• Belief
    Funny thing is, ofttimes when we both look at the same thing, we agree as to the details.

    It's the privacy of your imagined "phenomenal states" that leads you astray here.     — Banno
    It shouldn't be funny that two genetically similar beings arive at the same phenomenal states in response to the same external stimuli. That is assumed, of course, but I don't know that a bat would see the world as I do.
  • Belief
    Suppose that your belief changes over time, but that you do not notice.

    It what sense can your belief be said to be the very same, over time? It ceases to have any individuality.     — Banno
    Suppose the paint on your house fades over time yet you do not notice? In what sense can the paint be said to be the very same over time?
  • Belief
    I learn pain behavior by using it correctly within a linguistic setting. I don't learn pain behavior from my own pains, — Sam26

    And suppose this empirical declaration is wrong? This really isn't philosophy anymore. It's just a strange claim about how people learn. I do in fact know that you're in pain when your behavior is consistent with my own, and it all happens outside a linguistic setting.
  • Belief
    We both see the beetle.

    We do not both see your mental furniture.     — Banno

    We both have phenomenal states. I experience mine, you yours. How the beetle looks without reference to how it looks to someone is incoherent.
  • Belief
    If we followed Hanover here and agreed that the meaning of our words is a subjective item of some sort, we would have no basis for claiming that you, I and Hanover meant the same thing, as Hanover says. — Banno

    Of course we'd have a basis for claiming that we were using the words to refer to the same things. I'd see that when I saw a beetle run by, you would say, "hey, there goes a beetle." I would infer that your phenomenal impression was just as mine was based upon your behavior. And you needn't say "hey, there goes a beetle." Maybe you'd scream, flinch, or whatever. I would draw a conclusion as to what your internal mental impression was based upon your behavior, linguistic or otherwise. As to the question of whether my phenomenal impression of the beetle was similar to yours, I could not know that for sure, but that is simply the inherent limitation of a first person account - it can't be placed into the second person. My guess is that you see beetle as I do, simply because we're all humans of similar structure and we seem to similar reactions to the beetle.
    Hanover might see beliefs as things in the head that we can reference. But you and I see them as tools used in producing explanations, and various other activities. — Banno
    I see a belief as a thing in my head I can reference, yet you see it as a tool that you can use. So, that thing you call a belief you reference is a tool. I presume you acknowledge the belief is in your head. It's not on the table, right? So, this means that you see a belief as a thing in your head that you can reference and you call this thing a tool. I'm not sure what the distinction is you wish to make, except you wish to call beliefs tools.
  • Feature requests
    I use DOS 1.3
  • Feature requests
    ↪ArguingWAristotleTiff
    Maybe you now spell all words correctly. Have you recently been hit on the head?

    I actually get spell check on my home and work computers, but not my phone. Not sure why.
  • Lack Of Seriousness...
    Your web designer, your lawyer, they just want to do what's required to not get fired, they're not interested in doing a good job, and why should they be? — Pseudonym

    This is amatuer psychoanlysis. People have all sorts of motivations, despite your view that everyone chases dollars and strikes at shiny objects like a fish. I care only about quality.
  • Belief
    ↪javra
    Missed the sarcasm. Needed a :wink:
  • Belief
    ↪creativesoul
    Knowing requires a justification which is a subjective interpretation.
  • Belief
    ↪javra
    I just didn't follow your comment that "it doesn't go unexpressed." Was "it" the belief? You could have an unexpressed belief.
  • Belief
    ↪javra
    Not following. The belief isn't the behavior.
  • Belief
    ↪javra
    Yes, the utterance is but a very small percentage of the information conveyed. The distinction between linguistic and non-linguistic behavior is arbitrary as all behavior is communicative whether it be orated by Winston Churchill or my dog scratching at the door.
  • Belief
    ↪creativesoul
    A belief is knowable only via behavior and is therefore subject to interpretation.
  • Belief
    One problem I see, and I'm sure I'm not alone, is how we can know what the non-linguistic creature's belief is. I mean, one could come up with a variety of different explanations for the same set of behaviours — creativesoul
    You know any being's belief by its behavior whether it's by their gestures, movements, or utterances. Language is behavior just like your cat looking for its bowl. All external behavior offers an incomplete report of the internal belief, which could result in alternative explanations, just like you remain uncertain of Banno's beliefs in this thread despite his explicit linguistic behavior attempting to explain himself.
  • Belief
    The meaning of a word - so far as there can be such a thing - cannot be its "subjective referent" - whatever that might be - because you and I can mean the very same thing with the same word; that would imply that the subjective referent in your head was the very same subjective referent as in my head, thus contradicting the very idea of it being subjective. — Banno

    No, it would imply that it's likely we both are referencing a similar subjective impression of a beetle when we said "beetle," but we couldn't be sure.

    I can't be sure your utterance of "beetle" is heard the same for me as you. It too is a beetle. Language is only assumed public.
  • Word of the day - Not to be mistaken for "Word de jour."
    Fine, here's a pic of me.

    https://media.giphy.com/media/YI0HM7ix6pFbW/giphy.mp4
  • Word of the day - Not to be mistaken for "Word de jour."
    Aww Hanover, that is simply adorable. You named a fine lady after a gourd we carve, to scare people as we jack them for free candy, when the sun goes down on all Hallows Eve. Brilliant! :roll: — ArguingWAristotleTiff

    Don't be jelly Sweet Petunia.
  • Word of the day - Not to be mistaken for "Word de jour."
    ↪Baden
    Sorry, you can't be Punkin cuz Punkin said so. You're now Luscious.

    Carry on.
  • Word of the day - Not to be mistaken for "Word de jour."
    ↪TimeLine
    Not sure who is hipper and cooler, the young flopping Travolta with the goofy grin or the serious and aloof gum chewer in the spaghetti strap cut off.
  • What makes you feel confident and empowered to be your most authentic self?
    What currently makes you feel confident and empowered to be your most authentic self? — GBaxter

    The sound of Baden crying.
  • Lack Of Seriousness...
    Also, keep in mind that you fail the Hannah test. You must be at least 20 years older than my daughter in order for me to have any interest in a romantic relationship. Also, I'd have to ask my wife and she is unlikely to approve. I hope you're not too disappointed. — T Clark

    I pass the Hannah test and your wife just told me you could join in.
  • Word of the day - Not to be mistaken for "Word de jour."
    ↪Baden
    Don't be jelly. You can be Punkin too.
  • Word of the day - Not to be mistaken for "Word de jour."
    I wish to thank Tiff for pointing out that I have become the topic of discussion of yet another thread. I'd also like to thank Timeline (aka Punkin) for having created a word describing all that is me.

    Carry on.
  • Lack Of Seriousness...
    If you look at the child actually, you will see just how intensely he is playing, how immersed he is into it - he does it with his entire being, it is not a half-hearted effort at all. — Agustino

    Being childlike is endearing. Childish, not so much.

    Silly games and silly rules is all in fun, and everyone wants to play with the fun kid, but the kid who whines, mopes, and complains at the unfairness of it all is the one no one wants to play with. I didn't at least.
  • Lack Of Seriousness...
    One must take their life seriously. One must care about it. Even when one is joking, playing, etc. You must play seriously. — Agustino

    What you take seriously is often what reveals your character, which is why the person who berates the waitress for his cold soup receives little respect from the person who knows the meaning of true loss. Of course you should be serious when it's a life or death issue or it's something that can avoid true suffering, but we rarely encounter that in the routine of our day, and if you find yourself being overly serious about the mundane issues of life, you're probably lacking some degree of perspective.

    And that means should I realize that you are taking things too seriously, I should simply appreciate that and not provoke you by minimizing what you hold to be serious, even though I don't think it's serious at all. One who lacks the ability to self-deprecate due to his taking life too seriously will often mistake good natured ribbing as malicious ridicule.
  • Lust for risk
    I'm not sure is any kind of painting is really risky since there are not really any adverse consequences to painting a bad picture. — charleton

    Like if you paint a penis on Kim Jung Un's face, that would be risky. I'm sure there are other examples, but that one came to mind.
  • Lust for risk
    I have been for the most part of my life risk averse, but life changes regardless of the security you try to create for yourself, and then you realize that some of the changes foisted upon you result in needed growth. It's actually liberating to have your life dismantled to a degree because it makes you realize that clinging to the way things are is a self-imposed prison often motivated by fear. This isn't a suggestion that you should be impulsive or self-destructively free spirited, but it is to suggest you push yourself out of your comfort zone because that really is where life is most worth living.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2SfmcNg8js
  • Belief
    Concepts are linguistic. — creativesoul

    I'm telling you that I comprehend concepts nonlinguistically, so it's sort of silly for you to tell me I'm not, don't you think?

    If I told you there were no computers, should it matter to me that you report to me you're using a computer?
  • Lack Of Seriousness...
    ↪Agustino
    You're the common denominator in all of these troublesome business dealings.

    Perhaps use the deft people skills you have displayed on this board to generate the same good will among your vendors as you have here.

    Or more kindly, I'd suggest that even if you are right in each instance and they are wrong, it's still you who is damaged, which means it's as much a part of being a successful business person that you extract good work out of your people as it is that you personally are competent. Being a good producer doesn't always translate into being a good manager and it sounds like you have vendors running amok.
  • Belief
    I can only say that when I read these posts that language necessarily precedes concepts, I wonder how it is that I reject those arguments fully understanding the basis of my rejection well before I've articulated that basis linguistically. You guys might be describing the way your mind works, or maybe you wish simply to deny something that challenges your worldview, but I find the discussion just so clearly inconsistent with experience. I conceptualize nonlinguistically and find myself searching for words to express those concepts. If you don't, good for you, but I know no other way to do it.
  • Belief
    My point is that they have no concepts because concepts are a necessary feature of language. What is a concept apart from language? I have no idea what that would be. — Sam26

    What is a concept other than an abstract idea? I can only speak for myself, but I do arrive at concepts prior to articulating them into language. Couldn't I know nothing of baseball, but be able to derive the concepts of the game from the behavior even though I at no time create an inner dialog explaining to myself those concepts?
    I'm making a distinction between concepts and beliefs, in the sense that beliefs can be shown in our actions apart from language, but concepts not. — Sam26

    I guess I don't fully follow the distinction. The pre-lingual man leaves food for his prey to entice him near his arrow. Is that not an understanding of the concept of hunger?
  • Belief
    Firstly, it does not follow from the fact that we use a given word, that there is a something to which the word refers. For example, "red". — Banno

    Not every word has an objective referent, but every meaningful word has a subjective referent, namely its subjective meaning. The subjective referent oftentimes preexists the word, and I'd suppose often occurs without a word ever being designated to attach to that referent.
  • The morality of capitalism
    My point of view is that capitalism works by outsourcing exploitation, just like life works by decreasing its own internal entropy by increasing the entropy of its environment (by more than it decreases its own). So for capitalism to work, there must be an "out there" that we don't care about - the Chinese, the Africans, etc. - let them produce everything for us cheaply, we don't care how they live so long as we have what we need back home. — Agustino

    There are capitalists who produce by their own labor and who offer generous income and benefits to their labor force. You're just describing a particular type of industry and type of capitalist where production requires little skill and the owner is trying to maximize his own profits at the expense of his employees being provided very little.

    If I own a clothing business, maybe it would be cheaper to outsource to China where the workers will make very little. If I'm starting a plumbing business, it might behoove me to treat my best plumbers very well. In a capitalist system, the worker is a commodity, so the greater his skills and talents, the better he will be treated, which is why you should stay in school, be hardworking, and make yourself valuable.
  • Belief
    Hence, I am assuming, your argument would proceed to conclude that since beliefs are not always reflected in action, the only thing they could be is some sort of mental object.

    But this is not a very good argument; there may well be other things that would explain the oddities of belief.     — Banno
    What are those other things you refer to?
    Something else that needs exposition is the dynamics of belief. Beliefs are in a state of flux. They change over time, merge with each other, divide, become more or less distinct. — Banno

    Behaviors are in a state of flux and change over time and become ambiguous and whatnot. But just like beliefs, at any specific time, they are not in flux, but are a specific something.
    That's a great deal of similarity to the beetle in the box. — Banno

    Let's work off that thought experiment because I'm not sure it means to me what it means to you. I would concede you cannot know what my pain is or what any internal state of my consciousness actually is. It is the hidden beetle in the box. All we can talk about it is what we talk about. You cannot know my beliefs by looking into my head, and while I can see my beetle and talk all about it, and you can talk about your beetle and talk all about it, the beetle itself is irrelevant to our discussion because we've conceded the inability to see one another's actual beetles.

    The crux of my argument is that irrelevance does not equate to non-existence. For the purposes of our discussion, should I agree entirely that it helps us none to talk among each other about belief in terms of it providing you any explanatory power, that hardly means I don't have a mental state called a belief that I can know intimately because I have the ability to see into my box.

    It's like any sort of behavioristic theory. Skinner says psychology will never be a real science unless it limits itself to the study of the measurable and quantifiable. Your depression will therefore be measured in terms of the behaviors you engage in, including your own declarations of sadness. However, none of that is to suggest your depression is at all your sad behaviors, but it's simply to declare irrelevant for psychological study that depression is an ineffable, unlocatable phenomenal state hovering around somewhere in your mind. That is to say, it is irrelevant to the psychologist that he cannot identify your qualia, but that doesn't mean his true aim is anything less than altering that qualitative state. The psychologist is limited to seeing you in the third person and he must treat you that way, but his aim is to correct your first person account of yourself.

    Maybe a philosopher (of a certain bent perhaps) finds talk of internal beliefs wasteful talk about beetles that advance the discussion no where. That hardly means I don't have beliefs entirely without language.

    There is a critical difference between saying the actual beetle is irrelevant to us and that it is irrelevant to me. There is an even more critical difference between saying the actual beetle is irrelevant and the actual beetle does not exist.
  • Belief
    They have no concept called belief. So part of the problem is that our talk of these beliefs is a necessary function of language, which in turn leads to the assumption that the belief itself, as shown in the animal/human, is a necessary function of language. It is a necessary function of language if we are to express beliefs using language, but that doesn't mean that an act cannot show a belief apart from a linguistic understanding. — Sam26
    I don't follow the significance of what you're saying. An animal has no concept called anything because it has no language. They nonetheless have concepts, just no word that attaches to that concept. They fully understand what food is, yet they have no word for it. They may fully understand what a belief is, yet have no word for it. If they don't, that speaks to the simplicity and limited understanding of the animal, but I don't see where it's necessarily the case that a language-less creature could not understand the distinction between what he thought was true and what turned out to be actually true, thus drawing a distinction in his mind between what he believed to be true and what was actually true. Maybe I don't get what you were getting at.
  • Any suggestions for undergrad senior paper?
    I'd write about the dehumanizing effects of technology, from the teenagers who disengage from direct contact with family and friends to corporate micromanagement of employees of everything measurable to my not petting my playful dog while I type this message. Has happiness been lost in search of happiness?

    I had this thought on the way home from the gym today actually, especially with regard to workplace technology. The more our occupations are objectively measurable, the less we'll be permitted the freedom of personal expression, else we won't acheive the result expected. What couldn't be measured in years past is easily captured by technolgy. In fact, if a worker is superior in a way not capable of clear measurement, technolgy will dictate the skill irrelevant. It is much the same way that spell check will change our speech if an otherwise legitimate word is not included in its dictionary.

    Yeah, write about that.
  • Belief
    In what States do I truly believe my cat hungry? I say 1 and 2. Do you say 2 and 4? — Hanover

    the explanations are post hock and sufficient. — Banno

    Clarify. My question called for a yes or no.
  • Belief
    But we keep repeating this discussion. It seems that you will not move away from the notion of a belief as a thing in a mind. But for me that view makes no sense. What counts is not a thing in Jack's minds, but what he does: meowing and staring at the bowl and following me around and so on, which all stops when I fill the bowl. These actions are not mental tables and chairs; they are Jack's interactions with the world. — Banno

    State 1 - I believe my cat is hungry, yet I do nothing to show it.
    State 2 - I believe my cat is hungry, so I feed her.
    State 3 - I do not believe my cat is hungry, so I do not feed her.
    State 4 - I do not believe my cat is hungry, but I feed her anyway.

    In what States do I truly believe my cat hungry? I say 1 and 2. Do you say 2 and 4?
  • Mental Resilience
    Yogi's can master the practice of meditation so that they can voluntarily lower their various biological markers of wakefulness (heart rate, respiration, etc.) -- if reports can be believed. — Bitter Crank
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