Meanwhile you are talking about it. — frank

Yrs, in much the same way as Antigonish is about a little man who wasn't there.

It's a bit cowardly to resort to cheap ad homs instead of, I don't know, doing some actual philosophy. — plaque flag

, like most folk, agrees with you, but only when someone else is doing the cheap ad homs.

(I just prefer bass to base) — frank

Something felt more than heard? An interesting metaphor?

Although I may only work within the confines of my own subjective reality, this does not disprove a bass reality that exists outside of my own perceptions. — vanzhandz

Like the sustained double low C of Sunrise in Also Sprach Zarathustra, a barely audible 65.4 Hz.

But that is both played and felt, spoken of and created. Again, The mooted noumenon either drops out of consideration or can be replaced by the stuff of the every day.

Cheers. Don't feel obligated to respond to the article. As mentioned above, Davidson was seeking to interpret a natural language, such as English, using first logical, and so there was reason for him to tackle difficult cases, providing examples of how his project might proceed. This essay is an example of the sorts of methods he used. His project faded, not before showing some interesting strategies for dealing with recalcitrant utterances.

the essence of a kind K is that characteristic, or set of characteristics, of members of K upon which any other properties they have as members of K depend. — Introduction to Posterior Analytics, by Jonathan Barnes, p. xiii

This is all a long way from anything I might be tempted by.

To deal with this we would have to look into what sort of thing an essential property of a kind might be, with all the modal complications that involves, then look to whether we can maintain a distinction between real essences and mere nominal essences within that modal structure, then look to all the issues surrounding natural kinds. Not just one minefield, but a series of them.

I don't see this approach as being of help here. It's a quagmire.

Yes. Separating a belief from the behaviours it explains is the sort of hypostatisation I would reject.

If there is no essence, then what does it show better? — Leontiskos

The nature of belief... as a family resemblance.

To "It is impossible to exaggerate the damage done to philosophy and cognitive science by the mistaken view that "believe" and other intentional verbs name relations between believers and propositions" I might append "...in that they find themselves searching for that relation as if it were a thing in the mind, or worse, in the brain".

...it leads to the hypostatisation previously discussed.

I'm confused — Count Timothy von Icarus

So am I. The Wittgenstein you critique is very far from the Wittgenstein with whom I am familiar.

The argument that seems salient to 's OP is that if one can say nothing about the mooted "base reality", then it is irrelevant to our conversations.

Alternately, if we do talk about this "base reality", then it's not the case that we can say nothing about it.

Seems to me that we are left with the socks and books and cups and so on, that participate in our everyday conversations. The mooted noumenon either drops out of consideration or can be replaced by the stuff around us.

To say that B(L,p) is inadequate is to say that there is some essence of belief that it misconstrues. Would you agree? — Leontiskos

No. Adding essence here doesn't make things clearer. It's just that there is an aspect that is shown better by other analysis. I don't see much point in thinking in terms of an "essence" of belief, but rather a family resemblance of uses around the word "belief" and various cognates.

What we are doing here is exploring some of those uses. I am not looking for an ultimate, correct and complete interpretation of belief in some formal language.

And I don't think Searle is, either.

As for how logic might best be understood, see the thread Logical Nihilism

https://eclass.uoa.gr/modules/document/file.php/PHS180/davidson_on_saying_that.pdf

It's obtuse, but he shows how to analyse "Galileo said that the Earth moves" into two sentences: "The Earth moves" and "Galileo said that." We can apply the same analysis to belief: "Galileo believes that the Earth moves" divides into two sentences: "The Earth moves" and "Galileo believes that."

For Davidson, this helps make clear the truth-functional structure of such propositional attitudes. His project was to interpret English into a first order language using by making use of t-sentence. For our purposes, this is another way of showing the incompleteness of the B(a,p) analysis and the opacity of "p".

:wink: Cheers.

:rofl:

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.

Oh, well.

The think about "knowing" the keys are in the draw when they are in your pants pocket is that you did not know the keys were in the draw, because they were not.

You thought you knew, but you were wrong.

This is basic stuff.

Might leave this conversation there. I'm not seeing much benefit in chatting with someone who "knows" things that are not true.

Whatever. There's no pleasing some folk.

No facts that language could latch onto. — Sam26

Yep. The things shown, not said.

So you are saying he was wrong here? That there are facts that language cannot latch on to?

But then what grounds could we have for calling such things "facts"?

And here we would be putting a limit on what might be said, but not on what might be shown, or understood.

So I'm not following you here, either.

What I do say, is that beliefs are not necessarily a product of statements such as, "X believes that P." — Sam26

Sure. It's not a product of such statements. The statement sets out an aspect of the grammar of belief, as between an agent and a proposition.

Those are only beliefs that are part of the language of statements. — Sam26

I maintain beliefs can be stated.

The fact is that beliefs can exist quite apart from any linguistic expression of that belief. — Sam26

Sure. Beliefs can be shown as well as stated. But they can also be stated. Note also the word "exist' here, and the implicit hypostatisation. When one says that a belief exists, what more is one saying, apart from that thinking the world is such-and-so accounts for this behaviour... the beetle is in this box, but you still cannot see it, yet you can talk of it existing. Nothing is brought into existence here.

so, given my understanding, prior to language there were still beliefs. These beliefs were shown in the actions of those who had the belief. The act is prior to language, then comes language, where we are able to express the belief. In my estimation you and others are putting the cart before the horse. — Sam26

Yes, I understand that you see it this way. But in the end all you have are the actions - both verbal and non-verbal; never the belief. You infer the belief from the act, beetle from the box.

the belief doesn't pop into existence — Sam26

Yep. Stop there.

Well, I think you've misunderstood what was going on here, but I'll leave it as moot. Too far of the OP, anyway.

he was just wrong about what can be said about the metaphysical. — Sam26

Which bit?

...the meaning of "know" has nothing to do with truth — LuckyR

You know things that are not true? I don't think so.

What you can be said to know is true. Otherwise, you don't know it. Been that way since at least Theaetetus.

You may not have. But at some stage you have left me with the impression that you think there are beliefs that cannot be put into the form "X believes that P" where P is some statement. Whereas I, and I think most folk who have given the issue some consideration, might say that this is part of the grammar of belief.

So to believe something is to believe that something to be true; and what is true is this or that state of affairs, this or that statement.

I hope I have misunderstood.

Edit: Something to do with hinge beliefs not being propositional?

I think the main source is On Saying That.

Edit: The idea is something like that we sometimes both use and mention; SO "Galileo said that the Earth moves" might be analysed as a conjunct of "The Earth moves" and "Galileo said that", where the demonstrative "that" points to "The Earth moves", or even to Galileo's utterance of "The Earth moves".

But that'd be it's own thread.

Transcendental arguments are treacherous. It's the bit that says "The only way in which Y could be true is if X". It's usually wrong, either because there are other unnoticed reasons for Y besides X, or because we've misunderstood Y int he first place.

We couldn't recognise a conceptual scheme that was radically different to ur own, as a conceptual scheme. :wink:

Is what wales and dolphins do, with all that clicking and so on, a conceptual scheme?

It's always easier to critique someone if you start by misunderstanding them.

In particular, Wittgenstein went to some length to point out that language is embedded in our activities, and certainly not "too distinct, too cut off from the rest of experience". And he might well have agreed with you that it is impossible to avoid metaphysics, being what is shown rather than just said. The sense of wonder is at the core of Wittgenstein's thinking.

You might consider that there is more to his ideas.

Consider though that, if you could teach a fly that it is a fly, that it is in a fly bottle, and what a fly bottle is, you might be able to help the fly stop flying back into the same fly bottle over and over. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So you would build another, somewhat larger bottle. As said, before unfortunately getting lost in the infinite and supposing "the fundamental truth of the ‘real’ for Wittgenstein".

But the feet aren't, right? — Ciceronianus

More perplexing is whether the sock puppets are real sock puppets.

"fundamental particles don't really exist, they are just mathematical descriptions of standing waves — Count Timothy von Icarus

If so, then there are standing waves.

I was looking for feed back on my logic — vanzhandz

Then I'd suggest that you reconsider your "I may only work within the confines of my own subjective reality". You are a member of a community, and you learned to divide the world up thus-and-so as a member of that community, and overwhelmingly, you are in agreement with that community. The very fact that you are reading this shows that there is more going on than just your "perceptions".

And if you think not, then solipsism has you and there's no point in your conversing here.

Well, you are not the first to make this suggestion.

After Wittgenstein, the standard response is that there is nothing you can say about this "base reality". The corollary, that it therefore drops out of any discussion; it is irrelevant.

So back to plain ordinary reality, socks and hands and cups and kettles.

We are saying roughly that believing uses a proposition rather than mentioning it. — Ludwig V

Yep.

But nup. Davidson's analysis.

The scope of the belief statements surely makes explicit your quibble? The difference is between "Kent is Superman" and "Lois believes that Kent is Superman".

I'll try one more time. Suppose we have some agent L a nd some possible state of affairs which we might present as either p or as f(a); that is, p ≡ f(a). Then that L believes this state of affairs as B(L,p); and for some purposes this will suffice. But the problem here is that B(L,p) looks like a first-order relation between the agent and the state of affairs, and this is not so. "p" is not the thing the belief is about. We might get to that thing by parsing the believe as B(L, f(a)). The belief is that f(a), a proposition, that is about the individual a.

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"

@Sam26, @creativesoul, Searle is not saying that beliefs are not propositional. Beliefs range over propositions.

Now, who would have predicted such a witty, erudite and original response.

I'd say pick your fight. If, after you explain climate change so cogently, the reply is a verbose "But it's cold in winter", then you are wasting time that might be spent on folk who can think.

Your interlocutor's pretence of rationality is risible. It's dubious that such oxygen thieves deserve any sort of interaction, let alone attempting to explain science to them. It's not going anywhere, and has the unintended consequence of providing them a platform.

Best to laugh and walk away.

With Sam Harris?

What a fucking goose you are.

Yes, it's cold in winter. :roll:

Anyone read Tim Maudlin?

~~

I was not sufficiently impressed by the OP to submit the few drafted comments I'd made — Quixodian

Yeah, I also regret having entered into the discussion.

The problem with Descartes' philosophy is not positing the division of mind and matter, but of treating mind (res cogitans) as though it were something objective. — Quixodian

Yet there has been quite a bit of progress in explaining mind in physiological terms. So I'm not going to go along with that, and instead repeat the methodological point, missed by and unaddressed by @ucarr, that an ontological juxtaposition will lead to incommensurability. They might see it one day and move forward to Hegel. :wink:

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.

I don't see a salient issue with (2) and (3). Roughly,

2. B(Lois, Kent (wears glasses)); Kent=superman; but  ◇~B(Lois, Superman(wears glasses)

3. B(Lois, Kent (types fast)); B(Lois,Kent=superman); ⊢B(Lois, Superman(types fast))

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. The various modal Doxastic Logics might be used to capture this more formally.

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.

Unless your point is that Lois might have inconsistent beliefs?

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? Or is it better thought of as a sensation, a feeling, an impression, an intuition?

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 perhaps not a proposition.

Beliefs range over propositions.

Beliefs are stated as an association between an agent and a proposition. This superficial structure serves to show that a belief is always both about a proposition and about some agent. It might be misleading as the proposition is not the object of the belief but constitutes the belief.

This association is such that if the agent acts in some way then there is a belief and a desire that together are sufficient to explain the agent's action. Banno wants water; he believes he can pour a glass from the tap; so he goes to the tap to pour a glass of water.

Notice that I am using the word "association" and not "relation", for reasons explained above.

Some folk hereabouts think something like that there are beliefs which are not propositional. It remains unclear to me how that could work. It's supposed that there are hinge beliefs that are in some way not propositional, but that is quite problematic, since hinge beliefs are also supposed to ground other beliefs by implication, and implication relies on propositions. If a hinge belief cannot be expressed as a proposition, it cannot be used to ground other beliefs.

Far better to adopt the grammar described above, with "beliefs" restricted to range over propositions.

How do I view my old threads?

As it turns out, you already are.

Could you draw out your claim that we cannot substitute salve veritate using your Superman example? — Leontiskos

It's a standard example. Lous believes (knows, loves, is worried that...) Kent wears glasses. Kent is Superman. But Lous does not believe (know, love, worry that...)Superman wears glasses.

You must have seen it?

I keep seeing the title as "dermatological ontology".

Getting some skin in the game?

I am wary of calling an unprovable sentence a theorem. — Leontiskos

Yeah, I have a bad habit of calling true well-formed formulae "theorems", which is incorrect. @sime has picked me up on it before.

Later.