What I would say, is that belief has to have an object just like knowledge always does. Knowledge is always of something. Belief is always in something. That something is not a physical object like a brick, or paint. At the same time, the object of belief is something people share. The situation tempts the philosopher to come up with some alternative to endorsing a non-physical sharable object like a flaming objective idealist. — frank

I wonder about this because I'm not sure whether you're making an epistemological claim about what you can believe in or whether you're just making a claim about English sentence structure and grammar. The sentence structure as it relates to a knowledge based claim (as you've submitted) would be "I know there are bricks" or something similar ("I know bricks exist), but I would think that in order for you to say you know something of bricks existing, you will necessarily have to use the existence verb "to be" or explicitly use the word "exists."

You really wouldn't say "I know bricks" in regular discourse. You'd say you know there are bricks. By the same token, you wouldn't say "I believe bricks," but you'd say "I believe there are bricks," which demands the same reliance on the "to be" verb as when speaking of knowledge.

Keep in mind too that English has largely abandoned the subjunctive mood, but the antiquated "I believe there be bricks" is correct because you change the "to be" verb when you're speaking about something that exists in a subjective capacity like beliefs, wishes, and the like (e.g. "I wish I were there," not "I wish I was there."). Anyway, as noted, this is turning into a grammar lesson as opposed to an epistemological or metaphysical one, but it is a well established notion in Western languages that statements of belief receive different grammatical treatment than indicative statements.

I actually like this post of yours. A huge part of working through these political debates for me as well is in figuring out how reasonable people can hold such seemingly unreasonable views.

What makes her evil? What has she done to deserve what she received? Is it worse than knocking down the homes of Palestines. Bombing the Gaza Strip as Israel does. Or the multiple assassination commited by Mossad on Foreigners. She just kicked a soldier. Poor him. That must have been a life threatening situation. I wonder if he will go to jail if he ever kills a Palestinian. — René Descartes

I didn't call her evil. I said children are not all innocent.

I'm just wondering why the Romani Gypsies never got their own land after the holocaust. Why were the Zionists privileged enough to merit this. — René Descartes

You can read the history of the State of Israel for the specifics on this, but as I've noted before, the right to land is always morally ambiguous. Why did the British get Australia and not the Roma? There are thousands of reasons.

I don't think we are talking about Australia here. If you want to talk about Australia start your own thread. — René Descartes

These quips make your post not worth responding to. As noted very clearly, I wasn't suggesting anything in particular about the Australians, but only what constituted legitimate land possession by any nation.

And neither should the Israel bombardments of the West Bank or the illegal settlements be acceptable in any circumstance. — René Descartes

This has already been responded to as it relates to the dispute over whether the settlements are illegal.

Are you using the "Fake News" argument? — René Descartes

I'm suggesting that the reports are a form of advocacy for one side or the other. I don't think that an inability to present a neutral side amounts to it being fake, but more so being so ideological that lack of bias is impossible.

The truth is that the Israelis are the aggressors. They came in illegally before 1948 and they suddenly ended up with the majority of previously Palestinian owned land. — René Descartes

That's not the truth.

Now I condemn the violence from both sides, but tell me where is the justice in this. How does Israel have a moral high ground? — René Descartes

It was in self-defense.

They don't just throw rocks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel

The rock throwing is symbolic (David against Goliath), but it can be significantly harmful as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_stone-throwing

Nevertheless, I have a principle that I hope is agreeable to most, that those with power over others are responsible for them. I don't think there is a question on which side the balance of power lies. And I don't think the film is mere propaganda; one can argue and question individual incidents, but there is too much, too well supported from Israelis as well as Palestinians, testimony from the Australian journalists, credible video evidence. This is not peace-keeping, this is not a measured response to threat, this is a terror campaign intended to totally subjugate demoralise and eventually evict or eliminate opposition. There is little sign of a will to reach an accommodation. — unenlightened

I disagree with this assessment. The Israeli response is motivated by the real threat posed by the Palestinians to their existence and peaceful functioning. They are not terrorists who awake each morning asking themselves how they can disrupt a peaceful people due to religious and ideological differences. Should the Palestinians stop any aggressive act toward Israel, there will be no aggression by Israel.

This is a dispute over land. That's what this is. If we accept Israel's right to the land it occupies, it stands morally right. If we don't, it doesn't, although I would not allow that the terroristic acts by the Palestinians are acceptable in any circumstance. They lob bombs into Israel for the sole purpose of disruption and civilian casualty, without regard for any military target.

The Palestinians have no way to win a military war against the Israelis, so the war has turned to securing public condemnation against Israel in order to gain an advantage diplomatically. They have largely been successful in that approach except in the U.S. So, is the video you presented propaganda, no more or less than if Israel were to start producing videos showing the atrocities exacted by the Palestinians. What's the purpose of such videos if not to garner support for a political position?

Ain't that the truth. So few students nowadays want to ask questions because the fear being shown up for a dunce in front of the other dunces. And to make it worse, now we have to worry about them laughing at each other on the internet. — Sir2u

I read some book a while ago about a guy who went to an ivy league school who said that there was competition among the students to constantly ask questions and gain recognition. The point was that it put the Asian students at a disadvantage because their culture demanded that the teachers be respected and listened to, and that it was also disrespectful to the other students to force them to listen to you when there was a more learned professor in the room.

I used to see it in corporate meetings as well. The same guy would always drone on about nothing just to show his great interest in everything corporate to the boss, which was really annoying during the meetings and doubly annoying when he became the boss.

Despite all this, I still have faith that the world is built on a solid foundation of truth, justice, and righteousness upon which this house of cards cannot stand, but that might also be wishful thinking, but I've not given up hope.

There is absolutely no way to establish truth when one only will acknowledge the concepts of ones own mind. Unless we can converse with others and reach a conclusion then we are idiots. Who cares the method of recording. — Sid

So the only way I can establish that I am sitting here is to ask someone else?

you're committed to the idea that a Vietnam vet's experience of watching a film reminding him of the horrors of the war is the same as a 12 year old child's? — Hanover
Of course not. — Banno

So they saw the same movie, but had different experiences, meaning they had distinctly different phenomenal states as the result of observing the same object. Whose phenomenal state best represented reality?

Are you suggesting that there were no books in his time? Of course not. The point is the quite simple one that if something is shared we can check it, if it isn't, we can't. Despite your protestation, your reply look quite disingenuous. — Banno

A less than generous read of my post, but understandable based on my specific comments. Simply put, the shared, objective, publically analyzable data need not be of superior quality than the personal recollection of a single person. In many instances it will be, as in a video, but where no such data is available, we often turn to individual witnesses who are left with nothing but the contents of their minds to recite their recollections from. That information might be considered more reliable than the recollection of a group or various writings that might not fully be trusted.

In my example of dogs and cats, there is a public referent, but the meaning of that referent still rests within the private thoughts of individuals. It is for that reason that we could insist that cats fetch and dogs purr if our internal belief of such things changed. The public event doesn't fix anything, especially if it's not ongoing, as the case may be if we were separated from cats and dogs for a long while.

Why do you reckon being young is a disadvantage when it comes to judging? Perhaps the young have their minds freer than the old, who are already conditioned by society, and hence not free. — Agustino

It's not poor judgment. It's just the fact it's hard to land that first real job and during that difficult period one questions having gone to college. The point is that that education will eventually pay off and your drop out will get further left in the dust.

As noted, this isn't a judgment call. It requires only that you read the statistics. It's a no brainer really.

Hmm, shall I post stats about billionaires? — Agustino

The vast majority of wealthy people have college degrees. www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/969659/despite-the-myth-of-the-billionaire-college-dropout-most-wealthy-americans-have-a-degree/amp/

There is no disadvantage in receiving an education, and the old adage you ought to stay in school is accurate, despite the disagreement by those typically young people who simply have not given themselves adequate time to secure meaningful employment.

And yet I think the same of you. And this isn't meant just as a backatcha retort, but truly a failure to accept very basic notions and an odd resistence to fully engage and meaningfully explain things.

.and written material and video and so on. It's external, analysable. Unlike your private mentation. — Banno

And so the public verifiability advantage only applies where the public's recollection is superior to the guy with the best recollection? How prevalent were these recording devices in Witt's time?

Super.

The vitriol and indignation are generally unhelpful.

Human rights, whatever they may be, are dependant upon circumstances. You have the right to live unless you are trying to kill me. You have the right to due process, unless we are on the field of combat. No particular right, I'd submit, dictates that another commit suicide and allow you to kill them.

So, is there an instance when an enemy combatant might be afforded lesser due process rights than a citizen in a milatarized zone even if 16 years old? Of course. It just depends on the circumstances on the ground, the danger posed by the conduct, and precisely the due process limitations in the military court versus the civil court.

With cats and dogs we have a clear shared referent. So, in your account, where a belief is in your mind, what is this shared referent? — Banno

I suppose the shared referent distiction is relevant for this analysis because it offers verification of consistent use over time whereas internal beliefs do not?

If I've got that right, I don't see where community usage is necessarily more reliable for consistency's sake than a single individual's recollection. In either case, we're relying upon memory, and if I've got the best memory in a community of fools, my memory of my private thoughts will exceed the collective memory of fools.

The universe revolves around me, so should I not exist, it'd stop revolving. Yes, a revolving universe. That's what I said.

But how does this observation contradict what I've said?

Israel was conceived during a time when eugenics was respectable and at a time when race was thought to be a viable proposition. Hitler accepted the position of the Zionists as it was his view that founding a state on racist lines was a good idea. — charleton

And so it's your position that the founding of Israel was motivated by a desire to foist Jewish dominance on the world as opposed to saving an ancient people from the verge of extinction?

I think there is. You can be anti-Israel and pro-Jewish. Logically, sure.

Huh. So you can't distinguish anything from anything else, there's just the endless unified flow of Hanover's experience. Nothing special about beliefs-- they're part of your stream of consciousness like everything else, like me, and rocks. — Srap Tasmaner

This view is just a basic recitation of indirect realism, and it's correct. Making a claim about what truly exists outside of your interpretation is incoherent. My position was not that I could not distinguish between beliefs and visual impressions of objects, but only that they all formed part of the experience and were all just as much part of the phenomenal state, a claim you seem to be denying and are trying to put the mental objects of beliefs and visual impressions into different categories.

Bored now. If I had known this is where we were headed, I wouldn't have bothered. — Srap Tasmaner

If your time was important and you limited it to things that had some impact on your life, you wouldn't post in a philosophy forum, so get over yourself.

What differentiates this from the Israel-Palestine case is that I can vehemently criticise the Australian government when it seeks to downplay the country's past genocide (as it shamefully does far too often), without being accused of racism against the current majority inhabitants of Australia. Yet when one criticises the Israeli government one is branded as anti-semitic. Or, if one is one of the many Jews that levy similar criticism against the Israeli government's actions, one is branded a self-hating Jew. I'm not saying that people on this forum, who are mostly a pretty thoughtful bunch, would spray those accusations of anti-semitism or self-hatred around. But there are regrettably very many in the wider world that do exactly that. — andrewk

I'm no fan of calling people racist to end discussion, but that occurs in all sorts of settings. It's a worn out battle cry here in the US, recited often after a Republican speaks. The race card can only be played when race is at play, so one group of white Australians can hardly call another group of white Australians who are decrying the past abuses against the aborigines anti-white for their views. It just wouldn't make sense. I suppose I might be limited in defending Australia's past treatment of aboriginal peoples for fear of claims of racism aimed at me, but I don't know, I'm not Australian and don't know the social limitations placed on such conversations. But when you're criticizing Israel, it can be seen a criticism of Jews specifically, a historically abused minority, and therefore the cries of racism. My guess is that sometimes it is prejudice against Jews, sometimes not, but we all understand an ad hom doesn't respond to a legitimate argument.

Ahed Tamimi is one such girl detained by the Israeli police for kicking a soldier and while I congratulate the soldiers in that instance for not responding to her frustrated resistance, is she "dangerous" enough to merit 10 years imprisonment? — TimeLine

Consider what is being said about Israel as the result of a 16 (now 17) year old child for striking an officer. She was no stranger to intentional provocations against military officers in what basically amounts to a war zone. She is not a little child, but someone who was specifically protesting and physically resisting for the purpose of impacting public opinion about Israel in her effort to gain political advantage where she could not gain it militarily. She was not part of a round up effort of children and she wasn't whisked away after a late night knock on the door. Might a 16 year old be sentenced to 8 months in detention in the US after repeated resistance against police officers, especially if it occurred in areas where officer's safety was threatened? Maybe, it wouldn't be that extraordinary, but does that rise the level of declaring Israel a nation rife with human rights abuses?

I don't understand how you would assume that I am not taking a "generous view" toward the Israelis when I am well aware of the continuous security threats and have said it as such - hence the relationship between security threats and children's rights - but children are not dangerous. — TimeLine

Fair enough, it's likely I'm more defensive than you are ungenerous when it comes to Israel, but you're views on children are overly defensive and entirely unrealistic in your declaration that they are not dangerous. Evil doesn't suddenly emerge at 18 years old.

Suppose that our beliefs change over time. But we don't notice. — Banno

Suppose our collective use of a term changes over time and we don't notice it to where we now mean dog when we used to mean cat and all our old books confuse us and we start trying to teach our cats to fetch. It'd be a crazy topsy turvy world. Hopefully someone would remember the mistake and beat it down our throat, like Frank.

If your argument is founded on the pretence that they share nothing, it fails. — Banno

They share their observation of the film, but you're committed to the idea that a Vietnam vet's experience of watching a film reminding him of the horrors of the war is the same as a 12 year old child's?

It is incoherent to ask for a description of a rock without reference to your subjective interpretation of it. That is, I can't distunguish for you the external object from the phenomenal state, so I can hardly parse out the phenomenal state itself into raw presence sense data and preexisting interpretative data like beliefs. I experience a rock and part of that experience is having all those beliefs about rocks, like it will fall down, not up, that it will hurt if it hits my toe etc. Which part of the experience of the rock do you wish to declare non-experiential?

Is it? Where's the argument for this? — Srap Tasmaner

Your experience is a single event, tied together by all sorts of things, like sensations, beliefs, emotions, and it occurs all at once. Let us suppose a Vietnam war vet and a 12 year old child who knows nothing of the war watched a movie glorifying the war, do you suppose their experience of the movie would be at all the same during any frame of the movie? The background, education, beliefs, emotions, ideologies (or lack thereof) will have a profound effect on every moment of the experience. My point is that all those things are part of the unity of the indivisible experience.

You then ask what about the permanency of the belief because it continues to exist even when unexperienced. That is simply a question of memory in that we store sensations, emotions, beliefs and everything else in our memory and we can bring them up when we need them, but is the smell I remember of a rose not an experience because it sits in my memory bank waiting to be thought about?

Taking a step back here: phenomenal states are complex and fleeting; beliefs on the other hand can be simple and persistent. They don't look like the same sort of thing, do they? It's one thing to say that our phenomenal experience is generally accompanied by beliefs, but quite another to say our beliefs are those experiences. — Srap Tasmaner

A belief is an experience and I suppose there are differing sorts of experiences. Me seeing the computer screen before me is one, but it is accompanied by all sorts of beliefs, some not even articulated but just as much a part of the present experience as anything else. If attempting to replicate this exact phenomenal state I'm having this exact second in five years from now, I would need to be sure that my current worldview, opinions, and beliefs were duplicated without change in five years so that my experience at T-1 and T-1 plus five years was the same.

I'm just not following the need to create categories within the phenomenal state, with some being more vivid and others more vague, others being fleeting and others being constant. I could say the same of physical objects: smoke floats off into the sky and the rock of Gibraltar doesn't. They don't seem like the same sort of thing, and I guess they're not at a superficial level, but metaphysically they are both physical objects.

My reference to Australia was not to suggest that since the Australians violate civil rights, it's hypocritical for the Australian presenter to condemn Israel for doing the same thing. It also was not meant to suggest Australians are particularly egregious violators of civil rights. I suppose an argument could be made that hints at anti-Semitic motives if it is indeed Jews being specifically targeted by the international community for its violations, but I don't think that's the case candidly. I do believe the interest in Middle East politics is all about the seas of oil in the region and the need for a strong US ally there. Displacement that occurs in various lesser known regions in Africa, for example, get no attention because there is no economic interest there.

My reference to Australia was over the question of what constitutes legitimate land occupation, and the question can be turned to any nation anywhere. It's no more legitimate to say my quarter acre lot is mine because I bought it through legitimate means under US law as it to say it is mine because my ancestors put a stake in it 1000 years ago. Land is acquired by war, government force, treaty, and purchase, and the question isn't clear when it's morally rightfully one's own, which places Israel's rightful presence as morally ambiguous as Australia's and the US's. The Palestinian right to the lands is just as morally right as the Manhattan Indians right to NYC, only in the latter case no one takes such a claim at all seriously.

And that takes me to the next point, is that if we accept Israel's right to occupy all the lands it does (for example, accepting the Levy Commission's report of its right to the disputed territories), then it is understandable that there be a certain ferocity in protecting those lands. You'd certainly not expect much less from a sovereign nation in allowing the takeover its land. To be sure, if the Mexicans decided they wanted to reclaim Texas, it would end very badly for them, with little public outcry.

And this takes us to the children. I absolutely wish to protect innocent children and even to afford guilty children lesser punishments than adults, but there is no nation on earth that doesn't detain children. Israel, if you take the generous view toward the Israelis (which I understand you do not), is a nation under constant attack and fears for its safety and its continued prosperity. Amid the growing violence, it did in fact increase mandatory sentences for rock throwing, although the Israeli Supreme Court did not allow anywhere close to three year sentences for it, and the sentences in facts were measured in terms of weeks and not years. I would assume again that should some teenagers take it upon themselves to throw rocks at police in the US, I could certainly see sentences being handed down in that range. Say what you wish, but throwing stones into crowds and at officers is a real threat to public order, and doubtfully something you would accept in your community, unless, of course, you shared in the outrage of the rock throwers. But, of course, in this hypothetical, we are assuming the rightful occupation of the Israelis, which you do not.

So, yes, innocent children should not be detained, but dangerous children should, still keeping in mind they are children and should not be treated as punitively as adults.

Please advise me: is this a video that has hard to watch images? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

No, it's just like Bambi, but without the scary scenes.

My thought is that the problem with your post in the Shoutbox is likely what you intended to avoid by placing it in the Shoutbox. I get that you feared starting a thread would spark controversial remarks that could be designated anti-Semitic, but I also think by placing a single video here as sort of the definitive description of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without offering a full forum for complete discussion sort of limits the responses.

I can't say I watched the whole video, but I did watch the opening lines, which had a woman declaring that Israel's right to exist was rooted in God's decree alone, which was intended to delegitimize Israel's right to exist and it then said Palestinian children were being rounded up in an effort to control the population, placing Israel as monsters who enjoy injuring children.

Questions like what gives our Australian announcer the right to live on Aboriginal lands are not discussed, nor is the question of what has instigated the martial law tactics of the Israelis addressed (although maybe later in the film they offer a balanced explanation of both sides, but it seems not).

Anyway, the right to possess land is complicated in all instances, but the right to protect it generally not. So I'd think a thread would be more appropriate for complete discussion, but I also think special care should be made to avoid suggestions that the Jews are monsters or that the Palestinians are dogs, which are sometimes the unspoken thoughts of the advocates for either side.

You can have all the phenomenal states you like. I'm pointing out that if they are private, then they are irrelevant; and if they are public, they are just the everyday stuff we already talk about - colours and beliefs and such. — Banno

But here you're agreeing with me, so either you've shifted or we've talked past each other. A claim of irrelevance simply claims that the issue is unimportant for your purposes. If you're trying to figure out what words mean to someone other than yourself, you are necessarily limited to observing how they are used, considering we all concede that you aren't capable of reading the internal workings of my mind. This is just a basic behavioristic claim, claiming that you cannot bother with reading minds, but none of this is suggestive that the phenomenal state is not what gives rise to my behavior and that my beliefs are not mental furniture, as you say.

It seems you're saying (and I might be reinterpreting you to make you comport to my views, so please do correct me if I'm misstating) all that you know of my belief is what you see, so you wish to label that "belief" for your purposes, and the fact that I know my belief to encompass far more than what you see and what you've labeled is irrelevant to you because there's nothing you can do with what you're unable to see.

And so what have we now? I have this internal belief with all its uncommunicated elements that I shall call X and you have these observations of my beliefs you shall call Y, and yet we both run in circles calling them both "beliefs"? I can only say that X <> Y, that X causes Y, and that Y is a limited and very rough estimate of X. But to the extent your linguistic science must disregard as irrelevant that which cannot be publically seen and measured, fine.

I can have all the phenomenal states I like, and you can measure all the events you like.

What puzzles me a little though is that you want to call those foundational phenomenal experiences beliefs. How do you see the connection between sense experience and belief? — Srap Tasmaner

Your attempt here is to catagorize qualia, and I'm just resistent to it because it's not how the internal state works. I don't just experience a bird as a single raw image, devoid of beliefs, ideas, anxiety about work, hunger from not having breakfast, etc. A phenomenal qualitative state is an entire experience presenting however it does. It's my internal state at a given time.

Even if you're not thinking about those reasons? And is holding a belief the same as having reasons for holding it? Are you still talking about the belief existing in different senses, some phenomenal some not? — Srap Tasmaner

If I never had the present moment phenomenal state (State 1), then I could never be said to have believed that I lived in Georgia. It is required that at some point I have held the belief to say that I currently hold the belief. To say I have the belief now even when not thinking about it is simply to claim I previously held the belief and haven't changed my mind. And it's doubtful I'll change my mind if I have no basis.

SO you accept a reality external to your phenomenal experience. Not all hope is lost, then. — Banno

I've not argued idealism. I've just insisted there are phenomenal states, a claim you seem to deny.

I have other things to compare the paint to. You have nothing with which to compare your private mental furniture, except more private mental furniture. — Banno

Sure, you can go back and compare your current house to some old paint samples you kept in your basement to see if it faded, unless of course the samples faded too, much like my memory might have faded. We should have kept better care of our measuring sticks I suppose, but I very well might be convinced that all our measuring sticks had been altered if they were inconsistent with how I remembered them to be.

It drops out of the discussion; and in so doing, drops out of any rational discourse. It is irrelevant. — Banno

What drops out and what's irrelevant?

I'm not following this at all. — Srap Tasmaner

Ok, I'll try again.

I'm currently thinking about my belief that I live in the state of Georgia. We'll call this Phenomenal State 1.

I'm sitting around eating popcorn and watching cartoons, not thinking about where I live. We'll call this Phenomenal State 2.

Do I believe that I live in Georgia while in State 2? Sure, I guess, only because I have the same reasons to believe it when I'm thinking about it even when I'm not, but State 1 is different from State 2.

That's introspection, surely. Doesn't your belief that you live in the great state of Georgia persist when you happen not to be thinking about it? — Srap Tasmaner

It exists in a different sense when I am thinking about than when I'm not, but to the extent the same data and rationality exists over time that causes me to believe I live in Georgia, I continue to have that same belief in some sense even when I'm not actually presently experiencing that belief.