, often even “a lousy, unreliable and superficial job at detecting mood” is good enough to navigate smoothly through many ordinary social interactions.

> What would help me at this point is to know if there are any particular writings-theories in psychology that have inspired your ontological descriptions of passion, mood, emotion and disposition.

Mine is just a philosophical exercise certainly inspired by what I read, but in a very broad sense: indeed I can’t point you to any specific author or text (FYI for quite a while I read just Heidegger, but it was long time ago). Besides I do not have any special interest in psychology, indeed my knowledge of the psychological literature is certainly very poor, not up-to-date and almost totally forgotten.

@Bartricks,

> And I have argued that sensations give us an awareness of the sensible world by resembling it.

I doubt that. First of all notice that we can refer to the world independently from sensory resemblance: the term “one” denotes a number but is there any resemblance between them? The term “democracy” stands for a political regime but is there any resemblance between them?
Besides reference is an asymmetric predicate (a name refers to an object not the other way around) while resemblance is symmetric (a picture of an object resembles the object and the other way around). So how do we settle their relationship? First we establish if there is a resemblance on top of that we ground a reference claim oriented in one sense or the other: in other words if an agent is referring to something based on sensory resemblance first the sensory resemblance must be identified by comparison of entities that can be independently experienced, then the agent can take one of the entities as referring to the other by resembling it!
Yet what you are trying to argument is the opposite: you’re trying to infer the sensory-resemblance between sensations of change and real changes from the putative ability of sensations of change (assumed you are right, and I doubt that too!) to refer to the world, prior to having made any sensory comparisons.
Besides sensations do not require “sensory” resemblance to be able to inform us about the world: e.g. a red sensation can be triggered by an electro-magnetic wave coming from a given source, now how does the red sensation “sensory”-resemble the electro-magnetic wave or the source? There is no such “sensory” resemblance since electro-magnetic waves and their source are not sensations!

> I say that a portrait of Rembrandt - or to be tediously accurate, the image it creates in us - gives us some insight into Rembrandt's appearance by resembling the image that looking at actual Rembrandt would have created in us. So, in this case it is an image of an image of an image. Would you raise the same questions?

Of course not, because the resemblance is always between visual sensory patterns. Besides to each of them you can in principle have independent access: the image of Rembrandt as directly perceived, the image of Rembrandt as perceived in his portrait and the image of Rembrandt one can remember. Just because you have independent access to all of them you can compare them and notice the resemblance. Based on that you can take these images “stored” in memory or in paintings to refer to the visual object. All of them belong to the domain of visual phenomena, and can be experienced independently from one another.
But how can this example help you prove that changes in the real world are sensations?
I don’t see how for several reasons:
1. The two domains are categorically heterogenous: A. Physical particles are not even accessible to our senses, then how can changes affecting them (like quantum leaps) be sensations? Consider the symptoms a person gets even weeks after the cells of her body got infected by a coronavirus: if the changes in her cells during the infection were “sensations” happening in her body how come she became aware of the infection only days or weeks later, namely when experiencing the first symptoms of the viral disease?
B. And, as I previously clarified, the sensory-resemblance is unsustainable even for explaining what of the world is accessible to us through sensations.
2. As I argued before, the possibility for an image to refer to a certain object by resembling it, is grounded in the possibility of detecting the resemblance by direct comparison of 2 sensory patterns that one can experience independently, however it is no possible to experience the world independently from our sensations to make sensory-comparisons between the world and our sensations.
3. If we need a resemblance argument to prove that change is a sensation, do we need a resemblance-argument to prove that red is a sensation? If not, what is the reason?

> Change itself is a sensation, and it too is sensed, but not by us, but some other mind.

What is the mind that is sensing a quantum leap?


Pls give and argue on examples if possibile to not get lost in abstract arguments

@Bartricks

> Change itself is the object, but because sensations can only resemble other sensations, change itself can nevertheless be concluded to be a sensation.

In what respect do they resemble and in what respect do they differ? And if your conclusion is that change is a sensation then why would I need a sensation of a change (actually a sensation of a sensation, a second order sensation) to detect it?! Or are you saying that change is a sensation that is not sensed? Which doesn’t make sense (pun intended!)

> objects of awareness and vehicles of awareness cannot be made of the same material. That's patently false.

Why? What is the argument? Can you show your point with an example other the sensation of change?


> But by reason we know or are told that some of our sensations 'resemble' a world.

We know or we are told?! Why some and not all? Also the idea of an external world is a sensation? How can a sensation resemble a magnetic field or a quantum leap in the real world?

@Joshs
My strong impression is that we are addressing different philosophical issues. You seem mainly concerned about what is required to have a better understanding of human behaviour [1], and in order to achieve that you are advocating for a more holistic than behaviouristic approach [2]. This concern is clearly epistemological not ontological. My issue is instead primarily ontological: in other words, I’m discussing about what emotions or moods are. More specifically if we can understand moods as emotional dispositions. Or how we can ontologically discriminate between moods and passions, especially if we consider both emotional dispositions. And these considerations give me clues on how to deal with the epistemological concerns too: e.g. I think that the ontological analysis of moods support the idea that we can identify them successfully without any reference to background motivations or causes.
Of course your epistemological concerns too must be grounded in some ontological understanding of the subject yet your ontological/epistemological stance remains ambiguous to me. My suspect is that is because you are conflating ontological with epistemological concerns. Indeed on one side you keep admitting emotional dispositions and how important is to detect them, besides you also keep using mood-terms for discriminating actual from dispositional behavior [3]. On the other side not only you do not seem willing to acknowledge the role that mood-terms may play in discriminating actual from dispositional behavior (see your previous comment), but you seem also to suggest that emotions too can support expectations, since they can reveal motivations [4], if so then do we really need to distinguish emotions from emotional dispositions after all?

So let me ask you again:
- Do you agree that mood-terms are particularly suitable to suggest emotional dispositions (as e.g. soluble is particularly suitable to suggest the disposition of salt to dissolve in water)?
- Do you agree that in order to detect successfully someone’s mood we do not necessarily need to know background motivations or causes that would explain that mood (as e.g. to detect that salt is soluble doesn’t require any scientific knowledge of the chemistry of salt)?



[1]
The better we understand the way the other person is experiencing their world right now , the better we can anticipate what they are likely to do next.

the more we know about their history, that is , our history with them, the better we can interpret what they are doing now and why they are doing it.

What if that someone doesn’t know the boss as well as you do?

The more effectively we understand the stable templates, habits and schemes others employ to navigate life, the better position we are to both identify their moods and to help alleviate their suffering.

We need to consult more than just overt behavior patterns in order to understand and predict others behavior. These outward signs must be linked back to our prior history with that person to the extent that we can do so, and that includes knowing about recent significant events in their lives.

Knowing the reason for the mood ( winning lottery, smoking marijuana, yoga session) is useful here to the extent that we know enough about the person to fathom how the event is likely to affect them.

[2]
First , that human beings are not stimulus response machines who react to events in easily generalizable ways. They react in ways that are unique to them.

If one cannot see this linkage of internal scheme and outward signs , then one has to settle for the relative superficiality of behaviorist methods of observation. They do tell us something about others , but leave out much that is vital to achieving intimate anticipatory understanding of others

[3]
I may also know that he is prone to fire people without warning when he is in such a mood, and newbies at the office will have no way of protecting themselves, since they may only be looking for overt emotional manifestations of anger.

In order to recognize anothers moods, and how they are likely to behave when in a particular mood, we must attempt to connect outward signs and gestures with underlying themes of concern that preoccupy them.

[4]
emotions reveal to us the hierarchical nature of our motivations.

@Joshs, very elaborate and interesting analysis. I’m afraid I’m not as skillful as you to articulate my views.
Anyhow, did your analysis prove that moods are not dispositions? I doubt that. You wrote: “So what differentiates the angry mood from isolated bouts of anger? You suggest disposition , but what makes someone disposed to act angrily in more than just a one-off fashion?”. This question shows me that you admit the existence of emotional dispositions, but in order to account for moods you find it decisive to look at actual emotions (or milder/subtle actual feelings) and deeper motivations.
I think your approach is misleading on two grounds:
1. We always detect dispositions by observing some occurring behavior, indeed a behavioral pattern, yet we do not need to have personally observed those behavioral patterns that support disposition claims, someone else can have done that for us. In any case the purpose of talking about dispositions is to guide our expectations in possible future behaviors (what would happen if…), so much so that this can become a strong reason for having terms to identify those dispositions (e.g. “soluble” for salt). And this is precisely the role I think we give to “mood”-related vocabulary at least for certain emotional dispositions. If I know that someone is simply angry, I can hope to smooth down their anger by making some inoffensive and distracting playful remark, while if I know that someone is in a bad mood, I would more likely avoid such an attempt to not risk to make that person even more angry than she actually is.
2. When we talk about moods indeed we do not need to know the deeper roots of a given person's mood: maybe she is in a good mood because she won the lottery, or because she just came back from a successful yoga session, or because she smoked marijuana, or because her beloved one is coming back home after months of separation, or by character like Pollyanna. Mood-claims are allowed whenever there are emotional patterns that can guide our expectations about possible future emotional reactions under certain conditions, independently from their genesis.

@Joshs ,

There are 2 hints that I can get from your comments: 1. Moods and passions can be related to personality traits 2. Moods are actual states.
Let me focus on the second point and leave the first point for another occasion. First off, I noticed that in you comments, you do not talk about emotions, but about angry feelings and angry mood, so it’s not clear to me if you distinguish or conflate “angry emotion“, “angry feelings“ and “angry mood“. As I said anger is for me an emotion, and my impression is that your idea of “angry feeling” and “angry mood” simply correspond to my idea of angry emotion (indeed also of emotions we can say they can capture us and some of them are so volatile that can quickly fade away or easy forget). The difference you seem to suggest between emotions and moods sounds more phenomenological than ontological to me: you seem to prefer to talk about “angry mood” when an emotion or “angry feeling” is particularly intense and/or persistent (e.g. “a continuous and incessant brooding over a situation”). Yet you also talk about volatile moods (“Moods are states we can briefly pop out of. We say that we were in a bad mood but forgot all about it for a few moments”) so I’m not sure after all if intensity/persistence are relevant in distinguishing angry emotions, angry feelings and angry moods. And if it is not that then what else?
Anyway, as I said, for me emotions and sensations are actual states, while passions and moods are dispositional states. Emotions are actual states triggered by what actually happens, while moods refer more to emotional patterns in someone’s behavior that guide people’s expectations (expectations may be grounded on actual events but are directed toward possible future events). The example I have in mind is the employee who warns his/her colleague of the employer’s “bad mood” what does the employee mean? That if the colleague runs into his employee he/she can trigger an angry emotional reaction from the boss if doesn’t act enough cautiously. This kind of conditionals render the dispositional nature of moods. That is why the case of “moody” persons is particularly striking since in their case the emotional pattern could mislead our expectations, in other words their emotional dispositions are less or not easily predictable.

@Joshs unfortunately I don’t know enough about the enactivist approach to affect or other mental states, and I’m not sure how to process your quotation.

What I would say about the concept of feeling, is that I find it more vague and general than emotion: for example, sensations (like pain) can be considered feelings as you also suggested. But I would also label emotions, moods and passions as feelings. While emotions are actual mental states, moods and passions are dispositional emotional states. By passion I’m referring to e.g. love and hate, and I understand them as complex emotional dispositions revolving around a subject of interest: e.g. love is someone’s disposition to feel joy when in company of the beloved one, sadness in the protracted absence of the beloved one, anger when someone mistreats the beloved one, or when the beloved one is flirting with someone else etc. While moods are emotional dispositions identifiable independently from any reference to their genesis (but still useful to guide our expectations about other people’s emotional patterns): e.g. the mood of a moody person is an unpredictable emotional disposition, the bad mood can be an occasional disposition to get easily angry, being “in the mood for love” is a disposition to enjoy flirting, romantic occasions and fantasies, being in a “good mood” is a pro-social or auto-affective emotional disposition (don’t get easily angry, enjoy company, don’t feel particularly anxious about something or to do things), etc.

@Bartricks

Here my feedback:

- No I do not subscribe to a static view of time, this is why I explicitly wrote “I myself do not believe that the russellian definition of change is satisfactory, but not because it's circular which indeed is not”.

- I questioned that you understood the static definition of time, because the static definition of time doesn’t need to refer to temporal properties nor can be rendered with “going” or “becoming” terms and it offers us an analysis of change in ontological terms. But if your point is that a russellian definition of change is a static one so it misses the dynamic nature of change, fine with me however I didn’t read arguments in favour of this latter contention, while you spent lots of comments focusing only on the putative circularity of the russellian definition of change .

- Indeed I gave you several arguments against the idea that change can be a sensation which you simply ignored [1]. And I’ll add one more: if sensations “refer to” X, then they can not be identified with what they are referring to as much as a perception of a red apple doesn’t identify with the apple. So a sensation of change is not change nor what change is. Unless of course you interpret the grammar of “sensation of change” by analogy with “sensation of red” instead of by analogy with “perception of a red apple”. If so there would certainly be a case of identification however not a case of reference!

[1]
> There are different sorts of sensation, and some of them are 'of' reality and thus are capable of being accurate or inaccurate. That's not true of all of them. A sensation of pain cannot be accurate or inaccurate. However, the impression that one is in pain can be. And similarly, my visual impression that there is a mug on my desk can be accurate or inaccurate.

You believe that there are 2 types of sensations: sensations “of” reality and sensations which are not “of” anything. FYI, this does not correspond to the empiricist view where sensations do not refer. In philosophy “reference” recalls the debate over “intentionality”, and sensations are usually understood as devoid of intentionality . I’m claiming that such a distinction is a confusion. One and the same type of sensation can be understood in ontological terms or epistemological terms. In ontological terms, sensations do not “refer to“ , they are not “of” something. However if you understand them in epistemological terms, they can deliver information of something else, like a red sensation can accurately or inaccurately deliver information about the skin color of an apple. Also the sensation of “pain” can deliver information about our body and this information can be inaccurate (e.g. phantom limb pain). Aristotle, Hume, and Kant have different ideas about how sensations can deliver information about the world. None of them believes that sensations as such deliver such information. The intuitive reasons why one may want to not assume that there are sensations that refer to something as such are the following: 1. the same sensation can deliver information about 2 different objects: the external world and us (e.g. sensation of heat on our skin delivers information on the source of heat and our body part), and two completely different sensations can deliver information about one and the same object (e.g. we recognize the circular shape of an object by tactile and visual sensations ) 2. An accurate assessment about a sensation doesn’t depend on the accurate assessment about the sensation is referring to (e.g. I can see something red without understanding what is red).
The additional trouble with the notion of “sensation of change” is that sensations are actual: at time t1 you have a sensation of heat, and at time t2 you have a sensation of cold, now when would the sensation of change supposedly happen? If you say at t1, then t2 didn’t occur yet, so there was no change. While if you say at t2, then t1 doesn’t exist anymore so how can you detect the change?


> The point, though, is that the accuracy condition of a sensation is going to be another sensation. And thus, if change is something we have a sensation of, then change itself is a sensation.

As someone said: “it is an egregious mistake to confuse one's detection of something with the thing itself” so having an impression that something has changed may be understood as detection mechanism for establishing what is true, but truth conditions do not need to be understood as sensations (e.g. statements about the existence of aliens in the outer space can be true or false independently if we can ever prove it or not by direct or indirect observation, and related sensations). And “having an impression that something has changed” doesn’t necessarily amounts to “having a sensation of change” but it may simply express a weakly belief that change was detected even in the absence of any specific “sensation of change”.

@Joshs I can see how we could easily parse such ‘emotions’ into subtler and subtler versions of themselves. This is why I mentioned the psychological acumen necessary to detect certain emotions. Yet the existence of subtler emotions doesn’t logically exclude the possibility of occasional or chronic absence of emotions (if this is harmless or harmful is another matter): for example when we do some daily routine/chore (imagine when you have to fill up a brief questionnaire about general biographical trivia) or when there is no emotion where we would normally expect it (indeed psychologic and fictional literature is plenty of emotionally obtuse characters e.g. think about the main character of “The Stranger” by Camus). Since in this context I’m more interested in the ontological questions than in the phenomenological or the empirical questions about emotions, I am inclined to admit the logical possibility of having thoughts without emotions.
BTW this possibility is also readily compatible with evolutionary and ethological considerations like: 1. emotions have been selected in the broad animal world for their “communicative” function, so their excessive subtlety may play against this ) 2. Emotions are energy consuming since they involve physical and bodily reactions, so there might be an ethological incentive to saving “emotional” energy where it is not needed.

@Joshs I would be inclined to consider sadness, anxiety, trepidation , uneasiness, concern, satisfaction as emotions because they can be easily described in accordance to the definition I’ve given, maybe with some caveats though: for example if uneasiness is an expression of embarrassment then it’s an emotion but if it amounts to feeling queasy because I’ve eaten something toxic, then it is not an emotion. Why? Because in the latter case the triggering factor is physiological and doesn’t involve thoughts.

@Mww Then as a starter I said that emotions (e.g. fear, joy, anger, disgust, surprise) are occurring sudden and spontaneous (non-deliberate) bodily/physiological reactions (like the facial expressions) to what happens. To complete I would say that emotions require thoughts not the other way around.

@Mww indeed I limited myself to draft some ideas on how I would distinguish thoughts and emotions. Or at least where I would start with. The problem depends also on the vague boundaries of concepts like thoughts and emotions. Do you have any suggestions on how you would make it less incomplete?

@Joshs if we are talking about "emotions" and emotions are considered "more intense variations in the affective attunement" while "Attunements are never absent" then we can still claim that emotions can be absent. The question is if attunements in H.'s terminology correspond or not to emotional dispositions in my terminology .

@Bartricks you keep putting your wording in my mouth. I never wrote that "something goes from being future to being present". There is no "going". According to the russellian definition, change is strictly and literally speaking: possessing different properties at different times. Period. There are no "going", "becoming", "change" terms involved. And this definition is definitely not circular no matter how hard you try. Besides I never talked about temporal properties in the first place, but since you keep talking about them, I limited myself to give you an example on how the russellian definition of change can be applied also to temporal properties. And also in this case the definition wouldn't be circular. Finally I myself do not believe that the russellian definition of change is satisfactory, but not because it's circular which indeed is not. I think we stalled and it's clear that you are unfamiliar with the main philosophical literature on the subject.

@Joshs I'm not sure how you understand Heidegger''s remarks wrt what I wrote. The first observation is that H. is talking about mood, attunements, affective self-finding while I’m talking about emotions. The second observation is that I provided examples of emotions: joy, sadness, anger, fear, surprise. While H., in your quotations, doesn’t give any examples to illustrate what he means by mood, attunements, affective self-finding . Said that, I can concede that emotions can be more or less intense and that sometimes we are not even aware of them. However emotions are actual, non-dispositional phenomena (differently from “mood”, at least to me) and we learn what emotions are based on their most intense and “expressive” manifestations not on the mildest and concealed (indeed some psychological acumen is required to detect mild, inauthentic, or concealed emotions). Besides in our life there might be activities not emotionally triggering like when we are following some daily routine or chore (e.g. cooking or do shopping).

@Bartricks I don't get your question. Until you rephrase, I limit myself to stress that the russellian definition I was referring to does not talk about change of temporal properties. Simply it states that change is possessing different properties at different times, period. Of course if one believes in the existence of temporal properties (e.g. being past, being present and being future as properties), then the russellian definition of change can be applied as follow: temporal change is when one and the same thing possesses the property of being future at time t1, present at time t2 and past at time t3.

Thoughts are cognitive states: believing, doubting, questioning, reasoning, guessing, comparing, etc.
Emotions (e.g. fear, joy, anger, disgust, surprise) are occurring sudden and spontaneous (non-deliberate) bodily/physiological reactions to what happens.
Thoughts can trigger emotions, but there can also be emotionless thoughts.

@Bartricks For the umpteenth time, read carefully before commenting. You wrote: "A change in temporal properties is.....wait for it......a 'change'" , this definition of yours is indeed circular, bravo! But as far as I can tell no known philosopher dealing with the ontology of time has provided such a definition. But feel free to provide textual evidences to the contrary, then I will agree with you with no further hesitation. The only definition that resounds like yours is the russellian definition of time which is: possessing different properties at different times. Read carefully: possessing - different - properties - at - different - times. In this russellian definition there is no mention of "change" or "becoming". So either you misunderstood what a russellian definition is or you just concocted a circular definition of change to prove how smart you are at detecting circular definitions. In any case, you should still prove you can deal with a non-circular definition of change as the russellian definition is.

@emancipate I disagree with the following statement: "Propositions are the bearers of these truth values." And therefore with what ensues. I'm reluctant to give "propositions" the role you attribute to them for reasons related to the ontology of propositions and to the nature of language. To sum up my view (without arguing further), I'd say that "perceptions" have truth-conditions, they can be accurate or not, effective or illusory without being propositional (one might recall here the distinction between "seeing" and "seeing as" suggested by Wittgenstein).

@emancipate
> Your proposed pre-rendered belief states are impossible to communicate without language.
So what? You can have it backwards, without perceptual beliefs you couldn't even learn a human language for communicating anything, since to learn a language you need to rely on the ability to detect perceptual patterns and reproduce them e.g. phonetically without being able to render the related perceptual beliefs in linguistic terms (since you are still learning the language).