@emancipate yes indeed, I put my cat's beliefs in propositional form. That doesn't mean that my cat's beliefs were originally in propositional form nor that they wouldn't be beliefs if we couldn't render them in propositional form.

@emancipate exactly? I don't know. Broadly speaking I might render the cat's belief as "my cat believes there is an intruder in our yard" or "my cat believes that my wife is coming home" etc.

perceptual beliefs are the ones your cat has while staring at the window. And you form when looking at the road while driving your car and listening to some songs on the radio.

@Banno perceptual beliefs are not identical to beliefs that such-and-such, yet they can often be more or less broadly rendered as beliefs that such and such. The possibility of having perceptual beliefs is not grounded on the linguistic capacity of rendering perceptual beliefs in linguistic terms. Briefly, while I can concede the first part of your statement "If you can't put it into propositional form, your belief is not a belief that such-and-such", the consequence "hence it is not a belief" doesn't follow unless you stipulate it. And yes beliefs can be about something (like all perceptual beliefs which refer to possible state of affairs through sensations), without being beliefs that such and such.

@Bartricks, according to the russellian conception, change is possessing different properties at different times. Read carefully and you'll see that there is no mention of "becoming". The circularity you claim to see is due to your misunderstanding of this definition.

I tend to agree with @creativesoul and disagree with @Banno. The latter claims: "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."
The second statement sounds a sloppy way of render the first one, for the simple reason that the actual content of a belief is the "what" (the possible state of affairs?) prior to being put into propositional form (by means of a statement?). The content of a glass is not water just because you can pour into it water!

@Bartricks

> What on earth does that mean? What work is the word 'ontologically' doing?

The question “what is change?” may mean that one want to know under what ontological categories/terms change can be understood: e.g. men are substances, colours are properties, wars are events, number are abstract entities etc.
The notion of “change” you are clumsily referring to is a known as “Cambridge or russellian change”, within the analytic philosophical tradition. According to Russell there is no intrinsic state of change, but simply possessing different properties at different times. Since you are clumsily reporting it as if the term “change” was included in the definition to make it look circular, you think that the definition of russellian change is circular, which is not.



What? If an object goes from being present to being past, it has changed, has it not? Changed from being present, to being past.

It seems you are unfamiliar with the philosophical debate about the subject you are talking about. Russellian change can not be understood as a transition from being present to being past. Being present and being pas are predicates which may or may nor indicate properties in a strict ontological sense. Some believe that being present and being past can be reduced to predicates which do not refer to present nor past. In any case russellian change can be understood without reference to such predicates.



> Secondly, “being present” and “being past” may not be properties in strict sense. — neomacYes they are

Again, you seem unfamiliar with the ontological terminology. Properties in ontology are technical terms, and may presuppose a more or less strict usage. E.g. existence is not a property according to some, while it is a first order property to some others, or a second order property for some others. So one can claim that also predicates like “being present” and “being past”, as “being possible” and “being necessary” are not properties as much as existence is not a property. This needs to be argued of course. My point is simplu that yours is just a debatable assumption in ontology.


> You keep putting in extra words. What's a 'categorical' confusion as opposed to just a confusion?

"Categorical confusion" specifies the scope of your confusing as much as terminological confusion specifies that you are confusing terms and mnemonic confusion specifies that you are confusing memories. In this case you are confusing ontological with epistemological categories. “Sensation” as an ontological category is neither true nor false: red is a sensation, and as such it is neither true nor false. While if we take “red” in terms of what information it delivers of the world it may refer to, therefore - as a perceptual belief - then it can be true or false.



> 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”.

However, that either doesn’t tell us what change in itself is - it just tells us when we typically recognize there to have been a change - or it is a circular and so tells us nothing. — Bartricks

I disagree, it tells us what change ontologically amounts to. So yes it does tell us what change is. Indeed there can be different properties at different times that no one recognises.
It is not circular because the term change is not included in the definition of change as having different properties at different times.

For it appeals to a change in temporal properties. When a thing goes from being present to being past, it has already changed – changed from being present to being past. — Bartricks

No it doesn’t. First of all, that definition of change makes no mention of predicates like “being present” and “being past“. Secondly, “being present” and “being past” may not be properties in strict sense.

I suggest that we first detect change by way of sensation. For after all, it can seem to us that something has changed even when we cannot identify 'what' has changed. — Bartricks

This sounds like a categorical confusion between “sensations” as an ontological type (the sensation of "red" is neither true or false) with “seeming” which is an epistemological type (what seems to be red can be blue so the red-seeming can be true or false).

Typically anyway, we have the sensation of change and then notice what seems to have caused that sensation in us — Bartricks

And the cause of a sensation is a sensation? And if it’s not a sensation how do you get the idea that “sensations” are caused?

That is, there must be some resemblance between our sensations of reality and reality itself, — Bartricks

How do they resemble since reality is what is beyond sensation? On what ground one can support the idea of such resemblance, since he/she can not even verify such resemblance?

According to Slattery’s definition of free will, you must always have more than one viable option to choose between for your next thought in order to have free will regarding your thoughts. However, it’s never possible for you to have more than one viable option to choose between for your next thought. — Paul Michael

In this line of reasoning there seem to be 2 assumptions that do not make much sense to me:
1.“Having options” is equated to pondering options simultaneously
2. Free choice between “options” presupposes free choice in thought processes

Against the first assumption, I’d say that one may have “options” simultaneously displayed before his/her eyes (like ice-cream flavours) but one does not ponder them simultaneously, the best one can do is to compare 2 options at a time. Therefore there is no need to ponder “options” simultaneously to choose between them. Pondering “options” can be done sequentially.
Against the second assumption, I’d say that, first of all, this presupposition between thoughts and choices is not included in the provided definition of “free will”. Acting according to what is deliberated by thought doesn’t mean that actions are caused by thoughts (consider the case of “acrasia” e.g. I decide to stop smoking because is bad for health but I can’t stop it) but that one’s actions or dispositions to act are rational.