Are you suggesting that animals might imagine alternative scenarios? — Janus
"It is important to remember that the constraint on belief imposed by experience is a negative one. The world affects our beliefs not by our finding out positive things about it, but rather, by providing recalcitrant or surprising things which upset an expectation produced by a belief. The role which the world plays is not one of providing something for our beliefs to correspond to, but rather, one of letting us know when we have a belief that conflicts with it."
It is symbolic language which enables abstraction — Janus
My point is that I wouldn't die in a ditch trying to defend some overly specific defintion of "belief". It is a generic kind of word. — apokrisis
I agree with everything else you say in this post; I am just arguing for the usefulness of distinctions between different kinds of believing. — Janus
I am really just arguing for the usefulness of distinctions between different kinds of believing in pre-linguistic and linguistic contexts. — Janus
And anticipation seems to have doubt inherent within it, so it doesn't seem to be consistent with belief either. — Metaphysician Undercover
it would be better not to say that animals and pre-linguistic humans believe but that they associate and expect. — Janus
Ha ha, hope you don't mind if I laugh about that. — Metaphysician Undercover
And that means it is always in a state of expectation about what might happen next. Surprises reveal that its belief system needs updating. — apokrisis
Presumably she will not think 'they may or may not be there' but she will become just a tad more wary. — Janus
So beliefs can't be weak and strong? Beliefs aren't by nature probabilistic and so held with various degrees of conviction? There is some "degree of doubt" that is inherent for good reason. It helps to know that we don't know as well as to be sure that we do know. — apokrisis
I am not clear though on how you think belief could be equivalent to memory, although belief certainly relies on memory. — Janus
I agree, doubt is inherent within belief because we know that we are never beyond the possibility of mistake. But I think that what separates belief from similar mental content which is not belief, is the conviction that there is a low possibility of mistake. This conviction is tied up with temporal extension such that a longer period of time without mistake reinforces the conviction. — Metaphysician Undercover
So isn't this just pragmatism? You are now thinking of a belief as a proposition - a hypothesis that, if true, would have expectable consequences. You are breaking down the three-part method for forming a reasonable and justified belief - abduction, deduction, inductive confirmation - into its components and labelling the first bit, the leap to a hypothesis that makes predictions, as "the belief". And that separates it from "the justification". — apokrisis
So all I say is that animals can't of course speak objectively in a way that clearly separates a belief from its justification. But the basic psychological structure is the same in that the brain is naturally wired up to work like that - to form general expectancies, to then make particular predictions, and then finally to revisit habits of belief when error correction becomes needed. — apokrisis
But does this really carve up the mind at its joints once you get into a systems-style understanding of neurocognition? Is there an imagery faculty, an intuition faculty, a feelings faculty, all making their individual contributions to the activity being witnessed in this theatre of conscious experience? — apokrisis
I haven't denied that animals are capable of signaling in quite complex ways, but any assertion like the one underlined would need to be supported by strong argument. — Janus
it would be a perversion of the term "belief' to say that she therefore necessarily believes that the sky is blue. — Janus
I don't think it is plausible that a percipient could form such an abstract concept in the absence of linguistic capacity. In any case how could we ever know that they were able to formulate abstract concepts in the absence of symbolic language? — Janus
It is significant that in your second paragraph above you place "believe" between inverted commas; it seems to show that you are not counting it as fully fledged belief. — Janus
If a dog could feign a happy tail wag in order to fool another dog so as to achieve some other purpose, then we would have the start of a symbolic or abstract level of semiosis. — apokrisis
if you studied the matter, you must at least be familiar with predator calls, which are entirely symbolic, — Pseudonym
Presumably she will not think 'they may or may not be there' but she will become just a tad more wary. — Janus
Like I replied to MU, do you think that beliefs can only speak of absolute certainties? — apokrisis
But I think the relationship between belief and memory is more than just belief relying on memory. Belief relies on thinking, and it relies on anticipation, in the same way that memory relies on thinking, and memory relies on anticipation. So belief is more closely related to memory than it is to thinking and anticipation, even though it relies on these things. — Metaphysician Undercover
For example I am absolutely certain that I see a blue sky; belief simply doesn't enter into it. — Janus
But then - to sustain your point - you want to set all that linguistic framing aside and pretend there is only the naked experiencing of a blue sky with no doubt involved, and hence no belief either. — apokrisis
I am just as absolutely certain that I am a linguistic being whose cognition is mediated by that fact, as I am that I see a blue sky. — Janus
Can you explain the presence of this "I-ness"? — apokrisis
I would say the "I-ness" is the fundamental fact upon which all other knowledge turns. It cannot be explained because it is the ground of all explanation. — Janus
Of course our modeling of the world is inevitably dualistic in the sense that there are those two poles of explained and explainer, but there is a third element; the relation between the two poles: the explanation. So the unity of reality is really a trinity. — Janus
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.