Propositions are existentially dependent upon language. Where there has never been language, there could have never been propositions. I'm not sure if I rightly understand what the W3 sense is.

Can you say more about what that would be, phenomenologically? — J

I reject phenomenology.

What is a conclusion that is not put into words? — J

In this example, the creature recognizes/attributes causality; recognizes and/or attributes a causal relationship between their own behaviour and the subsequent pain. — creativesoul

On my view, thought and/or belief cannot be reduced in/to purely physical terms or mental terms. That is because thought and belief consist in part of both and are thus not properly accounted for by either a purely physical or a purely 'mental'(non-physical) framework.

Feeling pain after touching fire causes an animal to infer/conclude that touching fire caused the pain
— creativesoul

But if we agree that this does not occur in the space of propositions, then what do you mean by "infer" or "conclude"? What is a nonlinguistic conclusion?

That's the problem I want to home in on. — J

A non-linguistic inference/conclusion is one that is arrived at via a language less creature. In this example, the creature recognizes/attributes causality; recognizes and/or attributes a causal relationship between their own behaviour and the subsequent pain.

↪creativesoul I'd like to understand this thought better. I think you're saying that I can have a belief without also having a propositional expression or equivalent of that belief? Thus, a non-linguistic animal can form a belief about, say, pain and fire, without entertaining any propositions about it? — J

The summary above points towards the general thrust. Not all belief is propositional in content.

If I've got that right, I don't think it's tangential at all. It raises the extremely interesting question of what to do with beliefs, in the taxonomy of Worlds 2 and 3. If we're going to use causal language, as I'm suggesting we might do, what causes a bear to believe that fire will cause pain, and how does that belief in turn cause whatever mental process results in the bear's steering clear of smoke? Is all this happening in the world of psychological events, local to the bear, and explainable in terms of brain processes? Or is there a shadow, so to speak, of propositional content, such that the bear might be said to conclude that smoke is to be avoided?

I think we can get some insight by consulting our own mental behavior when beliefs arise, but I'll stop here. — J

There's a lot packed up in there. The taxonomy of beliefs is an interesting subject matter, to me, all by itself. I reject the idea that language less animals' belief(s) have propositional content.

Feeling pain after touching fire causes an animal to infer/conclude that touching fire caused the pain, which in turn forms the belief that touching fire causes pain. That belief will then affect thoughts and effect behaviors, causing the animal to avoid fire.

entailment are 'logical rules', which could only be said to 'cause'(scarequotes intentional) someone to infer certain conclusions, if they know and follow the rules.
— creativesoul

Sure. "Knowing the rules" is a background condition, just like "all things being equal at room temperature and normal gravity etc." is a background condition for many statements of physical causation. My questions was/is, Given that the mind in question does know the rules, do they actually have a choice about following them? — J

My own objections to Gettier's Case I and II, as well as the cottage industry cases, serve as prima facie evidence that one can know the rules and not follow them.

Did I have a choice in the matter? I don't think so.

There is a large number of bright interesting people here.

I apologize for any inconvenience or distraction, my friend. I just wondered if Russell's approach was applicable to the issue I raised regarding what happens in Gettier's by following the rules of entailment. To my mind, that is the very reason that it seems so counterintuitive to nearly everyone who first encounters the paper(the undisclosed change in meaning/truth conditions). That is the sleight of hand Gettier had gotten away with, by following the rules nonetheless.

If you wish to return to what you were working on before I entered, please do! I was just stopping in to see if the new approach by Russell was applicable to what I've hinted at here.

So for the purposes of any extensional model we might use, the two propositions do meant the same thing. — Banno

And yet, the two have very different truth conditions Banno. "The man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job" is true regardless of which man gets the job, so long as he has ten coins in his pocket. Whereas, "Jones will get the job and has ten coins in his pocket" is true, if and only if, Jones gets the job and has ten coins in his pocket.

A change in truth conditions is a change in meaning.

Awww. I'm sorry.

I had it backwards(again), but corrected it while you were replying. I suppose it's hard for me to accept that Smith would count the coins in Jones' pocket! :lol: Anyway...

I made a point to mention the lack of need for a language speaker because it seemed germane to the commonly held belief that propositions are equivalent to belief. That point's probably too tangential, but it's true and has a very broad scope of far-reaching consequences which place many a common understanding and/or position under overwhelming direct scrutiny.

I would hesitate at that. I'm not a huge fan of the so called 'logical rules of entailment', because they do not preserve truth(as a result of allowing a change in meaning).

Setting that aside, and addressing the question above directly, entailment are 'logical rules', which could only be said to 'cause'(scarequotes intentional) someone to infer certain conclusions, if they know and follow the rules. I think that's what you're getting at.

Gettier comes to mind. Funny, I'm also discussing the paper with Banno in his Russell thread.

I don't have much time nowadays, which is good, but what I had in mind fit into the truth as satisfaction aspect as well as being germane to issues with entailment. In the first case Gettier invokes the rules of entailment to move from d to e.

from the paper...

Case I:

Suppose that Smith and Jones have applied for a certain job. And suppose that Smith has strong evidence for the following conjunctive proposition : (d) Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket. Smith's evidence for (d) might be that the president of the company assured him that Jones would in the end be selected, and that he, Smith, had counted the coins in Jones's pocket ten minutes ago.

Proposition (d) entails : (e) The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.

Let us suppose that Smith sees the entailment from (d) to (e), and accepts (e) on the grounds of (d), for which he has strong evidence. In this case, Smith is clearly justified in believing that (e) is true.

The satisfaction issue, it seems to me, is that those two conjunctive propositions do not mean the same thing. That is obvious because they have different truth conditions. Does Russell's approach find itself capable of addressing that?

If I had an unmet expectation -- or wish, really! -- it was that somehow we'd come up with a plausible explanation of the unpopular view that inferential reasoning is in fact causative. — J

What are your thoughts? — J

When a young child touches fire, they immediately infer that touching the fire is what caused the pain. The effect/affect is that they form the belief that touching fire causes pain. They are right. That can all be done by a languageless human.

I merely asked a question. You did the shewing. :wink:

Hi J. The topic has been one of historical interest for myself. Has the thread met your expectations, assuming you had any?

Seems that it may be the case that causal language isn't equipped for describing the evolution of thought. The very notion of "thought" is problematic in many ways. In layman's terms, sure it is beyond doubt that thoughts can cause other thoughts.

Hi Banno! Hope you are doing well. So, I'm wondering if this new critique of entailment could be applied to Gettier's two cases? That may be different or somehow opposed to your purposes/intent here, but if it's not, could you set it out? Case I in particular.

Second, we should take a good hard look at any philosophy that demands an appearances versus reality distinction but then denies access to reality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. Kant's problem as well.

...a listing or summary of a bunch of smart guys’ ideas is not the same as insight. That requires a connection between things that are not normally thought of as connected. — T Clark

Yes. Insight results from thinking, which AI is incapable of doing. Noam Chomsky called the LLM's glorified plagiarism. I agree.

Well put.

A lot of people are very unhappy with/in Trump's 'kingdom'.

The road to Trump has been paved over long periods of time. American political corruption has been laid bare by Trump. We've had the best government money can buy for a very long time. Citizens United legalized bribery. Trump came after. Trump bragged about buying every republican candidate on the stage during an early Republican primary debate leading up to the 2016 Republican national convention. An uncontested/unopposed open public admission of bribery. Mind you, there was one candidate, of at least 8, who jokingly spoke up to the contrary...

...stating that, although he had not yet...

...he would be more than happy to accept some of his money, if Trump wanted to give him some.

Under the rug it went...




Some have been hoping for better than a half century for America's socioeconomic influence to wane. Some have that aim/goal. The motivations are varied. They are plentiful and often incommensurate due to the wide variance of both, the individual and the subjective particular circumstance(s) grounding their desires. Be all that as it may, certain facts are clear enough to be able to form some general true assessments.

Trump has personally befriended those who actively work against American best interest. He has publicly dismissed American intelligence services' opinion(s) in favor of foreign actors' concerning charges directly involving that actor. <-----Read that very carefully. Trump is turning/has turned toward adversaries and away from American intelligence and longtime allies.

Others are perfectly content with the kingdom of Trump.

For Trump to begin his 'liberation' speech by blaming foreigners for the loss of good paying manufacturing and skilled trades jobs shows either his complete ignorance of past administrations' legislation or he's lying through his teeth. If only it were so simple. Unfortunately, there are a very large portion of Americans who are simpleminded enough to believe that rubbish.

Trump is the first president (as far as I can tell) to take such a bold move on the national debt, — NOS4A2

Bold to increase it by giving huge tax cuts for those who already have the most. Bold to try to pay for that loss by cutting social services and making other countries/trading partners pay for that tax cut.

Bold indeed.

Her belief, though still justified based on past data, is no longer true. — DasGegenmittel

Right. That's it. Her belief is no longer true. Hence, it no longer counts as knowledge even though it once did and was.

What's the problem?

:worry:

Not a problem. Real life pressing matters are more important than our discussions on this forum

If it is not necessary and sufficient to be the assertion it defines... — DasGegenmittel

I have no clue what that's supposed to mean.

Cheers. Sleep. Until next time. Be well.

Time in the Car Case:
T1: At the moment Smith forms his belief, he is justified in thinking that “Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona” is true because he believes that Jones owns a Ford. His evidence and reasoning at this time are entirely centered on the assumption regarding Jones, which forms the basis of his justification.

T2: However, when we consider the truth of the proposition at a later point, it turns out that the disjunction is actually true solely because Brown is in Barcelona—a fact completely independent of Smith’s initial evidence. Thus, while at T1 Smith’s belief was justified by his reasoning about Jones, at T2 the truth of the statement is secured by an unrelated, coincidental circumstance. — DasGegenmittel

What was Smith's belief at the moment he formed it?

He believed "Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona" was true because Jones owned a Ford.

What if the individual under our consideration while pointing towards the broken clock said something like, "Hey guys! Yesterday, at exactly 2 o'clock, do you know that I believed that that broken clock was working. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? I just looked at it like I normally do and then went on about my business as usual. :lol: I even made it home on time!"
I don't see the nonsense in this, or my account of it. If it's there, could you set it out and show it to me?
— creativesoul
He didn’t know it, but if we assume that, then he would be surprised—and according to the currently prevailing view of JTB, would have had knowledge by accident. And that’s exactly what you're describing. — DasGegenmittel

No, it's not. I don't think you understand. I'll elaborate a bit more.

That story shows how/that we can indeed believe a broken clock is working despite not being able to believe "a broken clock is working".

In addition, it forces those who show preference to the self-reporting of S at the time of belief to choose between contrary accounts both offered by S, one at a time when S did not know what they believed, and another at a time when they did.

On my view, predictions of future events (belief about what will happen later) are capable of neither being true or false at the time they're made.
— creativesoul
Exactly. And what does that mean? — DasGegenmittel

It means that belief about what's happened and/or is happening can be true/false, whereas belief about what will happen later can only be capable of becoming true/false later.

There can be no such thing as knowledge in cases involving temporality and change — DasGegenmittel

It does not follow from the fact that predictions are incapable of being true/false at the time they're made, that there can be no such thing as knowledge in cases involving temporality and change. Assuming they're justified and believed, predictions can become true despite being incapable of being so at the time they're articulated/made. They become JTB by virtue of turning out to be true. If they turn out to be false, then they cannot be knowledge, because knowledge cannot be false.

If his cases are examples of justified false belief, then his challenge to those formulations fails to hit the target. <-------Can we agree on that much, for now?
— creativesoul
Since these are statements about future events, they do not constitute knowledge but rather speculation (credence), and the result is not knowledge either, as it does not necessarily and sufficiently follow from the premises. Luck is a temporal phenomenon; the outcome could have been different: good luck (JTB) & bad luck (JFB) — DasGegenmittel

On my view, as it pertains to the temporal aspect, the first case is quite different from the second in that he former is the sort of claim that cannot be either true or false at the time the statement is made, while the latter is the sort of claim that can.

You seem to want to say that the first case cannot be knowledge because it cannot be true or false at the time it's made. However, we do find out that his belief turns out to be false, because Jones does not get the job. Hence, on my view, at the time S made the claim, it was well grounded and unknowable. It ended up being justified false belief. That just follows from my own framework regarding what kinds of things can be true/false(in the sense relevant to the paper) and how they become so.

I suspect we're in at least some agreement on that.

The second case is another matter altogether when it comes to the temporal aspect. It's false when made because "Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona" was true at the time because Brown was in Barcelona. Whereas S believed it was true because Jones owned a Ford.

This is precisely where the JTB concept fails: it assumes that truth is already determined, that it is static. — DasGegenmittel

I argue in favor of JTB. The account differs tremendously from historical convention though, in that I do not treat belief and propositions as equivalent. Nor do I treat belief and reports thereof as equivalent, self-reporting notwithstanding. Perhaps it may be a result of those differences that I can say that the characterization above fails. It's also odd for me to see another treat JTB as though it has agency.

But it is not unfair to say that they turn on a proposition (belief) which is ambiguous and is interpreted (applied) differently in two different contexts - the subject's belief/knowledge and the context of what we might call objectivity. — Ludwig V

At time t1(the duration of trusting the broken clock) S cannot admit of believing that a broken clock is working. They don't know they do. At time t2(after becoming aware of the clock's working condition), then and only then, can they readily admit/acknowledge/realize that at time t1 they believed a broken clock was working.

Which account warrants/garners deference/preference here, before or after becoming aware?

The fatal weakness of JTB is its lack of temporal precision. — DasGegenmittel

Smith obviously cannot possibly be describing (thinking of) the clock as broken and it makes nonsense of the story to attribute such a belief to them. — Ludwig V

Seems to me that that's a tad too strongly put. Conventional belief attribution practices may end that way, but that's a flaw born of conflating propositions and belief in addition to not keeping in mind that our knowledge base evolves over time, knowledge about our own past belief notwithstanding.

What if the individual under our consideration while pointing towards the broken clock said something like, "Hey guys! Yesterday, at exactly 2 o'clock, do you know that I believed that that broken clock was working. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? I just looked at it like I normally do and then went on about my business as usual. :lol: I even made it home on time!"

I don't see the nonsense in this, or my account of it. If it's there, could you set it out and show it to me?

Broken clocks are not reliable time tellers.

That's about the J part.

The content of belief is not equivalent to a report of it.

That's about the B part.

we must respect the believer's description of their own belief. — Ludwig V

After they become aware that they believed a broken clock was working or before?

:wink:

What we have are competing explanations for the Gettier problem. One grants that Gettier has showed a problem with the justification aspect of JTB. That is the basis of the project. Another argues that both Gettier cases are examples of justified false belief, and thus pose no problem for JTB; case closed. You're arguing in the vein of the former, and I, the latter.
— creativesoul

I accept your suggestion—if indeed there is a way back to actual arguments—and I welcome it.

Please take another careful look at what the Gettier problem entails according to my position, and what must be concluded from it.

In brief: in contingent scenarios—such as our dynamic reality—there is no fixed truth. We are subject to possible perceptual errors, and the concepts that underpin our assertions are therefore not absolute. Dynamic reality is an infinite game played with incomplete information.

This is precisely where the JTB concept fails: it assumes that truth is already determined, that it is static. But in dynamic contexts, truth can change unexpectedly—due to what we might call epistemic good or bad luck. JTB presumes one can reliably assert truths about the future based on current justification and belief. Crude as it may sound, this becomes evident in everyday application scenarios.

Moreover, there are at least two epistemically relevant time points: (1) the moment of justification and belief, and (2) the moment when the truth value of the proposition becomes (retrospectively) evident. The failure of JTB lies in its temporal indifference—it does not account for the possibility that a justified belief at t₁ might turn out to be false at t₂, even though no irrationality occurred.

Any JTB that is currently accepted in a dynamic scenario may turn out to be false. This is epistemologically paradoxical: JTB is meant to define knowledge strictly—but definitions, by their nature, must offer consistent and temporally robust criteria. They should fix what something is once and for all. But that doesn’t happen here.

This implies: any dynamic scenario in which one makes a justified assertion according to JTB—and in which the circumstances then change—produces a counterexample: a “justified false belief,” such as in the broken bottle or the “fastest way to work” cases. These are not marginal exceptions; they are systematic results of a conceptual flaw.

The fatal weakness of JTB is its lack of temporal precision. If it were to incorporate temporal dimensions, it would have to make them explicit. It does not. Thus, at the very least, it is imprecise—and for a definition, this imprecision is fatal, because definitions are meant to offer definitive and stable characterizations of the concept they define.

I simply wanted to highlight these core issues once more. — DasGegenmittel

I may be inclined, if you like, to offer candidates of JTB that are not Gettier cases. We could then apply your concepts/reasoning to them and see what that looks like, and/or how well the criticism you levy fits a case of JTB. That could be interesting. I'm much less interested in applying criticism of JTB to cases that are not.