I don't follow your basic point.

In the job case, Smith is told that he will get the job. Because he knows he has 10 coins in his own pocket, he validly infers "a man with 10 coins in his pocket will get the job". It turns out that Paul gets the job and that Paul has 10 coins in his pocket. Smith has a justified true belief but he doesn't have knowledge. — PossibleAaran

When Smith thinks to himself, "the man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job", the referent of "the man" is himself not Paul and that is not properly accounted for. He does not have justified true belief that Paul will get the job, rather he has justified false belief that he will. He does not believe that anyone else is going to get the job. "The man" as used within Smith's belief does not - cannot - refer to anyone other than Smith himself.

Perhaps an example would help. I throw a ball for the dog onto the verandah, He obviously doesn't see whether it has gone over the edge because he runs all around the verandah searching for the ball. When he has looked all over and doesn't find it he immediately runs down the stares and into the garden and looks there for the ball.

Now if it were me I would look all over the verandah and when I saw the ball wasn't there would think "The ball must have gone over the edge of the verandah onto the garden, so I should look there for it". Now I know the dog cannot think that thought just as I have expressed it there, since he cannot exercise symbolic language.

But I can conjecture that he might have visualized the ball being on the verandah, and when he found it wasn't then visualized it in the garden beyond. Did he make some kind of inference? I don't know if it would be right to call it that. — Janus

I'm still left wondering what all those different kinds of thinking have in common such that they count as being cases of thinking. Clearly we agree that post linguistic thinking is only enabled by language and consists of propositional content. Clearly we agree that the dog's thinking is not propositional in content.

It's hard to place much value upon the above conjecture, especially after things have been said like we cannot get into the mind of a dog in order to know what it's thinking. That's an outright dismissal. A consistent/coherent position would stop there... and must. We both know that that's not right though. I reject that sort of approach... as if it was fait accompli, or a foregone conclusion. It's not. We both know that some thought/belief(thinking/believing) is prior to language. I suggest that you reject any and all conclusions and/or logic that leads to the contrary, for it's wrong on a basic foundational level.

Think about it this way...

We need not get into the mind of the dog any more that we need to get into our own minds. We cannot get into either. Such rhetoric adds nothing to our understanding of the evolutionary complexity of thought/belief. Rather, it stifles it and contradicts much better accounts of everyday events.

We can take good account of thought/belief from it's earliest stages through it's most complex by virtue of taking account of it's content. All we need know is what our thought/belief consists in/of combined with a reasonable conception of what non and/or prelinguistic thought/belief must not consist in/of in order to be rightfully called non and/or pre-linguistic, along with what it must consist of to be sensibly, rightfully called "thought", "belief", "thinking", and/or "believing". That harks back to the aforementioned criterion.

What counts as thinking/believing? What does each and every case have in common that makes them a case of thought/belief? This is what must be established/determined prior to any and all conjecture about the dog's thinking/believing. Well, if we are to avoid blind conjecture, that is.

We have to know what we're looking for, just like the dog.

Dogs look for balls, especially after having had enough experience playing the game. Clearly the dog believes that there is a ball to be found, and looks where it has been found in past, wherever it now thinks/believes it will be, or perhaps wherever it's physiological sensory perception leads it... this time around.

That is a common report of the dog's thought/belief and behaviour.

A more precise description of that thought/belief would be put in terms of the correlations drawn by the dog between different things; such as your behaviour(throwing the ball), it's own behaviour(fetching it), and other things like it's own mental/physiological ongoings and their immediate effects/affects(it's state of mind - loosely speaking).

That's more than adequate for bridging the evolutionary gaps between non-linguistic thought/belief and our own without anthropomorphism.

For me, thoughts and beliefs are propositional expressions...
— Janus

What are these propositional expressions doing if not representing and/or misrepresenting the speaker's own thought/belief on the matter? — creativesoul

I think they do represent or misrepresent our always already symbolically enbaled thinking... — Janus

So, we agree that propositional expressions represent and/or misrepresent the speaker's own thought/belief, that the thinking/believing non and/or prelinguistic creature cannot state it's own thought/belief, and that the thought/belief of a pre-linguistic creature cannot be in propositional form.

Do we also agree that all creatures' thought/belief(thinking/believing) begin(s) simply within some reasonably determinable time frame - after biological conception - and grows in it's complexity?

:smile:

I guess comparing their behavior to ours and then observing what we are thinking when we behave whatever way it is that we are comparing. — Janus

This doesn't make any sense to me.

For me, thoughts and beliefs are propositional expressions... — Janus

What are these propositional expressions doing if not representing and/or misrepresenting the speaker's own thought/belief on the matter?

I think it is reasonable to say that animals who cannot use symbolic language behave as though they are doing something which we could refer to as 'thinking' but I don't really see much justification in going any further than that. — Janus

Ok.

What is the justification for going that far?

:smile:

What else could differentiate pre-linguistic believing from post-linguistic believing if not the content?
— creativesoul

The fact that the latter has determinate content, insofar as it can be expressed verbally. — Janus

So, we can talk about the content of post linguistic thought/belief. You agree as shown above. It's actually tied into Gettier and the OP...

Convention has it that all belief is propositional in content, because all reports/accounts of it are(including the traditional epistemological notion of justification).

However, propositions are existentially dependent upon language use. Language-less creatures have no language. Thus, either there is no thought/belief prior to language, or not all thought/belief is propositional in content.

Agree?

That must be dealt with first. Of course, I'm asserting the latter. The question then becomes what does non and/or pre-linguistic thought/belief consist of? The answer does not have to be a result of blind/wild speculation. In fact, I would reject such a method.

I'll wait for a response prior to moving forward. I have a tendency to say too much too soon. Comes from assuming that everyone else has already been through all the same thought processes that I've been through. Bad habit.

:smile:

Do you take issue with talking about the content of our(as metacognitive creatures) thought/belief?

Reflecting a bit more on Gettier...

Knowing what it takes for a disjunction to be true is knowing the conventional rules.

Why ought we believe that Smith does?

All Smith believes is that Jones owns a Ford. His ground for that belief warranted his certainty. It warranted certainty by most. The ground doesn't get much stronger. Smith was so certain that Jones owned a Ford that he haphazardly asserted a disjunction solely as a means for emphasizing his own certainty.

Smith stated something that he did not believe.

He picked a place at random(Barcelona), because it did not matter which place he chose. Rather, all else said was for rhetorical effect/affect. Hence, he randomly chose "Brown is in Barcelona" because that was obviously unbelievable to him:He was certain that Brown was not in Barcelona. That certainty washed over from his belief that Jones owned a Ford.

Smith did not believe that Brown was in Barcelona.

What sense does it make to say otherwise?

1.Are we agreeing that the thinking/believing creature cannot state it's own thought/belief?

2.Are we agreeing that the thought/belief of a pre-linguistic creature cannot be in propositional form — creativesoul

1. Yes
2. Yes — Janus

In light of the above agreements, do you accept the following?

Pre-linguistic believing requires a creature capable of drawing correlations between different things. All thought/belief formed and/or had by a language-less creature consists of correlations drawn between directly perceptible content(different things). No pre-linguistic thought/belief has propositional content. All thought/belief has correlative/associative content. Not all correlation/association requires language. All propositions do. All correlation/association counts as thought/belief in it's most rudimentary form. Some rudimentary thought/belief is prior to language.

All thought/belief is all meaningful to the thinking/believing creature, and presupposes it's own truth somewhere along the line.

Do we agree?

:worry:

We can know what pre-linguistic thought/belief consists of by virtue of knowing what linguistic thought/belief consists of and taking it from there. Are you seeing this for yourself yet?

We can know what pre-linguistic thought/belief consists of by virtue of knowing what linguistic thought/belief consists of and taking it from there.
— creativesoul

I don't share your confidence about this. We can impute, from the standpoint inherent to our linguistically based reasoning, particular thoughts or beliefs to animals and pre-linguistic humans, but it will always remain a projection that cannot capture the reality of animal experience. In other words I think the nature of animal experience and even of our own experience prior to linguistic mediation is indeterminate; we can gesture at it, but that is about all. — Janus

This ought be gotten into...

Next time!

:smile:

Til then... Cheers!

Looks like you understand.

However, the involuntary salivation shows us that aforementioned something more that we typically associate with belief but not always with thinking...

Expectation.

The dog believed that he was going to be fed after hearing the bell.
— creativesoul

Interesting! — Janus

I thought you may find that interesting. It's reminiscent of Hume. He struggled with belief, by his own admission. He did mention expectation. I won't offer my usual critique of his mistake(s).

:wink:

Perhaps. But that would obligate us to admit that all correlation/association inevitably 'produces expectation'. I do not think it does... pace the difference between thinking and believing on the agreed upon metacognitive level.

It offers support to the notion that thought/belief begins simply and grows in it's complexity. Doubting and suspending one's judgment are kinds of thought/belief that are more complex, as they have as their own subject matter... pre-existing thought/belief.

Wow, I actually agree with what you are saying here. Or rather what you are saying is a reiteration in different words of what creativesoul and I have been saying. But, in any case, it's a marvel: agreement nonetheless!

I'd be interested to know if there are any academic papers presenting the same devastating critique of Gettier that the three of us here apparently agree upon, and if not, why not? — Janus

None that I'm aware of.

Typically, convention conflates propositions and belief, and has for centuries. I blame it on the church. The vestiges thereof remain in conventional notions of thought/belief. Philosophy proper has not gotten up to evolutionary speed regarding thought/belief. There are more reasons for that aside from the church.

All this talk about "consciousness" and "experience" doesn't help either... but it sells!

I agree that our dialogue has been steadily improving; which is a good thing. And I have begun to enjoy our conversations, and to learn and sharpen my thinking from participating in them.

I also agree with pretty much everything you say above, and it is the very fact that, as you point out, thinking and believing would not seem to be distinguishable in the case of animals that leads me to want to talk for the sake of parsimony, in that context, only about thinking. — Janus

And yet, as we agree, belief has that something extra, that additional commitment that thinking doesn't have. Could it be that our metacognitive accounts merely caught up with and began to account for rudimentary thought/belief? If thinking is drawing correlations, and it is, and believing is that and more, then when Pavlov's dog drew correlations/associations between the sound of the bell and eating, it was thinking. However, the involuntary salivation shows us that the aforementioned 'something more' that we typically associate with belief but not always with thinking is had by the dog!

Expectation.

The dog believed that he was going to be fed after hearing the bell. The dog's thought/belief consisted entirely of correlations drawn between the sound of the bell and eating.

As you say, and as I have also suggested, it is in the light of the logical difference that obtains between merely thinking and actively believing some proposition that the distinction between thinking and believing, between thought and belief, becomes necessary.

Indeed. This must be kept in mind throughout, ad rightfully applied when the context demands.

TBH I'd rather dispense with belief/ believing and stick to thought/ thinking, particularly when trying to address pre-linguistic scenarios.

The problem with the term 'belief' and 'believe', even in the linguistic context, is that they seem to carry a kind of extra baggage that 'thought' and 'think' do not. I can't see any logical difference between 'I think X is the case' and 'I believe X is the case'.

But there could be a difference between thinking X and believing X, so the former seems to somehow carry extra weight, and although I don't think that impression of extra weight is really based on anything substantive; there just seems to be a quality of extra commitment associated with the term 'believe'... — Janus

You know Janus, I've given you more flack over the above considerations than anyone deserves. I mean, without question I am the one in the minority here. So, I want to give this the attention that it deserves... that you deserve, especially given the steady improvement of our dialogue.

You are absolutely within the bounds of good reason(valid critique) to point out that there is a remarkable difference between some thought and belief, and some use of the terms. Kudos. You've worded the above well. There is an additional/extra sense of commitment(certainty?) typically associated with the terms "believe", "believing", and "belief" that is not always associated with the term "think", "thinking", and "thought". This is easy enough to understand. I mean, one can follow a train a thought to it's conclusion without believing any particular statement within it. However, one cannot follow the same train of thought to it's conclusion without thinking.

So...

This is actually a good time to draw and maintain this distinction between thought and belief, because it helps to situate different complexity levels of thought/belief along the evolutionary timeline. That distinction between thought and belief requires creatures with an ability to take account of their own thought/belief. That ability is facilitated by complex language use.

However, surely you can now better understand that that difference only matters when we're reporting upon creatures who have the ability to suspend their own judgment during complex metacognitive considerations. Aside from that, there is no difference to be had. Even that difference dissolves at the basic level of correlations.

That said, the focus is on pre-linguistic thought/belief(thinking/believing is acceptable too), and here at this very early stage, there is no ability to either doubt or suspend judgment, and thus there is no difference between thought/belief.

You're all over the place. There's one basic disagreement between us that is worth discussing here, because it's what piqued my interest regarding what you wrote. You claim that the truth criterion is redundant when regarding JTB. You further state and imply that there's nothing more about the "true" aspect of JTB than what we have regarding the justification aspect.

I'm saying - flat out - you are mistaken.

The ground for my saying that is that justification is inadequate for truth. If the aspect of being true were redundant regarding JTB, then there could be no such thing as justified false belief. But there is. The reason that there is and that there can be is quite clear. They are two different criteria.

I understand that science keeps our own fallibility in mind, and in doing so allows for the possibility of future evidence/observation to displace current convention. That's irrelevant here. Science is based upon truth as correspondence. That is precisely what verification/falsification techniques are looking for.

It took a few years to verify General Relativity. They looked at a particular area of space for a particular celestial body during a particular set of circumstances and they saw exactly what Einstein's equations predicted would be seen.

Einstein's predictions corresponded to what happened/what was happening. They became true.

His justification was in the paper.

A justified belief is not equivalent to a true one.

Indeed!

We'll pick up later.

Be well.

The association of different things in the animal mind or brain may be nothing more than a neural one for all we know. — Janus

If it's true for our earliest stages...

What else could differentiate pre-linguistic believing from post-linguistic believing if not the content?
— creativesoul

The fact that the latter has determinate content, insofar as it can be expressed verbally. — Janus

The determinant content of thought/belief that is prelinguistic cannot be propositional. Nevertheless, the content of all thought/belief can be expressed verbally, just not always by the thinking/believing creature. We are more than capable of taking proper account of that much. We can know what pre-linguistic thought/belief consists of by virtue of knowing what linguistic thought/belief consists of and taking it from there.

It must be meaningful to the creature in question, and it must somehow be capable of presupposing it's own truth somewhere along the line.

This is all perfectly satisfied without any unwanted anthropomorphism.

Mental correlations(associations works fine too) drawn between different things.

It's the content of the correlation/association that matters most here.

In other words I don't see any advantage, and perhaps no inevitable disadvantage, but I do see possible disadvantages, to be had in referring to the act of believing as an act of "belief formation" when speaking about a pre-linguistic context. — Janus

Some descriptions of believing can only be had by a creature capable of metacognition(Gettier's cases). That is drawing correlations between past and present considerations(thought/belief). Others can only be had by creatures with pre-reflective thought/belief fostered by language use(believing in Santa Claus). That sort of believing consists of meaningful correlations drawn between Santa and all sorts of other stuff, depending upon the thinking/believing creature under our consideration.

Pre-linguistic believing can only be had by a creature capable of drawing correlations between different things. All of the content of pre and/or non-linguistic thought/belief is directly perceptible.

Perhaps things look a bit differently now?

...we've been over this before, perhaps a few times now, I think. — Janus

Well, we get to here. I do not remember our ever having finished hashing it out.

The caution against anthropomorphism is already well considered.

...I am not comfortable with speaking about "content" of "pre-linguistic thought/ belief". I would instead speak about 'the process of pre-linguistic believing' or something along those lines. — Janus

What else could differentiate pre-linguistic believing from post-linguistic believing if not the content?

Sometimes being uncomfortable is not a bad thing.

the believing cannot even be stated as a definite belief. — Janus

Could you re-phrase this? What is the referent of "the believing"? The process of thought/belief formation? The 'act' of thought/belief formation? The behaviour driven by that?


I would say that we can definitely state what the content of pre-linguistic thought/belief is. It takes the strongest of justificatory ground in order to convince the reasonable skeptic, but it can be done, regardless of whether or not everyone is capable of being convinced by such ground.

There are flat-earthers after-all. We need not convince everyone. Right?

Do we still agree?

:meh:

Obviously I agree since I presented pretty much the same critique in the other thread (copied and pasted here in my first comment in this thread). — Janus

The same target. The critiques differ in their sharpness.

It may not always or even often happen that we agree, but does it follow that when we do there must be something wrong? :joke: — Janus

Nah. There's much to be gleaned here. Nothing wrong with that!

Yes, the "justified" would seem to be relevant only to the context in which justification can be given, which would obviously not be the context of pre-linguistic believing. In that latter context not only can a justification for what is believed not be given, the believing cannot even be stated as a definite belief.

↪creativesoul Obviously I agree since I presented pretty much the same critique in the other thread (copied and pasted here in my first comment in this thread). — Janus

To be sure...

Are we agreeing that the thinking/believing creature cannot state it's own thought/belief?

Are we agreeing that the thought/belief of a pre-linguistic creature cannot be in propositional form?

Are we agreeing that the content of pre-linguistic thought/belief cannot have propositional content(it cannot consist of propositions)?

You're being unusually conducive here. Something wrong?

:joke:

If the critique I've put forth here holds good, then Gettier poses no problem for JTB, even as it is currently understood with belief having propositional content and justification requiring being able to give one's ground for arriving at the belief. Rather, he showed that there is an accounting malpractice of reporting upon Smith's belief at hand.

True is a perfectly good adjective, but in jtb it is redundant. — Coben

And yet there are justified false beliefs. Paradigm shift happens by virtue of peeling them away from conventional certainty. Copernican revolution. Einstein's On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies and General Relativity are exactly such cases which show that what were justified beliefs held to be true were not true, but were justified nonetheless.

We do not have some separate other access to truth.... — Coben

I don't understand this at all. What in the world does "access to truth" mean?

We can look to see if a cup is on the table. That's access enough, right?

seems quite confused...

If we were to clean up JTB by virtue of dropping one of the three... it would have to be the justification aspect, as traditionally held. One need not argue for a belief in order for it to be true. Traditional JTB cannot admit of prelinguistic thought/belief, let alone pre-linguistic true belief, or pre-linguistic well-grounded true belief(knowledge). And yet, it is quite clear that many creatures can learn that fire hurts when touched, despite not being able to tell anyone about the causal connections they've drawn between the behaviour and the pain.

True is a perfectly good adjective, but in jtb it is redundant. I use true and truth in other contexts... — Coben

Such as?

So you opted to ignore the bulk of my post. — Coben

Stop writing shit that you don't really mean...

I am looking at the specific model or definition of knowledge, JTB, and given the way it is used being critical of using the two adjectives justified and true. It is in that specfiic context, the way justification is used in contexts with JTB, that I think using true is problematic. There are other contexts where I have no problem with true and truth. — Coben

What's wrong with discussing justified true belief?

There's an oddity on another level.

Speaking of belief having propositional content...

On the one hand(Case II), Gettier wants us to join two propositions that - quite simply - do not belong together in the category of Smith's belief, and yet on the other(Case I), he separates two propositions that are inseparable(meaningfully irreducible) without losing crucial semantic content of Smith's thought/belief. That would be to report upon something other than Smith's belief.

Ridiculous indeed!

Smith believes that the man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job because Smith believes that he has ten coins in his pocket and Smith is referring to himself. Smith picks himself out to the exclusion of all others.

Some would have us believe that Smith was referring to the other guy?

No.

Hell no!

When reporting upon Smith's belief we ought at least keep that in mind. It is supposed to be Smith's belief. It is Smith doing the thinking. Gettier is reporting upon it. With that in mind...

If Smith carried ten coins and thought "the guy with ten coins in his pocket is going to get the job" he was thinking about himself.

Our account of Smith's belief(any and all such accounts), if it is to be called a good practice, it ought use "the guy" only in reference to Smith, because that's how Smith used it, that's what Smith's belief means, and we're supposed to be reporting upon Smith's belief.

This is all becoming more and more ridiculous if you ask me.

Who on earth could sit and say - with a straight face - that Smith believed Brown was in Barcelona or anyone other than he was going to get the job?

We must dispense with any 'logic' that leads to concluding otherwise.

"My friend is moving to London because she got a new job at a law firm." is not equivalent to "My friend is moving to London."
— creativesoul

I didn't say they mean the same thing. — Michael

Then the latter cannot be substituted for the former. We're assessing the former, not the latter.

I'm saying that if you believe that X because Y then you (also) believe X (and believe Y). — Michael

I'm saying that there are some beliefs which are more complex than a single proposition can represent, with this being one example thereof. All Gettier examples are as well. Such complex belief are understood and thus represented in their entirety... and only in their entirety.

If you believe your friend is moving to London because she got a new job at a law firm, then that is the belief. Nothing less is adequate.

I might have lots of beliefs related to the issue. She’s moving to London because she has a new job at a law firm after passing an interview she went to on Thursday, and her motive from doing so is to earn more money and distance herself from an abusive ex-boyfriend.

It’s just wrong to say that this is a single belief — Michael

I did not say such a thing about all that.