Thanks -

At the same time, his response is not the sort of inquiry demonstrated in the Philebus. — Paine

Right, and in the Posterior Analytics Aristotle would go that route directly and point to the intermediate, where learning involves a particular kind of potency.

Fast forward to Heidegger and his report that metaphysics is dead. Does this mean the tension brought into view by Plato has been overcome? — Paine

The tension between "what is given to us through our ancestors and what can be revealed through inquiry"? Isn't Heidegger's point that metaphysics is not the sort of thing that can be handed down, and also that we have lost our capacity to "inquire" into metaphysics? That being is concealed from us?

I can see how Meno and Philebus relate to this thread, but I'm still not clear on how Heidegger's report could be thought to indicate the overcoming of that tension.

So I think you are saying that "I believe X but I do not know X" expresses a view about the certainty of, or evidence for, X - that certainty is less than complete, or that evidence is less than conclusive.

Is that something like what you meant? — Ludwig V

Yes, but this also implies something about the propositionality of the belief. When the certainty is less than complete or the evidence is less than conclusive, then the belief becomes more intentionally propositional.

For example, you made a distinction between a first order belief and a second order belief, where a second order belief "believes something of a proposition." Lack of certainty/evidence brings us towards a second order belief, although not in the highly abstract manner of Searle's example of Bernoulli's principle. Namely, the "object" of this sort of belief may be a proposition, unlike first order beliefs.

My point is that this introduces a new and rather large category of belief (i.e. beliefs for which we have a conscious lack of certainty or evidence). If we accept Searle's dichotomy between first order beliefs and highly abstract second order beliefs, then his conclusion that most beliefs are first order beliefs holds. I am wondering if we ought to question that dichotomy and introduce an intermediate category (or else question the proportion between the two halves of the dichotomy and note that the second category contains this other sort of belief, which in turn means that the second category contains more instances of belief than Searle had supposed).

Around and around. Seems to me you talk as if the belief is something more than the behaviour, existing beyond that, until I push the point, then you agree with me that it isn't. — Banno

I think this is right. I think @Sam26 has confused an effect with a cause (link).

The scope of the belief statements surely makes explicit your quibble? — Banno

I'm going to let @Ludwig V take up your question about referential opacity, as I am somewhat pressed for time at the moment. I don't see Searle making any claims about the referential opacity of beliefs construed as first order relations, so I assume that's your thing.

And the quote form Searle seems to me to be making that point; that B(L,p) is somewhat inadequate, and that the belief is about the individual named "a" — Banno

Sure, I agree that Searle is saying that. I think I can see that better now.

What’s interesting to me is that Searle seems to be getting into the business of definitions and essences, much like Kit Fine in your other thread. To say that B(L,p) is inadequate is to say that there is some essence of belief that it misconstrues. Would you agree?

In your OP and elsewhere you seem to be implying that there is no real definition of belief, and formal logic merely models certain aspects of belief. This is on display in a recent comment:

It seems worth making the point that parsing natural languages into formal languages is not a game of finding the one, correct, interpretation. Rather one chooses a formalisation that suits one's purpose. — Banno

When Searle thinks of B(L,p) as inadequate he is then either claiming that it is an incorrect interpretation, or else that it does not suit his purpose. But I think he he saying the former. I think he is saying that the very nature of belief itself is obscured by B(L,p). But how can that be? Beliefs do involve a relation between the believer and a proposition. B(L,p) could easily be construed in a way such that it does not imply that the proposition is the object of the belief. In fact such a rendering would be quite useful if we are talking about beliefs from a strictly third-person vantage point, where we are concerned with the proposition rather than the object.* But according to Searle that rendering is itself inadequate and misleading. So it would seem that for Searle parsing natural language into formal languages really does involve finding the correct interpretation. Or more precisely, there are some interpretations that are more accurate than others, even when both interpretations are not false, and this implies an essence that underlies the inequality of the two interpretations.


* For example, when you say, "The statement sets out an aspect of the grammar of belief, as between an agent and a proposition" (), you are saying that this is a legitimate aspect of the grammar of belief, but at the same time you agree with Searle that presenting beliefs in this way tends to misrepresent them.

Everything you mention involves a determinate pull in a particular direction, and so promotes the thesis that philosophy does have a determinate pull in a particular direction. I am not particularly concerned with the question of whether an endpoint is ever reached.

Good post. Fair points.

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Very interesting. :up:

The standard way is to post an "intentional object" (in this case a proposition). But then, what's a proposition? The standard "meaning of a sentence" doesn't help much. I believe that Frege thinks it is something like thinking of a state of affairs without affirming or denying it. Are there no other proposals around. — Ludwig V

I think I understand what Searle is saying now. The clause, "...independent of any proposition," felt strange at first, but probably he is saying that the subjective act of belief prescinds from notions of propositionality or representation. ...And I have no problem with Frege's account of a proposition.

It is curious, though, that 'belief' insofar as it is distinguished from knowledge really is propositional in the way that Searle is talking about. If I say, "I believe X but I do not know X," then apparently there is an intentional propositionality, and one which is much more common than Searle's example of Bernoulli's principle.

To my eye this sets out pretty clearly why substitution fails to preserve truth in (2) but not in (3): in (2) it need not be true that Lois believes superman is Kent. — Banno

Oh, that's quite right. You say that (2) fails to preserve truth, and this is undeniable. My question is whether you are saying (2) fails to preserve truth because Lois does not believe that Kent is Superman, or only because Superman uses a disguise?

This is why I am curious: When you say that first order relations fail to model belief because your example does not admit of substitution salva veritate, there are two different ways to understand your claim, because there are two different ways that your example does not admit of substitution salva veritate. I am wondering which of them you have in mind.

I must be misunderstanding you, since it seems you are saying that logic is inadequate to the task of dealing with beliefs, when it sets stuff out quite clearly. — Banno

Well, does (3) solve your salve veritate problem? Could we "substitute salva veritate if the equality relation was redefined to take into account belief"? Perhaps the belief relation is only referentially opaque when it prescinds from belief in the equality of the substituted term. Namely, once Lois believes that the substituted term is equal (B(Lois, Kent = Superman)), the substitution saves truth.

Unless your point is that Lois might have inconsistent beliefs? — Banno

No, I don't want to say that or go there. :grin:

I dunno. Perhaps if we drag this back to your opening post. You proposed that to believe is to think with assent; I guess one might ask: to think what? If what you are thinking cannot be expressed as a proposition, is it a thought? — Banno

To think a proposition. I agree with you that beliefs are about propositions ().

To clarify, I have been disagreeing with Searle when he says, "Most [intentional states] are directed at objects and states of affairs in the world independent of any proposition," and this goes back to my posts which compare propositions to mirrors. I have been positing a stronger notion of the propositionality of belief than Searle, not a weaker one.

It might be misleading as the proposition is not the object of the belief but constitutes the belief. — Banno

At this point I am inclined to think we are just talking past one another. When you or Searle say that a proposition is not the object of a belief, presumably you are not flirting with direct realism. Instead, you are saying that the object of a belief is not a proposition qua proposition, just as when I look through a mirror to see a reflected object my act of sight does not terminate in the mirror itself. Yes?

Yes, that makes good sense to me. I am familiar with Taylor but will have to look into Gillespie.

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Yes, exactly right. I was thinking about Heraclitus as well. I will have to revisit Cratylus.

Right, I get that. But does Lois believe that Clark Kent is Superman? That's where the ambiguity arises for me. The falsity of the substitution is overdetermined. For example:

1. Lois believes that Clark Kent can type at 140 words per minute; Clark Kent is Superman; But Lois does not believe that Superman can type at 140 words per minute (because Lois does not believe that Clark Kent is Superman).
2. Lois believes that Clark Kent wears glasses; Clark Kent is Superman; But Lois does not believe that Superman wears glasses (and yet Lois does believe that Clark Kent is Superman).

In (1) the substitution is false because of an ontological fact of identity that Lois does not hold as a belief. In (2) the substitution is false merely because Superman dons a disguise, and not because of any lack of knowledge or belief on Lois' part. Your example could be interpreted either way, and yet in each case the substitution fails for a different reason.

Of course the substitution would remain true in 3:

3. Lois believes that Clark Kent can type at 140 words per minute; Clark Kent is Superman; Therefore Lois believes that Superman can type at 140 words per minute (because Lois does believe that Clark Kent is Superman).

That does not strike me as an adequate parsing of what Searle is pointing out. Indeed, it would appear that you are making much the same claim as Searle... — Banno

It is quite possible that I am misunderstanding Searle or saying the same thing in different words. Thing is, I don't know whether this question about the nature of propositions is relevant. If you think it's relevant and want to look at it, we can. If not, we can let it slip back into the water.

To help get us back on track, would you be able to clarify this post? Could you draw out your claim that we cannot substitute salve veritate using your Superman example? Specifically, what is the substitution that would fail to save truth? I don't disagree with your claim, but I want to make sure I am clear on what you are saying.

Secondly, if you do not think beliefs can be represented by first order relations, then what alternative would you turn to?

Gödel showed that for any sufficiently advanced system (roughly, on that includes counting) there are theorems of that logic that cannot be proved within that logic. Note the bolding. The unproven theorems are part of the system. So I'm not sure that "arithmetic is a consistent discourse that logic cannot fully model or contain" is quite right. — Banno

Yes, but the reason we know the unproven logical sentences are true is because they correspond to (provable) truths in arithmetic via "Gödel numbers". Is the unproven sentence "part of the system"? The unproven sentence is represented in that system, but is not provable in that system. (Maybe my logic is rusty, but I am wary of calling an unprovable sentence a theorem.)

And the mirror analogy just does not seem to work. Of course one can take a mirror and look at it, rather than what it reflects. One does so in order to clean it, or to check it for scratches. So with language, one can look to the logic of propositions in order to understand their structure. — Banno

I don't disagree that we can examine propositions qua propositions, but if we think that is what propositions are, or are for, then I think we have made a mistake. (Very likely the hangups around propositions have to do with their ontology.)

So when Searle says, "Most [intentional states] are directed at objects and states of affairs in the world independent of any proposition," it seems to me that he is saying something like, "Most of the time when we use our rear-view mirror to see what is behind our car, we are looking at objects and states of affairs in the world independent of any mirror." Just as I don't think using a rear-view mirror can be done independent of a mirror, so I also don't think intentional states can be directed at the world independent of propositions. We direct our beliefs at the world through propositions in the same way that we view the world through a mirror. Searle isn't a direct realist, is he?

already alluded to the idea that if beliefs are not propositional, then it is hard to understand how they could be wrong. If my belief is directed at the world independent of any proposition, then how could I ever be wrong about what I believe?

P.S. Thanks for the SEP article. I didn't realize this topic was so well-explored.

Is that the task of the philosopher, or of the engineer, technologist and scientist? — Quixodian

I agree.

Of course, the fact that Bacon helped shift the Western trajectory towards the manipulation of nature is not in dispute. Indeed, it is probably the most common narrative in the Western history of thought. But I haven't quite figured out what it has to do with this thread. Perhaps if the Baconians are philosophers then philosophy retains its relevance? Yet given that the OP talks about "the direction of philosophy and science since Bacon," how then have we arrived at the claim that post-Baconian science is philosophy itself (or else the devoted spouse of philosophy)?

Well, I guess I meant that I use vengeance as a specific term (which it is) in conversation with those who use it as an umbrella term (synonymous with "justice"). — LuckyR

The tricky thing here is that there is a legitimate disagreement about whether vengeance is equivalent to (commutative) justice or is only a synecdoche. In that conversation, which I was also a part of, there seem to have been at least four options:

1. Vengeance and justice are the same thing
2. Vengeance is a part of justice
3. Vengeance is any form of retaliation
4. 'Vengeance' is a pejorative and nothing more ("I am not willing to tell you what I mean by vengeance, only that I consider it to be bad")

When the parties resist disambiguation the wagon is inevitably stuck in the mud, going nowhere.

Thanks for asking. There are two things to address: Searle and the inconsistency bit.

First, Searle. Searle is saying, "X is Y, not Z" ("The proposition is the content of the belief, not the object of the belief"). Such a statement implies that it is in some way sensible or plausible, albeit incorrect, to say that X is Z. That is where I want to part ways with Searle. There is nothing sensible or plausible about reifying a proposition such that it would itself be the object of belief. That's not the sort of thing a proposition is. Hence Searle's conclusion seems to be invalid, namely his conclusion that beliefs are (usually) not propositional. In other words, I agree that reified propositions are not the object of belief, but I maintain that propositions are the object of belief. (It's hard to convey because the crucial difference is between two different conceptions of propositions.)*

But again, if Searle is merely rejecting an error of his contemporaries, then what he is doing is understandable. My critique here is admittedly a bit subtle. If someone reifies a proposition and makes it the object of belief, then we should not say, "Beliefs are not about propositions." Instead we should say, "You do not understand what a proposition is. When we talk about a proposition we are talking about a representation of 'objects and states of affairs in the world'." This is merely that "single puzzle piece" that nags at me in Searle's account. Whether it affects our larger conversation, I do not know.

Second, the inconsistency bit. Sorry - I had meant to edit that post because it is sloppy, but I forgot. The idea was that if logic cannot capture belief, and yet belief is subject to canons of consistency, then logic is not coextensive with consistent subjects.

Maybe a more formal example would be more helpful:

Doesn’t logic just set out what it is we can say, consistently? — Banno

It's been awhile since I studied mathematical logic, but I believe that Gödel, in his 1931 paper which contains his incompleteness theorems, showed in effect that there are arithmetic truths that logic (in the Principia) cannot prove, such that arithmetic is not a branch of logic as Russell had hoped. I can try to dig out some sources for this if you'd like. If that is right, then arithmetic is a consistent discourse that logic cannot fully model or contain.

In particular, what the belief is about is not shown by this analysis... — Banno

Do you think there is an analysis which shows what the belief is about? Do you think you would be able to draw up a deeper analysis that avoids the recursion problem I noted above?


* Edit: A proposition is like a mirror. Its whole purpose is to reflect something. When I stand in front of the mirror I am not looking at the mirror; I am looking at myself. More precisely, I am looking at a reflection of myself in the mirror. The mirror itself is not the object that my act of sight terminates in. So if I say, "I saw a bump on my eye when I was shaving," the listener will assume that a mirror (or something like it) was being used. There is no other way to look at my eye. If someone comes to believe that mirrors are things to be looked at, apart from their reflection, then they don't understand mirrors.

The issue isn't umbrella terms at all, it's about whether the term's prerequisites are specific and meaningful or not. — Judaka

What do you mean when you say, "The term's prerequisites are specific and meaningful"?

A complex phenomenon is hard to see, like a faraway object. Different viewers will perceive different things, but some have better vision and some worse. Whether there is value in knowing about the object will depend on the case, but it is difficult to claim that there is never value in knowing about it. For example, we might be interested in knowing whether it is a meteor, headed for Earth.

I think there is value in analyzing the umbrella terms you have noted. All of them concern human welfare (democracy, capitalism, Christianity, Islam, nationalism). For each of those terms, some people think they are very good and conducive to our welfare, and others think they are very bad and destructive of our welfare. If that indistinct object on the horizon is a meteor then we should shoot it down; if it's Prometheus with a new gift then we ought to start cooking his favorite meal; if it's nothing important then we can move on and stop expending energy looking at it. But there are reasons to learn about it.

On the other side of the coin, scapegoating and umbrella terms go hand in hand, so whenever someone attributes good or ill to an umbrella term we should take it with a grain of salt.

(5 years have passed since the previous post)

I don't think that deduction is less fundamental than induction; deductive reasoning seems to be at least as fundamental as inductive. But that doesn't mean that one can subsume the other. — SophistiCat

(I am just quoting the last post of an interesting conversation between @SophistiCat and @apokrisis. This topic is also somewhat related to a recent thread on intuition (link).)

I don't know if either of your thoughts have changed on this in the last few years. It seems to me that SophistiCat's objections are weighty for anyone who doesn't accept the approach of pragmatism, but I think it is equally clear that there must be some tertium quid that is being overlooked. I tend to think this tertium quid is Aristotle's notion of induction which was then helped by the metaphysical justification that Christianity provided for it. In the Medieval period the genus was referred to as intellection, a sort of direct knowing as opposed to discursive knowledge.

Usually when we think of induction we think of observing a series of regularities and then forming a probabilistic guess that the next event will also adhere to that regularity. For example, calls induction "probable reasoning" as opposed to the "certain reasoning" of deduction. For Aristotle and the Medievals (and probably also Plato) it was different. There is a kind of certain knowledge in induction/intellection, distinct from probabilistic reasoning.

But there is a more recent and more accessible entry point to the topic, and it is found in the language acquisition of children. Walker Percy was a doctor, novelist, and semioticist:

Percy experienced [symbol acquisition] firsthand. His second daughter, Ann, was born deaf. Her language tutor and the whole family participated in her language education, and Percy saw her symbolic acquisition in process, in a much different and more conscious manner than the automatic attainment of the average toddler. — Walker Percy and the Magic of Naming, by Karey Perkins (English Dissertation)

A number of Percy's books relate to this subject, but especially The Message in the Bottle and Signposts in a Strange Land. Section 2 of that dissertation is a quick introduction to the topic, "2. The Children: The Magic and Mystery of Naming" (again, an English dissertation). The standard case, which Percy also focused on, is Helen Keller.

In a nutshell the idea is that when you train a dog to sit you are doing something fundamentally different than when you train a child to use language. This is particularly obvious in cases like Helen Keller, where the transition from dyadic to triadic activity is so stark, beautiful, and hard-won.

Or rather, when Helen finally understood the symbol 'water', something fundamentally different occurred than when the dog finally responded to the sign 'sit', even though the stimuli presented were not overly different (children manage symbol acquisition even in spite of parents who approach the task the same way they might approach the training of a dog). At some point Helen crossed a mysterious threshold and understood that 'water' is a symbol, not a sign, and her mind was opened to the entirely new reality of symbols. This, I claim, is intellection (induction), or at least something very close to it. 'Water' changed from being a mere lever which was pulled whenever Helen was thirsty, to a symbolic reality that existed on a plane distinct from stimuli and conditioning and utility.

This is the sort of qualitative 'jump' that Aristotle means by induction. It is the act of seeing a truth in a way that is 'spiritual' and not merely mechanical (for lack of a better word). It also applies in a variety of different contexts. Sometimes we intellect/induct the nature of some reality from frequent exposure, like Helen. Sometimes we require a variety of different arguments before the truth of a conclusion finally "clicks" for us. But even the terms, propositions, inferential rules, and inferential steps of formal arguments require a sort of direct intellectual perception, similar to Helen's symbolic association between 'water' and the physical stuff she was so familiar with via her senses.

Helen's "jump" was not deductive reasoning; it was not abductive reasoning; it was not inductive reasoning (a la Hume); so what was it? The "jump" doesn't occur with dogs or cats or llamas. It isn't predictable or controllable; Helen's teachers often despaired that it would ever occur. "Magical" is not a bad word for it, but in any case it is entirely foreign to our modern mechanistic approach to reality.

Whatever the case, it seems to me that could be right in his claim that "helping ourselves" to inductive reasoning may not be a problem, so long as it is understood in this very rarefied sense. If intellection really is a tertium quid, then it is not bound by the rules of deduction or Humean induction. The only reason we can't help ourselves to it is because it doesn't wait on our beck and call in the way that deduction or Humean induction do, but this is a rather different problem than the one that SophistiCat complained of.

Is it inconsistent to say that Lois Lane believes Clark Kent wears glasses, because logic can't say it?

It seems to me that (formal) logic is something like the science of modal relations, and much of reality is not able to be modeled by modal relations. I'd say reality has more to do with regularities and natures than with modal relations, although logic is still vitally important. Of course I plead guilty to Aristotelianism, and see the world through the lens of substances and natures more than through the lens of necessity and possibility.

Now it should be clear that belief is not a relation of this sort, since we may not substitute in to a belief salva veritate. — Banno

It seems like this is your definitional recursion conundrum in a slightly different context (first order logic). We could only substitute salva veritate if the equality relation was redefined to take into account belief, but that would result in the same recursive definition problem. For example, we could say that two beliefs are equal (substitutable) if and only if the subject (Lane) believes them to be equal (Kent's identity and Superman's identity), but this would result in recursively adverting to Lois Lane's belief within a function that is attempting to capture her belief in the first place. Is that the idea?

In your quote of Searle it seemed like he was rejecting the claim that a belief is a relation between a believer and a proposition, but was content with the claim that a belief is a relation between a believer and the content of a proposition. (I questioned the validity of the distinction between a proposition and a proposition's content in my last post to you.) Do you think Searle is rejecting the relation model of beliefs wholesale?

I think you are right that a belief cannot be captured by a first order relation, yet on my view the deeper problem is with logic, not with relations. Intentional realities like belief are not the sort of things that logic is able to capture, much less define. Part of it is that beliefs are more fundamental than logic, but another part is that logic is too blunt an instrument or too broad a brush to capture the nuance of intentional realities like belief.

All I'm saying is that on the orthodox philosophical view of causation, it doesn't make sense. — Ludwig V

Now you are bringing up Hume, which is a new topic. In short, I do not agree that Hume's view is philosophical orthodoxy; and no one in this recent discussion accepts the Humean claim that there is no causal relationship between a belief and actions. If there is one thing we all agree on, it's that beliefs and actions are related in an explanatory or causal manner.

But it seems like we are in general agreement, and that's good. If you want to run with the Humean devil's advocate you will need a different interlocutor. That's not the sort of thing I would want to discuss in this thread.

If the direction is determined statistically, we're just talking about evolution... — Srap Tasmaner

We are talking about Nietzsche, not evolution. You are taking these posts out of context.

We're talking about the thesis that philosophy has a determinate pull (link). Saying, "There will always be points of divergence and points of convergence [among philosophers]," doesn't seem to help us in addressing that thesis.

I don't agree that the examples you have given are not underpinned by something real. For example, do you say that there is no real phenomenon in the world and in history that the term 'Islam' refers to?

The whereto is not oriented to be being but to becoming. This might mean not only divergence but convergence. — Fooloso4

It seems to me that if the becoming has no end then there can be no ultimate convergence.

But is it absurd to go counter-factual and say that a belief would show in action... — Ludwig V

But this is to talk about an effect of the belief, not the belief in itself. It is a conflation of effect with cause. Further, mere thinking is not an empirical effect, and is therefore not what Sam26 is talking about.

But isn't it legitimate to describe what belief does, as a way of describing what belief is? — Ludwig V

It is legitimate to describe what belief does as a way of understanding what belief is. To describe an effect is not to describe the cause. That's the problem: says "beliefs are..." What he ought to say is, "the effects of beliefs are..." He is not talking about beliefs; he is talking about their effects.

I have in mind the role of belief in our language, which is not reducing it to the question how we know what people believe. Perhaps I'm just fooling myself. — Ludwig V

Belief has an effect on our thinking and our language as well. These are more subtle than empirical effects, but they are effects nonetheless. We know this because one belief can cause multiple effects, and therefore a belief and its effect are not the same thing (even when it comes to thinking).

...namely that [umbrella terms] denote a complex phenomenon. — Leontiskos

You've reiterated the complexity of such terms, but avoidable and unnecessary complexity is objectively bad, and I wonder if that's why I don't like these umbrella terms. Of course, a term will be complex if it references a large number of hugely complicated and loosely connected ideas, but is there a good reason why we have to do that? — Judaka

Well if there is a complex phenomenon and we want to talk about it then we will need to use a word to reference it, no? But umbrella terms do facilitate misunderstanding, I think you are right about that.

"Islam" can't be a religion/ideology, the various interpretations of that religion/ideology and the practice of that religion/ideology. — Judaka

Language tends to do that, and it is confusing. There is currently a thread about the grand-daddy of all umbrella terms, "How's actual existence not a predicate?" The idea there is something like, "Hey, this umbrella is so big that it can't even be a term!"

Methinks that the Anglo bias towards empiricism is rearing its head and conflating beliefs themselves with the ways in which we empirically detect beliefs in others, even to the point that a belief is re-defined to be the detection of a belief (or the relation containing the conspicuous action). It's strange, but I've seen the exact same thing on another forum.

Alternatively, there is the idea that "actions speak louder than words," such that one's actions may more accurately reflect beliefs than self-reporting would. Still, this remains at the epistemic level, inquiring into how others' beliefs come to be known. It remains a step away from the topic: beliefs in themselves.

That's interesting. I was thinking about starting a philosophy forum myself. But if you've been thinking about this for 7 or 8 years, and you're now at a point where you are claiming that a belief is a relation between an individual and a certain type of action, then I can only conclude that you must have taken a wrong turn at some point.

Feel free to link me to a post where you defend that claim. It's tricky to search this thread because the search returns results from any thread with 'belief' in the title.

In that case the 20 year-old might actually be attracted to him. The truth table gets tricky.

:lol:

The interesting thing about Nietzsche, and especially the quote you provided, it that it somewhat undermines one of the premises that @Pantagruel is entertaining. Namely, Pantagruel seems to be considering the idea that philosophy produces a cumulative effect on society, such that philosophers all pull in one direction and the more philosophers there are, the more the world moves in that "philosophical" direction. The idea is that the effect that philosophy has on society is a determinate effect, pulling in one particular direction.

But Nietzsche's "real philosopher" would "set aside the previous labour of all philosophical workers." It is not clear that the Nietzschean philosophers would pull in the same direction, and because of this we wouldn't be justified in thinking that philosophy writ large could move society in a determinate direction. It would then seem that there are different theories of philosophy on offer.

Oh, I see. Yes, I think you are right. Philosophy does contribute in that way.

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Yes, I agree with much of that, although I prefer Plato to Nietzsche. I tend to think that Nietzsche's emphasis on will deviates too far from Apollo.

Yes, but the only other way to read it is that you were given a ticket on account of celebrity, which would be a rather strange reading.

Perhaps that is the question that interests you, but it seems to me that the thread is about belief, not about how we come to know about the beliefs of others.

An easier example is tattoos. If there were a thread on tattoos, we wouldn't want to all of the sudden start talking about how we come to know about the tattoos of others, and think that we are still talking about tattoos in themselves. The two topics are quite different, no? One is, "What is a tattoo?" The other is, "How do we come to know about the tattoos of others?"

Right. I think philosophy only flourishes on a societal level through benefactors, which can include the State. If philosophy is at heart an end in itself, then it should come as no surprise that it is not viewed as instrumentally valuable. Of course it does tend to overflow itself and produce valuable things, but once it is subordinated for the sake of those things it becomes something other than philosophy. It's an interesting tension, but one which will always plague the highest things (ends in themselves).

A mandate is "an authorization to act given to a representative" (Merriam-Webster). The idea was that our ticket derives from a mandate or charge that we have received from the community on account of our importance. The question inquires into how our +1's are related to that mandate.

There's definitely a relation between individuals and beliefs, this seems obvious. However, I would go further, viz., beliefs are relations between individuals and certain types of actions. Individuals show their beliefs by what they do (actions). So I can express that I believe that an object X is a car by using a proposition. I can also show my belief in cars without using language, by getting into the car, working on the car, changing a tire, etc. It's the conscious individual that gives life to a belief in relation to the world. — Sam26

I think you might be confusing a belief with the revelation of a belief. Beliefs don't need to be shown or "given life." They still exist even when they are not shown or given life.

Where did your beliefs about cars come from? You didn't develop your beliefs in a vacuum. At some point you saw a car, or were told about cars, or interacted with cars. — Sam26

Beliefs may arise from experiences or actions, but it does not follow that they are a relation between individuals and actions.

I know this is a bit different than what you are getting at, but there is an important sense in which philosophy was never relevant. Socrates was executed; Aristotle fled for his life; Plato felt impotent before the Athenian polis and the demos; the Hellenistic philosophers were very often proto-monastic groups, living apart from society and its norms. Philosophy was often granted importance where there was religious ascendency, but that has now passed. In many ways our modern pragmatism which is averse to philosophy is not so different from the past.

Why would your decision depend on knowing that specific data? — javi2541997

Because my own ticket is apparently based on some sort of mandate, as it derives from my importance within the town. Does that mandate extend to my +1's? Was I given +1's because I have good judgment about who should be saved, or perhaps only for my own personal comfort and well-being as someone whose future is tied to the town's future?

Even before you responded I sort of realized what you were asking and how I misinterpreted it (I think). Some thoughts:

I think umbrella terms do exist and I also think they are relevant to philosophy. The examples you give are apt. While it is true that umbrella terms are given to vagueness, I think their intrinsic quality is complexity, namely that they denote a complex phenomenon. Beginner philosophers will come to the table with a very simplistic understanding of a complex phenomenon, and this inevitably creates all sorts of problems of communication. Understanding a complex phenomenon requires a great deal of study, and if one person is using 'Islam' to refer to a complex religio-cultural reality, while another is using it to refer to a simplistic notion (e.g. anti-American Islamic terrorism), then they are not talking about the same thing and will end up talking past one another.

If you agree we can describe these terms as umbrella terms, do you agree that they function to reference more than just the diverse array of interpretations and approaches? — Judaka

Yes, but their complexity makes things difficult, and these are the cases where it is most difficult to bridge the gap between divergent interpretations. Aristotle and others have pointed out that the young, immature person is capable of mathematics, but not politics (or political philosophy). The latter requires a great deal of time and real world experience in a way that the former does not. This is because mathematics is not nearly as complex and difficult to understand as the messy real-world realities of human life, such as politics and religion.

I also tend to think that we need to recognize our limitations when it comes to umbrella terms. I don't know a great deal about Islam, and therefore I limit my judgments about Islam. If I speak to an expert I will be deferential, but if I speak to someone with similar knowledge to my own I can be less deferential (so long as we both recognize that our opinions have very limited credibility).

Is that more related to what your OP was getting at?

I find that some of the older philosophers are more interesting than the newer ones. :razz:

This is really a large discussion, and I think the reason so many contemporaries believe that, say, Hare is superior to Aristotle is because they have not read Aristotle and they hold to a general belief in progress, which is strong in our culture. Yet Hare is no longer taught or recognized much after a couple of decades, whereas Neo-Aristotelianism is quite strong after a couple of millennia. There are lots of reasons for this, and that's for another thread, but I am happy to see Fine challenging the modern paradigm.

If Anthony Kenny's history of Western philosophy is to be believed, then logic had a strong start with Aristotle, progressed in the middle ages, regressed in the modern period, and progressed in the contemporary period. My concern is that logic after the 14th century began to be divorced from the rest of philosophy, and this is very obvious today. Aristotle keeps things connected and in perspective, which is one of his general merits.

Goodness, a resurrection from five years ago. This thread was an analytic response to the vast amount of rubbish written about belief on these fora. As such the OP is a summary of what I take as the standard understanding of belief found in recent literature. — Banno

Thanks for the welcome. Yes, I have been doing a lot of resurrecting. :blush: I find that some of the older threads are more interesting than the newer ones.

It makes sense that the OP is based on more recent literature. I tend to read older philosophers and therefore some reorientation is often required, but I think Kit Fine’s distinction between modal and essential properties is lurking in the background of this topic, and he is himself resurrecting a much older notion.

Thanks for the interesting quote from Searle. It’s curious how strong he is in that last sentence. Often when I read Searle I find myself agreeing with him almost entirely, but with some remainder, like a single puzzle piece that is missing. In this case I think that an undue abstraction occurs when the emphasis is placed on the relational quality between proposition and believer. I think Searle believes that an undue abstraction occurs when the proposition is reified, which is apparently a common occurrence in contemporary philosophy. The more concrete and less abstract alternatives would be, respectively, an emphasis on assent, and designating the content of the belief as “objects and states of affairs in the world independent of any proposition.”

While I think Searle is right to resist an overly abstract notion of belief, I can’t agree with his claims about propositions. Searle seems to think it would make sense to say that propositions could be the object of belief. I mostly agree with that propositions point to content, not to a reified designator. Or as Aquinas says, “Now the act of the believer does not terminate in a proposition, but in a thing. For as in science we do not form propositions, except in order to have knowledge about things through their means, so is it in belief.”* But if Searle is responding to contemporaries who do reify propositions in this strange way, then what he says would make sense.

This struck me not as something novel, but as a clarification. In particular it relates to a conversation with @Sam26 and @creativesoul as to whether beliefs can all be expressed in words, or somethign like that. I had not expressed this clearly enough. — Banno

Perhaps it is only a difference of words, but your OP is quite emphatic that belief is propositional, whereas Searle is claiming that it is (usually) not. More specifically, Searle seems to think that propositions can capture the content of beliefs, but that the object of belief itself is usually not a proposition. Would you agree with Searle that beliefs are usually non-propositional?

Stipulating definitions is treacherous, as I've shown elsewhere, and this thread should be read as analysing belief rather than providing a definition. — Banno

This is a longer conversation, but as a throwaway comment I will just say that I’m not sure we can talk about a thing without a definition, stated or unstated.

If I were to choose the aspect of belief that is, as it were, most central, it would be that beliefs explain actions. Given that, while "to think with assent" has its merits, it is insufficient in that sometimes we act without thinking - that is, not all our beliefs are explicit. — Banno

Okay, that’s an interesting argument. For clarity’s sake:

1. Beliefs explain actions
2. Some actions are taken without thinking
3. Therefore belief is not a species of thinking

First I want to note that in your OP you claim that belief explains but does not determine action, such that we can act contrary to our beliefs (and I agree—I do not believe that every action requires a belief which explains it, e.g. akrasia). That was years ago, but if you still hold such a view then apparently not all actions are explained by belief, which is what your argument would require.

Second, while I agree that beliefs often explain actions, I should also think that beliefs often do not explain actions. Searle’s example, “John believes that Washington was the first president,” has no apparent impact on action, and yet it is surely a belief. John might believe any number of trivial propositions about things like history or astronomy that have no impact on his actions. Thus it seems that the aspect of belief you have identified does not cover all belief. Furthermore, in general I don’t understand the rationale for making belief orbit around action.

Third, I am not convinced there are non-propositional beliefs, although perhaps I should read your exchange with Sam26 and creativesoul. I tend to think that implicit beliefs are propositional. For example, if I am driving and I brake when a child runs into the street, I am acting on the belief that, “If I brake I will not hit this child,” even though this belief is not explicit or formulated or conscious. Admittedly the thinking would not need to be discursive or consciously carried out. It is fast thinking, but it nevertheless involves a mental act.

But maybe the English word "thinking" is too narrow for this broad notion of belief. Certainly there is a mental or cognitive act occurring. Perhaps a different genus for the definition is preferable, such as 'propositional attitude', or Searle's, 'intentional state'.

You believe, arguably, that I am not writing this while floating in space in the orbit of Jupiter, yet until now that belief had not been explicated. — Banno

This is a bit tricky. I would want to say that it is something I do not believe, but not something I do believe. Or rather, it was. Now that you have brought it to my attention I have assented to it and I believe it. That I believe you are sitting at a computer on Earth explains why I would assent to any entailed propositions that are brought to my attention, or which become generally relevant.


* Summa Theologiae, II.II.Q1.A2