Why should we kowtow to evolutionary "progress"? — Banno

The same reason we no longer seriously entertain geocentric models.

Planing a board cannot be done without a tool. A tool cannot be made without belief. Planing a board cannot be done without belief. Belief is necessary for planing boards in terms of existential dependency as well as practicality. Belief less creatures cannot know how to plane boards.

Robots can plane boards, but they cannot know how. Robots are automated tools. We can learn how to use them to plane boards, and given sufficient time and practice, begin using them without consciously focusing upon the task at hand. We can sing to ourselves while going through the motions. We can carry on complete conversations while using planers.

I think that you're getting at or pointing towards the kind of habitual muscle memory habits that develop given enough time and repetition. With that I'd wholly agree, but as "cross-purposes" implied, that's not what I was talking about.

For me an empirical fact is something that can be directly observed. That said, I think we may be talking at cross-purposes. I agree that, in the sense that everyone is aware of things, believes things and knows things that awareness, believing and knowing cannot be completely independent. — Janus

I think you're right here regarding "talking at cross-purposes".

I'm arguing from the standpoint of evolutionary progression. The safest starting point for this conversation may be the moment of conception(fertilization), although any acceptable robust notion of belief must be amenable to the evolutionary progression of the species as well; by my lights anyway.

My point is that we can be aware of a particular thing without believing or knowing anything about that thing, we can believe a particular thing without being aware of or knowing anything about that thing, and we can know how to do something without believing anything or being aware of doing the thing.

Examples may help me to grasp what you're saying here. The above, as written, seems plainly false to me. I would argue that all three candidates/examples/suggestions are false, as they are written.

Of course, we do have to be aware of what we are doing when we are learning to do something. I think it really comes down to how you want to think about it. There is not just one correct way.

The evolutionary progression of human thought and belief is not a matter of personal preference. It evolved however it has, regardless of how one wants to think about it.

Either all knowledge is existentially dependent upon belief or it is not.

The direct realist believes that this relationship is constitutive (entailing such things as the naive theory of colour) — Michael

Do you believe that naive/direct realism cannot deny color as a property of objects? I mean, I suppose I do not see any reason that a position like naive realism cannot correct any flaws based upon newly acquired knowledge such as color perception.

Searle takes up the argument from science quite well if you'd like to read an opposing argument. — NOS4A2

Indeed. Searle is a self-proclaimed naive realist. I'm currently listening/studying his lectures on philosophy of mind.

I do like how that accounting practice covers other mental states aside from belief, in terms of sharing the same content.

Thanks for the bits about a disjunctive account.

We’re talking belief/knowledge... — Mww

Indeed. You and I agree on the OP question. Knowledge is not merely belief. My claim was that knowledge is existentially dependent on belief(knowledge requires belief). The candidate in question was knowing how to ride a bike. I claimed, would argue and defend - if given a chance - the claim that all bike riding is existentially dependent upon all sorts of different beliefs. Some belonging to the rider, and some not.

Just because you claim that knowing how to ride a bike is not existentially dependent upon all sorts of prior beliefs, does not make it so.

And yes, you've been arguing against your own imaginary opponents. I've never claimed that belief was enough for knowledge. I've never argued that bike riding was existentially dependent upon any of the beliefs you've been reducing to ad absurdum.

I agree that it comes down to which should be thought the best way of talking about it, since there is no empirical fact of the matter to be found. I personally prefer to think in terms of direct awareness, knowledge and belief all being quite distinct and independent of one another. — Janus

But I think that there are empirical facts of the matter.

Direct awareness, knowledge, and belief are distinct, but given the need for evolutionary progression, I cannot agree with claiming that they are independent.

You are about to put food in the bowl. The cat knows that. That is a proposition. — Banno

What does the proposition consist of, here, on this account? If the content of the cat's belief is the proposition, and the content of the proposition is me, the food, the bowl, my actions - as compared/contrasted with words/meaningful marks - then it may be the case that we're calling the same thing by two different names.

The object of your cat's belief is presumably the imminent full bowl. — Banno

I've not worked out what the object of the cat's belief would be according to Searle, but that seems in line with what he set out.

I agree that propositions are not always what he calls 'the object' of belief but can be.

His account still is in agreement with the idea that all belief content is propositional, as he draws a distinction between propositional attitudes and propositional 'content'.

...someone said all knowledge requires belief, both of which I for sure, and ↪Janus apparently, reject.
————- — Mww

Your rejection is based upon a conception of experience that cannot include language acquisition. Your responses thus far have been full of strawmen and red herring. Funny ones, but horribly inaccurate if aimed towards what I've said here.

Knowledge, then, is multifaceted. Since to agree, to accept and to devote have different truth conditions - or none at all, like a devotion. — fdrake

Devotion is of the believer. Truth conditions are not always.

One sees the bike, handles it...no need for belief. I have to go right now...will resume later. — Janus

I'm thinking deterministic causal chain of events. Bike riding definitely arose via belief. It makes no sense to say that belief is not necessary for bike riding.

I share your well respected trepidation of religious remnants of language regarding the key terms here.

If "knowing that" includes my cat knowing that I was about to put food in her bowl as I began the ritual, despite her clear inability to form/possess and/or otherwise have/display a propositional attitude, then it only follows that not all belief is equivalent to propositional attitude. Some. Not all

Are you and I still at odds on that? Searle shares my loathing towards the notion of belief as propositional attitude.

:wink:

For future events? Depends. In a practical sense, sure it's warranted in that not assuming (to the degree needed) would prevent action.
But I do not think it right that past events can warrant certainty about future events, in the strict sense. Constant conjunction and all.. — AmadeusD

Does not matter to me how many conjunctions are necessary.

I'm certain that my fridge will be there when I go grab a yogurt.

Unshakably. Absolutely. Certitude is worth keeping. It's temperance and judgment that need honed. In other words, sometimes it is wise to not expect a pattern to continue. Not all.

I know how to ride a bike, plane a board, paint a picture, write a poem, play the piano and so on, and I don't see how any of that requires belief. — Janus

Five activities with five different sets of existential conditions. Is expectation nowhere to be found?

Maybe I believe I can’t know how to ride a bike cuz I’m a hopeless klutz who believes he shouldn’t use a hammer given the historical precedent of experiencing serious bodily injury. — Mww

The bike emerged onto the world stage through the belief of the original bike makers. Impossible to ride a bike that you do not believe is there.

If A is existentially dependent upon B, then either B emerged prior to or simultaneously with A.

Fill in the blanks. Find an exception.

Bike riding - as we know it - is existentially dependent on the belief of the original bike makers.

"Belief is not necessary for bike riding" is proven false.

Maybe I believe I can’t know how to ride a bike cuz I’m a hopeless klutz who believes he shouldn’t use a hammer given the historical precedent of experiencing serious bodily injury. But then, out of sheer well-being necessity, I find myself riding a bike in order to escape the neighbor’s mutt. If knowledge requires belief, and the belief is negative the knowledge must also be negative thereby how to ride a bike should not have been known to me, and under sufficiently strong negative belief that I can’t know how, I shouldn’t have even bothered to try. Yet given that riding a bike….which I’m now doing….presupposes at least the awareness of the mechanics and principles by which bike riding is accomplished, re: I’m peddling upright in a progressive series of times, it is the case what I believe about bike riding (I can’t know how) has nothing whatsoever to do with my coming to know how to do it (YEA!! Look it me, here I am bike riding).

So did I switch beliefs and come to believe I can know how to ride a bike? Like that little engine that could? Seems kinds silly to me, to take the time to believe something at the same time I’m discovering it for myself in conjunction with the extant experience that bikes are inherently ride-able. Even if IthinkIcanIthinkIcanIthinkIcan is running through my brain, am I navigating positively because of that alone, or am I concentrating on the objects of certain mechanics and principles necessary for transportation via bicycle? Do I really need to believe in the authority of those principles in order to use them, especially considering the fact I’m only interested in their objects I use and not the principles themselves I merely think as given?

Wonder why Nike, instead taglining with “Just do it”, didn’t instead go with “Believe you can know how to do it then just do it”? — Mww

Do you think someone has made the argument that all belief is necessary for bike riding?

Hey. Once again, for no particular reason while agreeing in a rhetorical fashion…..

I question whether all knowledge does require belief.
— Janus

Pretty dumb, methinks, to merely believe I know how to ride a bike while I’m actually doing it, and conversely, even dumber to claim to know I can ride a bike by merely believing I’ve been on one and in control of it. — Mww

Yup.

Who's made those claims anyway?

I question whether all knowledge does require belief.
— Janus

If such were the case, it reduces to belief being a necessary condition for knowledge. — Mww

That's one way to talk about it.

There are a variety of ways in which the experienced rider is not avoiding danger in the way that someone who is learning is avoiding danger — Leontiskos

Irrelevant to the point being made.

Where there has never been bikes and people there could have never been people riding bikes. The first creator must have believed it were possible to make a bike, otherwise they would not have tried.

It points at a problem with claiming that belief is not necessary for bike riding.

It's a matter of existential dependency.

Truth is inscrutable and ineffable — ENOAH

Huh. Self defeat much?

The original argument you gave had to do with “avoiding danger,” and because of this it was a good example of the invalidity of the inference from learning to riding. — Leontiskos

Please set this purported argument out.

I don't think it's right to say that the occurrence being in-line with the expectation amounts to knowledge. — AmadeusD

Agree.

One can have certainty, as an attitude. I don't think it's right to say one can be certain, without a Crystal ball. I don't think it's right to say that the occurrence being in-line with the expectation amounts to knowledge. That could be true or someone convinced they've got the Lottery numbers right. They didn't know. But they were certain, and right, in the event. — AmadeusD

Being right without knowing.

Are you implying that certitude is never warranted?

I think he claim only extends to instances in the past. Any application to future appointments would be speculation, and couldn't amount to knowledge, I don't think.
You can only know that your friend, has previously consistently arrived late to appointments. You may know that it is likely he/she will do so again. — AmadeusD

One can be certain of what's going to happen. Those things can happen as expected. After they happen, one knows.

That doesn't seem right.

Becoming experienced requires learning how to ride. Learning how to ride requires belief.
— creativesoul

And your tacit conclusion is, “Therefore, riding a bike requires belief.” The question and ambiguity is this: did it merely require belief at some point in the past, or does it require ongoing belief? — Leontiskos

Yes.

The original argument you gave had to do with “avoiding danger,” and because of this it was a good example of the invalidity of the inference from learning to riding. There are a variety of ways in which the experienced rider is not avoiding danger in the way that someone who is learning is avoiding danger. — Leontiskos

Sure. It becomes a series of autonomously enacted unconscious behaviours.

How does that avoid the existential dependency that all experienced riders have upon learning how to ride?

Becoming experienced requires learning how to ride. Learning how to ride requires belief.

Claiming there is no belief necessary for doing things that require belief makes no sense to me.

This is because it would be perfectly possible that one needs to believe while learning, but once they are an adept practitioner that belief ceases. In other words, your argument applies to learning, but there is no reason to believe that your argument will also apply to riding simpliciter. — Leontiskos

I cannot make much sense of the idea that learned bike riders no longer believe that they're riding bikes.

. I always welcome your input. — Janus

Sweet. Good to know.

I don't think beleif is required. You see people riding bikes. You see the bike and grasp how it works. You learn to ride it. No need to beleive anything.

What particular belief that would be necessary in order to learn to ride a bike did you have in mind. — Janus

Impossible to learn how to ride a bike that one does not believe is there. Isn't it?

Where does that leave us? — Janus

In both agreement and good standing. Glad to join you, if that's okay?

I know how to ride a bike, plane a board, paint a picture, write a poem, play the piano and so on, and I don't see how any of that requires belief. — Janus

How does one learn to ride a bike without believing that they're doing something while they're learning? Learning involves all sorts of belief. Removing the belief removes the capability.

Avoiding danger requires belief. Learning how to ride a bike involves avoiding danger.

These threads often get interesting.

We're fallible creatures. It doesn't follow from that that we're always mistaken.

Objectivity is fraught with archaic baggage. A muddler's pig pen. The muddlers are not fans.

When a belief statement is true, it is so independently of the user's certainty. That is an objective truth if there ever was one.

We agree that correlations can be drawn prior to(far in advance of) experience, but I suspect for very different reasons.
— creativesoul

Mine are: on the one hand all that which constitutes the representation of an object as it is perceived, which I call a phenomenon, correlated with representations for all that I think the phenomenon contains, which I call conceptions. The result is what my intelligence informs me about the object, which I call an understanding.

Yours are……? — Mww

Driven and delineated by evolutionary timeline.

….compatible with, an evolutionary timeline.
— creativesoul

This being aimed against the creationists? — Mww

Nah, more towards current knowledge.

The experience is meaningful to the dog, but not the sensor. The sensor detects and the dog perceives the very same thing.
— creativesoul

Ok, I get that. Because you already posit that experience is meaningful only to the creature, can half of each of your pairs be eliminated? Detection/perception eliminates detection because the creature perceives, and likewise, for sensitivity/sentience, sensitivity is eliminated. I wonder then, why you brought them up in the first place, just to dismiss them for their difference. — Mww

Who's being dismissive?

I brought them up to continue what I've been doing. I'm offering an outline I've been working with. That's part and parcel for methodological naturalist approaches. The strict rule against invoking supernatural entities as "a" or "thee" means for explanation is based upon knowing that logical possibility alone does not constitute sufficient reason to believe. I'm establishing my own terminological choices, and I'm adhering to a few basic principles while doing so.

That said...

Noting the difference between detection and perception is not dismissive. It is not dismissive of me to draw and maintain distinctions. I'm paving the way, as it were. Laying the groundwork. Letting you know what I mean by some of the key words, and trying to make consistent, coherent, non-contradictory, sense of it all.

Not all things capable of light detection are biological creatures. Photoreceptors need not be alive. Perceiving light is more than interacting with it. Light interacts with manmade photoelectric sensors as well as biological ones.

Who ever heard of ice cream that wasn’t creamy, just as who ever heard of an experience that wasn’t perceptual, or, perceptually instantiated. On the other hand, while the ice is of the cream, experience is not of the perception, but only of a determinable set of abstract intellectual predicates cognized as representing it. — Mww

It's the cream that mattered. Cream is an elemental constituent - a necessary ingredient - of ice cream. Cream exists in its entirety prior to becoming part of ice cream. Ice cream is existentially dependent upon cream, but not the other way around. The same is true of experience and perception respectively.

Again, I think we agree.

I’m saying no experience at all, includes language use. — Mww

If that is true, then language acquisition is not meaningful experience. Looks like a reductio ad absurdum.

My acquiring an experience is very different than me telling you about what it was, which manifests as me telling you all about what I know of the object with which the experience is concerned, or how I came into possession of it. — Mww

I see no issue with past experience being both, substantially different and elementally the same as the recollection thereof. It's different in its elemental constituency, and yet also like cream and ice cream there is an existential dependency in that the one is existentially dependent upon the other, but not the other way around.

A report of past experience presupposes past experience. If there is no past experience, there can be no report thereof. However, experience need not be reported upon. None of that is a problem.



I simply cannot agree with a (mis)conception and/or emaciated notion of experience that leads us to conclude that language acquisition is not meaningful experience.

People are very often mistaken about their own mental events.
— creativesoul

I can’t tell whether they have no use for understanding what such events are, they don't want to think it the case there are any mental events to be mistaken about, or, given mistakes, that mental events are necessary causality for them, which……for (a-hem) those of us in the know like you ‘n’ me……is a serious contradiction. — Mww

I was thinking more along the lines of knowing that and how we're influenced. I'm certainly not claiming to be 'in the know' as a means for evaluating/judging another as not being so well informed. I was merely stating something that is true of everyone. None of us knows everything. All of us hold some false belief or another.

Meaning, for example, emerges as a result of correlations being drawn between different things by a creature so capable. Meaning is necessary for experience.
— creativesoul

I agree meaning is a result of correlations, but I prefer to allot the correlations to understanding, and the meaning thereof emerging from the correlations, to judgement, but for me both of these are procedurally far in advance of experience. For you, then, is meaning one of the simpler things experience consists of, hence necessary for it? — Mww

As you said, using slightly different words, experience presupposes meaning. I would be okay with claiming simultaneity regarding meaning and experience. Co-dependency. Invoking understanding and judgement makes sense from you, being a Kantian and all.

We agree that correlations can be drawn prior to(far in advance of) experience, but I suspect for very different reasons. I have a strong methodological naturalist bent, a preference for ontological monism, and find it imperative to offer explanations that dovetail nicely with, or are otherwise compatible with, an evolutionary timeline.

It's the difference between detection and perception, or between sensitivity and sentience.
— creativesoul

Meaning is that difference? Sorry, you’ve lost me now. What you mean by those terms helps me locate them in the discussion. — Mww

Yup. Drawing correlations between different things is the difference between the motion sensor outside my shop and my dog when they both perceive the intruder. The experience is meaningful to the dog, but not the sensor. The sensor detects and the dog perceives the very same thing.

Last I checked "perceptual experience" wasn't something I invoked.
— creativesoul

I know, and didn’t mean to imply you did. I was kinda hoping you wouldn’t because you’d already recognized the lack of justification for doing so. — Mww

To me, it's akin to saying creamy ice cream. I mean, perception is one element of experience.

I agree that all experience is meaningful but would add that it is meaningful to the creature having the experience. This delineates the discourse. Are you okay with that?
— creativesoul

Absolutely, insofar as meaningful to the creature, if you meant only to the creature, is a purely subjective predication. What goes on between the ears stays between the ears, kinda thing. For me, this is a strictly metaphysical paradigm, and through the years here, I got the impression you didn’t wish to be so limited. — Mww

Your impression is accurate. All predication comes through a subject, hence the terminological use is redundant similar to "perceptual experience" and "creamy ice cream". We're thinking using words to help us. They're not between our ears. Nor are our correlations. I would not even agree with saying anything much at all stays between the ears aside from the biological structures residing there.

I reject language use for that which the discussion is about, for the first-hand, immediate occurrence of it, by the creature having the experience, which must include all that by which the experience he has, is possible, whatever that may be.

I think you're saying something along the lines of not all experience includes language use. I agree.

Biological machinery(physiological sensory perception) completely determines what sorts of things can become part of a creature's correlations. Of course, there are definitely hard limits to what we can know about that, especially given the hard limits regarding what we can know about our own meaningful experience. People are very often mistaken about their own mental events.

Not a good offer... deleted.

:blush:

the nature of our human intellect makes non-dualism impossible
— Mww

I'd like to see the support for this.
— creativesoul

Yes/no, up/down, left/right, wrong/right. For every possible conception, its negation is given immediately, without exception. It is impossible for the human intellect to function at all without this fundamental principle of complementarity, and from it follows the ground of intrinsically dualistic logical systems. — Mww

You're focusing upon language use. I agree with that much.

My concerns were of the physical/mental, physical/non physical, mind/body varieties as it may pertain to what counts as direct perception.

...all meaningful experience consists of correlations drawn between different things.
— creativesoul

Can we agree from this, that experience is a stand-alone entity? — Mww

I don't think so. I believe experience consists of simpler things. I would not call it a composite, for not all the elements can be said to exist in their entirety prior to becoming part of an experience. Meaning, for example, emerges as a result of correlations being drawn between different things by a creature so capable. Meaning is necessary for experience. It's the difference between detection and perception, or between sensitivity and sentience.

I’m saying, first of all, every experience is meaningful, and second, if it is granted experience is an end, the culmination of a methodological process, it needs no adjective attached to it. Case in point: perceptual experience. If every experience begins with perception, then perceptual experience is redundant insofar as it says nothing more than experience alone. — Mww

Last I checked "perceptual experience" wasn't something I invoked.

I agree that all experience is meaningful but would add that it is meaningful to the creature having the experience. This delineates the discourse. Are you okay with that?

some language less creatures can see red cups in very much the same way we do, given similar enough biological machinery. However, that same creature cannot know that they're seeing a green cup
— creativesoul

….cannot know they’re NOT seeing a green cup? — Mww

That as well...