Yes, we wouldn't want any gobbledegook would we, like in Deuteronomy where God finds it necessary to insist that we don't boil a young goat in its mother’s milk (14:21)

Or Ezekiel, who claims to see four creatures in a storm or each having four faces (a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle) and four conjoined wings. They had human hands under the wings, one on each squared side of their bodies. The feet, which looked like those of calves, shone like brass and were attached to peglegs (Ezekiel 1:4-10)
Later god demands some bizarre ritual with his hair.

God becomes a burning bush while talking with Moses (Exodus 3:3-4).

God will kill Aaron if he goes to minister without wearing a golden bell and blue pomegranates (Exodus 28:31-35).

God says that we can cure leprosy by killing a bird, putting the bird’s blood on another bird, killing a lamb, wiping the lamb blood on the leper, and killing two doves (Leviticus 14).

Samson claims his strength originates from his long hair (Judges 16:17) yet nature teaches us that it’s shameful for a man to have long hair (1 Corinthians 6:11-14).

Don't even get me started on Revelation.

Shame we don't have so much religion anymore to clear up all that gobbledegook.

clarified what I meant (thanks).

What do you imagine "consent" means in this context? Surely it cannot mean only the physiological ability to say "yes," yes? If, then, it means more than that, what do you say it means? — tim wood

I think it's reasonable to assume that "consent" means something more than the physiological ability to say yes, but there are problems with the notion that consent relies on something which can be safely presumed to be absent in young adults.

I would say consent requires that the person knows what it is they're consenting to, but most teenagers know stuff as complicated as the basics of particle physics, I think it would be a hard call to argue that they didn't know what sex was.

I would say consent had to be freely given, but again, it would be difficult to argue that the power imbalance that age disparity can bring is any different to the power imbalance in employee/employer, teacher/student, doctor/patient, client/worker relationships and yet young adults are asked to give their "consent" to all sorts of things in those relationships.

What I wouldn't say consent had to be, which it seems to be entirely about in these discussions, is avoiding doing something you might regret, or avoiding doing something your parents would disapprove of.

But this is exactly what happens with all adults out of necessity. If a rape claim is brought on the grounds that the victim was not able to consent - drugs, alcohol, mental health, then someone has to decide if that really is the case. The availability of an easy way of dodging this difficulty in some cases by banning young adults from choosing their own sexual partners does not simply justify itself, it must be weighed on its merits like any other legal proposition.

It's interesting you mention this. It's something that I've noticed here two. There's only two real consensus issues among philosophers according to the Phil Papers survey, David Chalmers even highlighted them in his lecture about the results.

One is non-skeptical Realism 81.6%, the other is Atheism 72.8%.

Ive not analysed this statistically, but I'd say more than half of the metaphysical discussions on this site end up either about Realism (in some sense), or Theism. The only two topics about which academic philosophy feel there is less than average to discuss.

So should we allow citizens to possess nuclear weapons to ensure they cannot be oppressed by their nuclear-armed governments? If not, why not?

I said ‘what has become very confused in current culture’. I didn’t single anyone out. Have a read of The Core of Mind and Cosmos if you haven’t encountered it before, it expands on the idea. — Wayfarer

Yes but it's not "confusion" it's disagreement, logical, sane disagreement. Nagel takes exactly the same line as you seem to be doing - "Since then the book has attracted a good deal of critical attention, which is not surprising given the entrenchment of the world view that it attacks"

I would forward the possibility that it's received a good deal of critical attention because there's a lot in it worthy of criticism.

Nagel fails to make a single argument in the whole piece. All he does is presume various, highly contended issues to be self-evidently true just because they seem so to him, and then build an entire castle in the air on the back of those weak presumptions.

As I said about your opening piece, this is all genuinely interesting as an insight into the way others see the world, but it doesn't show anyone else to be wrong, confused or any other negative term you care to throw in to push your agenda.

think the idea of laws for the protection of certain persons is appropriate. — tim wood

But we're not talking here about protecting certain people from others, we're talking about presuming to protect them from themselves.

Smoking is definitely a bad choice, as is drinking in excess and eating a poor diet, not getting enough excersice, all bad decisions a person might make with harmful consequences (far more definitively harmful than sex with someone much older than you). Yet we do not intervene to ban people from making these bad choices.

The ordinary individual is clearly in an unbalanced power relationship when faced with the might of the advertising industry, the media etc, yet we do not intervene to ban them from making bad decisions egged on by those industrial giants.

So it's clearly not just about protecting people in low positions of power from harm. We're saying that one group of people require, not just advice and guidance, but actual legal bans in order to prevent them making decisions that they might later regret. Whereas the rest of humanity do not.

The only logical framework I can see for doing this is to base it on some psychological understanding of a child's developing ability to make informed decisions. But that's not what's happening here, all sorts of decisions, including some really important ones, are given to children at all sorts of ages.

Ages of consent, unless biologically based (ie puberty) are just a reflection of a culture's attitude to sex, and it's a breach of human rights to have a cultural preference forced on someone by law.

Animals responses are typically limited to a very specific behavioural repertoire. Humans are meaning-seeking, technology-creating, language-using beings. — Wayfarer

You've just redescribed your position. I asked what observations have lead you to this conclusion.

Materialism is confused, because logic, math and so on, without which there would be no science, are based on the relationship of ideas, and ideas are not physical. Of course nowadays it is assumed that ideas are ‘what the brain does’, and that the brain is a material substance, but I don’t accept that. — Wayfarer

But you didn't say Materialism was confused, you said that those people who think conciousnes/the mind is a property of matter were confused. The existence of mathematics and logic (if they exist at all) simply mean that not all of existence is material. They don't then automatically mean that whichever other parts of existence you care to decide are also immaterial are proven to be so.

translation:I can't make heads or tails of postmodern discourse. — Joshs

Then why don't you enlighten me?

General observation of animal behavior. — Wayfarer

Which observations in particular?

To be honest I was with you up until here

However what has become very confused in current culture, is that the mind, which in some sense must precede science, is now believed to be a mere consequence or output of fundamentally physical processes - even though what is ‘fundamentally physical’ is still such an open question. — Wayfarer

Why must you spoil what was otherwise an elegant description of how you feel with the arrogant assumption that everyone who doesn't agree with you is "confused"?

If I say the earth is round and you think it isn't, you are confused, because the earth is objectively demonstrably round.

If I say that conscious awareness is a property of neural activity and you think it isn't, I am not "confused" I have a different but equally defensible belief about the world.

My fellow earthlings, as our demise is only a push of a button (by an orange buffoon) away, what is the next species to dominate the planet going to be like do you think? — CuddlyHedgehog

Orange buffoons?

One function of God has arguably been satisfy the unruly itch to transcend time and chance, or attain permanent status and security for one's essence if not one's body. — foo

I disagree. I think that religious people are no more satisfied by the idea of an afterlife than someone who has raised children that they are proud of and has left a positive legacy in their community.

I think religious people mistake an increased longevity of their legacy (stretching out to infinity) for an increased quality of their legacy (albeit forshortened). I don't honestly think people can actually get their heads round 'infinity', and most people when they talk about it are really just imagining 'a very long time'. I think when it comes to the practicality of satisfying this desire, doing something really positive that will last a very long time is far more satisfying than doing something incredibly selfish (such as religious practice) even with the conviction that it will last for eternity.

Religion may play into the desire to strive for something that goes on beyond death, but I'm highly doubtful that it actually satisfies.

there is a genuine, reciprocal unity between the self and the external world, and a pseudo-unity based on an emptiness or alienation glued together by consumerism. — TimeLine

I agree, but I don't think anyone particularly wouldn't. The point is this kind of sentiment still leaves open the real question which is how we actually identify the genuine unity. In my experience most people agree that there's something fake about consumer culture and something missing from those that persue it. The trouble is, almost everyone disagrees about what those things actually are.

They instead opt for psychological placebos such as new ageism and mindfulness to try and accept the happiness of the situation, despite the fact that they are crying out through their feelings. — TimeLine

Again, one person's new age mumbo-jumbo is another person's deeply held spiritual belief system. How are we to tell the difference?

I think that authenticity is essential to the sucess of any venture in personal fulfillment, but that too is so difficult to measure.

Sounds like the whining of someone with some agenda they're too scared to lay out so they hide it behind a lot of flowery obfuscation.

Yes, there's something very wrong with society nowadays, I think anyone with any sense can see that, and blaming "incessant propaganda, threats, ideologies, and cultural 'noise'" isn't going to ruffle any feathers is it? Who thinks propaganda is a good thing?

The problem is, behind all this vague hand-waiving, there will be some specific agenda, only loosely tied to the very real issues with society. Inevitably such agendas stem from nothing but personal bias, and lead to nothing but idolatry.

If there's something wrong with society (and I'm certain there is), the solution will be in real changes people make to their actual day-to-day life, changes which can be demonstrated by at least some logical theory, to actually work. It won't come from some ambiguous prose.

The same calculating mind that supports this also shows the futility of all human endeavor, relative to this desire at its most absolute. — foo

Why futile? In orienteering we will almost always find our way by compass direction "head North" is our objective. Does it matter that we will never get to "North", is it not sufficient that we are further North than we were yesterday?

That is, definitions are created post hoc; that is certainly the case here.

And my intuition, which I think I share with at least a few others around here, is that thermostats do not have beliefs. — Banno

And so ends any philosophical interest. You already hold a set of beliefs and we're just playing around with words until our descriptions of the world force it into your preconceived notions.

You've heard the one about the Buddhist pouring tea into an already full cup...

Philosophical Investigations, p.223. — Banno

Yeah, great philosopher, lousy zoologist.

I can see advantages in making the definition explicit.

The aim of this thread, for me, is not so much to set out a true and faithful definition - there's no such thing - but to explore the pros and cons, work out what might be consistent and what doesn't work. — Banno

What might an inconsistent definition look like (inconsistent with what?), or one that doesn't work (what is the job it has to do that it might fail at?).

Take the famous black swans. When defining what a Swan is we can either pick a set of criteria which are the bare minimum required to isolate swans from other birds, or we can select those criteria which we want to be associated with swans.

If we do the former, then when we encounter our first black Swan we can claim to have learned something new about swans (that they can be black).

If we do the latter (as it seems we're doing here deliberately trying to eliminate thermostats from the definition) then we learn nothing, we simply decide if 'whiteness' is one of the things we want a Swan to have, if it is, then the new things are not swans, if it isn't then we don't have a new fact about swans because we're not using ascribing properties based on necessity.

To bring it back round to belief. In the former, most useful sense, we need only give properties to 'belief' which are actually purposefully required to delineate it from something otherwise similar.

So the question is what is the useful consequence of delineating those attitudes to propositions which can be expressed in a language we can understand as some epistemologically distinct thing? Ascribing definitions based on some subjective ability of the observer is certainly not the 'normal' way to go about defining things.

It’s an allusion. — Wayfarer

Alluding to what?

You're looking to define belief. The usual method for defining something is broadly either analytical (what should it mean) or linguistic (what is it used to mean). Personally I think both have their uses, but what it is used to mean is of little use philosophically, it's more a sociological excersice.

Analytically then, we're looking to put a circle around some group of things on the basis of a set of shared properties which give us further insight. Defining those properties too narrowly is useless, it gives very little insight. If nothing turns out to be in the set that we didn't already know was in it then no useful information has been found. That's what I'm suggesting your anthropocentrism is doing. You're creating a definition in such as way as you already know everything that's in it. That's fine, but philosophically useless.

I have to do some real work now, but I look forward to reading your response later in the day.

Belief tends to arise in threads hereabouts. I'm curious. — Banno

If you're curious then coming at the problem with an already fixed human-shaped answer isn't going to help.

Find me a thermostat which suspects you’re materialist. — Wayfarer

Why would the content of a belief make any difference? I can find you a thermostat which clearly 'beleives' it's cold. I can find you a human who is incapable of believing I'm a materialist because they don't know what the word means. Your point is?

you might, though. It’s only a matter of translation. Polynesians are humans. Unlike, say, lions. — Wayfarer

How do you know it isn't possible to communicate with lions? Many people have effective communication with animals. Plus, you're neatly dodging how babies have beliefs, what about deaf mutes, are they incapable of belief?

To sort belief out from other propositional attitudes. — Banno

Yes but why? Why are you wanting to give a special word to some responses to propositions just because those responses are carried out by a human?

we would have that

A belief is a relation between an individual and a proposition.
The individual must understand the meaning of the proposition in order to believe that proposition. — Banno

But why do we need these things, what purpose does this restriction of the definition serve?

In other cases, watch how they act. — Banno

Which brings us back to cats, and thermostats. The thermostat certainly acts as if it knows what the temperature reading means. Why else would it turn the heating on when it learns that the room is cold. It must know what coldness means in terms of what must be done next.

I think we've entered entirely too speculative a territory here. I really don't see any way to untangle what we know to be an extremely culturally variable attitude to sex from what might be generalisable moral.

What about: In order to count as a belief, the believer must know what the proposition means.

It does not seem too unreasonable to suppose that belief has some dependence on meaning. — Banno

Then how are we to assess whether the believer 'knows' what the proposition means. We're getting circular here. Would we not have to say they had a 'belief' about what the proposition means?

Then, by your definition they would have to know what it means to have such a belief. If we knew that we wouldn't be having this discussion would we?

Many marine biologists can understand a significant part of dolphin communication. Can they have beliefs? What about babies before language, do they not have beliefs?

We're just fishing about for a sufficiently complex definition to satisfy our anthropocentrism when the simplest definition already suffices.

What job is being done by restricting the term 'belief' to those in possession of language?

Also, how is not just stimuli-respone that when you hear the words "explain your beliefs" you respond with words which correspond to the way you intend to react to certain propositions?

No I can't. I cannot ask a Polynesian to explain their beliefs because they will have no idea what I'm saying and I will be unable to understand any response.

What other animals have beliefs? Or is that just a PC concession? — Wayfarer

All other animals have beliefs. The tiger 'believes' that the antelope will alleviate its hunger. If it turns out the antelope was a cardboard cut out, then it will have had a false belief. In what way are human beliefs different?

That raises the obvious question of what form that representation might take. — Banno

I don't see any problem with it not having a representation. When John says "the sky is blue" we can propose the causal explanation of that John might 'believe' the sky is blue. Likewise if we were privy to all of John's thoughts we might say the same when we see some internal reaction. But until that time we have no justification for making the statement about John's beliefs, so I don't think there's any need for them to be contained anywhere, they are the causal chain.

I think we're getting into semantics here. We could say that beliefs are attitudes to a proposition that have to be contained in a mind, but there would be no epistemological reason to, just if we preferred to differentiate particular types of response and call them something different. As I say, I don't see any epistemological reason to do this, but that doesn't mean we can't.

Thing is, if we say the we're going to artificially restrict the use of the word 'belief' to humans (or other animals?) then we have two problems.

1. Where do we draw the line? Can an unconscious person have a belief, can a bacteria?

2. What do we call the same attitude to a proposition when it's contained in a computer, do we have another word that does the job?

I agree that such a desire exists, but I don't think it's as mysterious as some branches of metaphysics make out. It's simply the expression of our evolutionarily derived desire to rear children and leave then an environment in which they will thrive.

Would you be comfortable with saying that the thermostat believed it was cold, so it turned on the heater? — Banno

Yes, I see no reason to ascribe some special factor to human responses to external stimuli. The simplest explanation seems entirely adequate. John's senses have detected that the sky is blue. This information is meaningless until John responds in some way, maybe his brain retrieves some memories of other times the sky was blue, or maybe he is moved to speak the words "the sky is blue". In either case I'm not seeing any magical thing needed to explain John that is not present in the reacting thermometer.

How would we describe the reaction of a thermometer which was somehow tricked into turning the heating on despite the fact that the room was very warm. To say the thermometer reacted that way because it 'believed' the room was cold seems an entirely consistent use of the word.

Yes, I would say that in order to avoid the counter-intuitive conclusion that the spectrometer 'believes' the sky is blue, we have to add to our definition that the subject of the belief has some attitude towards it.

Essentially I would say that John 'believes' the sky is blue if some reaction within John is a consequence of the blueness of the sky.

Of course this definition means that a computer could believe that the sky is blue, but I have no problem with that.

OK, so what is preventing the spectrometer from containing a proposition?

Then what is "the sky is blue"? It cannot be a belief because it is itself just a variable in the thing you are defining as a belief. The first variable is a 'person', so what would you call the second variable in your definition?

I think that if we have a simple definition of belief such as you propose where the 'fact' simply resides in, or belongs to, a person, then we are committed to an epistemological framework which gives some special ability or feature to humans. That they alone can contain/possess beliefs. I see no justification for this additional complication to the theory.

If the 'fact' that the sky is 'blue' (by which we mean the sky has properties that allow it membership of the set 'things which we call blue') is simply contained in John, then the spectrometer also contains that data.

The way out of this is to have a behaviourist approach to belief. John is acting in response to the blueness of the sky.

So what about the spectrometer measuring the number of photons in the wavelength that most people associate with "blue". Does it 'believe' that the sky is blue, or does it contain that information in some other form?