The content of the belief includes a broken clock, but Joe's belief is not about broken clocks. — creativesoul

You asked for a distinction. There it is. Seems simple enough to me.

How can a language less creature, say a prehistoric mammal, have an attitude towards a proposition when propositions themselves are language constructs?
— creativesoul

Banno isn't saying a languageless creature can have an attitude toward a proposition. He's saying that the languageless beliefs of languageless creatures can be put in the form of a propositional attitude.

Non-controversial.

If I were to say that I am choosing to use the term "belief" only for those things that can be put into the form of propositional attitudes, would you object?
— Banno — ZzzoneiroCosm

Is it non-controversial though? At first blush, it may seem innocuous enough, but when placed under scrutiny, it reveals itself to be inherently incapable of taking proper account of language less belief. If all belief is an attitude towards some proposition or another then all language less creatures' beliefs are attitudes towards some proposition.

That's patently absurd on it's face.

he believes that a broken clock was working
— creativesoul

That doesn’t sound a correct report of Jack’s belief. Indeed it would make Jack’s belief contradictory. A better report would be: Jack believes that clock is working. But that belief is false. — neomac

Evidently, we've very different standards regarding what counts as a "better report" of Jack's belief.

This is a matter of great contention between our views. It seems clear to me that Jack can and does believe both, without any issue at all.

Jack looked at a broken clock because he wanted to know the time. He carefully noted the time indicated on the face of the clock by looking at the clock's hands; i.e., by already knowing how to read a clock. The clock on the wall indicated 3 o'clock. Jack - in that very moment - believed that it was three o'clock because he believed that that particular clock was working. That particular clock was broken.

Anyway what you mean...

I mean what I write. Let's focus there.

The content of Jack's belief included that particular broken clock, despite the fact that it was about what time it was. Jack's belief was not about broken clocks, it included them.

Joe looks at a broken clock which indicates the time is 3 o'clock.

Joe believes that the time is 3 o'clock, because he believes that a broken clock was working. Joe does not know that the clock is broken, so he does not believe the statement/proposition "a broken clock is working" is true. The content of the belief includes a broken clock, but Joe's belief is not about broken clocks.

A thread worthy of careful revisitation...

Around page ten, it gets interesting...

:wink:

I was just perusing that thread yesterday.

creativesoul must think something like this, to explain why he is perplexed that a cat might have a belief while not being able to use language. For him, if a belief is an attitude towards a proposition, there must be propositions in minds, and so language. — Banno

No, that's not it at all. My problem with that notion of belief is well known. How to square that with the idea that language less animals are capable of belief. Hence, the need to posit the notion of a language less proposition.

If all belief is an attitude towards a proposition, and all propositions are existentially dependent upon language use, then language less animals have no belief. That's the argument. The conclusion follows from the premisses. You have argued for both premisses. You cannot admit the conclusion, because you know better. I'm offering a way to make amends.

Yes. Indeed! That article was very impressive to me as well! I'm not a physicalist either, strictly speaking.

You may find it interesting to search the site by typing the title into the search bar. Banno created a great thread about it. Good stuff in there, between the typical yahoos.

What is the referent of the belief in "the cat believes the bowl is empty"? — Banno

The question makes no sense on my view.
— creativesoul

I disagree. The referent of the word "belief" is a cognitive intentional state/event (depending on the dispositional or actual meaning we attribute to the word "belief"). — neomac

Note he asked the referent of the belief, not the word "belief". Beliefs do not have referents for they are not used to pick something out to the exclusion of all else. That's what names do.

My impression is that here you are confusing the content of the belief, with the belief. I think your formulation would sound better if you stated "All belief consists of drawing correlations" instead of "All belief consists of correlations drawn". Yet I wouldn't find it satisfactory: we draw correlations even when we imagine or associate ideas, but imagination is not belief. — neomac

The content of a belief amounts to what a belief consists of. The content of the belief that a mouse is behind a tree is the mouse, the tree, the spatiotemporal relationship between the two, and the correlations drawn between all these by the creature capable of doing so.

Indeed, we do draw correlations when imagining, remembering, creating, envisioning, dreaming, etc. I fail to see how that presents any issue for the position I'm putting forth here. I mean, I've not claimed that all correlations are belief, nor would I.

Besides what is "correlations drawn between directly and/or indirectly perceptible things" supposed to mean when one believes that 3 + 2 = 5 or God is omniscient? — neomac

Are those meaningful marks imperceptible? When one believes that 3 + 2 = 5, they've done nothing more than accept the rules of arithmetic. It may be worth noting here that numbers are nothing more than the names of quantities. When one believes that God is omniscient, they've done nothing more than learn to use language to talk about the supernatural beliefs of the community, and believe that what they are saying is true. Believing that God is omniscient is to believe that there is a God, such that God exists, and that God knows everything.

On my view, all concepts are linguistic constructs, whereas not all beliefs are. All concepts are existentially dependent upon language.
— creativesoul

On what grounds do you believe that all concepts are linguistic constructs? What are the features you ascribe to concepts that essentially require language? — neomac

Short on time.

Name some things that you count as a concept, and it will help this along better. As before, I do not use the notion, finding different ways of talking to be more practical.

The concept of belief and belief...

Do you draw a distinction?

...what is it that is "had" by the cat, when it has a belief? Nothing, I say; it's just a way of setting out it's behaviour. — Banno

It's a tough question to be sure. The belief is what is had by the cat. The cat draws correlations between different things. The bowl. Hunger pangs. The urge to eat, and seek food(gather resources). The belief that the bowl is empty could be accompanied by unsatisfied expectations, if she is expecting food to be there. There are numerous past events, each leaving an impression upon the cat such that it now goes to the bowl when it's hungry. After looking into the bowl, if it is empty, then the cat sees that the bowl is empty. Knowing what an empty food bowl looks like is not a mystery, nor is believing the bowl is empty when looking at an empty bowl. There is language necessary to make the bowl, but there's none necessary to look into it and see that it's empty, resulting in believing so.

We build red out of our usage. Why shouldn't we think of belief in much the same way? — Banno

I think that that overstates the human influence regarding red things. Other language less creatures can also see red, so it is clear that seeing red does not require our language usage. However, more to your point, which I take on in agreement is...

Our usage determines what "seeing red" means. We cannot sensibly talk about seeing red cups unless we've been steeped in language. Our usage determines what "I believe that X" means(where X is some statement believed true). We cannot sensibly talk about our beliefs unless we've been steeped in language. In both cases, it is true that our understanding and knowledge of what those words mean depends entirely upon language use...

However, I would not say the same about all instances of seeing red or all instances of believing that a mouse ran behind a tree. Not all those depend upon language use.

What is the referent of the belief in "the cat believes the bowl is empty"? — Banno

The question makes no sense on my view. Beliefs are not the sort of things used to pick something out to the exclusion of all else, or to refer to something else; beliefs are not names, do not function like names, although they are certainly necessary for any naming and descriptive practices to begin.

What sort of thing is the belief? — Banno

Beliefs are complex things composed of other things. They are a result of cognitive processes. All belief consists of correlations drawn between directly and/or indirectly perceptible things. The complexity of any belief in particular(the correlational content) is congruent with the innate capabilities of the creature.

If the cat believes that the bowl is empty, it is as a result of looking and seeing that there was no food in it. There is no referent of the belief. As above, the cat's belief does not refer to anything. Rather, it's about a food source. It's about the bowl,, but is much more than just the empty bowl.

You say it's not a thing in the mind of the cat. So what is it? — Banno

The issue I have is with the use of "mind" as anything other than a loose reference to one's thoughts and beliefs. Layman speak for what are you thinking is "What's on your mind". "I have something in mind" does not mean that the mind is a place where things can be. Indeed, beliefs are the sorts of things that do not have a precise spatiotemporal location, for they are composed of entirely different otherwise seemingly disparate things, connected only by the correlations drawn between them by the believing creature.

Seems to me you missed something quite important, but...

Try this:

You are perhaps happy to say that red is seen by us in, say, a sunset or a cup, but that it is a secondary property; not to actually be found in the object.

I'm suggesting something analogous is the case with belief. — Banno

Well then, perhaps we do agree on something basic. I'm not keen on the 'property' talk though. I'll try to tease out the analogy in as simple terms as I can, using ones with which I believe you'll be okay. I'll try to incorporate both, the private language argument and the secondary property gist, for they seem to be different kinds of objections.

So, seeing red always includes some creature or another, and what is meant by "seeing red" is entirely determined by language use, which is social. Thus, when one claims that their experience of seeing red cups or even thinking about red cups is some personal and private experience or thought, we can surely know that those thoughts and experiences cannot count as private matters at all, because they are the result of social constructs and historical language use, and that which is a social construct cannot be completely private.

I'll leave it there for now. Hopefully, this is the beginning of something more productive between us. It's been a while. If the above is palatable enough for you, could you elaborate on how belief is the same way. Don't get me wrong, I understand how our use of the term "belief" fits into the above so far as language use being social goes. Rather, I'm struggling to see how this is at all applicable and/or lends support to the claim that all belief content is propositional.

If I claim that I am referring to something intrinsic by saying that I am in pain, what I mean is that there is a simple and direct relation between my words and a sensation. Wittgenstein argues that such an isolated association between word and thing doesn’t say anything at all, it is meaningless. In order for the expression ‘ I am in pain’ to mean something to others,, it has to refer to a socially shared context of background presuppositions, and do something new with them that is recognizable to other speakers. If I am alone, and I think to myself ‘I am in pain’, then the thought is only meaningful to me if it refers to my own network of background presuppositions and carries them forward into a new context of sense. — Joshs

This seems like a good summary to me. It points to how crucial historical usage is when it comes to the meaning of words, phrases, and other language constructs. It denies the equivalence often drawn between unspoken thought and 'private' thought. Dennet has at least one intuition pump that does much the same thing in "Quining Qualia", except he's arguing against the notion of private sensations or some such and using something like the private language argument to make the point of how socially constructed the notions actually are.

I highly recommend reading that to anyone who has not.

We only need to assume languageless creatures have thoughts and emotions and that these thoughts and emotions have the power to motivate behavior. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I believe that it's better to arrive at that as a conclusion that is warranted by and follows from what we can know about our own thought and belief.

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

I don't see how we can further it. — neomac

Do you find the account I set out in the first three posts of the debate to be a complete one?

...how do you see the relation between concepts and beliefs? — neomac

On my view, all concepts are linguistic constructs, whereas not all beliefs are. All concepts are existentially dependent upon language. Language creation and use is existentially dependent upon belief. Therefore, concepts are existentially dependent upon belief. I've no use for the notion of "concept", having found that talking in terms of beliefs, thoughts, and linguistic frameworks is much better than talking in terms of concepts or conceptual schemes.

Diplodocus did not have items of furniture in their minds that could be properly described as beliefs. Rather they had behaviours that we can set out and explain in terms of beliefs and desires.

I dunno. This seems to be a fairly straight forward corollary of the beetle in the box. That folk with a decent grasp of Wittgenstein - yes, you , creativesoul - can't see this strikes me as quite odd. — Banno

Diplodocus are not prehistoric mammals. I chose my classification deliberately. I wish you would pay closer attention, I know you're capable of understanding this. There are no items of furniture inside of any skulls that I'm aware of, so the response is laughable... literally. You are arguing against your own imaginary opponents.

I've no issue at all with the idea that we can explain behaviours in terms of beliefs and desires.

As far as Witt's beetle goes, I am of the understanding that it's an argument against the idea of private language or private meaning of words. I agree with it actually. It's also irrelevant here. Language less creatures' belief does not consist of language or constructs thereof. Our reports of them do, but I'm not so naive as to conflate the content of our reports with the content of what we're reporting upon.

Trees, mice, and the spatiotemporal relationship between them that we characterize as one being behind the other do not need language to exist in their entirety exactly as they did when we coined the phrase "the mouse is behind the tree". I'm not arguing that the phrase is some private belief of a prehistoric mammal(say a cat). That's absurd. Rather, I'm saying that a prehistoric cat could have believed that a mouse was behind a tree long before we coined the phrase(call it whatever you want, it matters not).

How can a language less creature, say a prehistoric mammal, have an attitude towards a proposition when propositions themselves are language constructs? The failure of what you argue is shown in it's inherent inability to make much sense of such language less belief.
— creativesoul

Again?

So a belief is a something stored in the mind of a Diplodocus? — Banno

Please address what I write and not some imaginary opponent that you make up in lieu thereof.

Well, I agree that he's not taken the criticism head on, not mine at least, nor yours; both of which seem relevant and valid. However, I'd rather not make this about Banno.

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

...It does seem to me you are obsessing over a minor point. If I were to say that I am choosing to use the term "belief" only for those things that can be put into the form of propositional attitudes, would you object? I doubt it. And yet here we are. — Banno

Actually, that is exactly what I'm objecting to.

How can a language less creature, say a prehistoric mammal, have an attitude towards a proposition when propositions themselves are language constructs? The failure of what you argue is shown in it's inherent inability to make much sense of such language less belief.

I do not think that you understand what I'm arguing. It doesn't so much as contradict your own as much as further qualifies it. Some and all belief... whereas I hold the former and you the latter.

Take a look at Propositional Attitude Reports

It is an article about the actual difficulties with propositional attitudes. I go along with Davidson, although I must admit never having considered the objections closely. — Banno

Will do. Thanks for the link. Now you're just verifying my earlier comment to you about being a guidepost of the highest caliber...

:wink:

That's a very heavily theory laden link.
— creativesoul

It might show you how the notion of proposition fits into the belief stuff. — Banno

Yeah, I noticed the leaning on possible worlds arguments in your replies regarding unspoken statements and propositions.

That's a very heavily theory laden link. Notice the term "representation" too. It's an accounting practice. What is true of it is not necessarily true of what's being taken into account.

- The actual propositional content of a belief seems to be identified with the possibility of being put in propositional form [9][10][11], and that sounds like claiming that the actual content of a glass is water because one can pour water into the glass.



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

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

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

Yes, it seems that Banno thinks that because belief can be put into propositional form, and has been for centuries, that all belief content is propositional and all belief is an attitude towards that particular proposition.

There is a conflation between reporting upon and/or taking an account of anothers' belief and anothers' belief. The opening post in the debate covers this thoroughly. There are three basic kinds of belief, and believing that some proposition or other is true is but one kind.

It also does not follow from the fact that we can state the cat's belief, and do so using propositions or statements which are truth-apt, that the cat holds those to be true. The cat cannot believe such things, for the cat has no language. The cat believes that the mouse is behind the tree, but quite simply cannot believe that the proposition "the mouse is behind the tree" is true.

- Implicit beliefs [8] can’t be verified until properly expressed (e.g. stated): “holding a belief true” can have both a dispositional and a non-dispositional account. In any case, considerations about truth-functional implications or equivalences based on propositional contents are fallible ways for belief attribution, because there are also irrational beliefs, conceptual indeterminacies and background knowledge that affect doxastic dispositions.



[8] I take it that you believe that you have more than one eyelash. But I suppose that up until now, you had not given this much consideration. If that example does not suit, perhaps you might consider if you believe that you have more than five eyelashes, or less than 12,678. Or you might bring to mind some other belief about something which you had up until now never considered …

The point is that we each have innumerable beliefs that we have never articulated, indeed which we never will articulate, but which nevertheless we do hold to be true. All this to make the point that there are unstated beliefs… — neomac

Here Banno was attempting to support the notion of propositions which had never been proposed, but somehow existed nonetheless as something a believer somehow holds to be true despite never having articulated the proposition or witnessing it having been articulated. To me, that is patently absurd. It amounts to claiming that one can believe something that they have never thought of before ever thinking of it. Such a parsing completely neglects the need for the believer to be a part of the process, and makes a complete muddle of the sequences of events that lead up to forming, having, and/or holding that some proposition or other is true.

seems to think that the position I argue for/from is somehow guilty of reifying belief. The notions of reification or misplaced concreteness work from basic taxonomy which I reject. Not all things can be properly taken into account with a dichotomy such as real/abstract, physical/non-physical, real/imaginary, physical/mental, etc. So, when Banno claims that I hold that beliefs are in the head or mind of the believer, or that they are mental furniture, he's quite mistaken. Belief, like many other things, are not the sorts of things that can have a spatiotemporal location, for the content of one individual's belief can be spread across the globe, indeed the entire universe. Or in the example of the mouse running behind a tree, the content does not have a precise location. The tree, the mouse, and the relationship between them are most certainly not inside the skull of the believer. Any dualist account or dichotomy such as internal/external, mental/physical, and the like is doomed to fail here for the belief is a result of a process that includes the individual who draws the correlations, the tree, the mouse, and the relationship between the mouse and tree.

Philosophy proper has not really recovered from Gettier. That failure is solely as a result of getting belief wrong to begin with, and it's led to approaches like Banno's. While I certainly do understand the need for the JTB account, especially during the time, for some reason or other, that line of thought has been stretched beyond what's warranted. That's where the notion of all belief as propositional attitude comes from. Moore's paradox also shows how that accounting practice is found wanting.

And we are more and more far from understanding how such an account could ever explain what a belief is about and explain the related behavior not only on non-linguistic creature but also in irrational/ignorant linguistic creature. — neomac

Over the years, I've come to realize that parsing the issues in terms of linguistic and non-linguistic belief is fraught, it quite simply does not work. Almost, but not quite right, it seems to me. There's a substantial loss of explanatory power when it comes to creatures we call non linguistic having belief content that is existentially dependent upon language; things like bowls, cups, cars, etc. Such things are certainly linguistic things, meaning that they owe their very existence to language, and it leads us to muddle when trying to parse non-linguistic creatures' beliefs if they are about such things.

To the best of my knowledge, current convention denies that language less creatures can even have belief, to remain consistent with holding that all belief has propositional content(an attitude towards a proposition). Current convention generally holds that truth is a language construct as well. So, appealing to convention doesn't work for me, given convention is wrong about that.

My position is that some belief do indeed have propositional content, but not all. This was explained thoroughly enough in the first three posts of yours truly during the debate this thread is supposed to be about.

- He claims that both beliefs [5] and state of affairs [6] can be put in the form of a proposition, but if the possibility of putting in propositional form a belief is enough to claim that belief have propositional content, then it should be also enough to claim that state of affairs have propositional content. And since propositions are sentences that can be true or false [7], then also state of affairs can be true or false as much as beliefs can be, thanks to their propositional content.



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

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

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

I agree on both points above. There seems to be some special pleading going on, at a bare minimum. Inconsistent terminological use, certainly. That's unacceptable.

Interesting though...

I've noticed something now that I do not remember noticing during the overwhelming amount of seemingly incongruent argumentation offered by Banno during the debate. I had a very hard time making much sense of any of it towards the end.

has arrived at incoherence by virtue of self-contradiction. If all belief has propositional content by virtue of being an attitude towards some proposition or other, and "The present King of France is bald" is not a proposition, then it would not even be possible to believe that the present King of France was bald, because "the present King of France is bald" has just been disqualified. That contradicts the way things are. We all know that it would take very little effort, given the right candidate, to convince someone that the statement is true. It is not impossible to believe that the present King of France is bald. The statement is not truth-apt, but can be wholeheartedly believed nonetheless.

:meh:

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

:death:

- The manifest inconsistency of claiming that beliefs about statements are exactly the same as beliefs about they way things are [3] has been already spotted by you. But his other formulations elsewhere [4] turned out to be even more preposterous because claiming that beliefs are about how we think things are is exactly like saying beliefs are about how we believe things are (kind of intrinsically reflexive beliefs).



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

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

I agree on the points you make here. The false equivalency, it seems to me, comes as a result of using the belief that approach for a task it's not suited for. Seems to me that it's suited for showing the presupposition of truth inherent belief statements, and lends itself to redundancy(Tarski's T sentence), both of which Banno seems to agree with and rely upon.

Witt is strong in Banno's view though, particularly so when it comes to metaphysics in general, the importance of language in all human considerations, and any and all philosophical notions which seem to add nothing to our understanding but unnecessary confusion. Last I knew, like Davidson, he rejects the distinction between scheme and world. What you're seeing here could be a result of not quite having consistently rendered all the different aspects of his worldview? Indeed, that may not even matter much to him.

Banno is excellent at engaging others, and for that the world is a better place. He has certainly been the most influential individual to me personally(regarding philosophy), despite all our disagreements. To put it into my own framework...

Banno has been a necessary elemental constituent of my own philosophical understanding, without which, I would not have even been able to have. A mentor of sorts, a guidepost of the utmost caliber.

- Commands and desires are also considered propositional attitudes but they have satisfaction conditions not truth conditions as beliefs. And as long as beliefs and desires can express different attitudes toward the same propositions, propositions themselves are not intrinsically truth bearers by themselves [2], but only dependently on the direction-of-fit conferred by the intentional attitude.


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

I may be of little help or interest here, I'm afraid. This seems to be from speech act theorists(Austin, Searle, Ryle???), and I'm not familiar enough to comment much. I will say that I'm fond of Austin's bit on promises(making the world match the words, i.e., direction of fit???). In addition, I'm not at all impressed by what I think I understand about the conventional notion of truth bearers, having perused the SEP on several occasions regarding it. I do not understand the need to posit them, leaning here on methodological naturalisms tenet regarding refrain from unnecessarily multiplying entities. I would be quite interested in reading your thoughts on the notion, if you find it necessary for explaining some aspect that cannot be adequately explained without invoking it.

In Banno's defense, his qualification above tells me that he already knows that they are not strictly speaking in conventional terms; interchangeable. I strongly suspect that he also knew, and was right, that I would not call him on that, for neither of us are much impressed by the conventional notion of proposition, and talking in terms of statements is easier for the average reader to grasp. We also both strive to speak as plainly as possible without sacrificing any crucial meaning.

I'd be honored to offer my feedback to such a carefully well-crafted post.

Due to personal time constraints, ease of reading, the desire to offer subsequent long overdue attention to this topic in particular, I think it best to address each set of remarks in their own respective posts. As a show of appreciation for the effort, it may take a couple of days to address all five. Luckily enough, I've a quite a bit of 'spare' time for the next week. I would consider it time well spent. After that, I will not be visiting the site daily. However, I would be more than happy to continue when I do. I'd like to help foster a long term respectful and productive discussion about the subject matter itself, after the critique. Thank you again. I was pleasantly surprised by the genuine interest.


Regarding the set of remarks and relevant footnote(again kudos for this!) copied below...

- If proposition is a “more abstract entity” [1] supposed to be “common between certain statements”, then proposition are not statements, and they are not interchangeable with statements, yet he prefers to talk in terms of propositions as “statements that can be either true or false”. Well if they are statements then they can not at the same time be intrinsic truth bearers and the content of our beliefs, why? Because believing that “the cup is on the shelf” is true, doesn’t equate to believing that "la taza está en el estante" is true, yet “the cup is on the shelf” and "la taza está en el estante" have the same truth value.


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

On pains of coherency alone, I would concur that if propositions are supposed to be what is common between certain statements, then they are not statements, cannot be statements, and thus cannot serve as substitutes thereof(salva veritate).

I agree that believing that “the cup is on the shelf” is true, doesn’t equate to believing that "la taza está en el estante" is true. Although those two statements are in completely different languages, they do have the same truth conditions; both are true if the cup is on the shelf. Banno has used Tarski to talk about this situation with "Snow is white" and the German equivalent.

If we have two individual believers, each from a community that uses one of the two respective languages, we would have two individuals that had the same meaningful belief in two different languages. What they believe is not so much that the statements are true(even though if asked they would say as much), but rather they both believe that things are a certain way(that the cup is on the shelf). The two statements make the same claim, say the same thing, express the same proposition, and both are about the spatiotemporal relationship between the cup and the shelf, and not themselves(their own truthfulness). The content of such belief is the cup, the shelf, and the relationship between them.

Rendering the content of something into propositional form warrants neither concluding that the content is propositional nor that the thing is an attitude towards a proposition.

The content of my fridge can be rendered in propositional form. The content of my fridge is not propositional, and my fridge is not an attitude towards a proposition.

Addressed six posts back.

Unspoken is not language less in the relevant sense. Language less means that they exist in their entirety prior to language. Propositions that somehow exist completely independent of language. All unspoken propositions belong to linguistic creatures. Creatures with language are not language less. Creatures without language are. Jack does not have unspoken propositions 'going through his mind', so to speak...